- Will hasn't heard the gossip about the codicil in Mr. Casaubon's will.
- He hasn't been invited to Brooke's house as often as before, but he continues to work on the Pioneer for Brooke.
- Will is afraid that they're trying to keep him away from Dorothea, and is annoyed at the thought that they suspect him of trying to seduce a rich and newly widowed woman.
- But he continues to see Brooke at the Pioneer office, and continues to coach him on speeches and politics.
- Brooke is as inconsistent as ever, but, with help from Will, it's not showing as badly.
- Or so Will hopes: the time has come for Brooke to give a public speech, and he's bad enough at speaking coherently in private that everyone is nervous for him.
- The speech starts out okay, but then Brooke starts rambling about nothing.
- And then someone in the crowd holds up a kind of effigy, or life-sized model, of Brooke on a stick to mimic him.
- Brooke has always been easily distracted, and the effigy pulls him even further off track.
- The speech really goes to pot when the crowd starts throwing rotten vegetables at him.
- Will Ladislaw and the rest of the committee that has been working for Brooke look "grim" when Brooke comes back in from his failed speech.
- Will considers quitting his job at the Pioneer. He wants to go away and do something brilliant that will elevate him socially. He wants to put himself on a level with Dorothea and erase the social gap between them.
- He doesn't want to go without seeing Dorothea first.
- But then Brooke tells him that he's planning on selling the Pioneer, and therefore he won't need Will to stay on as editor anymore.
- This is just the excuse Will needed to leave Middlemarch to seek his fortune elsewhere, but he doesn't want to leave "because they are afraid" of him.
- He has a feeling that Brooke and his friends are trying to push him away either because of politics or because of Dorothea.