“Dodo is just the creature not to mind about having anything of her own—children or anything!” said Celia to her husband. “And if she had had a baby, it never could have been such a dear as Arthur. Could it, James?
“Not if it had been like Casaubon,” said Sir James, conscious of some indirectness in his answer, and of holding a strictly private opinion as to the perfections of his first-born.
“No! just imagine! Really it was a mercy,” said Celia; “and I think it is very nice for Dodo to be a widow. She can be just as fond of our baby as if it were her own, and she can have as many notions of her own as she likes.”
“It is a pity she was not a queen,” said the devout Sir James.
“But what should we have been then? We must have been something else,” said Celia, objecting to so laborious a flight of imagination. “I like her better as she is.”
Hence, when she found that Dorothea was making arrangements for her final departure to Lowick, Celia raised her eyebrows with disappointment, and in her quiet unemphatic way shot a needle-arrow of sarcasm.
“What will you do at Lowick, Dodo? You say yourself there is nothing to be done there: everybody is so clean and well off, it makes you quite melancholy. And here you have been so happy going all about Tipton with Mr. Garth into the worst backyards. And now uncle is abroad, you and Mr. Garth can have it all your own way; and I am sure James does everything you tell him.”
“I shall often come here, and I shall see how baby grows all the better,” said Dorothea.
“But you will never see him washed,” said Celia; “and that is quite the best part of the day.” She was almost pouting: it did seem to her very hard in Dodo to go away from the baby when she might stay.
“Dear Kitty, I will come and stay all night on purpose,” said Dorothea; “but I want to be alone now, and in my own home. I wish to know the Farebrothers better, and to talk to Mr. Farebrother about what there is to be done in Middlemarch.”