tell me of another landlord who has distressed his tenants
for arrears as little as I have. I let the old tenants stay on. I'm uncommonly
easy, let me tell you - uncommonly easy. I have my own ideas, and I take my
stand on them, you know. A man who does that is always charged with
eccentricity, inconsistency, and that kind of thing. When I change my line of
action, I shall follow my own ideas.«
    After that, Mr. Brooke remembered that there was a packet which he had
omitted to send off from the Grange, and he bade everybody hurriedly good-bye.
    »I didn't want to take a liberty with Brooke,« said Sir James; »I see he is
nettled. But as to what he says about old tenants, in point of fact no new
tenant would take the farms on the present terms.«
    »I have a notion that he will be brought round in time,« said the Rector.
»But you were pulling one way, Elinor, and we were pulling another. You wanted
to frighten him away from expense, and we want to frighten him into it. Better
let him try to be popular and see that his character as a landlord stands in his
way. I don't think it signifies two straws about the Pioneer, or Ladislaw, or
Brooke's speechifying to the Middlemarchers. But it does signify about the
parishioners in Tipton being comfortable.«
    »Excuse me, it is you two who are on the wrong tack,« said Mrs. Cadwallader.
»You should have proved to him that he loses money by bad management, and then
we should all have pulled together. If you put him a-horseback on politics, I
warn you of the consequences. It was all very well to ride on sticks at home and
call them ideas.«
 

                                 Chapter XXXIX

 »If, as I have, you also doe,
 Vertue attired in woman see,
 And dare love that, and say so too,
 And forget the He and She;

 And if this love, though placed so,
 From prophane men you hide,
 Which will no faith on this bestow,
 Or, if they doe, deride:

 Then you have done a braver thing
 Than all the Worthies did,
 And a braver thence will spring,
 Which is, to keep that hid.«
                                                                      Dr. Donne,
 
Sir James Chettam's mind was not fruitful in devices, but his growing anxiety to
»act on Brooke,« once brought close to his constant belief in Dorothea's