Besides, a man with the milk of human kindness in him can scarcely abstain from doing a good-natured action, and one can't be good-natured all round. Nature herself occasionally quarters an inconvenient parasite on an animal towards whom she has otherwise no ill-will. What then? We admire her care for the parasite. If Mr Riley had shrunk from giving a recommendation that was not based on valid evidence, he would not have helped Mr Stelling to a paying pupil, and that would not have been so well for the reverend gentleman. Consider, too, that all the pleasant little dim ideas and complacencies - of standing well with Timpson, of dispensing advice when he was asked for it, of impressing his friend Tulliver with additional respect, of saying something and saying it emphatically, with other inappreciably minute ingredients that went along with the warm hearth and the brandy and water to make up Mr Riley's consciousness on this occasion, would have been a mere blank.