prompt:
Chapter: In Which Becky Revisits the Halls of Her Ancestors

So the mourning being ready, and Sir Pitt Crawley warned of their
arrival, Colonel Crawley and his wife took a couple of places in the
same old High-flyer coach by which Rebecca had travelled in the defunct
Baronet's company, on her first journey into the world some nine years
before.  How well she remembered the Inn Yard, and the ostler to whom
she refused money, and the insinuating Cambridge lad who wrapped her in
his coat on the journey!  Rawdon took his place outside, and would have
liked to drive, but his grief forbade him. He sat by the coachman and
talked about horses and the road the whole way; and who kept the inns,
and who horsed the coach by which he had travelled so many a time, when
he and Pitt were boys going to Eton.  At Mudbury a carriage and a pair
of horses received them, with a coachman in black.  "It's the old drag,
Rawdon," Rebecca said as they got in.  "The worms have eaten the cloth
a good deal--there's the stain which Sir Pitt--ha!  I see Dawson the
Ironmonger has his shutters up--which Sir Pitt made such a noise about.
It was a bottle of cherry brandy he broke which we went to fetch for
your aunt from Southampton.  How time flies, to be sure!  That can't be
Polly Talboys, that bouncing girl standing by her mother at the cottage
there.  I remember her a mangy little urchin picking weeds in the
garden."

"Fine gal," said Rawdon, returning the salute which the cottage gave
him, by two fingers applied to his crape hatband.  Becky bowed and
saluted, and recognized people here and there graciously.  These
recognitions were inexpressibly pleasant to her.  It seemed as if she
was not an imposter any more, and was coming to the home of her
ancestors.  Rawdon was rather abashed and cast down, on the other hand.
What recollections of boyhood and innocence might have been flitting
across his brain? What pangs of dim remorse and doubt and shame?

"Your sisters must be young women now," Rebecca said, thinking of those
girls for the first time perhaps since she had left them.

"Don't know, I'm shaw," replied the Colonel.  "Hullo! here's old Mother
Lock.  How-dy-do, Mrs. Lock? Remember me, don't you? Master Rawdon,
hey? Dammy how those old women last; she was a hundred when I was a
boy."

They were going through the lodge-gates kept by old Mrs. Lock, whose
hand Rebecca insisted upon shaking, as she flung open the creaking old
iron gate, and the carriage passed between the two moss-grown pillars
surmounted by the dove and serpent.

"The governor has cut into the timber," Rawdon said, looking about, and
then was silent--so was Becky.  Both of them were rather agitated, and
thinking of old times. He about Eton, and his mother, whom he
remembered, a frigid demure woman, and a sister who died, of whom he
had been passionately fond; and how he used to thrash Pitt; and about
little Rawdy at home.  And Rebecca thought about her own youth and the
dark secrets of those early tainted days; and of her entrance into life
by yonder gates; and of Miss Pinkerton, and Joe, and Amelia.

The gravel walk and terrace had been scraped quite clean.  A grand
painted hatchment was already over the great entrance, and two very
solemn and tall personages in black flung open each a leaf of the door
as the carriage pulled up at the familiar steps.  Rawdon turned red,
and Becky somewhat pale, as they passed through the old hall, arm in
arm.  She pinched her husband's arm as they entered the oak parlour,
where Sir Pitt and his wife were ready to receive them. Sir Pitt in
black, Lady Jane in black, and my Lady Southdown with a large black
head-piece of bugles and feathers, which waved on her Ladyship's head
like an undertaker's tray.

Sir Pitt had judged correctly, that she would not quit the premises.
She contented herself by preserving a solemn and stony silence, when in
company of Pitt and his rebellious wife, and by frightening the
children in the nursery by the ghastly gloom of her demeanour. Only a
very faint bending of the head-dress and plumes welcomed Rawdon and his
wife, as those prodigals returned to their family.

To say the truth, they were not affected very much one way or other by
this coolness.  Her Ladyship was a person only of secondary
consideration in their minds just then--they were intent upon the
reception which the reigning brother and sister would afford them.

Pitt, with rather a heightened colour, went up and shook his brother by
the hand, and saluted Rebecca with a hand-shake and a very low bow.
But Lady Jane took both the hands of her sister-in-law and kissed her
affectionately. The embrace somehow brought tears into the eyes of the
little adventuress--which ornaments, as we know, she wore very seldom.
The artless mark of kindness and confidence touched and pleased her;
and Rawdon, encouraged by this demonstration on his sister's part,
twirled up his mustachios and took leave to salute Lady Jane with a
kiss, which caused her Ladyship to blush exceedingly.

"Dev'lish nice little woman, Lady Jane," was his verdict, when he and
his wife were together again.  "Pitt's got fat, too, and is doing the
thing handsomely." "He can afford it," said Rebecca and agreed in her
husband's farther opinion "that the mother-in-law was a tremendous old
Guy--and that the sisters were rather well-looking young women."

They, too, had been summoned from school to attend the funeral
ceremonies.  It seemed Sir Pitt Crawley, for the dignity of the house
and family, had thought right to have about the place as many persons
in black as could possibly be assembled.  All the men and maids of the
house, the old women of the Alms House, whom the elder Sir Pitt had
cheated out of a great portion of their due, the parish clerk's family,
and the special retainers of both Hall and Rectory were habited in
sable; added to these, the undertaker's men, at least a score, with
crapes and hatbands, and who made goodly show when the great burying
show took place--but these are mute personages in our drama; and having
nothing to do or say, need occupy a very little space here.

With regard to her sisters-in-law Rebecca did not attempt to forget her
former position of Governess towards them, but recalled it frankly and
kindly, and asked them about their studies with great gravity, and told
them that she had thought of them many and many a day, and longed to
know of their welfare.  In fact you would have supposed that ever since
she had left them she had not ceased to keep them uppermost in her
thoughts and to take the tenderest interest in their welfare.  So
supposed Lady Crawley herself and her young sisters.

"She's hardly changed since eight years," said Miss Rosalind to Miss
Violet, as they were preparing for dinner.

"Those red-haired women look wonderfully well," replied the other.

"Hers is much darker than it was; I think she must dye it," Miss
Rosalind added.  "She is stouter, too, and altogether improved,"
continued Miss Rosalind, who was disposed to be very fat.

"At least she gives herself no airs and remembers that she was our
Governess once," Miss Violet said, intimating that it befitted all
governesses to keep their proper place, and forgetting altogether that
she was granddaughter not only of Sir Walpole Crawley, but of Mr.
Dawson of Mudbury, and so had a coal-scuttle in her scutcheon. There
are other very well-meaning people whom one meets every day in Vanity
Fair who are surely equally oblivious.

"It can't be true what the girls at the Rectory said, that her mother
was an opera-dancer--"

"A person can't help their birth," Rosalind replied with great
liberality.  "And I agree with our brother, that as she is in the
family, of course we are bound to notice her. I am sure Aunt Bute need
not talk; she wants to marry Kate to young Hooper, the wine-merchant,
and absolutely asked him to come to the Rectory for orders."

"I wonder whether Lady Southdown will go away, she looked very glum
upon Mrs. Rawdon," the other said.

"I wish she would.  I won't read the Washerwoman of Finchley Common,"
vowed Violet; and so saying, and avoiding a passage at the end of which
a certain coffin was placed with a couple of watchers, and lights
perpetually burning in the closed room, these young women came down to
the family dinner, for which the bell rang as usual.

But before this, Lady Jane conducted Rebecca to the apartments prepared
for her, which, with the rest of the house, had assumed a very much
improved appearance of order and comfort during Pitt's regency, and
here beholding that Mrs. Rawdon's modest little trunks had arrived, and
were placed in the bedroom and dressing-room adjoining, helped her to
take off her neat black bonnet and cloak, and asked her sister-in-law
in what more she could be useful.

"What I should like best," said Rebecca, "would be to go to the nursery
and see your dear little children." On which the two ladies looked very
kindly at each other and went to that apartment hand in hand.

Becky admired little Matilda, who was not quite four years old, as the
most charming little love in the world; and the boy, a little fellow of
two years--pale, heavy-eyed, and large-headed--she pronounced to be a
perfect prodigy in point of size, intelligence, and beauty.

"I wish Mamma would not insist on giving him so much medicine," Lady
Jane said with a sigh.  "I often think we should all be better without
it." And then Lady Jane and her new-found friend had one of those
confidential medical conversations about the children, which all
mothers, and most women, as I am given to understand, delight in. Fifty
years ago, and when the present writer, being an interesting little
boy, was ordered out of the room with the ladies after dinner, I
remember quite well that their talk was chiefly about their ailments;
and putting this question directly to two or three since, I have always
got from them the acknowledgement that times are not changed.  Let my
fair readers remark for themselves this very evening when they quit the
dessert-table and assemble to celebrate the drawing-room mysteries.
Well--in half an hour Becky and Lady Jane were close and intimate
friends--and in the course of the evening her Ladyship informed Sir
Pitt that she thought her new sister-in-law was a kind, frank,
unaffected, and affectionate young woman.

And so having easily won the daughter's good-will, the indefatigable
little woman bent herself to conciliate the august Lady Southdown. As
soon as she found her Ladyship alone, Rebecca attacked her on the
nursery question at once and said that her own little boy was saved,
actually saved, by calomel, freely administered, when all the
physicians in Paris had given the dear child up.  And then she
mentioned how often she had heard of Lady Southdown from that excellent
man the Reverend Lawrence Grills, Minister of the chapel in May Fair,
which she frequented; and how her views were very much changed by
circumstances and misfortunes; and how she hoped that a past life spent
in worldliness and error might not incapacitate her from more serious
thought for the future. She described how in former days she had been
indebted to Mr. Crawley for religious instruction, touched upon the
Washerwoman of Finchley Common, which she had read with the greatest
profit, and asked about Lady Emily, its gifted author, now Lady Emily
Hornblower, at Cape Town, where her husband had strong hopes of
becoming Bishop of Caffraria.

But she crowned all, and confirmed herself in Lady Southdown's favour,
by feeling very much agitated and unwell after the funeral and
requesting her Ladyship's medical advice, which the Dowager not only
gave, but, wrapped up in a bed-gown and looking more like Lady Macbeth
than ever, came privately in the night to Becky's room with a parcel of
favourite tracts, and a medicine of her own composition, which she
insisted that Mrs. Rawdon should take.

Becky first accepted the tracts and began to examine them with great
interest, engaging the Dowager in a conversation concerning them and
the welfare of her soul, by which means she hoped that her body might
escape medication.  But after the religious topics were exhausted, Lady
Macbeth would not quit Becky's chamber until her cup of night-drink was
emptied too; and poor Mrs. Rawdon was compelled actually to assume a
look of gratitude, and to swallow the medicine under the unyielding old
Dowager's nose, who left her victim finally with a benediction.

It did not much comfort Mrs. Rawdon; her countenance was very queer
when Rawdon came in and heard what had happened; and his explosions
of laughter were as loud as usual, when Becky, with a fun which she
could not disguise, even though it was at her own expense, described
the occurrence and how she had been victimized by Lady Southdown.  Lord
Steyne, and her son in London, had many a laugh over the story when
Rawdon and his wife returned to their quarters in May Fair.  Becky
acted the whole scene for them.  She put on a night-cap and gown.  She
preached a great sermon in the true serious manner; she lectured on the
virtue of the medicine which she pretended to administer, with a
gravity of imitation so perfect that you would have thought it was the
Countess's own Roman nose through which she snuffled. "Give us Lady
Southdown and the black dose," was a constant cry amongst the folks in
Becky's little drawing-room in May Fair.  And for the first time in her
life the Dowager Countess of Southdown was made amusing.

Sir Pitt remembered the testimonies of respect and veneration which
Rebecca had paid personally to himself in early days, and was tolerably
well disposed towards her.  The marriage, ill-advised as it was, had
improved Rawdon very much--that was clear from the Colonel's altered
habits and demeanour--and had it not been a lucky union as regarded
Pitt himself? The cunning diplomatist smiled inwardly as he owned that
he owed his fortune to it, and acknowledged that he at least ought not
to cry out against it.  His satisfaction was not removed by Rebecca's
own statements, behaviour, and conversation.

She doubled the deference which before had charmed him, calling out his
conversational powers in such a manner as quite to surprise Pitt
himself, who, always inclined to respect his own talents, admired them
the more when Rebecca pointed them out to him.  With her sister-in-law,
Rebecca was satisfactorily able to prove that it was Mrs. Bute Crawley
who brought about the marriage which she afterwards so calumniated;
that it was Mrs. Bute's avarice--who hoped to gain all Miss Crawley's
fortune and deprive Rawdon of his aunt's favour--which caused and
invented all the wicked reports against Rebecca.  "She succeeded in
making us poor," Rebecca said with an air of angelical patience; "but
how can I be angry with a woman who has given me one of the best
husbands in the world? And has not her own avarice been sufficiently
punished by the ruin of her own hopes and the loss of the property by
which she set so much store? Poor!" she cried.  "Dear Lady Jane, what
care we for poverty? I am used to it from childhood, and I am often
thankful that Miss Crawley's money has gone to restore the splendour of
the noble old family of which I am so proud to be a member.  I am sure
Sir Pitt will make a much better use of it than Rawdon would."

All these speeches were reported to Sir Pitt by the most faithful of
wives, and increased the favourable impression which Rebecca made; so
much so that when, on the third day after the funeral, the family party
were at dinner, Sir Pitt Crawley, carving fowls at the head of the
table, actually said to Mrs. Rawdon, "Ahem!  Rebecca, may I give you a
wing?"--a speech which made the little woman's eyes sparkle with
pleasure.

While Rebecca was prosecuting the above schemes and hopes, and Pitt
Crawley arranging the funeral ceremonial and other matters connected
with his future progress and dignity, and Lady Jane busy with her
nursery, as far as her mother would let her, and the sun rising and
setting, and the clock-tower bell of the Hall ringing to dinner and to
prayers as usual, the body of the late owner of Queen's Crawley lay in
the apartment which he had occupied, watched unceasingly by the
professional attendants who were engaged for that rite.  A woman or
two, and three or four undertaker's men, the best whom Southampton
could furnish, dressed in black, and of a proper stealthy and tragical
demeanour, had charge of the remains which they watched turn about,
having the housekeeper's room for their place of rendezvous when off
duty, where they played at cards in privacy and drank their beer.

The members of the family and servants of the house kept away from the
gloomy spot, where the bones of the descendant of an ancient line of
knights and gentlemen lay, awaiting their final consignment to the
family crypt. No regrets attended them, save those of the poor woman
who had hoped to be Sir Pitt's wife and widow and who had fled in
disgrace from the Hall over which she had so nearly been a ruler.
Beyond her and a favourite old pointer he had, and between whom and
himself an attachment subsisted during the period of his imbecility,
the old man had not a single friend to mourn him, having indeed, during
the whole course of his life, never taken the least pains to secure
one.  Could the best and kindest of us who depart from the earth have
an opportunity of revisiting it, I suppose he or she (assuming that any
Vanity Fair feelings subsist in the sphere whither we are bound) would
have a pang of mortification at finding how soon our survivors were
consoled.  And so Sir Pitt was forgotten--like the kindest and best of
us--only a few weeks sooner.

Those who will may follow his remains to the grave, whither they were
borne on the appointed day, in the most becoming manner, the family in
black coaches, with their handkerchiefs up to their noses, ready for
the tears which did not come; the undertaker and his gentlemen in deep
tribulation; the select tenantry mourning out of compliment to the new
landlord; the neighbouring gentry's carriages at three miles an hour,
empty, and in profound affliction; the parson speaking out the formula
about "our dear brother departed." As long as we have a man's body, we
play our Vanities upon it, surrounding it with humbug and ceremonies,
laying it in state, and packing it up in gilt nails and velvet; and we
finish our duty by placing over it a stone, written all over with lies.
Bute's curate, a smart young fellow from Oxford, and Sir Pitt Crawley
composed between them an appropriate Latin epitaph for the late
lamented Baronet, and the former preached a classical sermon, exhorting
the survivors not to give way to grief and informing them in the most
respectful terms that they also would be one day called upon to pass
that gloomy and mysterious portal which had just closed upon the
remains of their lamented brother. Then the tenantry mounted on
horseback again, or stayed and refreshed themselves at the Crawley
Arms.  Then, after a lunch in the servants' hall at Queen's Crawley,
the gentry's carriages wheeled off to their different destinations:
then the undertaker's men, taking the ropes, palls, velvets, ostrich
feathers, and other mortuary properties, clambered up on the roof of
the hearse and rode off to Southampton.  Their faces relapsed into a
natural expression as the horses, clearing the lodge-gates, got into a
brisker trot on the open road; and squads of them might have been seen,
speckling with black the public-house entrances, with pewter-pots
flashing in the sunshine.  Sir Pitt's invalid chair was wheeled away
into a tool-house in the garden; the old pointer used to howl sometimes
at first, but these were the only accents of grief which were heard in
the Hall of which Sir Pitt Crawley, Baronet, had been master for some
threescore years.

As the birds were pretty plentiful, and partridge shooting is as it
were the duty of an English gentleman of statesmanlike propensities,
Sir Pitt Crawley, the first shock of grief over, went out a little and
partook of that diversion in a white hat with crape round it. The sight
of those fields of stubble and turnips, now his own, gave him many
secret joys.  Sometimes, and with an exquisite humility, he took no
gun, but went out with a peaceful bamboo cane; Rawdon, his big brother,
and the keepers blazing away at his side.  Pitt's money and acres had a
great effect upon his brother.  The penniless Colonel became quite
obsequious and respectful to the head of his house, and despised the
milksop Pitt no longer.  Rawdon listened with sympathy to his senior's
prospects of planting and draining, gave his advice about the stables
and cattle, rode over to Mudbury to look at a mare, which he thought
would carry Lady Jane, and offered to break her, &c.:  the rebellious
dragoon was quite humbled and subdued, and became a most creditable
younger brother.  He had constant bulletins from Miss Briggs in London
respecting little Rawdon, who was left behind there, who sent messages
of his own.  "I am very well," he wrote.  "I hope you are very well.  I
hope Mamma is very well.  The pony is very well.  Grey takes me to ride
in the park. I can canter.  I met the little boy who rode before.  He
cried when he cantered.  I do not cry." Rawdon read these letters to
his brother and Lady Jane, who was delighted with them.  The Baronet
promised to take charge of the lad at school, and his kind-hearted wife
gave Rebecca a bank-note, begging her to buy a present with it for her
little nephew.

One day followed another, and the ladies of the house passed their life
in those calm pursuits and amusements which satisfy country ladies.
Bells rang to meals and to prayers.  The young ladies took exercise on
the pianoforte every morning after breakfast, Rebecca giving them the
benefit of her instruction.  Then they put on thick shoes and walked in
the park or shrubberies, or beyond the palings into the village,
descending upon the cottages, with Lady Southdown's medicine and tracts
for the sick people there.  Lady Southdown drove out in a pony-chaise,
when Rebecca would take her place by the Dowager's side and listen to
her solemn talk with the utmost interest.  She sang Handel and Haydn to
the family of evenings, and engaged in a large piece of worsted work,
as if she had been born to the business and as if this kind of life was
to continue with her until she should sink to the grave in a polite old
age, leaving regrets and a great quantity of consols behind her--as if
there were not cares and duns, schemes, shifts, and poverty waiting
outside the park gates, to pounce upon her when she issued into the
world again.

"It isn't difficult to be a country gentleman's wife," Rebecca thought.
"I think I could be a good woman if I had five thousand a year.  I
could dawdle about in the nursery and count the apricots on the wall.
I could water plants in a green-house and pick off dead leaves from the
geraniums.  I could ask old women about their rheumatisms and order
half-a-crown's worth of soup for the poor.  I shouldn't miss it much,
out of five thousand a year.  I could even drive out ten miles to dine
at a neighbour's, and dress in the fashions of the year before last. I
could go to church and keep awake in the great family pew, or go to
sleep behind the curtains, with my veil down, if I only had practice.
I could pay everybody, if I had but the money.  This is what the
conjurors here pride themselves upon doing.  They look down with pity
upon us miserable sinners who have none.  They think themselves
generous if they give our children a five-pound note, and us
contemptible if we are without one." And who knows but Rebecca was
right in her speculations--and that it was only a question of money and
fortune which made the difference between her and an honest woman? If
you take temptations into account, who is to say that he is better than
his neighbour? A comfortable career of prosperity, if it does not make
people honest, at least keeps them so.  An alderman coming from a
turtle feast will not step out of his carriage to steal a leg of mutton;
but put him to starve, and see if he will not purloin a loaf.  Becky
consoled herself by so balancing the chances and equalizing the
distribution of good and evil in the world.

The old haunts, the old fields and woods, the copses, ponds, and
gardens, the rooms of the old house where she had spent a couple of
years seven years ago, were all carefully revisited by her.  She had
been young there, or comparatively so, for she forgot the time when she
ever WAS young--but she remembered her thoughts and feelings seven
years back and contrasted them with those which she had at present, now
that she had seen the world, and lived with great people, and raised
herself far beyond her original humble station.

"I have passed beyond it, because I have brains," Becky thought, "and
almost all the rest of the world are fools. I could not go back and
consort with those people now, whom I used to meet in my father's
studio.  Lords come up to my door with stars and garters, instead of
poor artists with screws of tobacco in their pockets.  I have a
gentleman for my husband, and an Earl's daughter for my sister, in the
very house where I was little better than a servant a few years ago.
But am I much better to do now in the world than I was when I was the
poor painter's daughter and wheedled the grocer round the corner for
sugar and tea? Suppose I had married Francis who was so fond of me--I
couldn't have been much poorer than I am now.  Heigho!  I wish I could
exchange my position in society, and all my relations for a snug sum in
the Three Per Cent.  Consols"; for so it was that Becky felt the Vanity
of human affairs, and it was in those securities that she would have
liked to cast anchor.

It may, perhaps, have struck her that to have been honest and humble,
to have done her duty, and to have marched straightforward on her way,
would have brought her as near happiness as that path by which she was
striving to attain it.  But--just as the children at Queen's Crawley
went round the room where the body of their father lay--if ever Becky
had these thoughts, she was accustomed to walk round them and not look
in.  She eluded them and despised them--or at least she was committed
to the other path from which retreat was now impossible.  And for my
part I believe that remorse is the least active of all a man's moral
senses--the very easiest to be deadened when wakened, and in some never
wakened at all.  We grieve at being found out and at the idea of shame
or punishment, but the mere sense of wrong makes very few people
unhappy in Vanity Fair.

So Rebecca, during her stay at Queen's Crawley, made as many friends of
the Mammon of Unrighteousness as she could possibly bring under
control.  Lady Jane and her husband bade her farewell with the warmest
demonstrations of good-will.  They looked forward with pleasure to the
time when, the family house in Gaunt Street being repaired and
beautified, they were to meet again in London.  Lady Southdown made her
up a packet of medicine and sent a letter by her to the Rev. Lawrence
Grills, exhorting that gentleman to save the brand who "honoured" the
letter from the burning.  Pitt accompanied them with four horses in the
carriage to Mudbury, having sent on their baggage in a cart previously,
accompanied with loads of game.

"How happy you will be to see your darling little boy again!" Lady
Crawley said, taking leave of her kinswoman.

"Oh so happy!" said Rebecca, throwing up the green eyes. She was
immensely happy to be free of the place, and yet loath to go. Queen's
Crawley was abominably stupid, and yet the air there was somehow purer
than that which she had been accustomed to breathe. Everybody had been
dull, but had been kind in their way.  "It is all the influence of a
long course of Three Per Cents," Becky said to herself, and was right
very likely.

However, the London lamps flashed joyfully as the stage rolled into
Piccadilly, and Briggs had made a beautiful fire in Curzon Street, and
little Rawdon was up to welcome back his papa and mamma.

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

completion: Becky and Rawdon fall into nostalgic thoughts on their way back to Queen's Crawley. Becky thinks about how much younger she seemed to herself nine years ago when she came to Queen's Crawley to be a governess. Rawdon thinks about his own misspent youth. OK, sentimental break over. Young Sir Pitt welcomes Becky and Rawdon to the mansion, and Lady Jane is so nice to her that Becky actually...wait for it, it's crazy...cries real tears. It makes us realize how rare it is for someone to be genuinely nice to her. Sort of sad. Sort of. Becky quickly starts her standard tactic of ingratiating herself with everyone. She first asks to see Lady Jane's two kids and compliments them on how cute they are. This instantly endears her to Jane. Then she launches into Lady Southdown, who is still pretty cold. Becky asks her for help with religious matters and then, as icing on the sucking-up cake, asks her for medical advice. Lady Southdown takes her very seriously, and pompously helps her. Becky works on her impression of Lady Southdown and later, when she gets back to London, uses it to entertain Lord Steyne. But for now, Lady Southdown warms to her slightly. Young Sir Pitt, meanwhile, is totally into his sister-in-law. All she does is compliment and praise him. It helps that he is really susceptible to praise. As the narrator points out, "Pitt himself, who, always inclined to respect his own talents, admired them the more when Rebecca pointed them out to him" . While all this is happening, old, dead Sir Pitt is laid out in state. Young Sir Pitt hires the right number of mourners and orders black mourning clothes for everyone who lives and works on the estate. However, he and the other members of the family don't go near the coffin. There is a proper and totally impersonal funeral service. As soon as it's over, everyone forgets all about him. We guess that's fair - if you don't make any friends while you're alive, don't expect much sadness when you die. Young Sir Pitt is totally psyched to be in control of his estate and decides to be a good, economical, practical, and fair steward of it. Rawdon has now become very subservient to his brother. He also gets frequent notes from Briggs about how Rawdon Jr. is doing in London. The boy sometimes even writes letters himself, which Rawdon shows to Lady Jane with a lot of pride. Young Sir Pitt promises to pay for the boy's education. Deep into a slow and comfortable country existence, Becky has a thought that has now become a very famous quotation from the novel. She sees how nice and calm everyone and everything is, and decides that "I think I could be a good woman if I had five thousand a year" . This line has since become a quick way of saying that morality is relative, and that it tends to depend on circumstances. Here, for instance, Becky blames her scheming and conniving ways on the fact that she is poor and has no other way to get ahead in life. Soon it's time to leave Queen's Crawley. Becky is torn between how boring and how nice it was to be there. Either way, though, her life is in London.


prompt:
Chapter: Which Treats of the Osborne Family

Considerable time has elapsed since we have seen our respectable
friend, old Mr. Osborne of Russell Square.  He has not been the
happiest of mortals since last we met him. Events have occurred which
have not improved his temper, and in more instances than one he has
not been allowed to have his own way.  To be thwarted in this
reasonable desire was always very injurious to the old gentleman; and
resistance became doubly exasperating when gout, age, loneliness, and
the force of many disappointments combined to weigh him down.  His
stiff black hair began to grow quite white soon after his son's death;
his face grew redder; his hands trembled more and more as he poured out
his glass of port wine.  He led his clerks a dire life in the City:
his family at home were not much happier.  I doubt if Rebecca, whom we
have seen piously praying for Consols, would have exchanged her poverty
and the dare-devil excitement and chances of her life for Osborne's
money and the humdrum gloom which enveloped him.  He had proposed for
Miss Swartz, but had been rejected scornfully by the partisans of that
lady, who married her to a young sprig of Scotch nobility.  He was a
man to have married a woman out of low life and bullied her dreadfully
afterwards; but no person presented herself suitable to his taste, and,
instead, he tyrannized over his unmarried daughter, at home.  She had a
fine carriage and fine horses and sat at the head of a table loaded
with the grandest plate.  She had a cheque-book, a prize footman to
follow her when she walked, unlimited credit, and bows and compliments
from all the tradesmen, and all the appurtenances of an heiress; but
she spent a woeful time. The little charity-girls at the Foundling, the
sweeperess at the crossing, the poorest under-kitchen-maid in the
servants' hall, was happy compared to that unfortunate and now
middle-aged young lady.

Frederick Bullock, Esq., of the house of Bullock, Hulker, and Bullock,
had married Maria Osborne, not without a great deal of difficulty and
grumbling on Mr. Bullock's part. George being dead and cut out of his
father's will, Frederick insisted that the half of the old gentleman's
property should be settled upon his Maria, and indeed, for a long time,
refused, "to come to the scratch" (it was Mr. Frederick's own
expression) on any other terms.  Osborne said Fred had agreed to take
his daughter with twenty thousand, and he should bind himself to no
more.  "Fred might take it, and welcome, or leave it, and go and be
hanged." Fred, whose hopes had been raised when George had been
disinherited, thought himself infamously swindled by the old merchant,
and for some time made as if he would break off the match altogether.
Osborne withdrew his account from Bullock and Hulker's, went on 'Change
with a horsewhip which he swore he would lay across the back of a
certain scoundrel that should be nameless, and demeaned himself in his
usual violent manner.  Jane Osborne condoled with her sister Maria
during this family feud.  "I always told you, Maria, that it was your
money he loved and not you," she said, soothingly.

"He selected me and my money at any rate; he didn't choose you and
yours," replied Maria, tossing up her head.

The rapture was, however, only temporary.  Fred's father and senior
partners counselled him to take Maria, even with the twenty thousand
settled, half down, and half at the death of Mr. Osborne, with the
chances of the further division of the property.  So he "knuckled
down," again to use his own phrase, and sent old Hulker with peaceable
overtures to Osborne.  It was his father, he said, who would not hear
of the match, and had made the difficulties; he was most anxious to
keep the engagement.  The excuse was sulkily accepted by Mr. Osborne.
Hulker and Bullock were a high family of the City aristocracy, and
connected with the "nobs" at the West End. It was something for the old
man to be able to say, "My son, sir, of the house of Hulker, Bullock,
and Co., sir; my daughter's cousin, Lady Mary Mango, sir, daughter of
the Right Hon.  The Earl of Castlemouldy." In his imagination he saw
his house peopled by the "nobs." So he forgave young Bullock and
consented that the marriage should take place.

It was a grand affair--the bridegroom's relatives giving the breakfast,
their habitations being near St.  George's, Hanover Square, where the
business took place.  The "nobs of the West End" were invited, and many
of them signed the book.  Mr. Mango and Lady Mary Mango were there,
with the dear young Gwendoline and Guinever Mango as bridesmaids;
Colonel Bludyer of the Dragoon Guards (eldest son of the house of
Bludyer Brothers, Mincing Lane), another cousin of the bridegroom, and
the Honourable Mrs. Bludyer; the Honourable George Boulter, Lord
Levant's son, and his lady, Miss Mango that was; Lord Viscount
Castletoddy; Honourable James McMull and Mrs. McMull (formerly Miss
Swartz); and a host of fashionables, who have all married into Lombard
Street and done a great deal to ennoble Cornhill.

The young couple had a house near Berkeley Square and a small villa at
Roehampton, among the banking colony there.  Fred was considered to
have made rather a mesalliance by the ladies of his family, whose
grandfather had been in a Charity School, and who were allied through
the husbands with some of the best blood in England.  And Maria was
bound, by superior pride and great care in the composition of her
visiting-book, to make up for the defects of birth, and felt it her
duty to see her father and sister as little as possible.

That she should utterly break with the old man, who had still so many
scores of thousand pounds to give away, is absurd to suppose. Fred
Bullock would never allow her to do that.  But she was still young and
incapable of hiding her feelings; and by inviting her papa and sister
to her third-rate parties, and behaving very coldly to them when they
came, and by avoiding Russell Square, and indiscreetly begging her
father to quit that odious vulgar place, she did more harm than all
Frederick's diplomacy could repair, and perilled her chance of her
inheritance like a giddy heedless creature as she was.

"So Russell Square is not good enough for Mrs. Maria, hay?" said the
old gentleman, rattling up the carriage windows as he and his daughter
drove away one night from Mrs. Frederick Bullock's, after dinner.  "So
she invites her father and sister to a second day's dinner (if those
sides, or ontrys, as she calls 'em, weren't served yesterday, I'm
d--d), and to meet City folks and littery men, and keeps the Earls and
the Ladies, and the Honourables to herself. Honourables? Damn
Honourables.  I am a plain British merchant I am, and could buy the
beggarly hounds over and over.  Lords, indeed!--why, at one of her
swarreys I saw one of 'em speak to a dam fiddler--a fellar I despise.
And they won't come to Russell Square, won't they? Why, I'll lay my
life I've got a better glass of wine, and pay a better figure for it,
and can show a handsomer service of silver, and can lay a better dinner
on my mahogany, than ever they see on theirs--the cringing, sneaking,
stuck-up fools.  Drive on quick, James:  I want to get back to Russell
Square--ha, ha!" and he sank back into the corner with a furious laugh.
With such reflections on his own superior merit, it was the custom of
the old gentleman not unfrequently to console himself.

Jane Osborne could not but concur in these opinions respecting her
sister's conduct; and when Mrs. Frederick's first-born, Frederick
Augustus Howard Stanley Devereux Bullock, was born, old Osborne, who
was invited to the christening and to be godfather, contented himself
with sending the child a gold cup, with twenty guineas inside it for
the nurse.  "That's more than any of your Lords will give, I'LL
warrant," he said and refused to attend at the ceremony.

The splendour of the gift, however, caused great satisfaction to the
house of Bullock.  Maria thought that her father was very much pleased
with her, and Frederick augured the best for his little son and heir.

One can fancy the pangs with which Miss Osborne in her solitude in
Russell Square read the Morning Post, where her sister's name occurred
every now and then, in the articles headed "Fashionable Reunions," and
where she had an opportunity of reading a description of Mrs. F.
Bullock's costume, when presented at the drawing room by Lady Frederica
Bullock.  Jane's own life, as we have said, admitted of no such
grandeur.  It was an awful existence. She had to get up of black
winter's mornings to make breakfast for her scowling old father, who
would have turned the whole house out of doors if his tea had not been
ready at half-past eight.  She remained silent opposite to him,
listening to the urn hissing, and sitting in tremor while the parent
read his paper and consumed his accustomed portion of muffins and tea.
At half-past nine he rose and went to the City, and she was almost free
till dinner-time, to make visitations in the kitchen and to scold the
servants; to drive abroad and descend upon the tradesmen, who were
prodigiously respectful; to leave her cards and her papa's at the great
glum respectable houses of their City friends; or to sit alone in the
large drawing-room, expecting visitors; and working at a huge piece of
worsted by the fire, on the sofa, hard by the great Iphigenia clock,
which ticked and tolled with mournful loudness in the dreary room.  The
great glass over the mantelpiece, faced by the other great console
glass at the opposite end of the room, increased and multiplied between
them the brown Holland bag in which the chandelier hung, until you saw
these brown Holland bags fading away in endless perspectives, and this
apartment of Miss Osborne's seemed the centre of a system of
drawing-rooms. When she removed the cordovan leather from the grand
piano and ventured to play a few notes on it, it sounded with a
mournful sadness, startling the dismal echoes of the house.  George's
picture was gone, and laid upstairs in a lumber-room in the garret; and
though there was a consciousness of him, and father and daughter often
instinctively knew that they were thinking of him, no mention was ever
made of the brave and once darling son.

At five o'clock Mr. Osborne came back to his dinner, which he and his
daughter took in silence (seldom broken, except when he swore and was
savage, if the cooking was not to his liking), or which they shared
twice in a month with a party of dismal friends of Osborne's rank and
age.  Old Dr. Gulp and his lady from Bloomsbury Square; old Mr.
Frowser, the attorney, from Bedford Row, a very great man, and from his
business, hand-in-glove with the "nobs at the West End"; old Colonel
Livermore, of the Bombay Army, and Mrs. Livermore, from Upper Bedford
Place; old Sergeant Toffy and Mrs. Toffy; and sometimes old Sir Thomas
Coffin and Lady Coffin, from Bedford Square.  Sir Thomas was celebrated
as a hanging judge, and the particular tawny port was produced when he
dined with Mr. Osborne.

These people and their like gave the pompous Russell Square merchant
pompous dinners back again.  They had solemn rubbers of whist, when
they went upstairs after drinking, and their carriages were called at
half past ten. Many rich people, whom we poor devils are in the habit
of envying, lead contentedly an existence like that above described.
Jane Osborne scarcely ever met a man under sixty, and almost the only
bachelor who appeared in their society was Mr. Smirk, the celebrated
ladies' doctor.

I can't say that nothing had occurred to disturb the monotony of this
awful existence:  the fact is, there had been a secret in poor Jane's
life which had made her father more savage and morose than even nature,
pride, and over-feeding had made him.  This secret was connected with
Miss Wirt, who had a cousin an artist, Mr. Smee, very celebrated since
as a portrait-painter and R.A., but who once was glad enough to give
drawing lessons to ladies of fashion.  Mr. Smee has forgotten where
Russell Square is now, but he was glad enough to visit it in the year
1818, when Miss Osborne had instruction from him.

Smee (formerly a pupil of Sharpe of Frith Street, a dissolute,
irregular, and unsuccessful man, but a man with great knowledge of his
art) being the cousin of Miss Wirt, we say, and introduced by her to
Miss Osborne, whose hand and heart were still free after various
incomplete love affairs, felt a great attachment for this lady, and it
is believed inspired one in her bosom.  Miss Wirt was the confidante of
this intrigue.  I know not whether she used to leave the room where the
master and his pupil were painting, in order to give them an
opportunity for exchanging those vows and sentiments which cannot be
uttered advantageously in the presence of a third party; I know not
whether she hoped that should her cousin succeed in carrying off the
rich merchant's daughter, he would give Miss Wirt a portion of the
wealth which she had enabled him to win--all that is certain is that
Mr. Osborne got some hint of the transaction, came back from the City
abruptly, and entered the drawing-room with his bamboo cane; found the
painter, the pupil, and the companion all looking exceedingly pale
there; turned the former out of doors with menaces that he would break
every bone in his skin, and half an hour afterwards dismissed Miss Wirt
likewise, kicking her trunks down the stairs, trampling on her
bandboxes, and shaking his fist at her hackney coach as it bore her
away.

Jane Osborne kept her bedroom for many days.  She was not allowed to
have a companion afterwards.  Her father swore to her that she should
not have a shilling of his money if she made any match without his
concurrence; and as he wanted a woman to keep his house, he did not
choose that she should marry, so that she was obliged to give up all
projects with which Cupid had any share. During her papa's life, then,
she resigned herself to the manner of existence here described, and was
content to be an old maid.  Her sister, meanwhile, was having children
with finer names every year and the intercourse between the two grew
fainter continually.  "Jane and I do not move in the same sphere of
life," Mrs. Bullock said.  "I regard her as a sister, of course"--which
means--what does it mean when a lady says that she regards Jane as a
sister?

It has been described how the Misses Dobbin lived with their father at
a fine villa at Denmark Hill, where there were beautiful graperies and
peach-trees which delighted little Georgy Osborne. The Misses Dobbin,
who drove often to Brompton to see our dear Amelia, came sometimes to
Russell Square too, to pay a visit to their old acquaintance Miss
Osborne.  I believe it was in consequence of the commands of their
brother the Major in India (for whom their papa had a prodigious
respect), that they paid attention to Mrs. George; for the Major, the
godfather and guardian of Amelia's little boy, still hoped that the
child's grandfather might be induced to relent towards him and
acknowledge him for the sake of his son.  The Misses Dobbin kept Miss
Osborne acquainted with the state of Amelia's affairs; how she was
living with her father and mother; how poor they were; how they
wondered what men, and such men as their brother and dear Captain
Osborne, could find in such an insignificant little chit; how she was
still, as heretofore, a namby-pamby milk-and-water affected
creature--but how the boy was really the noblest little boy ever
seen--for the hearts of all women warm towards young children, and the
sourest spinster is kind to them.

One day, after great entreaties on the part of the Misses Dobbin,
Amelia allowed little George to go and pass a day with them at Denmark
Hill--a part of which day she spent herself in writing to the Major in
India.  She congratulated him on the happy news which his sisters had
just conveyed to her.  She prayed for his prosperity and that of the
bride he had chosen.  She thanked him for a thousand thousand kind
offices and proofs of steadfast friendship to her in her affliction.
She told him the last news about little Georgy, and how he was gone to
spend that very day with his sisters in the country.  She underlined
the letter a great deal, and she signed herself affectionately his
friend, Amelia Osborne.  She forgot to send any message of kindness to
Lady O'Dowd, as her wont was--and did not mention Glorvina by name, and
only in italics, as the Major's BRIDE, for whom she begged blessings.
But the news of the marriage removed the reserve which she had kept up
towards him.  She was glad to be able to own and feel how warmly and
gratefully she regarded him--and as for the idea of being jealous of
Glorvina (Glorvina, indeed!), Amelia would have scouted it, if an angel
from heaven had hinted it to her.  That night, when Georgy came back in
the pony-carriage in which he rejoiced, and in which he was driven by
Sir Wm. Dobbin's old coachman, he had round his neck a fine gold chain
and watch.  He said an old lady, not pretty, had given it him, who
cried and kissed him a great deal.  But he didn't like her.  He liked
grapes very much.  And he only liked his mamma.  Amelia shrank and
started; the timid soul felt a presentiment of terror when she heard
that the relations of the child's father had seen him.

Miss Osborne came back to give her father his dinner.  He had made a
good speculation in the City, and was rather in a good humour that day,
and chanced to remark the agitation under which she laboured. "What's
the matter, Miss Osborne?" he deigned to say.

The woman burst into tears.  "Oh, sir," she said, "I've seen little
George.  He is as beautiful as an angel--and so like him!" The old man
opposite to her did not say a word, but flushed up and began to tremble
in every limb.

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

completion: Yes, how is that Osborne family? Mr. Osborne is more and more growly and miserable than ever. He proposed to Miss Swartz, the mixed-race rich girl he had been trying to get George to marry, but was rejected by her and her minders out of hand. Maria was finally married to Fred Bullock. Jane is a spinster and lives in total depression, loneliness, and misery with her horrible father. The Bullock family is connected with the aristocracy, so to make up for her own lower social rank, Maria starts to ignore and avoid her father and sister. She never has them over when she has her A-list parties, and sadly is too stupid and too bad of an actress not to let them know. Dobbin's sisters sometimes visit Jane Osborne, just as they do Amelia. They've been telling Jane all about George Jr. and how adorable and wonderful he is. One day, after George Jr. goes to spend a day with Dobbin's sisters at their estate, Amelia writes a letter to Dobbin, congratulating him on his upcoming marriage. There is a lot of sarcasm from the narrator here about just how happy Amelia is about the idea of Dobbin getting married. George Jr. comes home with a gold chain and tells Amelia that an old, unattractive lady gave it to him. Amelia's heart skips a beat because she realizes this must have been Jane Osborne. When Mr. Osborne comes home that night he sees that Jane is really out of it. When he asks her what's wrong, she tells him that she has seen little George Jr. and that he is the spitting image of his father. Mr. Osborne doesn't say anything but starts to tremble


prompt:
Chapter: In Which the Reader Has to Double the Cape

The astonished reader must be called upon to transport himself ten
thousand miles to the military station of Bundlegunge, in the Madras
division of our Indian empire, where our gallant old friends of the
--th regiment are quartered under the command of the brave Colonel, Sir
Michael O'Dowd.  Time has dealt kindly with that stout officer, as it
does ordinarily with men who have good stomachs and good tempers and
are not perplexed over much by fatigue of the brain. The Colonel plays
a good knife and fork at tiffin and resumes those weapons with great
success at dinner.  He smokes his hookah after both meals and puffs as
quietly while his wife scolds him as he did under the fire of the
French at Waterloo.  Age and heat have not diminished the activity or
the eloquence of the descendant of the Malonys and the Molloys.  Her
Ladyship, our old acquaintance, is as much at home at Madras as at
Brussels in the cantonment as under the tents.  On the march you saw
her at the head of the regiment seated on a royal elephant, a noble
sight. Mounted on that beast, she has been into action with tigers in
the jungle, she has been received by native princes, who have welcomed
her and Glorvina into the recesses of their zenanas and offered her
shawls and jewels which it went to her heart to refuse.  The sentries
of all arms salute her wherever she makes her appearance, and she
touches her hat gravely to their salutation.  Lady O'Dowd is one of the
greatest ladies in the Presidency of Madras--her quarrel with Lady
Smith, wife of Sir Minos Smith the puisne judge, is still remembered by
some at Madras, when the Colonel's lady snapped her fingers in the
Judge's lady's face and said SHE'D never walk behind ever a beggarly
civilian.  Even now, though it is five-and-twenty years ago, people
remember Lady O'Dowd performing a jig at Government House, where she
danced down two Aides-de-Camp, a Major of Madras cavalry, and two
gentlemen of the Civil Service; and, persuaded by Major Dobbin, C.B.,
second in command of the --th, to retire to the supper-room, lassata
nondum satiata recessit.

Peggy O'Dowd is indeed the same as ever, kind in act and thought;
impetuous in temper; eager to command; a tyrant over her Michael; a
dragon amongst all the ladies of the regiment; a mother to all the
young men, whom she tends in their sickness, defends in all their
scrapes, and with whom Lady Peggy is immensely popular.  But the
Subalterns' and Captains' ladies (the Major is unmarried) cabal against
her a good deal.  They say that Glorvina gives herself airs and that
Peggy herself is intolerably domineering.  She interfered with a
little congregation which Mrs. Kirk had got up and laughed the young
men away from her sermons, stating that a soldier's wife had no
business to be a parson--that Mrs. Kirk would be much better mending
her husband's clothes; and, if the regiment wanted sermons, that she
had the finest in the world, those of her uncle, the Dean. She abruptly
put a termination to a flirtation which Lieutenant Stubble of the
regiment had commenced with the Surgeon's wife, threatening to come
down upon Stubble for the money which he had borrowed from her (for the
young fellow was still of an extravagant turn) unless he broke off at
once and went to the Cape on sick leave.  On the other hand, she housed
and sheltered Mrs. Posky, who fled from her bungalow one night, pursued
by her infuriate husband, wielding his second brandy bottle, and
actually carried Posky through the delirium tremens and broke him of
the habit of drinking, which had grown upon that officer, as all evil
habits will grow upon men.  In a word, in adversity she was the best of
comforters, in good fortune the most troublesome of friends, having a
perfectly good opinion of herself always and an indomitable resolution
to have her own way.

Among other points, she had made up her mind that Glorvina should marry
our old friend Dobbin.  Mrs. O'Dowd knew the Major's expectations and
appreciated his good qualities and the high character which he enjoyed
in his profession.  Glorvina, a very handsome, fresh-coloured,
black-haired, blue-eyed young lady, who could ride a horse, or play a
sonata with any girl out of the County Cork, seemed to be the very
person destined to insure Dobbin's happiness--much more than that poor
good little weak-spur'ted Amelia, about whom he used to take on
so.--"Look at Glorvina enter a room," Mrs. O'Dowd would say, "and
compare her with that poor Mrs. Osborne, who couldn't say boo to a
goose.  She'd be worthy of you, Major--you're a quiet man yourself, and
want some one to talk for ye.  And though she does not come of such
good blood as the Malonys or Molloys, let me tell ye, she's of an
ancient family that any nobleman might be proud to marry into."

But before she had come to such a resolution and determined to
subjugate Major Dobbin by her endearments, it must be owned that
Glorvina had practised them a good deal elsewhere.  She had had a
season in Dublin, and who knows how many in Cork, Killarney, and
Mallow? She had flirted with all the marriageable officers whom the
depots of her country afforded, and all the bachelor squires who seemed
eligible.  She had been engaged to be married a half-score times in
Ireland, besides the clergyman at Bath who used her so ill. She had
flirted all the way to Madras with the Captain and chief mate of the
Ramchunder East Indiaman, and had a season at the Presidency with her
brother and Mrs. O'Dowd, who was staying there, while the Major of the
regiment was in command at the station. Everybody admired her there;
everybody danced with her; but no one proposed who was worth the
marrying--one or two exceedingly young subalterns sighed after her, and
a beardless civilian or two, but she rejected these as beneath her
pretensions--and other and younger virgins than Glorvina were married
before her.  There are women, and handsome women too, who have this
fortune in life.  They fall in love with the utmost generosity; they
ride and walk with half the Army-list, though they draw near to forty,
and yet the Misses O'Grady are the Misses O'Grady still:  Glorvina
persisted that but for Lady O'Dowd's unlucky quarrel with the Judge's
lady, she would have made a good match at Madras, where old Mr.
Chutney, who was at the head of the civil service (and who afterwards
married Miss Dolby, a young lady only thirteen years of age who had
just arrived from school in Europe), was just at the point of proposing
to her.

Well, although Lady O'Dowd and Glorvina quarrelled a great number of
times every day, and upon almost every conceivable subject--indeed, if
Mick O'Dowd had not possessed the temper of an angel two such women
constantly about his ears would have driven him out of his senses--yet
they agreed between themselves on this point, that Glorvina should
marry Major Dobbin, and were determined that the Major should have no
rest until the arrangement was brought about. Undismayed by forty or
fifty previous defeats, Glorvina laid siege to him.  She sang Irish
melodies at him unceasingly.  She asked him so frequently and
pathetically, Will ye come to the bower? that it is a wonder how any
man of feeling could have resisted the invitation.  She was never tired
of inquiring, if Sorrow had his young days faded, and was ready to
listen and weep like Desdemona at the stories of his dangers and his
campaigns.  It has been said that our honest and dear old friend used
to perform on the flute in private; Glorvina insisted upon having duets
with him, and Lady O'Dowd would rise and artlessly quit the room when
the young couple were so engaged. Glorvina forced the Major to ride
with her of mornings.  The whole cantonment saw them set out and
return.  She was constantly writing notes over to him at his house,
borrowing his books, and scoring with her great pencil-marks such
passages of sentiment or humour as awakened her sympathy.  She borrowed
his horses, his servants, his spoons, and palanquin--no wonder that
public rumour assigned her to him, and that the Major's sisters in
England should fancy they were about to have a sister-in-law.

Dobbin, who was thus vigorously besieged, was in the meanwhile in a
state of the most odious tranquillity.  He used to laugh when the young
fellows of the regiment joked him about Glorvina's manifest attentions
to him. "Bah!" said he, "she is only keeping her hand in--she
practises upon me as she does upon Mrs. Tozer's piano, because it's the
most handy instrument in the station.  I am much too battered and old
for such a fine young lady as Glorvina." And so he went on riding with
her, and copying music and verses into her albums, and playing at chess
with her very submissively; for it is with these simple amusements that
some officers in India are accustomed to while away their leisure
moments, while others of a less domestic turn hunt hogs, and shoot
snipes, or gamble and smoke cheroots, and betake themselves to
brandy-and-water.  As for Sir Michael O'Dowd, though his lady and her
sister both urged him to call upon the Major to explain himself and not
keep on torturing a poor innocent girl in that shameful way, the old
soldier refused point-blank to have anything to do with the conspiracy.
"Faith, the Major's big enough to choose for himself," Sir Michael
said; "he'll ask ye when he wants ye"; or else he would turn the matter
off jocularly, declaring that "Dobbin was too young to keep house, and
had written home to ask lave of his mamma." Nay, he went farther, and
in private communications with his Major would caution and rally him,
crying, "Mind your oi, Dob, my boy, them girls is bent on mischief--me
Lady has just got a box of gowns from Europe,  and there's a pink satin
for Glorvina, which will finish ye,  Dob, if it's in the power of woman
or satin to move ye."

But the truth is, neither beauty nor fashion could conquer him.  Our
honest friend had but one idea of a woman in his head, and that one did
not in the least resemble Miss Glorvina O'Dowd in pink satin.  A gentle
little woman in black, with large eyes and brown hair, seldom speaking,
save when spoken to, and then in a voice not the least resembling Miss
Glorvina's--a soft young mother tending an infant and beckoning the
Major up with a smile to look at him--a rosy-cheeked lass coming
singing into the room in Russell Square or hanging on George Osborne's
arm, happy and loving--there was but this image that filled our honest
Major's mind, by day and by night, and reigned over it always.  Very
likely Amelia was not like the portrait the Major had formed of her:
there was a figure in a book of fashions which his sisters had in
England, and with which William had made away privately, pasting it
into the lid of his desk, and fancying he saw some resemblance to Mrs.
Osborne in the print, whereas I have seen it, and can vouch that it is
but the picture of a high-waisted gown with an impossible doll's face
simpering over it--and, perhaps, Mr. Dobbin's sentimental Amelia was no
more like the real one than this absurd little print which he
cherished.  But what man in love, of us, is better informed?--or is he
much happier when he sees and owns his delusion? Dobbin was under this
spell.  He did not bother his friends and the public much about his
feelings, or indeed lose his natural rest or appetite on account of
them.  His head has grizzled since we saw him last, and a line or two
of silver may be seen in the soft brown hair likewise.  But his
feelings are not in the least changed or oldened, and his love remains
as fresh as a man's recollections of boyhood are.

We have said how the two Misses Dobbin and Amelia, the Major's
correspondents in Europe, wrote him letters from England, Mrs. Osborne
congratulating him with great candour and cordiality upon his
approaching nuptials with Miss O'Dowd. "Your sister has just kindly
visited me," Amelia wrote in her letter, "and informed me of an
INTERESTING EVENT, upon which I beg to offer my MOST SINCERE
CONGRATULATIONS. I hope the young lady to whom I hear you are to be
UNITED will in every respect prove worthy of one who is himself all
kindness and goodness.  The poor widow has only her prayers to offer
and her cordial cordial wishes for YOUR PROSPERITY!  Georgy sends his
love to HIS DEAR GODPAPA and hopes that you will not forget him. I tell
him that you are about to form OTHER TIES, with one who I am sure
merits ALL YOUR AFFECTION, but that, although such ties must of course
be the strongest and most sacred, and supersede ALL OTHERS, yet that I
am sure the widow and the child whom you have ever protected and loved
will always HAVE A CORNER IN YOUR HEART." The letter, which has been
before alluded to, went on in this strain, protesting throughout as to
the extreme satisfaction of the writer.

This letter, which arrived by the very same ship which brought out
Lady O'Dowd's box of millinery from London (and which you may be sure
Dobbin opened before any one of the other packets which the mail
brought him), put the receiver into such a state of mind that Glorvina,
and her pink satin, and everything belonging to her became perfectly
odious to him.  The Major cursed the talk of women, and the sex in
general.  Everything annoyed him that day--the parade was insufferably
hot and wearisome.  Good heavens! was a man of intellect to waste his
life, day after day, inspecting cross-belts and putting fools through
their manoeuvres? The senseless chatter of the young men at mess was
more than ever jarring. What cared he, a man on the high road to forty,
to know how many snipes Lieutenant Smith had shot, or what were the
performances of Ensign Brown's mare? The jokes about the table filled
him with shame.  He was too old to listen to the banter of the
assistant surgeon and the slang of the youngsters, at which old O'Dowd,
with his bald head and red face, laughed quite easily.  The old man had
listened to those jokes any time these thirty years--Dobbin himself had
been fifteen years hearing them.  And after the boisterous dulness of
the mess-table, the quarrels and scandal of the ladies of the regiment!
It was unbearable, shameful.  "O Amelia, Amelia," he thought, "you to
whom I have been so faithful--you reproach me!  It is because you
cannot feel for me that I drag on this wearisome life.  And you reward
me after years of devotion by giving me your blessing upon my marriage,
forsooth, with this flaunting Irish girl!" Sick and sorry felt poor
William; more than ever wretched and lonely.  He would like to have
done with life and its vanity altogether--so bootless and
unsatisfactory the struggle, so cheerless and dreary the prospect
seemed to him.  He lay all that night sleepless, and yearning to go
home.  Amelia's letter had fallen as a blank upon him.  No fidelity, no
constant truth and passion, could move her into warmth.  She would not
see that he loved her.  Tossing in his bed, he spoke out to her. "Good
God, Amelia!" he said, "don't you know that I only love you in the
world--you, who are a stone to me--you, whom I tended through months
and months of illness and grief, and who bade me farewell with a smile
on your face, and forgot me before the door shut between us!" The
native servants lying outside his verandas beheld with wonder the
Major, so cold and quiet ordinarily, at present so passionately moved
and cast down.  Would she have pitied him had she seen him? He read
over and over all the letters which he ever had from her--letters of
business relative to the little property which he had made her believe
her husband had left to her--brief notes of invitation--every scrap of
writing that she had ever sent to him--how cold, how kind, how
hopeless, how selfish they were!

Had there been some kind gentle soul near at hand who could read and
appreciate this silent generous heart, who knows but that the reign of
Amelia might have been over, and that friend William's love might have
flowed into a kinder channel? But there was only Glorvina of the jetty
ringlets with whom his intercourse was familiar, and this dashing young
woman was not bent upon loving the Major, but rather on making the
Major admire HER--a most vain and hopeless task, too, at least
considering the means that the poor girl possessed to carry it out.
She curled her hair and showed her shoulders at him, as much as to say,
did ye ever see such jet ringlets and such a complexion? She grinned at
him so that he might see that every tooth in her head was sound--and he
never heeded all these charms.  Very soon after the arrival of the box
of millinery, and perhaps indeed in honour of it, Lady O'Dowd and the
ladies of the King's Regiment gave a ball to the Company's Regiments
and the civilians at the station.  Glorvina sported the killing pink
frock, and the Major, who attended the party and walked very ruefully
up and down the rooms, never so much as perceived the pink garment.
Glorvina danced past him in a fury with all the young subalterns of the
station, and the Major was not in the least jealous of her performance,
or angry because Captain Bangles of the Cavalry handed her to supper.
It was not jealousy, or frocks, or shoulders that could move him, and
Glorvina had nothing more.

So these two were each exemplifying the Vanity of this life, and each
longing for what he or she could not get. Glorvina cried with rage at
the failure.  She had set her mind on the Major "more than on any of
the others," she owned, sobbing.  "He'll break my heart, he will,
Peggy," she would whimper to her sister-in-law when they were good
friends; "sure every one of me frocks must be taken in--it's such a
skeleton I'm growing." Fat or thin, laughing or melancholy, on
horseback or the music-stool, it was all the same to the Major.  And
the Colonel, puffing his pipe and listening to these complaints, would
suggest that Glory should have some black frocks out in the next box
from London, and told a mysterious story of a lady in Ireland who died
of grief for the loss of her husband before she got ere a one.

While the Major was going on in this tantalizing way, not proposing,
and declining to fall in love, there came another ship from Europe
bringing letters on board, and amongst them some more for the heartless
man.  These were home letters bearing an earlier postmark than that of
the former packets, and as Major Dobbin recognized among his the
handwriting of his sister, who always crossed and recrossed her letters
to her brother--gathered together all the possible bad news which she
could collect, abused him and read him lectures with sisterly
frankness, and always left him miserable for the day after "dearest
William" had achieved the perusal of one of her epistles--the truth
must be told that dearest William did not hurry himself to break the
seal of Miss Dobbin's letter, but waited for a particularly favourable
day and mood for doing so.  A fortnight before, moreover, he had
written to scold her for telling those absurd stories to Mrs. Osborne,
and had despatched a letter in reply to that lady, undeceiving her with
respect to the reports concerning him and assuring her that "he had no
sort of present intention of altering his condition."

Two or three nights after the arrival of the second package of letters,
the Major had passed the evening pretty cheerfully at Lady O'Dowd's
house, where Glorvina thought that he listened with rather more
attention than usual to the Meeting of the Wathers, the Minsthrel Boy,
and one or two other specimens of song with which she favoured him (the
truth is, he was no more listening to Glorvina than to the howling of
the jackals in the moonlight outside, and the delusion was hers as
usual), and having played his game at chess with her (cribbage with the
surgeon was Lady O'Dowd's favourite evening pastime), Major Dobbin took
leave of the Colonel's family at his usual hour and retired to his own
house.

There on his table, his sister's letter lay reproaching him.  He took
it up, ashamed rather of his negligence regarding it, and prepared
himself for a disagreeable hour's communing with that crabbed-handed
absent relative. . . . It may have been an hour after the Major's
departure from the Colonel's house--Sir Michael was sleeping the sleep
of the just; Glorvina had arranged her black ringlets in the
innumerable little bits of paper, in which it was her habit to confine
them; Lady O'Dowd, too, had gone to her bed in the nuptial chamber, on
the ground-floor, and had tucked her musquito curtains round her fair
form, when the guard at the gates of the Commanding-Officer's compound
beheld Major Dobbin, in the moonlight, rushing towards the house with a
swift step and a very agitated countenance, and he passed the sentinel
and went up to the windows of the Colonel's bedchamber.

"O'Dowd--Colonel!" said Dobbin and kept up a great shouting.

"Heavens, Meejor!" said Glorvina of the curl-papers, putting out her
head too, from her window.

"What is it, Dob, me boy?" said the Colonel, expecting there was a fire
in the station, or that the route had come from headquarters.

"I--I must have leave of absence.  I must go to England--on the most
urgent private affairs," Dobbin said.

"Good heavens, what has happened!" thought Glorvina, trembling with all
the papillotes.

"I want to be off--now--to-night," Dobbin continued; and the Colonel
getting up, came out to parley with him.

In the postscript of Miss Dobbin's cross-letter, the Major had just
come upon a paragraph, to the following effect:--"I drove yesterday to
see your old ACQUAINTANCE, Mrs. Osborne.  The wretched place they live
at, since they were bankrupts, you know--Mr. S., to judge from a BRASS
PLATE on the door of his hut (it is little better) is a coal-merchant.
The little boy, your godson, is certainly a fine child, though forward,
and inclined to be saucy and self-willed. But we have taken notice of
him as you wish it, and have introduced him to his aunt, Miss O., who
was rather pleased with him.  Perhaps his grandpapa, not the bankrupt
one, who is almost doting, but Mr. Osborne, of Russell Square, may be
induced to relent towards the child of your friend, HIS ERRING AND
SELF-WILLED SON.  And Amelia will not be ill-disposed to give him up.
The widow is CONSOLED, and is about to marry a reverend gentleman, the
Rev. Mr. Binny, one of the curates of Brompton.  A poor match.  But
Mrs. O. is getting old, and I saw a great deal of grey in her hair--she
was in very good spirits:  and your little godson overate himself at
our house. Mamma sends her love with that of your affectionate, Ann
Dobbin."

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

completion: Meanwhile, all this time Dobbin has been stationed in India as a Major under Colonel O'Dowd. With the promotion to Colonel, O'Dowd got a title, so Mrs. O'Dowd became a Lady. Lady O'Dowd is just as kind and domineering as ever. She wants her sister-in-law, Glorvina, to marry Dobbin, so Glorvina spends all day every day trying to make Dobbin propose to her. It ain't happening. Glorvina is beautiful and strong and loud - the opposite of what he wants. Dobbin is still completely hung up on Amelia. Still, Glorvina is so hell-bent on this that the rumors of their engagement travel all the way to England . One day Dobbin gets the letter from Amelia congratulating him on the upcoming marriage. He is sad that she is so blind to the fact that he has been desperately in love with her all this time. A few days later he gets a letter from one of his sisters telling him that they've seen George Jr., who is adorable, bossy, and spoiled. She also writes that Amelia is about to marry Mr. Binny, a local curate . Dobbin freaks, panics, and immediately asks for leave to go back to England.