-haired, generous-featured type easily passing for Englishmen of unusually
cordial manners; and Croop, the dark-eyed shoemaker, was probably more Celtic
than he knew. Only three would have been discernible everywhere as Englishmen:
the wood-inlayer Good-win, well-built, open-faced, pleasant-voiced; the florid
laboratory assistant Marrables; and Lilly, the pale, neat-faced copying clerk,
whose light-brown hair was set up in a small parallelogram above his well-filled
forehead, and whose shirt, taken with an otherwise seedy costume, had a
freshness that might be called insular, and perhaps even something narrower.
    Certainly a company select of the select among poor men, being drawn
together by a taste not prevalent even among the privileged heirs of learning
and its institutions; and not likely to amuse any gentleman in search of crime
or low comedy as the ground of interest in people whose weekly income is only
divisible into shillings. Deronda, even if he had not been more than usually
inclined to gravity under the influence of what was pending between him and
Mordecai, would not have set himself to find food for laughter in the various
shades of departure from the tone of polished society sure to be observable in
the air and talk of these men who had probably snatched knowledge as most of us
snatch indulgences, making the utmost of scant opportunity. He looked around him
with the quiet air of respect habitual to him among equals, ordered whisky and
water, and offered the contents of his cigar-case, which, characteristically
enough, he always carried and hardly ever used for his own behoof, having
reasons for not smoking himself, but liking to indulge others. Perhaps it was
his weakness to be afraid of seeming strait-laced, and turning himself into a
sort of diagram instead of a growth which can exercise the guiding attraction of
fellowship. That he made a decidedly winning impression on the company was
proved by their showing themselves no less at ease than before, and desirous of
quickly resuming their interrupted talk.
    »This is what I call one of our touch and go nights, sir,« said Miller, who
was implicitly accepted as a sort of moderator - addressing Deronda by way of
explanation, and nodding toward each person whose name he mentioned. »Sometimes
we stick pretty close to the point. But to-night our friend Pash, there, brought
up the law of progress, and we got on statistics; then Lilly, there, saying we
knew well enough before counting that in the same state of society the same sort
of things would happen,