The Vicar's Honest Compromises — Middlemarch

Next evening Lydgate visits Farebrother's parsonage expecting books and beetles, and finds three dependent women first. Mrs. Farebrother rules talk from old certainties about flannel, over-eating, and plain moral truth; Miss Noble steals sugar for poor children; Miss Winifred serves silently. Farebrother rescues him to a bare study where he smokes, collects insects exquisitely, and admits he feeds small weaknesses to avoid idleness.

He knows Lydgate through Paris correspondence with Trawley, trades specimens, and speaks frankly: Bulstrode wants Tyke instead of him for the hospital living; vote for Tyke and keep the banker; vote for Farebrother and make an enemy. Lydgate prefers Bulstrode's hospital money to his theology, quoting Voltaire on arsenic and incantations. Farebrother calls himself only a decent makeshift, yet he is shrewd about harness, independence, and the cost of humoring every fool.

He names Mary Garth as an excellent girl who gauges everybody, though Lydgate has hardly noticed her at Featherstone's. The visit turns hospital politics personal: Lydgate wants useful public work separated from moral posturing, while Farebrother offers friendship without demanding his vote. They turn at last to talk of Paris as the chapter ends with a hospital vote looming that will test whether Lydgate's reform ideals can survive local leverage.