But with your education you must know."
"What must Rosy know, mother?" said Mr. Fred, who had slid in unobserved through the half-open door while the ladies were bending over their work, and now going up to the fire stood with his back towards it, warming the soles of his slippers.
"Whether it's right to say `superior young men,'" said Mrs. Vincy, ringing the bell.
"Oh, there are so many superior teas and sugars now. Superior is getting to be shopkeepers' slang.""Are you beginning to dislike slang, then?" said Rosamond, with mild gravity.
"Only the wrong sort. All choice of words is slang. It marks a class.""There is correct English: that is not slang.""I beg your pardon: correct English is the slang of prigs who write history and essays. And the strongest slang of all is the slang of poets.""You will say anything, Fred, to gain your point.""Well, tell me whether it is slang or poetry to call an ox a leg-plaiter.""Of course you can call it poetry if you like.""Aha, Miss Rosy, you don't know Homer from slang. I shall invent a new game; I shall write bits of slang and poetry on slips, and give them to you to separate.""Dear me, how amusing it is to hear young people talk!" said Mrs. Vincy, with cheerful admiration.
"Have you got nothing else for my breakfast, Pritchard?" said Fred, to the servant who brought in coffee and buttered toast;while he walked round the table surveying the ham, potted beef, and other cold remnants, with an air of silent rejection, and polite forbearance from signs of disgust.
"Should you like eggs, sir?"
"Eggs, no! Bring me a grilled bone."
"Really, Fred," said Rosamond, when the servant had left the room, "if you must have hot things for breakfast, I wish you would come down earlier. You can get up at six o'clock to go out hunting;I cannot understand why you find it so difficult to get up on other mornings.""That is your want of understanding, Rosy. I can get up to go hunting because I like it.""What would you think of me if I came down two hours after every one else and ordered grilled bone?""I should think you were an uncommonly fast young lady," said Fred, eating his toast with the utmost composure.
"I cannot see why brothers are to make themselves disagreeable, any more than sisters.""I don't make myself disagreeable; it is you who find me so.
Disagreeable is a word that describes your feelings and not my actions.""I think it describes the smell of grilled bone.""Not at all. It describes a sensation in your little nose associated with certain finicking notions which are the classics of Mrs. Lemon's school. Look at my mother you don't see her objecting to everything except what she does herself. She is my notion of a pleasant woman.""Bless you both, my dears, and don't quarrel," said Mrs. Vincy, with motherly cordiality. "Come, Fred, tell us all about the new doctor.
How is your uncle pleased with him?"
"Pretty well, I think. He asks Lydgate all sorts of questions and then screws up his face while he hears the answers, as if they were pinching his toes. That's his way. Ah, here comes my grilled bone.""But how came you to stay out so late, my dear? You only said you were going to your uncle's.""Oh, I dined at Plymdale's. We had whist. Lydgate was there too.""And what do you think of him? He is very gentlemanly, I suppose.
They say he is of excellent family--his relations quite county people.""Yes," said Fred. "There was a Lydgate at John's who spent no end of money. I find this man is a second cousin of his.
But rich men may have very poor devils for second cousins.""It always makes a difference, though, to be of good family,"said Rosamond, with a tone of decision which showed that she had thought on this subject. Rosamond felt that she might have been happier if she had not been the daughter of a Middlemarch manufacturer.
She disliked anything which reminded her that her mother's father had been an innkeeper. Certainly any one remembering the fact might think that Mrs. Vincy had the air of a very handsome good-humored landlady, accustomed to the most capricious orders of gentlemen.
"I thought it was odd his name was Tertius," said the bright-faced matron, "but of course it's a name in the family.