prompt:
Chapter: "Though it be songe of old and yonge,
         That I sholde be to blame,
     Theyrs be the charge, that spoke so large
         In hurtynge of my name."
                           --The Not-Browne Mayde.

It was just after the Lords had thrown out the Reform Bill: that
explains how Mr. Cadwallader came to be walking on the slope of the
lawn near the great conservatory at Freshitt Hall, holding the "Times"
in his hands behind him, while he talked with a trout-fisher's
dispassionateness about the prospects of the country to Sir James
Chettam.  Mrs. Cadwallader, the Dowager Lady Chettam, and Celia were
sometimes seated on garden-chairs, sometimes walking to meet little
Arthur, who was being drawn in his chariot, and, as became the
infantine Bouddha, was sheltered by his sacred umbrella with handsome
silken fringe.

The ladies also talked politics, though more fitfully.  Mrs.
Cadwallader was strong on the intended creation of peers: she had it
for certain from her cousin that Truberry had gone over to the other
side entirely at the instigation of his wife, who had scented peerages
in the air from the very first introduction of the Reform question, and
would sign her soul away to take precedence of her younger sister, who
had married a baronet.  Lady Chettam thought that such conduct was very
reprehensible, and remembered that Mrs. Truberry's mother was a Miss
Walsingham of Melspring.  Celia confessed it was nicer to be "Lady"
than "Mrs.," and that Dodo never minded about precedence if she could
have her own way.  Mrs. Cadwallader held that it was a poor
satisfaction to take precedence when everybody about you knew that you
had not a drop of good blood in your veins; and Celia again, stopping
to look at Arthur, said, "It would be very nice, though, if he were a
Viscount--and his lordship's little tooth coming through!  He might
have been, if James had been an Earl."

"My dear Celia," said the Dowager, "James's title is worth far more
than any new earldom.  I never wished his father to be anything else
than Sir James."

"Oh, I only meant about Arthur's little tooth," said Celia,
comfortably.  "But see, here is my uncle coming."

She tripped off to meet her uncle, while Sir James and Mr. Cadwallader
came forward to make one group with the ladies.  Celia had slipped her
arm through her uncle's, and he patted her hand with a rather
melancholy "Well, my dear!"  As they approached, it was evident that
Mr. Brooke was looking dejected, but this was fully accounted for by
the state of politics; and as he was shaking hands all round without
more greeting than a "Well, you're all here, you know," the Rector
said, laughingly--

"Don't take the throwing out of the Bill so much to heart, Brooke;
you've got all the riff-raff of the country on your side."

"The Bill, eh? ah!" said Mr. Brooke, with a mild distractedness of
manner.  "Thrown out, you know, eh?  The Lords are going too far,
though.  They'll have to pull up.  Sad news, you know.  I mean, here at
home--sad news.  But you must not blame me, Chettam."

"What is the matter?" said Sir James.  "Not another gamekeeper shot, I
hope?  It's what I should expect, when a fellow like Trapping Bass is
let off so easily."

"Gamekeeper?  No. Let us go in; I can tell you all in the house, you
know," said Mr. Brooke, nodding at the Cadwalladers, to show that he
included them in his confidence.  "As to poachers like Trapping Bass,
you know, Chettam," he continued, as they were entering, "when you are
a magistrate, you'll not find it so easy to commit.  Severity is all
very well, but it's a great deal easier when you've got somebody to do
it for you.  You have a soft place in your heart yourself, you
know--you're not a Draco, a Jeffreys, that sort of thing."

Mr. Brooke was evidently in a state of nervous perturbation.  When he
had something painful to tell, it was usually his way to introduce it
among a number of disjointed particulars, as if it were a medicine that
would get a milder flavor by mixing.  He continued his chat with Sir
James about the poachers until they were all seated, and Mrs.
Cadwallader, impatient of this drivelling, said--

"I'm dying to know the sad news.  The gamekeeper is not shot: that is
settled.  What is it, then?"

"Well, it's a very trying thing, you know," said Mr. Brooke.  "I'm glad
you and the Rector are here; it's a family matter--but you will help
us all to bear it, Cadwallader.  I've got to break it to you, my dear."
Here Mr. Brooke looked at Celia--"You've no notion what it is, you
know.  And, Chettam, it will annoy you uncommonly--but, you see, you
have not been able to hinder it, any more than I have.  There's
something singular in things: they come round, you know."

"It must be about Dodo," said Celia, who had been used to think of her
sister as the dangerous part of the family machinery.  She had seated
herself on a low stool against her husband's knee.

"For God's sake let us hear what it is!" said Sir James.

"Well, you know, Chettam, I couldn't help Casaubon's will: it was a
sort of will to make things worse."

"Exactly," said Sir James, hastily.  "But _what_ is worse?"

"Dorothea is going to be married again, you know," said Mr. Brooke,
nodding towards Celia, who immediately looked up at her husband with a
frightened glance, and put her hand on his knee.  Sir James was almost
white with anger, but he did not speak.

"Merciful heaven!" said Mrs. Cadwallader.  "Not to _young_ Ladislaw?"

Mr. Brooke nodded, saying, "Yes; to Ladislaw," and then fell into a
prudential silence.

"You see, Humphrey!" said Mrs. Cadwallader, waving her arm towards her
husband.  "Another time you will admit that I have some foresight; or
rather you will contradict me and be just as blind as ever.  _You_
supposed that the young gentleman was gone out of the country."

"So he might be, and yet come back," said the Rector, quietly

"When did you learn this?" said Sir James, not liking to hear any one
else speak, though finding it difficult to speak himself.

"Yesterday," said Mr. Brooke, meekly.  "I went to Lowick.  Dorothea
sent for me, you know.  It had come about quite suddenly--neither of
them had any idea two days ago--not any idea, you know.  There's
something singular in things.  But Dorothea is quite determined--it is
no use opposing.  I put it strongly to her.  I did my duty, Chettam.
But she can act as she likes, you know."

"It would have been better if I had called him out and shot him a year
ago," said Sir James, not from bloody-mindedness, but because he needed
something strong to say.

"Really, James, that would have been very disagreeable," said Celia.

"Be reasonable, Chettam.  Look at the affair more quietly," said Mr.
Cadwallader, sorry to see his good-natured friend so overmastered by
anger.

"That is not so very easy for a man of any dignity--with any sense of
right--when the affair happens to be in his own family," said Sir
James, still in his white indignation.  "It is perfectly scandalous.
If Ladislaw had had a spark of honor he would have gone out of the
country at once, and never shown his face in it again.  However, I am
not surprised.  The day after Casaubon's funeral I said what ought to
be done.  But I was not listened to."

"You wanted what was impossible, you know, Chettam," said Mr. Brooke.
"You wanted him shipped off.  I told you Ladislaw was not to be done as
we liked with: he had his ideas.  He was a remarkable fellow--I always
said he was a remarkable fellow."

"Yes," said Sir James, unable to repress a retort, "it is rather a pity
you formed that high opinion of him.  We are indebted to that for his
being lodged in this neighborhood.  We are indebted to that for seeing
a woman like Dorothea degrading herself by marrying him." Sir James
made little stoppages between his clauses, the words not coming easily.
"A man so marked out by her husband's will, that delicacy ought to have
forbidden her from seeing him again--who takes her out of her proper
rank--into poverty--has the meanness to accept such a sacrifice--has
always had an objectionable position--a bad origin--and, I _believe_,
is a man of little principle and light character.  That is my opinion."
Sir James ended emphatically, turning aside and crossing his leg.

"I pointed everything out to her," said Mr. Brooke, apologetically--"I
mean the poverty, and abandoning her position.  I said, 'My dear, you
don't know what it is to live on seven hundred a-year, and have no
carriage, and that kind of thing, and go amongst people who don't know
who you are.'  I put it strongly to her.  But I advise you to talk to
Dorothea herself.  The fact is, she has a dislike to Casaubon's
property.  You will hear what she says, you know."

"No--excuse me--I shall not," said Sir James, with more coolness.  "I
cannot bear to see her again; it is too painful.  It hurts me too much
that a woman like Dorothea should have done what is wrong."

"Be just, Chettam," said the easy, large-lipped Rector, who objected to
all this unnecessary discomfort.  "Mrs. Casaubon may be acting
imprudently: she is giving up a fortune for the sake of a man, and we
men have so poor an opinion of each other that we can hardly call a
woman wise who does that.  But I think you should not condemn it as a
wrong action, in the strict sense of the word."

"Yes, I do," answered Sir James.  "I think that Dorothea commits a
wrong action in marrying Ladislaw."

"My dear fellow, we are rather apt to consider an act wrong because it
is unpleasant to us," said the Rector, quietly.  Like many men who take
life easily, he had the knack of saying a home truth occasionally to
those who felt themselves virtuously out of temper.  Sir James took out
his handkerchief and began to bite the corner.

"It is very dreadful of Dodo, though," said Celia, wishing to justify
her husband.  "She said she _never would_ marry again--not anybody at
all."

"I heard her say the same thing myself," said Lady Chettam,
majestically, as if this were royal evidence.

"Oh, there is usually a silent exception in such cases," said Mrs.
Cadwallader.  "The only wonder to me is, that any of you are surprised.
You did nothing to hinder it.  If you would have had Lord Triton down
here to woo her with his philanthropy, he might have carried her off
before the year was over.  There was no safety in anything else.  Mr.
Casaubon had prepared all this as beautifully as possible.  He made
himself disagreeable--or it pleased God to make him so--and then he
dared her to contradict him.  It's the way to make any trumpery
tempting, to ticket it at a high price in that way."

"I don't know what you mean by wrong, Cadwallader," said Sir James,
still feeling a little stung, and turning round in his chair towards
the Rector.  "He's not a man we can take into the family.  At least, I
must speak for myself," he continued, carefully keeping his eyes off
Mr. Brooke.  "I suppose others will find his society too pleasant to
care about the propriety of the thing."

"Well, you know, Chettam," said Mr. Brooke, good-humoredly, nursing his
leg, "I can't turn my back on Dorothea.  I must be a father to her up
to a certain point.  I said, 'My dear, I won't refuse to give you
away.'  I had spoken strongly before.  But I can cut off the entail,
you know.  It will cost money and be troublesome; but I can do it, you
know."

Mr. Brooke nodded at Sir James, and felt that he was both showing his
own force of resolution and propitiating what was just in the Baronet's
vexation.  He had hit on a more ingenious mode of parrying than he was
aware of.  He had touched a motive of which Sir James was ashamed.  The
mass of his feeling about Dorothea's marriage to Ladislaw was due
partly to excusable prejudice, or even justifiable opinion, partly to a
jealous repugnance hardly less in Ladislaw's case than in Casaubon's.
He was convinced that the marriage was a fatal one for Dorothea.  But
amid that mass ran a vein of which he was too good and honorable a man
to like the avowal even to himself: it was undeniable that the union of
the two estates--Tipton and Freshitt--lying charmingly within a
ring-fence, was a prospect that flattered him for his son and heir.
Hence when Mr. Brooke noddingly appealed to that motive, Sir James felt
a sudden embarrassment; there was a stoppage in his throat; he even
blushed.  He had found more words than usual in the first jet of his
anger, but Mr. Brooke's propitiation was more clogging to his tongue
than Mr. Cadwallader's caustic hint.

But Celia was glad to have room for speech after her uncle's suggestion
of the marriage ceremony, and she said, though with as little eagerness
of manner as if the question had turned on an invitation to dinner, "Do
you mean that Dodo is going to be married directly, uncle?"

"In three weeks, you know," said Mr. Brooke, helplessly.  "I can do
nothing to hinder it, Cadwallader," he added, turning for a little
countenance toward the Rector, who said--

"--I--should not make any fuss about it.  If she likes to be poor, that
is her affair.  Nobody would have said anything if she had married the
young fellow because he was rich.  Plenty of beneficed clergy are
poorer than they will be.  Here is Elinor," continued the provoking
husband; "she vexed her friends by me: I had hardly a thousand
a-year--I was a lout--nobody could see anything in me--my shoes were
not the right cut--all the men wondered how a woman could like me.
Upon my word, I must take Ladislaw's part until I hear more harm of
him."

"Humphrey, that is all sophistry, and you know it," said his wife.
"Everything is all one--that is the beginning and end with you.  As if
you had not been a Cadwallader!  Does any one suppose that I would have
taken such a monster as you by any other name?"

"And a clergyman too," observed Lady Chettam with approbation.  "Elinor
cannot be said to have descended below her rank.  It is difficult to
say what Mr. Ladislaw is, eh, James?"

Sir James gave a small grunt, which was less respectful than his usual
mode of answering his mother.  Celia looked up at him like a thoughtful
kitten.

"It must be admitted that his blood is a frightful mixture!" said Mrs.
Cadwallader.  "The Casaubon cuttle-fish fluid to begin with, and then a
rebellious Polish fiddler or dancing-master, was it?--and then an old
clo--"

"Nonsense, Elinor," said the Rector, rising.  "It is time for us to go."

"After all, he is a pretty sprig," said Mrs. Cadwallader, rising too,
and wishing to make amends.  "He is like the fine old Crichley
portraits before the idiots came in."

"I'll go with you," said Mr. Brooke, starting up with alacrity.  "You
must all come and dine with me to-morrow, you know--eh, Celia, my dear?"

"You will, James--won't you?" said Celia, taking her husband's hand.

"Oh, of course, if you like," said Sir James, pulling down his
waistcoat, but unable yet to adjust his face good-humoredly. "That is
to say, if it is not to meet anybody else.':

"No, no, no," said Mr. Brooke, understanding the condition.  "Dorothea
would not come, you know, unless you had been to see her."

When Sir James and Celia were alone, she said, "Do you mind about my
having the carriage to go to Lowick, James?"

"What, now, directly?" he answered, with some surprise.

"Yes, it is very important," said Celia.

"Remember, Celia, I cannot see her," said Sir James.

"Not if she gave up marrying?"

"What is the use of saying that?--however, I'm going to the stables.
I'll tell Briggs to bring the carriage round."

Celia thought it was of great use, if not to say that, at least to take
a journey to Lowick in order to influence Dorothea's mind.  All through
their girlhood she had felt that she could act on her sister by a word
judiciously placed--by opening a little window for the daylight of her
own understanding to enter among the strange colored lamps by which
Dodo habitually saw.  And Celia the matron naturally felt more able to
advise her childless sister.  How could any one understand Dodo so well
as Celia did or love her so tenderly?

Dorothea, busy in her boudoir, felt a glow of pleasure at the sight of
her sister so soon after the revelation of her intended marriage.  She
had prefigured to herself, even with exaggeration, the disgust of her
friends, and she had even feared that Celia might be kept aloof from
her.

"O Kitty, I am delighted to see you!" said Dorothea, putting her hands
on Celia's shoulders, and beaming on her.  "I almost thought you would
not come to me."

"I have not brought Arthur, because I was in a hurry," said Celia, and
they sat down on two small chairs opposite each other, with their knees
touching.

"You know, Dodo, it is very bad," said Celia, in her placid guttural,
looking as prettily free from humors as possible.  "You have
disappointed us all so.  And I can't think that it ever _will_ be--you
never can go and live in that way.  And then there are all your plans!
You never can have thought of that.  James would have taken any trouble
for you, and you might have gone on all your life doing what you liked."

"On the contrary, dear," said Dorothea, "I never could do anything that
I liked.  I have never carried out any plan yet."

"Because you always wanted things that wouldn't do.  But other plans
would have come.  And how can you marry Mr. Ladislaw, that we none of
us ever thought you _could_ marry?  It shocks James so dreadfully.  And
then it is all so different from what you have always been.  You would
have Mr. Casaubon because he had such a great soul, and was so and
dismal and learned; and now, to think of marrying Mr. Ladislaw, who has
got no estate or anything.  I suppose it is because you must be making
yourself uncomfortable in some way or other."

Dorothea laughed.

"Well, it is very serious, Dodo," said Celia, becoming more impressive.
"How will you live? and you will go away among queer people.  And I
shall never see you--and you won't mind about little Arthur--and I
thought you always would--"

Celia's rare tears had got into her eyes, and the corners of her mouth
were agitated.

"Dear Celia," said Dorothea, with tender gravity, "if you don't ever
see me, it will not be my fault."

"Yes, it will," said Celia, with the same touching distortion of her
small features.  "How can I come to you or have you with me when James
can't bear it?--that is because he thinks it is not right--he thinks
you are so wrong, Dodo.  But you always were wrong: only I can't help
loving you.  And nobody can think where you will live: where can you
go?"

"I am going to London," said Dorothea.

"How can you always live in a street?  And you will be so poor.  I
could give you half my things, only how can I, when I never see you?"

"Bless you, Kitty," said Dorothea, with gentle warmth.  "Take comfort:
perhaps James will forgive me some time."

"But it would be much better if you would not be married," said Celia,
drying her eyes, and returning to her argument; "then there would be
nothing uncomfortable.  And you would not do what nobody thought you
could do.  James always said you ought to be a queen; but this is not
at all being like a queen.  You know what mistakes you have always been
making, Dodo, and this is another.  Nobody thinks Mr. Ladislaw a proper
husband for you.  And you _said you_ would never be married again."

"It is quite true that I might be a wiser person, Celia," said
Dorothea, "and that I might have done something better, if I had been
better.  But this is what I am going to do.  I have promised to marry
Mr. Ladislaw; and I am going to marry him."

The tone in which Dorothea said this was a note that Celia had long
learned to recognize.  She was silent a few moments, and then said, as
if she had dismissed all contest, "Is he very fond of you, Dodo?"

"I hope so.  I am very fond of him."

"That is nice," said Celia, comfortably.  "Only I rather you had such a
sort of husband as James is, with a place very near, that I could drive
to."

Dorothea smiled, and Celia looked rather meditative.  Presently she
said, "I cannot think how it all came about." Celia thought it would be
pleasant to hear the story.

"I dare say not," said-Dorothea, pinching her sister's chin.  "If you
knew how it came about, it would not seem wonderful to you."

"Can't you tell me?" said Celia, settling her arms cozily.

"No, dear, you would have to feel with me, else you would never know."

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Mr. Brooke, Sir James, Celia, and the Cadwalladers are all assembled at Sir James' home. Mr. Brooke has news to tell them of Dorothea and Will, and their impending marriage. Sir James is very angry, and objects strongly; he wants to try and protect Dorothea as he should have protected her from her marriage with Casaubon, though this time she does not need help. The others only consider Will's reputation and his money situation in evaluating the worth of the union; everyone still has a great deal of prejudice against Will, and much concern for Dorothea. Sir James sends Celia to go and talk her, but Dorothea is steadfast in her decision. Celia hopes for the best, though still, no one is very positive about the marriage.


prompt:
Chapter: "Then went the jury out whose names were Mr. Blindman, Mr.
    No-good, Mr. Malice, Mr. Love-lust, Mr. Live-loose, Mr.
    Heady, Mr. High-mind, Mr. Enmity, Mr. Liar, Mr. Cruelty, Mr.
    Hate-light, Mr. Implacable, who every one gave in his
    private verdict against him among themselves, and afterwards
    unanimously concluded to bring him in guilty before the
    judge. And first among themselves, Mr. Blindman, the
    foreman, said, I see clearly that this man is a heretic.
    Then said Mr. No-good, Away with such a fellow from the
    earth! Ay, said Mr. Malice, for I hate the very look of him.
    Then said Mr. Love-lust, I could never endure him. Nor I,
    said Mr. Live-loose; for he would be always condemning my
    way. Hang him, hang him, said Mr. Heady. A sorry scrub, said
    Mr. High-mind. My heart riseth against him, said Mr. Enmity.
    He is a rogue, said Mr. Liar. Hanging is too good for him,
    said Mr. Cruelty. Let us despatch him out of the way said
    Mr. Hate-light. Then said Mr. Implacable, Might I have all
    the world given me, I could not be reconciled to him;
    therefore let us forthwith bring him in guilty of death."
                                            --Pilgrim's Progress.

When immortal Bunyan makes his picture of the persecuting passions
bringing in their verdict of guilty, who pities Faithful?  That is a
rare and blessed lot which some greatest men have not attained, to know
ourselves guiltless before a condemning crowd--to be sure that what we
are denounced for is solely the good in us.  The pitiable lot is that
of the man who could not call himself a martyr even though he were to
persuade himself that the men who stoned him were but ugly passions
incarnate--who knows that he is stoned, not for professing the Right,
but for not being the man he professed to be.

This was the consciousness that Bulstrode was withering under while he
made his preparations for departing from Middlemarch, and going to end
his stricken life in that sad refuge, the indifference of new faces.
The duteous merciful constancy of his wife had delivered him from one
dread, but it could not hinder her presence from being still a tribunal
before which he shrank from confession and desired advocacy.  His
equivocations with himself about the death of Raffles had sustained the
conception of an Omniscience whom he prayed to, yet he had a terror
upon him which would not let him expose them to judgment by a full
confession to his wife: the acts which he had washed and diluted with
inward argument and motive, and for which it seemed comparatively easy
to win invisible pardon--what name would she call them by?  That she
should ever silently call his acts Murder was what he could not bear.
He felt shrouded by her doubt: he got strength to face her from the
sense that she could not yet feel warranted in pronouncing that worst
condemnation on him.  Some time, perhaps--when he was dying--he would
tell her all: in the deep shadow of that time, when she held his hand
in the gathering darkness, she might listen without recoiling from his
touch.  Perhaps: but concealment had been the habit of his life, and
the impulse to confession had no power against the dread of a deeper
humiliation.

He was full of timid care for his wife, not only because he deprecated
any harshness of judgment from her, but because he felt a deep distress
at the sight of her suffering.  She had sent her daughters away to
board at a school on the coast, that this crisis might be hidden from
them as far as possible.  Set free by their absence from the
intolerable necessity of accounting for her grief or of beholding their
frightened wonder, she could live unconstrainedly with the sorrow that
was every day streaking her hair with whiteness and making her eyelids
languid.

"Tell me anything that you would like to have me do, Harriet,"
Bulstrode had said to her; "I mean with regard to arrangements of
property.  It is my intention not to sell the land I possess in this
neighborhood, but to leave it to you as a safe provision.  If you have
any wish on such subjects, do not conceal it from me."

A few days afterwards, when she had returned from a visit to her
brother's, she began to speak to her husband on a subject which had for
some time been in her mind.

"I _should_ like to do something for my brother's family, Nicholas; and
I think we are bound to make some amends to Rosamond and her husband.
Walter says Mr. Lydgate must leave the town, and his practice is almost
good for nothing, and they have very little left to settle anywhere
with.  I would rather do without something for ourselves, to make some
amends to my poor brother's family."

Mrs. Bulstrode did not wish to go nearer to the facts than in the
phrase "make some amends;" knowing that her husband must understand
her.  He had a particular reason, which she was not aware of, for
wincing under her suggestion.  He hesitated before he said--

"It is not possible to carry out your wish in the way you propose, my
dear.  Mr. Lydgate has virtually rejected any further service from me.
He has returned the thousand pounds which I lent him.  Mrs. Casaubon
advanced him the sum for that purpose.  Here is his letter."

The letter seemed to cut Mrs. Bulstrode severely.  The mention of Mrs.
Casaubon's loan seemed a reflection of that public feeling which held
it a matter of course that every one would avoid a connection with her
husband.  She was silent for some time; and the tears fell one after
the other, her chin trembling as she wiped them away.  Bulstrode,
sitting opposite to her, ached at the sight of that grief-worn face,
which two months before had been bright and blooming.  It had aged to
keep sad company with his own withered features.  Urged into some
effort at comforting her, he said--

"There is another means, Harriet, by which I might do a service to your
brother's family, if you like to act in it.  And it would, I think, be
beneficial to you: it would be an advantageous way of managing the land
which I mean to be yours."

She looked attentive.

"Garth once thought of undertaking the management of Stone Court in
order to place your nephew Fred there.  The stock was to remain as it
is, and they were to pay a certain share of the profits instead of an
ordinary rent.  That would be a desirable beginning for the young man,
in conjunction with his employment under Garth.  Would it be a
satisfaction to you?"

"Yes, it would," said Mrs. Bulstrode, with some return of energy.
"Poor Walter is so cast down; I would try anything in my power to do
him some good before I go away.  We have always been brother and
sister."

"You must make the proposal to Garth yourself, Harriet," said Mr.
Bulstrode, not liking what he had to say, but desiring the end he had
in view, for other reasons besides the consolation of his wife.  "You
must state to him that the land is virtually yours, and that he need
have no transactions with me.  Communications can be made through
Standish.  I mention this, because Garth gave up being my agent.  I can
put into your hands a paper which he himself drew up, stating
conditions; and you can propose his renewed acceptance of them.  I
think it is not unlikely that he will accept when you propose the thing
for the sake of your nephew."

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Bulstrode is getting ready to leave Middlemarch, since he cannot bear the scorn and shame of being there any longer. His wife has been constant, but at the same time, she has been worn down by grief and remorse in the past few months. She would like to do something nice for her family before she goes away; they decide to give the management of Stone Court to Fred, and a decent income, so that he may be able to save some money.


prompt:
Chapter: "Le coeur se sature d'amour comme d'un sel divin qui le
    conserve; de la l'incorruptible adherence de ceux qui se
    sont aimes des l'aube de la vie, et la fraicheur des vielles
    amours prolonges. Il existe un embaumement d'amour. C'est de
    Daphnis et Chloe que sont faits Philemon et Baucis. Cette
    vieillesse la, ressemblance du soir avec l'aurore."
                    --VICTOR HUGO: L'homme qui rit.

Mrs. Garth, hearing Caleb enter the passage about tea-time, opened the
parlor-door and said, "There you are, Caleb.  Have you had your
dinner?"  (Mr. Garth's meals were much subordinated to "business.")

"Oh yes, a good dinner--cold mutton and I don't know what.  Where is
Mary?"

"In the garden with Letty, I think."

"Fred is not come yet?"

"No. Are you going out again without taking tea, Caleb?" said Mrs.
Garth, seeing that her absent-minded husband was putting on again the
hat which he had just taken off.

"No, no; I'm only going to Mary a minute."

Mary was in a grassy corner of the garden, where there was a swing
loftily hung between two pear-trees. She had a pink kerchief tied over
her head, making a little poke to shade her eyes from the level
sunbeams, while she was giving a glorious swing to Letty, who laughed
and screamed wildly.

Seeing her father, Mary left the swing and went to meet him, pushing
back the pink kerchief and smiling afar off at him with the involuntary
smile of loving pleasure.

"I came to look for you, Mary," said Mr. Garth.  "Let us walk about a
bit."

Mary knew quite well that her father had something particular to say:
his eyebrows made their pathetic angle, and there was a tender gravity
in his voice: these things had been signs to her when she was Letty's
age.  She put her arm within his, and they turned by the row of
nut-trees.

"It will be a sad while before you can be married, Mary," said her
father, not looking at her, but at the end of the stick which he held
in his other hand.

"Not a sad while, father--I mean to be merry," said Mary, laughingly.
"I have been single and merry for four-and-twenty years and more: I
suppose it will not be quite as long again as that."  Then, after a
little pause, she said, more gravely, bending her face before her
father's, "If you are contented with Fred?"

Caleb screwed up his mouth and turned his head aside wisely.

"Now, father, you did praise him last Wednesday.  You said he had an
uncommon notion of stock, and a good eye for things."

"Did I?" said Caleb, rather slyly.

"Yes, I put it all down, and the date, anno Domini, and everything,"
said Mary.  "You like things to be neatly booked.  And then his
behavior to you, father, is really good; he has a deep respect for you;
and it is impossible to have a better temper than Fred has."

"Ay, ay; you want to coax me into thinking him a fine match."

"No, indeed, father.  I don't love him because he is a fine match."

"What for, then?"

"Oh, dear, because I have always loved him.  I should never like
scolding any one else so well; and that is a point to be thought of in
a husband."

"Your mind is quite settled, then, Mary?" said Caleb, returning to his
first tone.  "There's no other wish come into it since things have been
going on as they have been of late?"  (Caleb meant a great deal in that
vague phrase;) "because, better late than never.  A woman must not
force her heart--she'll do a man no good by that."

"My feelings have not changed, father," said Mary, calmly.  "I shall be
constant to Fred as long as he is constant to me.  I don't think either
of us could spare the other, or like any one else better, however much
we might admire them.  It would make too great a difference to us--like
seeing all the old places altered, and changing the name for
everything.  We must wait for each other a long while; but Fred knows
that."

Instead of speaking immediately, Caleb stood still and screwed his
stick on the grassy walk.  Then he said, with emotion in his voice,
"Well, I've got a bit of news.  What do you think of Fred going to live
at Stone Court, and managing the land there?"

"How can that ever be, father?" said Mary, wonderingly.

"He would manage it for his aunt Bulstrode.  The poor woman has been to
me begging and praying.  She wants to do the lad good, and it might be
a fine thing for him.  With saving, he might gradually buy the stock,
and he has a turn for farming."

"Oh, Fred would be so happy!  It is too good to believe."

"Ah, but mind you," said Caleb, turning his head warningly, "I must
take it on _my_ shoulders, and be responsible, and see after
everything; and that will grieve your mother a bit, though she mayn't
say so.  Fred had need be careful."

"Perhaps it is too much, father," said Mary, checked in her joy.
"There would be no happiness in bringing you any fresh trouble."

"Nay, nay; work is my delight, child, when it doesn't vex your mother.
And then, if you and Fred get married," here Caleb's voice shook just
perceptibly, "he'll be steady and saving; and you've got your mother's
cleverness, and mine too, in a woman's sort of way; and you'll keep him
in order.  He'll be coming by-and-by, so I wanted to tell you first,
because I think you'd like to tell _him_ by yourselves.  After that, I
could talk it well over with him, and we could go into business and the
nature of things."

"Oh, you dear good father!" cried Mary, putting her hands round her
father's neck, while he bent his head placidly, willing to be caressed.
"I wonder if any other girl thinks her father the best man in the
world!"

"Nonsense, child; you'll think your husband better."

"Impossible," said Mary, relapsing into her usual tone; "husbands are
an inferior class of men, who require keeping in order."

When they were entering the house with Letty, who had run to join them,
Mary saw Fred at the orchard-gate, and went to meet him.

"What fine clothes you wear, you extravagant youth!" said Mary, as Fred
stood still and raised his hat to her with playful formality.  "You are
not learning economy."

"Now that is too bad, Mary," said Fred.  "Just look at the edges of
these coat-cuffs! It is only by dint of good brushing that I look
respectable.  I am saving up three suits--one for a wedding-suit."

"How very droll you will look!--like a gentleman in an old
fashion-book."

"Oh no, they will keep two years."

"Two years! be reasonable, Fred," said Mary, turning to walk.  "Don't
encourage flattering expectations."

"Why not?  One lives on them better than on unflattering ones.  If we
can't be married in two years, the truth will be quite bad enough when
it comes."

"I have heard a story of a young gentleman who once encouraged
flattering expectations, and they did him harm."

"Mary, if you've got something discouraging to tell me, I shall bolt; I
shall go into the house to Mr. Garth.  I am out of spirits.  My father
is so cut up--home is not like itself.  I can't bear any more bad news."

"Should you call it bad news to be told that you were to live at Stone
Court, and manage the farm, and be remarkably prudent, and save money
every year till all the stock and furniture were your own, and you were
a distinguished agricultural character, as Mr. Borthrop Trumbull
says--rather stout, I fear, and with the Greek and Latin sadly
weather-worn?"

"You don't mean anything except nonsense, Mary?" said Fred, coloring
slightly nevertheless.

"That is what my father has just told me of as what may happen, and he
never talks nonsense," said Mary, looking up at Fred now, while he
grasped her hand as they walked, till it rather hurt her; but she would
not complain.

"Oh, I could be a tremendously good fellow then, Mary, and we could be
married directly."

"Not so fast, sir; how do you know that I would not rather defer our
marriage for some years?  That would leave you time to misbehave, and
then if I liked some one else better, I should have an excuse for
jilting you."

"Pray don't joke, Mary," said Fred, with strong feeling.  "Tell me
seriously that all this is true, and that you are happy because of
it--because you love me best."

"It is all true, Fred, and I am happy because of it--because I love you
best," said Mary, in a tone of obedient recitation.

They lingered on the door-step under the steep-roofed porch, and Fred
almost in a whisper said--

"When we were first engaged, with the umbrella-ring, Mary, you used
to--"

The spirit of joy began to laugh more decidedly in Mary's eyes, but the
fatal Ben came running to the door with Brownie yapping behind him,
and, bouncing against them, said--

"Fred and Mary! are you ever coming in?--or may I eat your cake?"

FINALE.

Every limit is a beginning as well as an ending.  Who can quit young
lives after being long in company with them, and not desire to know
what befell them in their after-years? For the fragment of a life,
however typical, is not the sample of an even web: promises may not be
kept, and an ardent outset may be followed by declension; latent powers
may find their long-waited opportunity; a past error may urge a grand
retrieval.

Marriage, which has been the bourne of so many narratives, is still a
great beginning, as it was to Adam and Eve, who kept their honeymoon in
Eden, but had their first little one among the thorns and thistles of
the wilderness.  It is still the beginning of the home epic--the
gradual conquest or irremediable loss of that complete union which
makes the advancing years a climax, and age the harvest of sweet
memories in common.

Some set out, like Crusaders of old, with a glorious equipment of hope
and enthusiasm and get broken by the way, wanting patience with each
other and the world.

All who have cared for Fred Vincy and Mary Garth will like to know that
these two made no such failure, but achieved a solid mutual happiness.
Fred surprised his neighbors in various ways.  He became rather
distinguished in his side of the county as a theoretic and practical
farmer, and produced a work on the "Cultivation of Green Crops and the
Economy of Cattle-Feeding" which won him high congratulations at
agricultural meetings.  In Middlemarch admiration was more reserved:
most persons there were inclined to believe that the merit of Fred's
authorship was due to his wife, since they had never expected Fred
Vincy to write on turnips and mangel-wurzel.

But when Mary wrote a little book for her boys, called "Stories of
Great Men, taken from Plutarch," and had it printed and published by
Gripp & Co., Middlemarch, every one in the town was willing to give the
credit of this work to Fred, observing that he had been to the
University, "where the ancients were studied," and might have been a
clergyman if he had chosen.

In this way it was made clear that Middlemarch had never been deceived,
and that there was no need to praise anybody for writing a book, since
it was always done by somebody else.

Moreover, Fred remained unswervingly steady.  Some years after his
marriage he told Mary that his happiness was half owing to Farebrother,
who gave him a strong pull-up at the right moment.  I cannot say that
he was never again misled by his hopefulness: the yield of crops or the
profits of a cattle sale usually fell below his estimate; and he was
always prone to believe that he could make money by the purchase of a
horse which turned out badly--though this, Mary observed, was of
course the fault of the horse, not of Fred's judgment.  He kept his
love of horsemanship, but he rarely allowed himself a day's hunting;
and when he did so, it was remarkable that he submitted to be laughed
at for cowardliness at the fences, seeming to see Mary and the boys
sitting on the five-barred gate, or showing their curly heads between
hedge and ditch.

There were three boys: Mary was not discontented that she brought forth
men-children only; and when Fred wished to have a girl like her, she
said, laughingly, "that would be too great a trial to your mother."
Mrs. Vincy in her declining years, and in the diminished lustre of her
housekeeping, was much comforted by her perception that two at least of
Fred's boys were real Vincys, and did not "feature the Garths." But
Mary secretly rejoiced that the youngest of the three was very much
what her father must have been when he wore a round jacket, and showed
a marvellous nicety of aim in playing at marbles, or in throwing stones
to bring down the mellow pears.

Ben and Letty Garth, who were uncle and aunt before they were well in
their teens, disputed much as to whether nephews or nieces were more
desirable; Ben contending that it was clear girls were good for less
than boys, else they would not be always in petticoats, which showed
how little they were meant for; whereupon Letty, who argued much from
books, got angry in replying that God made coats of skins for both Adam
and Eve alike--also it occurred to her that in the East the men too
wore petticoats.  But this latter argument, obscuring the majesty of
the former, was one too many, for Ben answered contemptuously, "The
more spooneys they!" and immediately appealed to his mother whether
boys were not better than girls.  Mrs. Garth pronounced that both were
alike naughty, but that boys were undoubtedly stronger, could run
faster, and throw with more precision to a greater distance.  With this
oracular sentence Ben was well satisfied, not minding the naughtiness;
but Letty took it ill, her feeling of superiority being stronger than
her muscles.

Fred never became rich--his hopefulness had not led him to expect that;
but he gradually saved enough to become owner of the stock and
furniture at Stone Court, and the work which Mr. Garth put into his
hands carried him in plenty through those "bad times" which are always
present with farmers.  Mary, in her matronly days, became as solid in
figure as her mother; but, unlike her, gave the boys little formal
teaching, so that Mrs. Garth was alarmed lest they should never be well
grounded in grammar and geography.  Nevertheless, they were found quite
forward enough when they went to school; perhaps, because they had
liked nothing so well as being with their mother.  When Fred was riding
home on winter evenings he had a pleasant vision beforehand of the
bright hearth in the wainscoted parlor, and was sorry for other men who
could not have Mary for their wife; especially for Mr. Farebrother.
"He was ten times worthier of you than I was," Fred could now say to
her, magnanimously.  "To be sure he was," Mary answered; "and for that
reason he could do better without me.  But you--I shudder to think what
you would have been--a curate in debt for horse-hire and cambric
pocket-handkerchiefs!"

On inquiry it might possibly be found that Fred and Mary still inhabit
Stone Court--that the creeping plants still cast the foam of their
blossoms over the fine stone-wall into the field where the walnut-trees
stand in stately row--and that on sunny days the two lovers who were
first engaged with the umbrella-ring may be seen in white-haired
placidity at the open window from which Mary Garth, in the days of old
Peter Featherstone, had often been ordered to look out for Mr. Lydgate.

Lydgate's hair never became white.  He died when he was only fifty,
leaving his wife and children provided for by a heavy insurance on his
life.  He had gained an excellent practice, alternating, according to
the season, between London and a Continental bathing-place; having
written a treatise on Gout, a disease which has a good deal of wealth
on its side.  His skill was relied on by many paying patients, but he
always regarded himself as a failure: he had not done what he once
meant to do.  His acquaintances thought him enviable to have so
charming a wife, and nothing happened to shake their opinion.  Rosamond
never committed a second compromising indiscretion.  She simply
continued to be mild in her temper, inflexible in her judgment,
disposed to admonish her husband, and able to frustrate him by
stratagem.  As the years went on he opposed her less and less, whence
Rosamond concluded that he had learned the value of her opinion; on the
other hand, she had a more thorough conviction of his talents now that
he gained a good income, and instead of the threatened cage in Bride
Street provided one all flowers and gilding, fit for the bird of
paradise that she resembled.  In brief, Lydgate was what is called a
successful man.  But he died prematurely of diphtheria, and Rosamond
afterwards married an elderly and wealthy physician, who took kindly to
her four children.  She made a very pretty show with her daughters,
driving out in her carriage, and often spoke of her happiness as "a
reward"--she did not say for what, but probably she meant that it was a
reward for her patience with Tertius, whose temper never became
faultless, and to the last occasionally let slip a bitter speech which
was more memorable than the signs he made of his repentance.  He once
called her his basil plant; and when she asked for an explanation, said
that basil was a plant which had flourished wonderfully on a murdered
man's brains.  Rosamond had a placid but strong answer to such
speeches.  Why then had he chosen her?  It was a pity he had not had
Mrs. Ladislaw, whom he was always praising and placing above her.  And
thus the conversation ended with the advantage on Rosamond's side.  But
it would be unjust not to tell, that she never uttered a word in
depreciation of Dorothea, keeping in religious remembrance the
generosity which had come to her aid in the sharpest crisis of her life.

Dorothea herself had no dreams of being praised above other women,
feeling that there was always something better which she might have
done, if she had only been better and known better.  Still, she never
repented that she had given up position and fortune to marry Will
Ladislaw, and he would have held it the greatest shame as well as
sorrow to him if she had repented.  They were bound to each other by a
love stronger than any impulses which could have marred it.  No life
would have been possible to Dorothea which was not filled with emotion,
and she had now a life filled also with a beneficent activity which she
had not the doubtful pains of discovering and marking out for herself.
Will became an ardent public man, working well in those times when
reforms were begun with a young hopefulness of immediate good which has
been much checked in our days, and getting at last returned to
Parliament by a constituency who paid his expenses.  Dorothea could
have liked nothing better, since wrongs existed, than that her husband
should be in the thick of a struggle against them, and that she should
give him wifely help.  Many who knew her, thought it a pity that so
substantive and rare a creature should have been absorbed into the life
of another, and be only known in a certain circle as a wife and mother.
But no one stated exactly what else that was in her power she ought
rather to have done--not even Sir James Chettam, who went no further
than the negative prescription that she ought not to have married Will
Ladislaw.

But this opinion of his did not cause a lasting alienation; and the way
in which the family was made whole again was characteristic of all
concerned.  Mr. Brooke could not resist the pleasure of corresponding
with Will and Dorothea; and one morning when his pen had been
remarkably fluent on the prospects of Municipal Reform, it ran off into
an invitation to the Grange, which, once written, could not be done
away with at less cost than the sacrifice (hardly to be conceived) of
the whole valuable letter.  During the months of this correspondence
Mr. Brooke had continually, in his talk with Sir James Chettam, been
presupposing or hinting that the intention of cutting off the entail
was still maintained; and the day on which his pen gave the daring
invitation, he went to Freshitt expressly to intimate that he had a
stronger sense than ever of the reasons for taking that energetic step
as a precaution against any mixture of low blood in the heir of the
Brookes.

But that morning something exciting had happened at the Hall.  A letter
had come to Celia which made her cry silently as she read it; and when
Sir James, unused to see her in tears, asked anxiously what was the
matter, she burst out in a wail such as he had never heard from her
before.

"Dorothea has a little boy.  And you will not let me go and see her.
And I am sure she wants to see me.  And she will not know what to do
with the baby--she will do wrong things with it.  And they thought she
would die.  It is very dreadful!  Suppose it had been me and little
Arthur, and Dodo had been hindered from coming to see me!  I wish you
would be less unkind, James!"

"Good heavens, Celia!" said Sir James, much wrought upon, "what do you
wish?  I will do anything you like.  I will take you to town to-morrow
if you wish it."  And Celia did wish it.

It was after this that Mr. Brooke came, and meeting the Baronet in the
grounds, began to chat with him in ignorance of the news, which Sir
James for some reason did not care to tell him immediately.  But when
the entail was touched on in the usual way, he said, "My dear sir, it
is not for me to dictate to you, but for my part I would let that
alone.  I would let things remain as they are."

Mr. Brooke felt so much surprised that he did not at once find out how
much he was relieved by the sense that he was not expected to do
anything in particular.

Such being the bent of Celia's heart, it was inevitable that Sir James
should consent to a reconciliation with Dorothea and her husband.
Where women love each other, men learn to smother their mutual dislike.
Sir James never liked Ladislaw, and Will always preferred to have Sir
James's company mixed with another kind: they were on a footing of
reciprocal tolerance which was made quite easy only when Dorothea and
Celia were present.

It became an understood thing that Mr. and Mrs. Ladislaw should pay at
least two visits during the year to the Grange, and there came
gradually a small row of cousins at Freshitt who enjoyed playing with
the two cousins visiting Tipton as much as if the blood of these
cousins had been less dubiously mixed.

Mr. Brooke lived to a good old age, and his estate was inherited by
Dorothea's son, who might have represented Middlemarch, but declined,
thinking that his opinions had less chance of being stifled if he
remained out of doors.

Sir James never ceased to regard Dorothea's second marriage as a
mistake; and indeed this remained the tradition concerning it in
Middlemarch, where she was spoken of to a younger generation as a fine
girl who married a sickly clergyman, old enough to be her father, and
in little more than a year after his death gave up her estate to marry
his cousin--young enough to have been his son, with no property, and
not well-born. Those who had not seen anything of Dorothea usually
observed that she could not have been "a nice woman," else she would
not have married either the one or the other.

Certainly those determining acts of her life were not ideally
beautiful.  They were the mixed result of young and noble impulse
struggling amidst the conditions of an imperfect social state, in which
great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the
aspect of illusion.  For there is no creature whose inward being is so
strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it.  A
new Theresa will hardly have the opportunity of reforming a conventual
life, any more than a new Antigone will spend her heroic piety in
daring all for the sake of a brother's burial: the medium in which
their ardent deeds took shape is forever gone.  But we insignificant
people with our daily words and acts are preparing the lives of many
Dorotheas, some of which may present a far sadder sacrifice than that
of the Dorothea whose story we know.

Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were
not widely visible.  Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus
broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on
the earth.  But the effect of her being on those around her was
incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly
dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you
and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived
faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Caleb Garth tells Mary that the Bulstrodes want Fred to manage Stone court; Mary is very happy, though Mr. Garth is still not sure if Fred will make her a good husband. He questions his daughter, about her love for Fred, and whether she truly thinks she can spend her life with him; she does not want to see his daughter make a huge mistake in marriage, if he can help prevent it. But Mary knows what is right to do, and has a good deal of sense; she will marry Fred, and they will probably be happy. She tells Fred about the management of Stone Court, and he is very happy; they will have to be engaged for a while so he can save money, but yet they are content with their engagement.


prompt:
Chapter: "Since I can do no good because a woman,
     Reach constantly at something that is near it.
          --The Maid's Tragedy:  BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.

Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into
relief by poor dress.  Her hand and wrist were so finely formed that
she could wear sleeves not less bare of style than those in which the
Blessed Virgin appeared to Italian painters; and her profile as well as
her stature and bearing seemed to gain the more dignity from her plain
garments, which by the side of provincial fashion gave her the
impressiveness of a fine quotation from the Bible,--or from one of our
elder poets,--in a paragraph of to-day's newspaper.  She was usually
spoken of as being remarkably clever, but with the addition that her
sister Celia had more common-sense. Nevertheless, Celia wore scarcely
more trimmings; and it was only to close observers that her dress
differed from her sister's, and had a shade of coquetry in its
arrangements; for Miss Brooke's plain dressing was due to mixed
conditions, in most of which her sister shared.  The pride of being
ladies had something to do with it: the Brooke connections, though not
exactly aristocratic, were unquestionably "good:" if you inquired
backward for a generation or two, you would not find any yard-measuring
or parcel-tying forefathers--anything lower than an admiral or a
clergyman; and there was even an ancestor discernible as a Puritan
gentleman who served under Cromwell, but afterwards conformed, and
managed to come out of all political troubles as the proprietor of a
respectable family estate.  Young women of such birth, living in a
quiet country-house, and attending a village church hardly larger than
a parlor, naturally regarded frippery as the ambition of a huckster's
daughter.  Then there was well-bred economy, which in those days made
show in dress the first item to be deducted from, when any margin was
required for expenses more distinctive of rank.  Such reasons would
have been enough to account for plain dress, quite apart from religious
feeling; but in Miss Brooke's case, religion alone would have
determined it; and Celia mildly acquiesced in all her sister's
sentiments, only infusing them with that common-sense which is able to
accept momentous doctrines without any eccentric agitation.  Dorothea
knew many passages of Pascal's Pensees and of Jeremy Taylor by heart;
and to her the destinies of mankind, seen by the light of Christianity,
made the solicitudes of feminine fashion appear an occupation for
Bedlam.  She could not reconcile the anxieties of a spiritual life
involving eternal consequences, with a keen interest in gimp and
artificial protrusions of drapery.  Her mind was theoretic, and yearned
by its nature after some lofty conception of the world which might
frankly include the parish of Tipton and her own rule of conduct there;
she was enamoured of intensity and greatness, and rash in embracing
whatever seemed to her to have those aspects; likely to seek martyrdom,
to make retractations, and then to incur martyrdom after all in a
quarter where she had not sought it.  Certainly such elements in the
character of a marriageable girl tended to interfere with her lot, and
hinder it from being decided according to custom, by good looks,
vanity, and merely canine affection.  With all this, she, the elder of
the sisters, was not yet twenty, and they had both been educated, since
they were about twelve years old and had lost their parents, on plans
at once narrow and promiscuous, first in an English family and
afterwards in a Swiss family at Lausanne, their bachelor uncle and
guardian trying in this way to remedy the disadvantages of their
orphaned condition.

It was hardly a year since they had come to live at Tipton Grange with
their uncle, a man nearly sixty, of acquiescent temper, miscellaneous
opinions, and uncertain vote.  He had travelled in his younger years,
and was held in this part of the county to have contracted a too
rambling habit of mind.  Mr. Brooke's conclusions were as difficult to
predict as the weather: it was only safe to say that he would act with
benevolent intentions, and that he would spend as little money as
possible in carrying them out.  For the most glutinously indefinite
minds enclose some hard grains of habit; and a man has been seen lax
about all his own interests except the retention of his snuff-box,
concerning which he was watchful, suspicious, and greedy of clutch.

In Mr. Brooke the hereditary strain of Puritan energy was clearly in
abeyance; but in his niece Dorothea it glowed alike through faults and
virtues, turning sometimes into impatience of her uncle's talk or his
way of "letting things be" on his estate, and making her long all the
more for the time when she would be of age and have some command of
money for generous schemes.  She was regarded as an heiress; for not
only had the sisters seven hundred a-year each from their parents, but
if Dorothea married and had a son, that son would inherit Mr. Brooke's
estate, presumably worth about three thousand a-year--a rental which
seemed wealth to provincial families, still discussing Mr. Peel's late
conduct on the Catholic question, innocent of future gold-fields, and
of that gorgeous plutocracy which has so nobly exalted the necessities
of genteel life.

And how should Dorothea not marry?--a girl so handsome and with such
prospects?  Nothing could hinder it but her love of extremes, and her
insistence on regulating life according to notions which might cause a
wary man to hesitate before he made her an offer, or even might lead
her at last to refuse all offers.  A young lady of some birth and
fortune, who knelt suddenly down on a brick floor by the side of a sick
laborer and prayed fervidly as if she thought herself living in the
time of the Apostles--who had strange whims of fasting like a Papist,
and of sitting up at night to read old theological books!  Such a wife
might awaken you some fine morning with a new scheme for the
application of her income which would interfere with political economy
and the keeping of saddle-horses: a man would naturally think twice
before he risked himself in such fellowship.  Women were expected to
have weak opinions; but the great safeguard of society and of domestic
life was, that opinions were not acted on.  Sane people did what their
neighbors did, so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know
and avoid them.

The rural opinion about the new young ladies, even among the cottagers,
was generally in favor of Celia, as being so amiable and
innocent-looking, while Miss Brooke's large eyes seemed, like her
religion, too unusual and striking.  Poor Dorothea! compared with her,
the innocent-looking Celia was knowing and worldly-wise; so much
subtler is a human mind than the outside tissues which make a sort of
blazonry or clock-face for it.

Yet those who approached Dorothea, though prejudiced against her by
this alarming hearsay, found that she had a charm unaccountably
reconcilable with it.  Most men thought her bewitching when she was on
horseback.  She loved the fresh air and the various aspects of the
country, and when her eyes and cheeks glowed with mingled pleasure she
looked very little like a devotee.  Riding was an indulgence which she
allowed herself in spite of conscientious qualms; she felt that she
enjoyed it in a pagan sensuous way, and always looked forward to
renouncing it.

She was open, ardent, and not in the least self-admiring; indeed, it
was pretty to see how her imagination adorned her sister Celia with
attractions altogether superior to her own, and if any gentleman
appeared to come to the Grange from some other motive than that of
seeing Mr. Brooke, she concluded that he must be in love with Celia:
Sir James Chettam, for example, whom she constantly considered from
Celia's point of view, inwardly debating whether it would be good for
Celia to accept him.  That he should be regarded as a suitor to herself
would have seemed to her a ridiculous irrelevance.  Dorothea, with all
her eagerness to know the truths of life, retained very childlike ideas
about marriage.  She felt sure that she would have accepted the
judicious Hooker, if she had been born in time to save him from that
wretched mistake he made in matrimony; or John Milton when his
blindness had come on; or any of the other great men whose odd habits
it would have been glorious piety to endure; but an amiable handsome
baronet, who said "Exactly" to her remarks even when she expressed
uncertainty,--how could he affect her as a lover?  The really
delightful marriage must be that where your husband was a sort of
father, and could teach you even Hebrew, if you wished it.

These peculiarities of Dorothea's character caused Mr. Brooke to be all
the more blamed in neighboring families for not securing some
middle-aged lady as guide and companion to his nieces.  But he himself
dreaded so much the sort of superior woman likely to be available for
such a position, that he allowed himself to be dissuaded by Dorothea's
objections, and was in this case brave enough to defy the world--that
is to say, Mrs. Cadwallader the Rector's wife, and the small group of
gentry with whom he visited in the northeast corner of Loamshire.  So
Miss Brooke presided in her uncle's household, and did not at all
dislike her new authority, with the homage that belonged to it.

Sir James Chettam was going to dine at the Grange to-day with another
gentleman whom the girls had never seen, and about whom Dorothea felt
some venerating expectation.  This was the Reverend Edward Casaubon,
noted in the county as a man of profound learning, understood for many
years to be engaged on a great work concerning religious history; also
as a man of wealth enough to give lustre to his piety, and having views
of his own which were to be more clearly ascertained on the publication
of his book.  His very name carried an impressiveness hardly to be
measured without a precise chronology of scholarship.

Early in the day Dorothea had returned from the infant school which she
had set going in the village, and was taking her usual place in the
pretty sitting-room which divided the bedrooms of the sisters, bent on
finishing a plan for some buildings (a kind of work which she delighted
in), when Celia, who had been watching her with a hesitating desire to
propose something, said--

"Dorothea, dear, if you don't mind--if you are not very busy--suppose
we looked at mamma's jewels to-day, and divided them?  It is exactly
six months to-day since uncle gave them to you, and you have not looked
at them yet."

Celia's face had the shadow of a pouting expression in it, the full
presence of the pout being kept back by an habitual awe of Dorothea and
principle; two associated facts which might show a mysterious
electricity if you touched them incautiously.  To her relief,
Dorothea's eyes were full of laughter as she looked up.

"What a wonderful little almanac you are, Celia!  Is it six calendar or
six lunar months?"

"It is the last day of September now, and it was the first of April
when uncle gave them to you.  You know, he said that he had forgotten
them till then.  I believe you have never thought of them since you
locked them up in the cabinet here."

"Well, dear, we should never wear them, you know." Dorothea spoke in a
full cordial tone, half caressing, half explanatory.  She had her
pencil in her hand, and was making tiny side-plans on a margin.

Celia colored, and looked very grave.  "I think, dear, we are wanting
in respect to mamma's memory, to put them by and take no notice of
them.  And," she added, after hesitating a little, with a rising sob of
mortification, "necklaces are quite usual now; and Madame Poincon, who
was stricter in some things even than you are, used to wear ornaments.
And Christians generally--surely there are women in heaven now who wore
jewels." Celia was conscious of some mental strength when she really
applied herself to argument.

"You would like to wear them?" exclaimed Dorothea, an air of astonished
discovery animating her whole person with a dramatic action which she
had caught from that very Madame Poincon who wore the ornaments.  "Of
course, then, let us have them out.  Why did you not tell me before?
But the keys, the keys!" She pressed her hands against the sides of her
head and seemed to despair of her memory.

"They are here," said Celia, with whom this explanation had been long
meditated and prearranged.

"Pray open the large drawer of the cabinet and get out the jewel-box."

The casket was soon open before them, and the various jewels spread
out, making a bright parterre on the table.  It was no great
collection, but a few of the ornaments were really of remarkable
beauty, the finest that was obvious at first being a necklace of purple
amethysts set in exquisite gold work, and a pearl cross with five
brilliants in it.  Dorothea immediately took up the necklace and
fastened it round her sister's neck, where it fitted almost as closely
as a bracelet; but the circle suited the Henrietta-Maria style of
Celia's head and neck, and she could see that it did, in the pier-glass
opposite.

"There, Celia! you can wear that with your Indian muslin.  But this
cross you must wear with your dark dresses."

Celia was trying not to smile with pleasure.  "O Dodo, you must keep
the cross yourself."

"No, no, dear, no," said Dorothea, putting up her hand with careless
deprecation.

"Yes, indeed you must; it would suit you--in your black dress, now,"
said Celia, insistingly.  "You _might_ wear that."

"Not for the world, not for the world.  A cross is the last thing I
would wear as a trinket." Dorothea shuddered slightly.

"Then you will think it wicked in me to wear it," said Celia, uneasily.

"No, dear, no," said Dorothea, stroking her sister's cheek.  "Souls
have complexions too: what will suit one will not suit another."

"But you might like to keep it for mamma's sake."

"No, I have other things of mamma's--her sandal-wood box which I am so
fond of--plenty of things.  In fact, they are all yours, dear.  We need
discuss them no longer.  There--take away your property."

Celia felt a little hurt.  There was a strong assumption of superiority
in this Puritanic toleration, hardly less trying to the blond flesh of
an unenthusiastic sister than a Puritanic persecution.

"But how can I wear ornaments if you, who are the elder sister, will
never wear them?"

"Nay, Celia, that is too much to ask, that I should wear trinkets to
keep you in countenance.  If I were to put on such a necklace as that,
I should feel as if I had been pirouetting.  The world would go round
with me, and I should not know how to walk."

Celia had unclasped the necklace and drawn it off.  "It would be a
little tight for your neck; something to lie down and hang would suit
you better," she said, with some satisfaction.  The complete unfitness
of the necklace from all points of view for Dorothea, made Celia
happier in taking it.  She was opening some ring-boxes, which disclosed
a fine emerald with diamonds, and just then the sun passing beyond a
cloud sent a bright gleam over the table.

"How very beautiful these gems are!" said Dorothea, under a new current
of feeling, as sudden as the gleam.  "It is strange how deeply colors
seem to penetrate one, like scent.  I suppose that is the reason why
gems are used as spiritual emblems in the Revelation of St. John.  They
look like fragments of heaven.  I think that emerald is more beautiful
than any of them."

"And there is a bracelet to match it," said Celia.  "We did not notice
this at first."

"They are lovely," said Dorothea, slipping the ring and bracelet on her
finely turned finger and wrist, and holding them towards the window on
a level with her eyes.  All the while her thought was trying to justify
her delight in the colors by merging them in her mystic religious joy.

"You _would_ like those, Dorothea," said Celia, rather falteringly,
beginning to think with wonder that her sister showed some weakness,
and also that emeralds would suit her own complexion even better than
purple amethysts.  "You must keep that ring and bracelet--if nothing
else.  But see, these agates are very pretty and quiet."

"Yes!  I will keep these--this ring and bracelet," said Dorothea.
Then, letting her hand fall on the table, she said in another
tone--"Yet what miserable men find such things, and work at them, and
sell them!" She paused again, and Celia thought that her sister was
going to renounce the ornaments, as in consistency she ought to do.

"Yes, dear, I will keep these," said Dorothea, decidedly.  "But take
all the rest away, and the casket."

She took up her pencil without removing the jewels, and still looking
at them.  She thought of often having them by her, to feed her eye at
these little fountains of pure color.

"Shall you wear them in company?" said Celia, who was watching her with
real curiosity as to what she would do.

Dorothea glanced quickly at her sister.  Across all her imaginative
adornment of those whom she loved, there darted now and then a keen
discernment, which was not without a scorching quality.  If Miss Brooke
ever attained perfect meekness, it would not be for lack of inward fire.

"Perhaps," she said, rather haughtily.  "I cannot tell to what level I
may sink."

Celia blushed, and was unhappy: she saw that she had offended her
sister, and dared not say even anything pretty about the gift of the
ornaments which she put back into the box and carried away.  Dorothea
too was unhappy, as she went on with her plan-drawing, questioning the
purity of her own feeling and speech in the scene which had ended with
that little explosion.

Celia's consciousness told her that she had not been at all in the
wrong: it was quite natural and justifiable that she should have asked
that question, and she repeated to herself that Dorothea was
inconsistent: either she should have taken her full share of the
jewels, or, after what she had said, she should have renounced them
altogether.

"I am sure--at least, I trust," thought Celia, "that the wearing of a
necklace will not interfere with my prayers.  And I do not see that I
should be bound by Dorothea's opinions now we are going into society,
though of course she herself ought to be bound by them.  But Dorothea
is not always consistent."

Thus Celia, mutely bending over her tapestry, until she heard her
sister calling her.

"Here, Kitty, come and look at my plan; I shall think I am a great
architect, if I have not got incompatible stairs and fireplaces."

As Celia bent over the paper, Dorothea put her cheek against her
sister's arm caressingly.  Celia understood the action.  Dorothea saw
that she had been in the wrong, and Celia pardoned her.  Since they
could remember, there had been a mixture of criticism and awe in the
attitude of Celia's mind towards her elder sister.  The younger had
always worn a yoke; but is there any yoked creature without its private
opinions?

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: The opening description of "Miss Brooke" harps on how she's so beautiful that she doesn't need to wear fancy clothes. In fact, she wears very plain clothes, despite her good birth - her family is solidly part of the lower upper class. Women of the middle class, the narrator tells us, try to show off by wearing fancy, expensive clothing, but Dorothea Brooke and her sister Celia don't need to show off. But Dorothea doesn't choose plain clothes for social reasons, or even to save money for more important things: she wears plain dress because of her religious beliefs. Dorothea is so hung up on her spiritual life and its "eternal consequences" that she thinks it's crazy to spend any time worrying about clothes. Celia is easy-going enough to go along with her sister's ideas about wearing simple clothes, but her common sense tells her that such ideas can be taken to the extreme. Dorothea and Celia have only been living with their uncle at Tipton Grange for about a year. Before that, they lived in Switzerland, where they'd been educated. Dorothea, the older of the two, isn't quite twenty yet - the girls had been orphaned when they were twelve, and their uncle Brooke, who isn't married, decided to send them away to school rather than attempt to raise two girls on his own. Dorothea says she doesn't want to marry - she has too many ideas about how to help her uncle manage his estate and improve the lives of the poor people in the neighborhood. Her wealth and beauty, though, would make her an attractive wife for anyone - if it weren't for her extreme ideas about religion and reform. In fact, a neighbor of theirs, a young man named Sir James Chettam, has been visiting them so often that Dorothea assumes that he must be in love with Celia. Of course, he's actually in love with Dorothea, but she's too busy thinking about how to help poor people that she hasn't realized it. Celia and Dorothea are alone one afternoon. Celia asks Dorothea if they can go through their mother's old jewelry box together - now that they're old enough to wear grown-up jewels, their uncle has given them their mother's to split up as they see fit. Of course, Dorothea isn't interested in jewelry. Too superficial! Celia, though, thinks the jewels are pretty, and sees no reason in the world why they shouldn't wear them - if only to honor their mother's memory. Dorothea acts like she's above such things, which hurts Celia's feelings. Then an emerald ring and bracelet catch Dorothea's eye - the brilliant green is so gorgeous that she agrees to take those things, and let Celia have the rest. Celia agrees, but is still annoyed that her sister should be so eccentric when plenty of women - even good, devout Christian women - wear jewelry.


prompt:
Chapter: "'Dime; no ves aquel caballero que hacia nosotros viene
    sobre un caballo rucio rodado que trae puesto en la cabeza
    un yelmo de oro?' 'Lo que veo y columbro,' respondio Sancho,
    'no es sino un hombre sobre un as no pardo como el mio, que
    trae sobre la cabeza una cosa que relumbra.' 'Pues ese es el
    yelmo de Mambrino,' dijo Don Quijote."--CERVANTES.

    "'Seest thou not yon cavalier who cometh toward us on a
    dapple-gray steed, and weareth a golden helmet?' 'What I
    see,' answered Sancho, 'is nothing but a man on a gray ass
    like my own, who carries something shiny on his head.' 'Just
    so,' answered Don Quixote: 'and that resplendent object is
    the helmet of Mambrino.'"

"Sir Humphry Davy?" said Mr. Brooke, over the soup, in his easy smiling
way, taking up Sir James Chettam's remark that he was studying Davy's
Agricultural Chemistry.  "Well, now, Sir Humphry Davy; I dined with him
years ago at Cartwright's, and Wordsworth was there too--the poet
Wordsworth, you know.  Now there was something singular.  I was at
Cambridge when Wordsworth was there, and I never met him--and I dined
with him twenty years afterwards at Cartwright's. There's an oddity in
things, now.  But Davy was there: he was a poet too.  Or, as I may say,
Wordsworth was poet one, and Davy was poet two.  That was true in every
sense, you know."

Dorothea felt a little more uneasy than usual.  In the beginning of
dinner, the party being small and the room still, these motes from the
mass of a magistrate's mind fell too noticeably.  She wondered how a
man like Mr. Casaubon would support such triviality.  His manners, she
thought, were very dignified; the set of his iron-gray hair and his
deep eye-sockets made him resemble the portrait of Locke.  He had the
spare form and the pale complexion which became a student; as different
as possible from the blooming Englishman of the red-whiskered type
represented by Sir James Chettam.

"I am reading the Agricultural Chemistry," said this excellent baronet,
"because I am going to take one of the farms into my own hands, and see
if something cannot be done in setting a good pattern of farming among
my tenants.  Do you approve of that, Miss Brooke?"

"A great mistake, Chettam," interposed Mr. Brooke, "going into
electrifying your land and that kind of thing, and making a parlor of
your cow-house. It won't do.  I went into science a great deal myself
at one time; but I saw it would not do.  It leads to everything; you
can let nothing alone.  No, no--see that your tenants don't sell their
straw, and that kind of thing; and give them draining-tiles, you know.
But your fancy farming will not do--the most expensive sort of whistle
you can buy: you may as well keep a pack of hounds."

"Surely," said Dorothea, "it is better to spend money in finding out
how men can make the most of the land which supports them all, than in
keeping dogs and horses only to gallop over it.  It is not a sin to
make yourself poor in performing experiments for the good of all."

She spoke with more energy than is expected of so young a lady, but Sir
James had appealed to her.  He was accustomed to do so, and she had
often thought that she could urge him to many good actions when he was
her brother-in-law.

Mr. Casaubon turned his eyes very markedly on Dorothea while she was
speaking, and seemed to observe her newly.

"Young ladies don't understand political economy, you know," said Mr.
Brooke, smiling towards Mr. Casaubon.  "I remember when we were all
reading Adam Smith.  _There_ is a book, now.  I took in all the new
ideas at one time--human perfectibility, now.  But some say, history
moves in circles; and that may be very well argued; I have argued it
myself.  The fact is, human reason may carry you a little too far--over
the hedge, in fact.  It carried me a good way at one time; but I saw it
would not do.  I pulled up; I pulled up in time.  But not too hard.  I
have always been in favor of a little theory: we must have Thought;
else we shall be landed back in the dark ages.  But talking of books,
there is Southey's 'Peninsular War.' I am reading that of a morning.
You know Southey?"

"No" said Mr. Casaubon, not keeping pace with Mr. Brooke's impetuous
reason, and thinking of the book only.  "I have little leisure for such
literature just now.  I have been using up my eyesight on old
characters lately; the fact is, I want a reader for my evenings; but I
am fastidious in voices, and I cannot endure listening to an imperfect
reader.  It is a misfortune, in some senses: I feed too much on the
inward sources; I live too much with the dead.  My mind is something
like the ghost of an ancient, wandering about the world and trying
mentally to construct it as it used to be, in spite of ruin and
confusing changes.  But I find it necessary to use the utmost caution
about my eyesight."

This was the first time that Mr. Casaubon had spoken at any length.  He
delivered himself with precision, as if he had been called upon to make
a public statement; and the balanced sing-song neatness of his speech,
occasionally corresponded to by a movement of his head, was the more
conspicuous from its contrast with good Mr. Brooke's scrappy
slovenliness.  Dorothea said to herself that Mr. Casaubon was the most
interesting man she had ever seen, not excepting even Monsieur Liret,
the Vaudois clergyman who had given conferences on the history of the
Waldenses.  To reconstruct a past world, doubtless with a view to the
highest purposes of truth--what a work to be in any way present at, to
assist in, though only as a lamp-holder!  This elevating thought lifted
her above her annoyance at being twitted with her ignorance of
political economy, that never-explained science which was thrust as an
extinguisher over all her lights.

"But you are fond of riding, Miss Brooke," Sir James presently took an
opportunity of saying.  "I should have thought you would enter a little
into the pleasures of hunting.  I wish you would let me send over a
chestnut horse for you to try.  It has been trained for a lady.  I saw
you on Saturday cantering over the hill on a nag not worthy of you.  My
groom shall bring Corydon for you every day, if you will only mention
the time."

"Thank you, you are very good.  I mean to give up riding.  I shall not
ride any more," said Dorothea, urged to this brusque resolution by a
little annoyance that Sir James would be soliciting her attention when
she wanted to give it all to Mr. Casaubon.

"No, that is too hard," said Sir James, in a tone of reproach that
showed strong interest.  "Your sister is given to self-mortification,
is she not?" he continued, turning to Celia, who sat at his right hand.

"I think she is," said Celia, feeling afraid lest she should say
something that would not please her sister, and blushing as prettily as
possible above her necklace.  "She likes giving up."

"If that were true, Celia, my giving-up would be self-indulgence, not
self-mortification. But there may be good reasons for choosing not to
do what is very agreeable," said Dorothea.

Mr. Brooke was speaking at the same time, but it was evident that Mr.
Casaubon was observing Dorothea, and she was aware of it.

"Exactly," said Sir James.  "You give up from some high, generous
motive."

"No, indeed, not exactly.  I did not say that of myself," answered
Dorothea, reddening.  Unlike Celia, she rarely blushed, and only from
high delight or anger.  At this moment she felt angry with the perverse
Sir James.  Why did he not pay attention to Celia, and leave her to
listen to Mr. Casaubon?--if that learned man would only talk, instead
of allowing himself to be talked to by Mr. Brooke, who was just then
informing him that the Reformation either meant something or it did
not, that he himself was a Protestant to the core, but that Catholicism
was a fact; and as to refusing an acre of your ground for a Romanist
chapel, all men needed the bridle of religion, which, properly
speaking, was the dread of a Hereafter.

"I made a great study of theology at one time," said Mr. Brooke, as if
to explain the insight just manifested.  "I know something of all
schools.  I knew Wilberforce in his best days.  Do you know
Wilberforce?"

Mr. Casaubon said, "No."

"Well, Wilberforce was perhaps not enough of a thinker; but if I went
into Parliament, as I have been asked to do, I should sit on the
independent bench, as Wilberforce did, and work at philanthropy."

Mr. Casaubon bowed, and observed that it was a wide field.

"Yes," said Mr. Brooke, with an easy smile, "but I have documents.  I
began a long while ago to collect documents.  They want arranging, but
when a question has struck me, I have written to somebody and got an
answer.  I have documents at my back.  But now, how do you arrange your
documents?"

"In pigeon-holes partly," said Mr. Casaubon, with rather a startled air
of effort.

"Ah, pigeon-holes will not do.  I have tried pigeon-holes, but
everything gets mixed in pigeon-holes: I never know whether a paper is
in A or Z."

"I wish you would let me sort your papers for you, uncle," said
Dorothea.  "I would letter them all, and then make a list of subjects
under each letter."

Mr. Casaubon gravely smiled approval, and said to Mr. Brooke, "You have
an excellent secretary at hand, you perceive."

"No, no," said Mr. Brooke, shaking his head; "I cannot let young ladies
meddle with my documents.  Young ladies are too flighty."

Dorothea felt hurt.  Mr. Casaubon would think that her uncle had some
special reason for delivering this opinion, whereas the remark lay in
his mind as lightly as the broken wing of an insect among all the other
fragments there, and a chance current had sent it alighting on _her_.

When the two girls were in the drawing-room alone, Celia said--

"How very ugly Mr. Casaubon is!"

"Celia!  He is one of the most distinguished-looking men I ever saw.
He is remarkably like the portrait of Locke.  He has the same deep
eye-sockets."

"Had Locke those two white moles with hairs on them?"

"Oh, I dare say! when people of a certain sort looked at him," said
Dorothea, walking away a little.

"Mr. Casaubon is so sallow."

"All the better.  I suppose you admire a man with the complexion of a
cochon de lait."

"Dodo!" exclaimed Celia, looking after her in surprise.  "I never heard
you make such a comparison before."

"Why should I make it before the occasion came?  It is a good
comparison: the match is perfect."

Miss Brooke was clearly forgetting herself, and Celia thought so.

"I wonder you show temper, Dorothea."

"It is so painful in you, Celia, that you will look at human beings as
if they were merely animals with a toilet, and never see the great soul
in a man's face."

"Has Mr. Casaubon a great soul?" Celia was not without a touch of naive
malice.

"Yes, I believe he has," said Dorothea, with the full voice of
decision.  "Everything I see in him corresponds to his pamphlet on
Biblical Cosmology."

"He talks very little," said Celia

"There is no one for him to talk to."

Celia thought privately, "Dorothea quite despises Sir James Chettam; I
believe she would not accept him." Celia felt that this was a pity.
She had never been deceived as to the object of the baronet's interest.
Sometimes, indeed, she had reflected that Dodo would perhaps not make a
husband happy who had not her way of looking at things; and stifled in
the depths of her heart was the feeling that her sister was too
religious for family comfort.  Notions and scruples were like spilt
needles, making one afraid of treading, or sitting down, or even eating.

When Miss Brooke was at the tea-table, Sir James came to sit down by
her, not having felt her mode of answering him at all offensive.  Why
should he?  He thought it probable that Miss Brooke liked him, and
manners must be very marked indeed before they cease to be interpreted
by preconceptions either confident or distrustful.  She was thoroughly
charming to him, but of course he theorized a little about his
attachment.  He was made of excellent human dough, and had the rare
merit of knowing that his talents, even if let loose, would not set the
smallest stream in the county on fire: hence he liked the prospect of a
wife to whom he could say, "What shall we do?" about this or that; who
could help her husband out with reasons, and would also have the
property qualification for doing so.  As to the excessive religiousness
alleged against Miss Brooke, he had a very indefinite notion of what it
consisted in, and thought that it would die out with marriage.  In
short, he felt himself to be in love in the right place, and was ready
to endure a great deal of predominance, which, after all, a man could
always put down when he liked.  Sir James had no idea that he should
ever like to put down the predominance of this handsome girl, in whose
cleverness he delighted.  Why not?  A man's mind--what there is of
it--has always the advantage of being masculine,--as the smallest
birch-tree is of a higher kind than the most soaring palm,--and even
his ignorance is of a sounder quality.  Sir James might not have
originated this estimate; but a kind Providence furnishes the limpest
personality with a little gum or starch in the form of tradition.

"Let me hope that you will rescind that resolution about the horse,
Miss Brooke," said the persevering admirer.  "I assure you, riding is
the most healthy of exercises."

"I am aware of it," said Dorothea, coldly.  "I think it would do Celia
good--if she would take to it."

"But you are such a perfect horsewoman."

"Excuse me; I have had very little practice, and I should be easily
thrown."

"Then that is a reason for more practice.  Every lady ought to be a
perfect horsewoman, that she may accompany her husband."

"You see how widely we differ, Sir James.  I have made up my mind that
I ought not to be a perfect horsewoman, and so I should never
correspond to your pattern of a lady." Dorothea looked straight before
her, and spoke with cold brusquerie, very much with the air of a
handsome boy, in amusing contrast with the solicitous amiability of her
admirer.

"I should like to know your reasons for this cruel resolution.  It is
not possible that you should think horsemanship wrong."

"It is quite possible that I should think it wrong for me."

"Oh, why?" said Sir James, in a tender tone of remonstrance.

Mr. Casaubon had come up to the table, teacup in hand, and was
listening.

"We must not inquire too curiously into motives," he interposed, in his
measured way.  "Miss Brooke knows that they are apt to become feeble in
the utterance: the aroma is mixed with the grosser air.  We must keep
the germinating grain away from the light."

Dorothea colored with pleasure, and looked up gratefully to the
speaker.  Here was a man who could understand the higher inward life,
and with whom there could be some spiritual communion; nay, who could
illuminate principle with the widest knowledge a man whose learning
almost amounted to a proof of whatever he believed!

Dorothea's inferences may seem large; but really life could never have
gone on at any period but for this liberal allowance of conclusions,
which has facilitated marriage under the difficulties of civilization.
Has any one ever pinched into its pilulous smallness the cobweb of
pre-matrimonial acquaintanceship?

"Certainly," said good Sir James.  "Miss Brooke shall not be urged to
tell reasons she would rather be silent upon.  I am sure her reasons
would do her honor."

He was not in the least jealous of the interest with which Dorothea had
looked up at Mr. Casaubon: it never occurred to him that a girl to whom
he was meditating an offer of marriage could care for a dried bookworm
towards fifty, except, indeed, in a religious sort of way, as for a
clergyman of some distinction.

However, since Miss Brooke had become engaged in a conversation with
Mr. Casaubon about the Vaudois clergy, Sir James betook himself to
Celia, and talked to her about her sister; spoke of a house in town,
and asked whether Miss Brooke disliked London.  Away from her sister,
Celia talked quite easily, and Sir James said to himself that the
second Miss Brooke was certainly very agreeable as well as pretty,
though not, as some people pretended, more clever and sensible than the
elder sister.  He felt that he had chosen the one who was in all
respects the superior; and a man naturally likes to look forward to
having the best.  He would be the very Mawworm of bachelors who
pretended not to expect it.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: The chapter opens with Dorothea, Celia, their uncle , Sir James Chettam, and Mr. Casaubon all sitting down to dinner together. Mr. Brooke keeps going on about the different books he read as a young man, and the different writers and poets he met. He can't seem to form a coherent thought, and rambles a lot. Sir James Chettam picks up on one book Mr. Brooke has mentioned, Agricultural Chemistry by Sir Humphry Davy, and says that he's been reading it so that he'll be better able to help his tenants learn how to farm better. Time out for a Brief Historical Context Lesson: At this point in English history , most land in the country was owned in large chunks by wealthy noble families, and they passed the land down from father to son. They made their money by renting out individual farms on their property to tenant farmers. Of course, some of these rural landlords were better than others: some of them, like Sir James here, tried to educate their tenants and help them make the most of their land. Some of them let the farmhouses that they rent out go to rack and ruin, and charged too much rent for bad land. Back to the story: Dorothea's happy to hear that Sir James Chettam is going to help his tenants make a better living . Mr. Casaubon is impressed at her passion and intelligence. Mr. Brooke brushes her off, and says that women don't understand such things. Dorothea is impressed by Mr. Casaubon's precise manner of speaking. Sir James keeps trying to impress Dorothea, and keeps failing - she thinks he's trying to impress Celia. They discuss horseback riding - Dorothea used to ride a lot, and still loves it, but has given it up because she'd rather spend her time on little projects to help the poor instead of on activities for her own enjoyment. The conversation turns to Mr. Casaubon's great scholarly project . Mr. Brooke asks him how he organizes his desk, and Dorothea's knowledge of how to organize papers impresses Mr. Casaubon. After dinner, Dorothea and Celia talk about Mr. Casaubon and Sir James. Dorothea likes Mr. Casaubon much more: she thinks he's got "a great soul," but Celia can't see past the hairy moles on his face. Once the men have joined Dorothea and Celia, Sir James has the opportunity of talking more with Celia, and decides she's all right, too - but not as pretty or smart as Dorothea.