Page 1025 - middlemarch

with him, till he’d brag of a spavin as if it ‘ud fetch money.
A man should know when to pull up.’ Mr. Bambridge made
this remark with an air of disgust, satisfied that his own
bragging showed a fine sense of the marketable.
‘What’s the man’s name? Where can he be found?’ said
Mr. Hawley.
‘As to where he is to be found, I left him to it at the Sara-
cen’s Head; but his name is Raffles.’
‘Raffles!’ exclaimed Mr. Hopkins. ‘I furnished his fu-
neral yesterday. He was buried at Lowick. Mr. Bulstrode
followed him. A very decent funeral.’ There was a strong
sensation among the listeners. Mr. Bambridge gave an ejac-
ulation in which ‘brimstone’ was the mildest word, and Mr.
Hawley, knitting his brows and bending his head forward,
exclaimed, ‘What?—where did the man die?’
‘At Stone Court,’ said the draper. ‘The housekeeper said
he was a relation of the master’s. He came there ill on Fri-
day.’
‘Why, it was on Wednesday I took a glass with him,’ in-
terposed Bambridge.
‘Did any doctor attend him?’ said Mr. Hawley
‘Yes. Mr. Lydgate. Mr. Bulstrode sat up with him one
night. He died the third morning.’
‘Go on, Bambridge,’ said Mr. Hawley, insistently. ‘What
did this fellow say about Bulstrode?’
The group had already become larger, the town-clerk’s
presence being a guarantee that something worth listening
to was going on there; and Mr. Bambridge delivered his nar-
rative in the hearing of seven. It was mainly what we know,

10 Middlemarch