He does play for money, and he wins a good deal. Of course that
takes him into company a little beneath him, and makes him slack
about some things; and yet, with all that, looking at him as a whole,
I think he is one of the most blameless men I ever knew. He has
neither venom nor doubleness in him, and those often go with a more
correct outside."
"I wonder whether he suffers in his conscience because of that habit,"
said Dorothea; "I wonder whether he wishes he could leave it off."
"I have no doubt he would leave it off, if he were transplanted
into plenty: he would be glad of the time for other things."
"My uncle says that Mr. Tyke is spoken of as an apostolic man,"
said Dorothea, meditatively. She was wishing it were possible to restore
the times of primitive zeal, and yet thinking of Mr. Farebrother
with a strong desire to rescue him from his chance-gotten money.
"I don't pretend to say that Farebrother is apostolic," said Lydgate.
"His position is not quite like that of the Apostles: he is only a
parson among parishioners whose lives he has to try and make better.
Practically I find that what is called being apostolic now,
is an impatience of everything in which the parson doesn't cut
the principal figure. I see something of that in Mr. Tyke at
the Hospital: a good deal of his doctrine is a sort of pinching hard
to make people uncomfortably--aware of him.
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