prompt:
Chapter: A Family in a Very Small Way

We must suppose little George Osborne has ridden from Knightsbridge
towards Fulham, and will stop and make inquiries at that village
regarding some friends whom we have left there.  How is Mrs. Amelia
after the storm of Waterloo? Is she living and thriving? What has come
of Major Dobbin, whose cab was always hankering about her premises? And
is there any news of the Collector of Boggley Wollah? The facts
concerning the latter are briefly these:

Our worthy fat friend Joseph Sedley returned to India not long after
his escape from Brussels.  Either his furlough was up, or he dreaded to
meet any witnesses of his Waterloo flight.  However it might be, he
went back to his duties in Bengal very soon after Napoleon had taken up
his residence at St.  Helena, where Jos saw the ex-Emperor. To hear Mr.
Sedley talk on board ship you would have supposed that it was not the
first time he and the Corsican had met, and that the civilian had
bearded the French General at Mount St.  John.  He had a thousand
anecdotes about the famous battles; he knew the position of every
regiment and the loss which each had incurred.  He did not deny that he
had been concerned in those victories--that he had been with the army
and carried despatches for the Duke of Wellington. And he described
what the Duke did and said on every conceivable moment of the day of
Waterloo, with such an accurate knowledge of his Grace's sentiments and
proceedings that it was clear he must have been by the conqueror's side
throughout the day; though, as a non-combatant, his name was not
mentioned in the public documents relative to the battle.  Perhaps he
actually worked himself up to believe that he had been engaged with the
army; certain it is that he made a prodigious sensation for some time
at Calcutta, and was called Waterloo Sedley during the whole of his
subsequent stay in Bengal.

The bills which Jos had given for the purchase of those unlucky horses
were paid without question by him and his agents.  He never was heard
to allude to the bargain, and nobody knows for a certainty what became
of the horses, or how he got rid of them, or of Isidor, his Belgian
servant, who sold a grey horse, very like the one which Jos rode, at
Valenciennes sometime during the autumn of 1815.

Jos's London agents had orders to pay one hundred and twenty pounds
yearly to his parents at Fulham.  It was the chief support of the old
couple; for Mr. Sedley's speculations in life subsequent to his
bankruptcy did not by any means retrieve the broken old gentleman's
fortune.  He tried to be a wine-merchant, a coal-merchant, a commission
lottery agent, &c., &c.  He sent round prospectuses to his friends
whenever he took a new trade, and ordered a new brass plate for the
door, and talked pompously about making his fortune still.  But Fortune
never came back to the feeble and stricken old man.  One by one his
friends dropped off, and were weary of buying dear coals and bad wine
from him; and there was only his wife in all the world who fancied,
when he tottered off to the City of a morning, that he was still doing
any business there.  At evening he crawled slowly back; and he used to
go of nights to a little club at a tavern, where he disposed of the
finances of the nation. It was wonderful to hear him talk about
millions, and agios, and discounts, and what Rothschild was doing, and
Baring Brothers.  He talked of such vast sums that the gentlemen of the
club (the apothecary, the undertaker, the great carpenter and builder,
the parish clerk, who was allowed to come stealthily, and Mr. Clapp,
our old acquaintance,) respected the old gentleman.  "I was better off
once, sir," he did not fail to tell everybody who "used the room." "My
son, sir, is at this minute chief magistrate of Ramgunge in the
Presidency of Bengal, and touching his four thousand rupees per mensem.
My daughter might be a Colonel's lady if she liked.  I might draw upon
my son, the first magistrate, sir, for two thousand pounds to-morrow,
and Alexander would cash my bill, down sir, down on the counter, sir.
But the Sedleys were always a proud family." You and I, my dear reader,
may drop into this condition one day: for have not many of our friends
attained it? Our luck may fail: our powers forsake us:  our place on
the boards be taken by better and younger mimes--the chance of life
roll away and leave us shattered and stranded.  Then men will walk
across the road when they meet you--or, worse still, hold you out a
couple of fingers and patronize you in a pitying way--then you will
know, as soon as your back is turned, that your friend begins with a
"Poor devil, what imprudences he has committed, what chances that chap
has thrown away!" Well, well--a carriage and three thousand a year is
not the summit of the reward nor the end of God's judgment of men.  If
quacks prosper as often as they go to the wall--if zanies succeed and
knaves arrive at fortune, and, vice versa, sharing ill luck and
prosperity for all the world like the ablest and most honest amongst
us--I say, brother, the gifts and pleasures of Vanity Fair cannot be
held of any great account, and that it is probable . . . but we are
wandering out of the domain of the story.

Had Mrs. Sedley been a woman of energy, she would have exerted it after
her husband's ruin and, occupying a large house, would have taken in
boarders.  The broken Sedley would have acted well as the
boarding-house landlady's husband; the Munoz of private life; the
titular lord and master:  the carver, house-steward, and humble husband
of the occupier of the dingy throne.  I have seen men of good brains
and breeding, and of good hopes and vigour once, who feasted squires
and kept hunters in their youth, meekly cutting up legs of mutton for
rancorous old harridans and pretending to preside over their dreary
tables--but Mrs. Sedley, we say, had not spirit enough to bustle about
for "a few select inmates to join a cheerful musical family," such as
one reads of in the Times.  She was content to lie on the shore where
fortune had stranded her--and you could see that the career of this old
couple was over.

I don't think they were unhappy.  Perhaps they were a little prouder in
their downfall than in their prosperity. Mrs. Sedley was always a great
person for her landlady, Mrs. Clapp, when she descended and passed many
hours with her in the basement or ornamented kitchen. The Irish maid
Betty Flanagan's bonnets and ribbons, her sauciness, her idleness, her
reckless prodigality of kitchen candles, her consumption of tea and
sugar, and so forth occupied and amused the old lady almost as much as
the doings of her former household, when she had Sambo and the
coachman, and a groom, and a footboy, and a housekeeper with a regiment
of female domestics--her former household, about which the good lady
talked a hundred times a day. And besides Betty Flanagan, Mrs. Sedley
had all the maids-of-all-work in the street to superintend. She knew
how each tenant of the cottages paid or owed his little rent.  She
stepped aside when Mrs. Rougemont the actress passed with her dubious
family.  She flung up her head when Mrs. Pestler, the apothecary's
lady, drove by in her husband's professional one-horse chaise.  She had
colloquies with the greengrocer about the pennorth of turnips which Mr.
Sedley loved; she kept an eye upon the milkman and the baker's boy; and
made visitations to the butcher, who sold hundreds of oxen very likely
with less ado than was made about Mrs. Sedley's loin of mutton:  and
she counted the potatoes under the joint on Sundays, on which days,
dressed in her best, she went to church twice and read Blair's Sermons
in the evening.

On that day, for "business" prevented him on weekdays from taking such
a pleasure, it was old Sedley's delight to take out his little grandson
Georgy to the neighbouring parks or Kensington Gardens, to see the
soldiers or to feed the ducks.  Georgy loved the redcoats, and his
grandpapa told him how his father had been a famous soldier, and
introduced him to many sergeants and others with Waterloo medals on
their breasts, to whom the old grandfather pompously presented the
child as the son of Captain Osborne of the --th, who died gloriously on
the glorious eighteenth.  He has been known to treat some of these
non-commissioned gentlemen to a glass of porter, and, indeed, in their
first Sunday walks was disposed to spoil little Georgy, sadly gorging
the boy with apples and parliament, to the detriment of his
health--until Amelia declared that George should never go out with his
grandpapa unless the latter promised solemnly, and on his honour, not
to give the child any cakes, lollipops, or stall produce whatever.

Between Mrs. Sedley and her daughter there was a sort of coolness about
this boy, and a secret jealousy--for one evening in George's very early
days, Amelia, who had been seated at work in their little parlour
scarcely remarking that the old lady had quitted the room, ran upstairs
instinctively to the nursery at the cries of the child, who had been
asleep until that moment--and there found Mrs. Sedley in the act of
surreptitiously administering Daffy's Elixir to the infant.  Amelia,
the gentlest and sweetest of everyday mortals, when she found this
meddling with her maternal authority, thrilled and trembled all over
with anger.  Her cheeks, ordinarily pale, now flushed up, until they
were as red as they used to be when she was a child of twelve years
old.  She seized the baby out of her mother's arms and then grasped at
the bottle, leaving the old lady gaping at her, furious, and holding
the guilty tea-spoon.

Amelia flung the bottle crashing into the fire-place. "I will NOT have
baby poisoned, Mamma," cried Emmy, rocking the infant about violently
with both her arms round him and turning with flashing eyes at her
mother.

"Poisoned, Amelia!" said the old lady; "this language to me?"

"He shall not have any medicine but that which Mr. Pestler sends for
him.  He told me that Daffy's Elixir was poison."

"Very good:  you think I'm a murderess then," replied Mrs. Sedley.
"This is the language you use to your mother. I have met with
misfortunes:  I have sunk low in life:  I have kept my carriage, and
now walk on foot:  but I did not know I was a murderess before, and
thank you for the NEWS."

"Mamma," said the poor girl, who was always ready for tears--"you
shouldn't be hard upon me.  I--I didn't mean--I mean, I did not wish to
say you would do any wrong to this dear child, only--"

"Oh, no, my love,--only that I was a murderess; in which case I had
better go to the Old Bailey.  Though I didn't poison YOU, when you were
a child, but gave you the best of education and the most expensive
masters money could procure.  Yes; I've nursed five children and buried
three; and the one I loved the best of all, and tended through croup,
and teething, and measles, and hooping-cough, and brought up with
foreign masters, regardless of expense, and with accomplishments at
Minerva House--which I never had when I was a girl--when I was too glad
to honour my father and mother, that I might live long in the land, and
to be useful, and not to mope all day in my room and act the fine
lady--says I'm a murderess.  Ah, Mrs. Osborne! may YOU never nourish a
viper in your bosom, that's MY prayer."

"Mamma, Mamma!" cried the bewildered girl; and the child in her arms
set up a frantic chorus of shouts. "A murderess, indeed!  Go down on
your knees and pray to God to cleanse your wicked ungrateful heart,
Amelia, and may He forgive you as I do." And Mrs. Sedley tossed out of
the room, hissing out the word poison once more, and so ending her
charitable benediction.

Till the termination of her natural life, this breach between Mrs.
Sedley and her daughter was never thoroughly mended.  The quarrel gave
the elder lady numberless advantages which she did not fail to turn to
account with female ingenuity and perseverance.  For instance, she
scarcely spoke to Amelia for many weeks afterwards. She warned the
domestics not to touch the child, as Mrs. Osborne might be offended.
She asked her daughter to see and satisfy herself that there was no
poison prepared in the little daily messes that were concocted for
Georgy. When neighbours asked after the boy's health, she referred them
pointedly to Mrs. Osborne.  SHE never ventured to ask whether the baby
was well or not.  SHE would not touch the child although he was her
grandson, and own precious darling, for she was not USED to children,
and might kill it.  And whenever Mr. Pestler came upon his healing
inquisition, she received the doctor with such a sarcastic and scornful
demeanour, as made the surgeon declare that not Lady Thistlewood
herself, whom he had the honour of attending professionally, could give
herself greater airs than old Mrs. Sedley, from whom he never took a
fee.  And very likely Emmy was jealous too, upon her own part, as what
mother is not, of those who would manage her children for her, or
become candidates for the first place in their affections.  It is
certain that when anybody nursed the child, she was uneasy, and that
she would no more allow Mrs. Clapp or the domestic to dress or tend him
than she would have let them wash her husband's miniature which hung up
over her little bed--the same little bed from which the poor girl had
gone to his; and to which she retired now for many long, silent,
tearful, but happy years.

In this room was all Amelia's heart and treasure.  Here it was that she
tended her boy and watched him through the many ills of childhood, with
a constant passion of love.  The elder George returned in him somehow,
only improved, and as if come back from heaven.  In a hundred little
tones, looks, and movements, the child was so like his father that the
widow's heart thrilled as she held him to it; and he would often ask
the cause of her tears.  It was because of his likeness to his father,
she did not scruple to tell him.  She talked constantly to him about
this dead father, and spoke of her love for George to the innocent and
wondering child; much more than she ever had done to George himself, or
to any confidante of her youth.  To her parents she never talked about
this matter, shrinking from baring her heart to them.  Little George
very likely could understand no better than they, but into his ears she
poured her sentimental secrets unreservedly, and into his only.  The
very joy of this woman was a sort of grief, or so tender, at least,
that its expression was tears.  Her sensibilities were so weak and
tremulous that perhaps they ought not to be talked about in a book. I
was told by Dr. Pestler (now a most flourishing lady's physician, with
a sumptuous dark green carriage, a prospect of speedy knighthood, and a
house in Manchester Square) that her grief at weaning the child was a
sight that would have unmanned a Herod.  He was very soft-hearted many
years ago, and his wife was mortally jealous of Mrs. Amelia, then and
long afterwards.

Perhaps the doctor's lady had good reason for her jealousy:  most women
shared it, of those who formed the small circle of Amelia's
acquaintance, and were quite angry at the enthusiasm with which the
other sex regarded her.  For almost all men who came near her loved
her; though no doubt they would be at a loss to tell you why.  She was
not brilliant, nor witty, nor wise over much, nor extraordinarily
handsome.  But wherever she went she touched and charmed every one of
the male sex, as invariably as she awakened the scorn and incredulity
of her own sisterhood.  I think it was her weakness which was her
principal charm--a kind of sweet submission and softness, which seemed
to appeal to each man she met for his sympathy and protection.  We have
seen how in the regiment, though she spoke but to few of George's
comrades there, all the swords of the young fellows at the mess-table
would have leapt from their scabbards to fight round her; and so it was
in the little narrow lodging-house and circle at Fulham, she interested
and pleased everybody.  If she had been Mrs. Mango herself, of the
great house of Mango, Plantain, and Co., Crutched Friars, and the
magnificent proprietress of the Pineries, Fulham, who gave summer
dejeuners frequented by Dukes and Earls, and drove about the parish
with magnificent yellow liveries and bay horses, such as the royal
stables at Kensington themselves could not turn out--I say had she been
Mrs. Mango herself, or her son's wife, Lady Mary Mango (daughter of the
Earl of Castlemouldy, who condescended to marry the head of the firm),
the tradesmen of the neighbourhood could not pay her more honour than
they invariably showed to the gentle young widow, when she passed by
their doors, or made her humble purchases at their shops.

Thus it was not only Mr. Pestler, the medical man, but Mr. Linton the
young assistant, who doctored the servant maids and small tradesmen,
and might be seen any day reading the Times in the surgery, who openly
declared himself the slave of Mrs. Osborne.  He was a personable young
gentleman, more welcome at Mrs. Sedley's lodgings than his principal;
and if anything went wrong with Georgy, he would drop in twice or
thrice in the day to see the little chap, and without so much as the
thought of a fee.  He would abstract lozenges, tamarinds, and other
produce from the surgery-drawers for little Georgy's benefit, and
compounded draughts and mixtures for him of miraculous sweetness, so
that it was quite a pleasure to the child to be ailing.  He and
Pestler, his chief, sat up two whole nights by the boy in that
momentous and awful week when Georgy had the measles; and when you
would have thought, from the mother's terror, that there had never been
measles in the world before. Would they have done as much for other
people? Did they sit up for the folks at the Pineries, when Ralph
Plantagenet, and Gwendoline, and Guinever Mango had the same juvenile
complaint? Did they sit up for little Mary Clapp, the landlord's
daughter, who actually caught the disease of little Georgy? Truth
compels one to say, no. They slept quite undisturbed, at least as far
as she was concerned--pronounced hers to be a slight case, which would
almost cure itself, sent her in a draught or two, and threw in bark
when the child rallied, with perfect indifference, and just for form's
sake.

Again, there was the little French chevalier opposite, who gave lessons
in his native tongue at various schools in the neighbourhood, and who
might be heard in his apartment of nights playing tremulous old
gavottes and minuets on a wheezy old fiddle. Whenever this powdered and
courteous old man, who never missed a Sunday at the convent chapel at
Hammersmith, and who was in all respects, thoughts, conduct, and
bearing utterly unlike the bearded savages of his nation, who curse
perfidious Albion, and scowl at you from over their cigars, in the
Quadrant arcades at the present day--whenever the old Chevalier de
Talonrouge spoke of Mistress Osborne, he would first finish his pinch
of snuff, flick away the remaining particles of dust with a graceful
wave of his hand, gather up his fingers again into a bunch, and,
bringing them up to his mouth, blow them open with a kiss, exclaiming,
Ah! la divine creature!  He vowed and protested that when Amelia walked
in the Brompton Lanes flowers grew in profusion under her feet.  He
called little Georgy Cupid, and asked him news of Venus, his mamma; and
told the astonished Betty Flanagan that she was one of the Graces, and
the favourite attendant of the Reine des Amours.

Instances might be multiplied of this easily gained and unconscious
popularity.  Did not Mr. Binny, the mild and genteel curate of the
district chapel, which the family attended, call assiduously upon the
widow, dandle the little boy on his knee, and offer to teach him Latin,
to the anger of the elderly virgin, his sister, who kept house for him?
"There is nothing in her, Beilby," the latter lady would say.  "When
she comes to tea here she does not speak a word during the whole
evening.  She is but a poor lackadaisical creature, and it is my belief
has no heart at all.  It is only her pretty face which all you
gentlemen admire so.  Miss Grits, who has five thousand pounds, and
expectations besides, has twice as much character, and is a thousand
times more agreeable to my taste; and if she were good-looking I know
that you would think her perfection."

Very likely Miss Binny was right to a great extent.  It IS the pretty
face which creates sympathy in the hearts of men, those wicked rogues.
A woman may possess the wisdom and chastity of Minerva, and we give no
heed to her, if she has a plain face.  What folly will not a pair of
bright eyes make pardonable? What dulness may not red lips and sweet
accents render pleasant? And so, with their usual sense of justice,
ladies argue that because a woman is handsome, therefore she is a fool.
O ladies, ladies! there are some of you who are neither handsome nor
wise.

These are but trivial incidents to recount in the life of our heroine.
Her tale does not deal in wonders, as the gentle reader has already no
doubt perceived; and if a journal had been kept of her proceedings
during the seven years after the birth of her son, there would be found
few incidents more remarkable in it than that of the measles, recorded
in the foregoing page.  Yes, one day, and greatly to her wonder, the
Reverend Mr. Binny, just mentioned, asked her to change her name of
Osborne for his own; when, with deep blushes and tears in her eyes and
voice, she thanked him for his regard for her, expressed gratitude for
his attentions to her and to her poor little boy, but said that she
never, never could think of any but--but the husband whom she had lost.

On the twenty-fifth of April, and the eighteenth of June, the days of
marriage and widowhood, she kept her room entirely, consecrating them
(and we do not know how many hours of solitary night-thought, her
little boy sleeping in his crib by her bedside) to the memory of that
departed friend.  During the day she was more active. She had to teach
George to read and to write and a little to draw.  She read books, in
order that she might tell him stories from them.  As his eyes opened
and his mind expanded under the influence of the outward nature round
about him, she taught the child, to the best of her humble power, to
acknowledge the Maker of all, and every night and every morning he and
she--(in that awful and touching communion which I think must bring a
thrill to the heart of every man who witnesses or who remembers
it)--the mother and the little boy--prayed to Our Father together, the
mother pleading with all her gentle heart, the child lisping after her
as she spoke.  And each time they prayed to God to bless dear Papa, as
if he were alive and in the room with them.  To wash and dress this
young gentleman--to take him for a run of the mornings, before
breakfast, and the retreat of grandpapa for "business"--to make for him
the most wonderful and ingenious dresses, for which end the thrifty
widow cut up and altered every available little bit of finery which she
possessed out of her wardrobe during her marriage--for Mrs. Osborne
herself (greatly to her mother's vexation, who preferred fine clothes,
especially since her misfortunes) always wore a black gown and a straw
bonnet with a black ribbon--occupied her many hours of the day.  Others
she had to spare, at the service of her mother and her old father.  She
had taken the pains to learn, and used to play cribbage with this
gentleman on the nights when he did not go to his club.  She sang for
him when he was so minded, and it was a good sign, for he invariably
fell into a comfortable sleep during the music.  She wrote out his
numerous memorials, letters, prospectuses, and projects.  It was in her
handwriting that most of the old gentleman's former acquaintances were
informed that he had become an agent for the Black Diamond and
Anti-Cinder Coal Company and could supply his friends and the public
with the best coals at --s. per chaldron.  All he did was to sign the
circulars with his flourish and signature, and direct them in a shaky,
clerklike hand.  One of these papers was sent to Major Dobbin,--Regt.,
care of Messrs.  Cox and Greenwood; but the Major being in Madras at
the time, had no particular call for coals.  He knew, though, the hand
which had written the prospectus.  Good God! what would he not have
given to hold it in his own!  A second prospectus came out, informing
the Major that J.  Sedley and Company, having established agencies at
Oporto, Bordeaux, and St.  Mary's, were enabled to offer to their
friends and the public generally the finest and most celebrated growths
of ports, sherries, and claret wines at reasonable prices and under
extraordinary advantages. Acting upon this hint, Dobbin furiously
canvassed the governor, the commander-in-chief, the judges, the
regiments, and everybody whom he knew in the Presidency, and sent home
to Sedley and Co.  orders for wine which perfectly astonished Mr.
Sedley and Mr. Clapp, who was the Co.  in the business.  But no more
orders came after that first burst of good fortune, on which poor old
Sedley was about to build a house in the City, a regiment of clerks, a
dock to himself, and correspondents all over the world.  The old
gentleman's former taste in wine had gone:  the curses of the mess-room
assailed Major Dobbin for the vile drinks he had been the means of
introducing there; and he bought back a great quantity of the wine and
sold it at public outcry, at an enormous loss to himself. As for Jos,
who was by this time promoted to a seat at the Revenue Board at
Calcutta, he was wild with rage when the post brought him out a bundle
of these Bacchanalian prospectuses, with a private note from his
father, telling Jos that his senior counted upon him in this
enterprise, and had consigned a quantity of select wines to him, as per
invoice, drawing bills upon him for the amount of the same.  Jos, who
would no more have it supposed that his father, Jos Sedley's father, of
the Board of Revenue, was a wine merchant asking for orders, than that
he was Jack Ketch, refused the bills with scorn, wrote back
contumeliously to the old gentleman, bidding him to mind his own
affairs; and the protested paper coming back, Sedley and Co.  had to
take it up, with the profits which they had made out of the Madras
venture, and with a little portion of Emmy's savings.

Besides her pension of fifty pounds a year, there had been five hundred
pounds, as her husband's executor stated, left in the agent's hands at
the time of Osborne's demise, which sum, as George's guardian, Dobbin
proposed to put out at 8 per cent in an Indian house of agency.  Mr.
Sedley, who thought the Major had some roguish intentions of his own
about the money, was strongly against this plan; and he went to the
agents to protest personally against the employment of the money in
question, when he learned, to his surprise, that there had been no such
sum in their hands, that all the late Captain's assets did not amount
to a hundred pounds, and that the five hundred pounds in question must
be a separate sum, of which Major Dobbin knew the particulars. More
than ever convinced that there was some roguery, old Sedley pursued the
Major.  As his daughter's nearest friend, he demanded with a high hand
a statement of the late Captain's accounts.  Dobbin's stammering,
blushing, and awkwardness added to the other's convictions that he had
a rogue to deal with, and in a majestic tone he told that officer a
piece of his mind, as he called it, simply stating his belief that the
Major was unlawfully detaining his late son-in-law's money.

Dobbin at this lost all patience, and if his accuser had not been so
old and so broken, a quarrel might have ensued between them at the
Slaughters' Coffee-house, in a box of which place of entertainment the
gentlemen had their colloquy.  "Come upstairs, sir," lisped out the
Major.  "I insist on your coming up the stairs, and I will show which
is the injured party, poor George or I"; and, dragging the old
gentleman up to his bedroom, he produced from his desk Osborne's
accounts, and a bundle of IOU's which the latter had given, who, to do
him justice, was always ready to give an IOU.  "He paid his bills in
England," Dobbin added, "but he had not a hundred pounds in the world
when he fell.  I and one or two of his brother officers made up the
little sum, which was all that we could spare, and you dare tell us
that we are trying to cheat the widow and the orphan." Sedley was very
contrite and humbled, though the fact is that William Dobbin had told a
great falsehood to the old gentleman; having himself given every
shilling of the money, having buried his friend, and paid all the fees
and charges incident upon the calamity and removal of poor Amelia.

About these expenses old Osborne had never given himself any trouble to
think, nor any other relative of Amelia, nor Amelia herself, indeed.
She trusted to Major Dobbin as an accountant, took his somewhat
confused calculations for granted, and never once suspected how much
she was in his debt.

Twice or thrice in the year, according to her promise, she wrote him
letters to Madras, letters all about little Georgy.  How he treasured
these papers!  Whenever Amelia wrote he answered, and not until then.
But he sent over endless remembrances of himself to his godson and to
her.  He ordered and sent a box of scarfs and a grand ivory set of
chess-men from China.  The pawns were little green and white men, with
real swords and shields; the knights were on horseback, the castles
were on the backs of elephants.  "Mrs. Mango's own set at the Pineries
was not so fine," Mr. Pestler remarked.  These chess-men were the
delight of Georgy's life, who printed his first letter in
acknowledgement of this gift of his godpapa.  He sent over preserves
and pickles, which latter the young gentleman tried surreptitiously in
the sideboard and half-killed himself with eating.  He thought it was a
judgement upon him for stealing, they were so hot.  Emmy wrote a
comical little account of this mishap to the Major:  it pleased him to
think that her spirits were rallying and that she could be merry
sometimes now.  He sent over a pair of shawls, a white one for her and
a black one with palm-leaves for her mother, and a pair of red scarfs,
as winter wrappers, for old Mr. Sedley and George. The shawls were
worth fifty guineas apiece at the very least, as Mrs. Sedley knew.  She
wore hers in state at church at Brompton, and was congratulated by her
female friends upon the splendid acquisition.  Emmy's, too, became
prettily her modest black gown.  "What a pity it is she won't think of
him!" Mrs. Sedley remarked to Mrs. Clapp and to all her friends of
Brompton.  "Jos never sent us such presents, I am sure, and grudges us
everything.  It is evident that the Major is over head and ears in love
with her; and yet, whenever I so much as hint it, she turns red and
begins to cry and goes and sits upstairs with her miniature.  I'm sick
of that miniature.  I wish we had never seen those odious purse-proud
Osbornes."

Amidst such humble scenes and associates George's early youth was
passed, and the boy grew up delicate, sensitive, imperious,
woman-bred--domineering the gentle mother whom he loved with passionate
affection.  He ruled all the rest of the little world round about him.
As he grew, the elders were amazed at his haughty manner and his
constant likeness to his father.  He asked questions about everything,
as inquiring youth will do.  The profundity of his remarks and
interrogatories astonished his old grandfather, who perfectly bored the
club at the tavern with stories about the little lad's learning and
genius.  He suffered his grandmother with a good-humoured
indifference.  The small circle round about him believed that the equal
of the boy did not exist upon the earth.  Georgy inherited his father's
pride, and perhaps thought they were not wrong.

When he grew to be about six years old, Dobbin began to write to him
very much.  The Major wanted to hear that Georgy was going to a school
and hoped he would acquit himself with credit there:  or would he have
a good tutor at home? It was time that he should begin to learn; and
his godfather and guardian hinted that he hoped to be allowed to defray
the charges of the boy's education, which would fall heavily upon his
mother's straitened income.  The Major, in a word, was always thinking
about Amelia and her little boy, and by orders to his agents kept the
latter provided with picture-books, paint-boxes, desks, and all
conceivable implements of amusement and instruction.  Three days before
George's sixth birthday a gentleman in a gig, accompanied by a servant,
drove up to Mr. Sedley's house and asked to see Master George Osborne:
it was Mr. Woolsey, military tailor, of Conduit Street, who came at the
Major's order to measure the young gentleman for a suit of clothes.  He
had had the honour of making for the Captain, the young gentleman's
father. Sometimes, too, and by the Major's desire no doubt, his
sisters, the Misses Dobbin, would call in the family carriage to take
Amelia and the little boy to drive if they were so inclined.  The
patronage and kindness of these ladies was very uncomfortable to
Amelia, but she bore it meekly enough, for her nature was to yield;
and, besides, the carriage and its splendours gave little Georgy
immense pleasure. The ladies begged occasionally that the child might
pass a day with them, and he was always glad to go to that fine
garden-house at Denmark Hill, where they lived, and where there were
such fine grapes in the hot-houses and peaches on the walls.

One day they kindly came over to Amelia with news which they were SURE
would delight her--something VERY interesting about their dear William.

"What was it:  was he coming home?" she asked with pleasure beaming in
her eyes.

"Oh, no--not the least--but they had very good reason to believe that
dear William was about to be married--and to a relation of a very dear
friend of Amelia's--to Miss Glorvina O'Dowd, Sir Michael O'Dowd's
sister, who had gone out to join Lady O'Dowd at Madras--a very
beautiful and accomplished girl, everybody said."

Amelia said "Oh!" Amelia was very VERY happy indeed. But she supposed
Glorvina could not be like her old acquaintance, who was most
kind--but--but she was very happy indeed.  And by some impulse of which
I cannot explain the meaning, she took George in her arms and kissed
him with an extraordinary tenderness.  Her eyes were quite moist when
she put the child down; and she scarcely spoke a word during the whole
of the drive--though she was so very happy indeed.

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

completion: So, speaking of George Jr., how is that Sedley family doing these days? Well, let's see. Jos has gone back to India and has been promoted a few times in his post there. All he ever talks about is how he was at Waterloo, and at this point his stories make it seem like he was actually with Wellington during the battle. He sends an annual stipend to his parents, which is pretty much their only income. Mrs. Sedley is doing OK and has adjusted to caring about the gossip of her new neighborhood rather than her old one. Mr. Sedley keeps trying to be a merchant again, constantly switching from one company to another, but always failing. Every Sunday he takes George Jr. out to the park and loves running into soldiers he can talk to about George. Amelia obsessively, head-over-heels, protectively loves her son. All she does is take care of him, tell him stories about his dead father, make him clothes, and just live vicariously through him. Because she won't let anyone else take care of him in any way, she and her mother are having some issues. Mrs. Sedley is pretty passive-aggressive about it. Still, Amelia's hyper-maternal feelings seem to make her really attractive to the men around her. George Jr.'s doctor is half in love with her and his wife is jealous. Amelia even gets a marriage proposal from the curate of the neighborhood chapel . On the anniversaries of her marriage and of George's death, she locks herself in her room. Financially, Mr. Sedley is slowly making the family bankrupt once again. He keeps investing in failing businesses. Amelia has an army pension of 50 pounds a year, and Dobbin tells her that George left 500 pounds invested in Indian funds at 8% per year. Mr. Sedley is suspicious about these funds and accuses Dobbin of trying to cheat Amelia out of her rightful inheritance. This is obviously crazy, since there is nobody more honest than Dobbin in this novel. Poverty really hasn't improved Mr. or Mrs. Sedley - they have both become way more proud and obnoxious and are living with a victim mentality. In any case, Dobbin finally explains to Mr. Sedley that George was way in debt when he died and that he and a few other soldiers scraped together this 500 pounds for Amelia. Even this is a lie, as all the money comes from Dobbin. When George turns 6, Major Dobbin starts to write him letters and offers to pay for some of his school costs. He also asks his sisters to visit Amelia every now and then. One day Dobbin's sisters tell Amelia the very exciting news that he is going to be married...to Mrs. O'Dowd's sister! Amelia is so very happy for him. Oh good, yay! Um, yeah, she's faking it.


prompt:
Chapter: A Cynical Chapter

Our duty now takes us back for a brief space to some old Hampshire
acquaintances of ours, whose hopes respecting the disposal of their
rich kinswoman's property were so woefully disappointed.  After
counting upon thirty thousand pounds from his sister, it was a heavy
blow to Bute Crawley to receive but five; out of which sum, when he
had paid his own debts and those of Jim, his son at college, a very
small fragment remained to portion off his four plain daughters.  Mrs.
Bute never knew, or at least never acknowledged, how far her own
tyrannous behaviour had tended to ruin her husband. All that woman
could do, she vowed and protested she had done.  Was it her fault if
she did not possess those sycophantic arts which her hypocritical
nephew, Pitt Crawley, practised? She wished him all the happiness which
he merited out of his ill-gotten gains.  "At least the money will
remain in the family," she said charitably.  "Pitt will never spend it,
my dear, that is quite certain; for a greater miser does not exist in
England, and he is as odious, though in a different way, as his
spendthrift brother, the abandoned Rawdon."

So Mrs. Bute, after the first shock of rage and disappointment, began
to accommodate herself as best she could to her altered fortunes and to
save and retrench with all her might.  She instructed her daughters how
to bear poverty cheerfully, and invented a thousand notable methods to
conceal or evade it.  She took them about to balls and public places in
the neighbourhood, with praiseworthy energy; nay, she entertained her
friends in a hospitable comfortable manner at the Rectory, and much
more frequently than before dear Miss Crawley's legacy had fallen in.
From her outward bearing nobody would have supposed that the family had
been disappointed in their expectations, or have guessed from her
frequent appearance in public how she pinched and starved at home.  Her
girls had more milliners' furniture than they had ever enjoyed before.
They appeared perseveringly at the Winchester and Southampton
assemblies; they penetrated to Cowes for the race-balls and
regatta-gaieties there; and their carriage, with the horses taken from
the plough, was at work perpetually, until it began almost to be
believed that the four sisters had had fortunes left them by their
aunt, whose name the family never mentioned in public but with the most
tender gratitude and regard.  I know no sort of lying which is more
frequent in Vanity Fair than this, and it may be remarked how people
who practise it take credit to themselves for their hypocrisy, and
fancy that they are exceedingly virtuous and praiseworthy, because they
are able to deceive the world with regard to the extent of their means.

Mrs. Bute certainly thought herself one of the most virtuous women in
England, and the sight of her happy family was an edifying one to
strangers.  They were so cheerful, so loving, so well-educated, so
simple!  Martha painted flowers exquisitely and furnished half the
charity bazaars in the county.  Emma was a regular County Bulbul, and
her verses in the Hampshire Telegraph were the glory of its Poet's
Corner.  Fanny and Matilda sang duets together, Mamma playing the
piano, and the other two sisters sitting with their arms round each
other's waists and listening affectionately.  Nobody saw the poor girls
drumming at the duets in private.  No one saw Mamma drilling them
rigidly hour after hour.  In a word, Mrs. Bute put a good face against
fortune and kept up appearances in the most virtuous manner.

Everything that a good and respectable mother could do Mrs. Bute did.
She got over yachting men from Southampton, parsons from the Cathedral
Close at Winchester, and officers from the barracks there. She tried to
inveigle the young barristers at assizes and encouraged Jim to bring
home friends with whom he went out hunting with the H. H.  What will
not a mother do for the benefit of her beloved ones?

Between such a woman and her brother-in-law, the odious Baronet at the
Hall, it is manifest that there could be very little in common. The
rupture between Bute and his brother Sir Pitt was complete; indeed,
between Sir Pitt and the whole county, to which the old man was a
scandal.  His dislike for respectable society increased with age, and
the lodge-gates had not opened to a gentleman's carriage-wheels since
Pitt and Lady Jane came to pay their visit of duty after their marriage.

That was an awful and unfortunate visit, never to be thought of by the
family without horror.  Pitt begged his wife, with a ghastly
countenance, never to speak of it, and it was only through Mrs. Bute
herself, who still knew everything which took place at the Hall, that
the circumstances of Sir Pitt's reception of his son and
daughter-in-law were ever known at all.

As they drove up the avenue of the park in their neat and
well-appointed carriage, Pitt remarked with dismay and wrath great gaps
among the trees--his trees--which the old Baronet was felling entirely
without license.  The park wore an aspect of utter dreariness and ruin.
The drives were ill kept, and the neat carriage splashed and floundered
in muddy pools along the road.  The great sweep in front of the terrace
and entrance stair was black and covered with mosses; the once trim
flower-beds rank and weedy. Shutters were up along almost the whole
line of the house; the great hall-door was unbarred after much ringing
of the bell; an individual in ribbons was seen flitting up the black
oak stair, as Horrocks at length admitted the heir of Queen's Crawley
and his bride into the halls of their fathers.  He led the way into Sir
Pitt's "Library," as it was called, the fumes of tobacco growing
stronger as Pitt and Lady Jane approached that apartment, "Sir Pitt
ain't very well," Horrocks remarked apologetically and hinted that his
master was afflicted with lumbago.

The library looked out on the front walk and park. Sir Pitt had opened
one of the windows, and was bawling out thence to the postilion and
Pitt's servant, who seemed to be about to take the baggage down.

"Don't move none of them trunks," he cried, pointing with a pipe which
he held in his hand.  "It's only a morning visit, Tucker, you fool.
Lor, what cracks that off hoss has in his heels!  Ain't there no one at
the King's Head to rub 'em a little? How do, Pitt? How do, my dear?
Come to see the old man, hay? 'Gad--you've a pretty face, too. You
ain't like that old horse-godmother, your mother. Come and give old
Pitt a kiss, like a good little gal."

The embrace disconcerted the daughter-in-law somewhat, as the caresses
of the old gentleman, unshorn and perfumed with tobacco, might well do.
But she remembered that her brother Southdown had mustachios, and
smoked cigars, and submitted to the Baronet with a tolerable grace.

"Pitt has got vat," said the Baronet, after this mark of affection.
"Does he read ee very long zermons, my dear? Hundredth Psalm, Evening
Hymn, hay Pitt? Go and get a glass of Malmsey and a cake for my Lady
Jane, Horrocks, you great big booby, and don't stand stearing there
like a fat pig.  I won't ask you to stop, my dear; you'll find it too
stoopid, and so should I too along a Pitt.  I'm an old man now, and
like my own ways, and my pipe and backgammon of a night."

"I can play at backgammon, sir," said Lady Jane, laughing.  "I used to
play with Papa and Miss Crawley, didn't I, Mr. Crawley?"

"Lady Jane can play, sir, at the game to which you state that you are
so partial," Pitt said haughtily.

"But she wawn't stop for all that.  Naw, naw, goo back to Mudbury and
give Mrs. Rincer a benefit; or drive down to the Rectory and ask Buty
for a dinner.  He'll be charmed to see you, you know; he's so much
obliged to you for gettin' the old woman's money.  Ha, ha! Some of it
will do to patch up the Hall when I'm gone."

"I perceive, sir," said Pitt with a heightened voice, "that your people
will cut down the timber."

"Yees, yees, very fine weather, and seasonable for the time of year,"
Sir Pitt answered, who had suddenly grown deaf.  "But I'm gittin' old,
Pitt, now.  Law bless you, you ain't far from fifty yourself.  But he
wears well, my pretty Lady Jane, don't he? It's all godliness,
sobriety, and a moral life.  Look at me, I'm not very fur from
fowr-score--he, he"; and he laughed, and took snuff, and leered at her
and pinched her hand.

Pitt once more brought the conversation back to the timber, but the
Baronet was deaf again in an instant.

"I'm gittin' very old, and have been cruel bad this year with the
lumbago.  I shan't be here now for long; but I'm glad ee've come,
daughter-in-law.  I like your face, Lady Jane:  it's got none of the
damned high-boned Binkie look in it; and I'll give ee something pretty,
my dear, to go to Court in." And he shuffled across the room to a
cupboard, from which he took a little old case containing jewels of
some value.  "Take that," said he, "my dear; it belonged to my mother,
and afterwards to the first Lady Binkie. Pretty pearls--never gave 'em
the ironmonger's daughter. No, no.  Take 'em and put 'em up quick,"
said he, thrusting the case into his daughter's hand, and clapping the
door of the cabinet to, as Horrocks entered with a salver and
refreshments.

"What have you a been and given Pitt's wife?" said the individual in
ribbons, when Pitt and Lady Jane had taken leave of the old gentleman.
It was Miss Horrocks, the butler's daughter--the cause of the scandal
throughout the county--the lady who reigned now almost supreme at
Queen's Crawley.

The rise and progress of those Ribbons had been marked with dismay by
the county and family.  The Ribbons opened an account at the Mudbury
Branch Savings Bank; the Ribbons drove to church, monopolising the
pony-chaise, which was for the use of the servants at the Hall.  The
domestics were dismissed at her pleasure. The Scotch gardener, who
still lingered on the premises, taking a pride in his walls and
hot-houses, and indeed making a pretty good livelihood by the garden,
which he farmed, and of which he sold the produce at Southampton, found
the Ribbons eating peaches on a sunshiny morning at the south-wall, and
had his ears boxed when he remonstrated about this attack on his
property.  He and his Scotch wife and his Scotch children, the only
respectable inhabitants of Queen's Crawley, were forced to migrate,
with their goods and their chattels, and left the stately comfortable
gardens to go to waste, and the flower-beds to run to seed.  Poor Lady
Crawley's rose-garden became the dreariest wilderness.  Only two or
three domestics shuddered in the bleak old servants' hall.  The stables
and offices were vacant, and shut up, and half ruined.  Sir Pitt lived
in private, and boozed nightly with Horrocks, his butler or house-steward
(as he now began to be called), and the abandoned Ribbons. The
times were very much changed since the period when she drove to Mudbury
in the spring-cart and called the small tradesmen "Sir." It may have
been shame, or it may have been dislike of his neighbours, but the old
Cynic of Queen's Crawley hardly issued from his park-gates at all now.
He quarrelled with his agents and screwed his tenants by letter.  His
days were passed in conducting his own correspondence; the lawyers and
farm-bailiffs who had to do business with him could not reach him but
through the Ribbons, who received them at the door of the housekeeper's
room, which commanded the back entrance by which they were admitted;
and so the Baronet's daily perplexities increased, and his
embarrassments multiplied round him.

The horror of Pitt Crawley may be imagined, as these reports of his
father's dotage reached the most exemplary and correct of gentlemen. He
trembled daily lest he should hear that the Ribbons was proclaimed his
second legal mother-in-law.  After that first and last visit, his
father's name was never mentioned in Pitt's polite and genteel
establishment.  It was the skeleton in his house, and all the family
walked by it in terror and silence.  The Countess Southdown kept on
dropping per coach at the lodge-gate the most exciting tracts, tracts
which ought to frighten the hair off your head.  Mrs. Bute at the
parsonage nightly looked out to see if the sky was red over the elms
behind which the Hall stood, and the mansion was on fire.  Sir G.
Wapshot and Sir H.  Fuddlestone, old friends of the house, wouldn't sit
on the bench with Sir Pitt at Quarter Sessions, and cut him dead in the
High Street of Southampton, where the reprobate stood offering his
dirty old hands to them.  Nothing had any effect upon him; he put his
hands into his pockets, and burst out laughing, as he scrambled into
his carriage and four; he used to burst out laughing at Lady
Southdown's tracts; and he laughed at his sons, and at the world, and
at the Ribbons when she was angry, which was not seldom.

Miss Horrocks was installed as housekeeper at Queen's Crawley, and
ruled all the domestics there with great majesty and rigour.  All the
servants were instructed to address her as "Mum," or "Madam"--and
there was one little maid, on her promotion, who persisted in calling
her "My Lady," without any rebuke on the part of the housekeeper.
"There has been better ladies, and there has been worser, Hester," was
Miss Horrocks' reply to this compliment of her inferior; so she ruled,
having supreme power over all except her father, whom, however, she
treated with considerable haughtiness, warning him not to be too
familiar in his behaviour to one "as was to be a Baronet's lady."
Indeed, she rehearsed that exalted part in life with great satisfaction
to herself, and to the amusement of old Sir Pitt, who chuckled at her
airs and graces, and would laugh by the hour together at her
assumptions of dignity and imitations of genteel life. He swore it was
as good as a play to see her in the character of a fine dame, and he
made her put on one of the first Lady Crawley's court-dresses, swearing
(entirely to Miss Horrocks' own concurrence) that the dress became her
prodigiously, and threatening to drive her off that very instant to
Court in a coach-and-four.  She had the ransacking of the wardrobes of
the two defunct ladies, and cut and hacked their posthumous finery so
as to suit her own tastes and figure.  And she would have liked to take
possession of their jewels and trinkets too; but the old Baronet had
locked them away in his private cabinet; nor could she coax or wheedle
him out of the keys.  And it is a fact, that some time after she left
Queen's Crawley a copy-book belonging to this lady was discovered,
which showed that she had taken great pains in private to learn the art
of writing in general, and especially of writing her own name as Lady
Crawley, Lady Betsy Horrocks, Lady Elizabeth Crawley, &c.

Though the good people of the Parsonage never went to the Hall and
shunned the horrid old dotard its owner, yet they kept a strict
knowledge of all that happened there, and were looking out every day
for the catastrophe for which Miss Horrocks was also eager.  But Fate
intervened enviously and prevented her from receiving the reward due to
such immaculate love and virtue.

One day the Baronet surprised "her ladyship," as he jocularly called
her, seated at that old and tuneless piano in the drawing-room, which
had scarcely been touched since Becky Sharp played quadrilles upon
it--seated at the piano with the utmost gravity and squalling to the
best of her power in imitation of the music which she had sometimes
heard.  The little kitchen-maid on her promotion was standing at her
mistress's side, quite delighted during the operation, and wagging her
head up and down and crying, "Lor, Mum, 'tis bittiful"--just like a
genteel sycophant in a real drawing-room.

This incident made the old Baronet roar with laughter, as usual.  He
narrated the circumstance a dozen times to Horrocks in the course of
the evening, and greatly to the discomfiture of Miss Horrocks.  He
thrummed on the table as if it had been a musical instrument, and
squalled in imitation of her manner of singing.  He vowed that such a
beautiful voice ought to be cultivated and declared she ought to have
singing-masters, in which proposals she saw nothing ridiculous. He was
in great spirits that night, and drank with his friend and butler an
extraordinary quantity of rum-and-water--at a very late hour the
faithful friend and domestic conducted his master to his bedroom.

Half an hour afterwards there was a great hurry and bustle in the
house.  Lights went about from window to window in the lonely desolate
old Hall, whereof but two or three rooms were ordinarily occupied by
its owner. Presently, a boy on a pony went galloping off to Mudbury, to
the Doctor's house there.  And in another hour (by which fact we
ascertain how carefully the excellent Mrs. Bute Crawley had always kept
up an understanding with the great house), that lady in her clogs and
calash, the Reverend Bute Crawley, and James Crawley, her son, had
walked over from the Rectory through the park, and had entered the
mansion by the open hall-door.

They passed through the hall and the small oak parlour, on the table of
which stood the three tumblers and the empty rum-bottle which had
served for Sir Pitt's carouse, and through that apartment into Sir
Pitt's study, where they found Miss Horrocks, of the guilty ribbons,
with a wild air, trying at the presses and escritoires with a bunch of
keys.  She dropped them with a scream of terror, as little Mrs. Bute's
eyes flashed out at her from under her black calash.

"Look at that, James and Mr. Crawley," cried Mrs. Bute, pointing at the
scared figure of the black-eyed, guilty wench.

"He gave 'em me; he gave 'em me!" she cried.

"Gave them you, you abandoned creature!" screamed Mrs. Bute.  "Bear
witness, Mr. Crawley, we found this good-for-nothing woman in the act
of stealing your brother's property; and she will be hanged, as I
always said she would."

Betsy Horrocks, quite daunted, flung herself down on her knees,
bursting into tears.  But those who know a really good woman are aware
that she is not in a hurry to forgive, and that the humiliation of an
enemy is a triumph to her soul.

"Ring the bell, James," Mrs. Bute said.  "Go on ringing it till the
people come." The three or four domestics resident in the deserted old
house came presently at that jangling and continued summons.

"Put that woman in the strong-room," she said.  "We caught her in the
act of robbing Sir Pitt.  Mr. Crawley, you'll make out her
committal--and, Beddoes, you'll drive her over in the spring cart, in
the morning, to Southampton Gaol."

"My dear," interposed the Magistrate and Rector--"she's only--"

"Are there no handcuffs?" Mrs. Bute continued, stamping in her clogs.
"There used to be handcuffs. Where's the creature's abominable father?"

"He DID give 'em me," still cried poor Betsy; "didn't he, Hester? You
saw Sir Pitt--you know you did--give 'em me, ever so long ago--the day
after Mudbury fair:  not that I want 'em.  Take 'em if you think they
ain't mine." And here the unhappy wretch pulled out from her pocket a
large pair of paste shoe-buckles which had excited her admiration, and
which she had just appropriated out of one of the bookcases in the
study, where they had lain.

"Law, Betsy, how could you go for to tell such a wicked story!" said
Hester, the little kitchen-maid late on her promotion--"and to Madame
Crawley, so good and kind, and his Rev'rince (with a curtsey), and you
may search all MY boxes, Mum, I'm sure, and here's my keys as I'm an
honest girl, though of pore parents and workhouse bred--and if you find
so much as a beggarly bit of lace or a silk stocking out of all the
gownds as YOU'VE had the picking of, may I never go to church agin."

"Give up your keys, you hardened hussy," hissed out the virtuous little
lady in the calash.

"And here's a candle, Mum, and if you please, Mum, I can show you her
room, Mum, and the press in the housekeeper's room, Mum, where she
keeps heaps and heaps of things, Mum," cried out the eager little
Hester with a profusion of curtseys.

"Hold your tongue, if you please.  I know the room which the creature
occupies perfectly well.  Mrs. Brown, have the goodness to come with
me, and Beddoes don't you lose sight of that woman," said Mrs. Bute,
seizing the candle.  "Mr. Crawley, you had better go upstairs and see
that they are not murdering your unfortunate brother"--and the calash,
escorted by Mrs. Brown, walked away to the apartment which, as she said
truly, she knew perfectly well.

Bute went upstairs and found the Doctor from Mudbury, with the
frightened Horrocks over his master in a chair.  They were trying to
bleed Sir Pitt Crawley.

With the early morning an express was sent off to Mr. Pitt Crawley by
the Rector's lady, who assumed the command of everything, and had
watched the old Baronet through the night.  He had been brought back to
a sort of life; he could not speak, but seemed to recognize people.
Mrs. Bute kept resolutely by his bedside.  She never seemed to want to
sleep, that little woman, and did not close her fiery black eyes once,
though the Doctor snored in the arm-chair. Horrocks made some wild
efforts to assert his authority and assist his master; but Mrs. Bute
called him a tipsy old wretch and bade him never show his face again in
that house, or he should be transported like his abominable daughter.

Terrified by her manner, he slunk down to the oak parlour where Mr.
James was, who, having tried the bottle standing there and found no
liquor in it, ordered Mr. Horrocks to get another bottle of rum, which
he fetched, with clean glasses, and to which the Rector and his son sat
down, ordering Horrocks to put down the keys at that instant and never
to show his face again.

Cowed by this behaviour, Horrocks gave up the keys, and he and his
daughter slunk off silently through the night and gave up possession of
the house of Queen's Crawley.

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

completion: Hey, how about those Crawleys back in the country? Here's an update. Mr. and Mrs. Bute are totally enraged that Miss Crawley only left them 5,000 pounds after she died . But Mrs. Bute makes the best of it, making her ugly daughter go out into society as much as possible in order to find a husband. They act so non-poor and non-bankrupt that they manage to almost convince everyone that they did actually end up with some of the inheritance. Mr. Bute and Mr. Pitt had a huge fight and are no longer on speaking terms. And what about Sir Pitt, you ask? Ugh, get ready to be grossed out. At some point after their marriage, Mr. Pitt and Lady Jane went to visit him. They found: 1) many of the estate trees cut down and sold for lumber ; 2) most of the servants gone and the mansion and grounds abandoned and neglected; 3) Sir Pitt totally gross and no longer even pretending to be anything other than a drunkard; and finally 4) Miss Horrocks, the butler's daughter, installed as housekeeper, running the house and hoping to be the next Lady Crawley. Ewww! Sir Pitt gives Jane some of dead Lady Crawley's jewels, which he's been hiding from Miss Horrocks. Totally appalled, Pitt and Jane run away as fast as they can. Everyone is also freaking out that Sir Pitt might actually marry this horrible young woman. To Sir Pitt, it's just all very funny. All his old friends shun and ignore him, which he also laughs off. All he does is get drunk with Mr. Horrocks every night and hang out with Miss Horrocks every day. Then finally one day he has a fit of some sort. He loses his ability to speak and then falls into a coma. Mr. and Mrs. Bute hurry to the house and find Miss Horrocks trying to open the cabinets in his study with a bunch of keys. Mrs. Bute accuses her of being a thief and threatens to have her arrested, but then she and her father are allowed to quickly and quietly go away and are never heard from again.


prompt:
Chapter: In Which Becky Is Recognized by the Family

The heir of Crawley arrived at home, in due time, after this
catastrophe, and henceforth may be said to have reigned in Queen's
Crawley.  For though the old Baronet survived many months, he never
recovered the use of his intellect or his speech completely, and the
government of the estate devolved upon his elder son.  In a strange
condition Pitt found it.  Sir Pitt was always buying and mortgaging; he
had twenty men of business, and quarrels with each; quarrels with all
his tenants, and lawsuits with them; lawsuits with the lawyers;
lawsuits with the Mining and Dock Companies in which he was proprietor;
and with every person with whom he had business.  To unravel these
difficulties and to set the estate clear was a task worthy of the
orderly and persevering diplomatist of Pumpernickel, and he set himself
to work with prodigious assiduity.  His whole family, of course, was
transported to Queen's Crawley, whither Lady Southdown, of course, came
too; and she set about converting the parish under the Rector's nose,
and brought down her irregular clergy to the dismay of the angry Mrs
Bute.  Sir Pitt had concluded no bargain for the sale of the living of
Queen's Crawley; when it should drop, her Ladyship proposed to take the
patronage into her own hands and present a young protege to the
Rectory, on which subject the diplomatic Pitt said nothing.

Mrs. Bute's intentions with regard to Miss Betsy Horrocks were not
carried into effect, and she paid no visit to Southampton Gaol.  She
and her father left the Hall when the latter took possession of the
Crawley Arms in the village, of which he had got a lease from Sir Pitt.
The ex-butler had obtained a small freehold there likewise, which gave
him a vote for the borough.  The Rector had another of these votes, and
these and four others formed the representative body which returned the
two members for Queen's Crawley.

There was a show of courtesy kept up between the Rectory and the Hall
ladies, between the younger ones at least, for Mrs. Bute and Lady
Southdown never could meet without battles, and gradually ceased seeing
each other.  Her Ladyship kept her room when the ladies from the
Rectory visited their cousins at the Hall.  Perhaps Mr. Pitt was not
very much displeased at these occasional absences of his mamma-in-law.
He believed the Binkie family to be the greatest and wisest and most
interesting in the world, and her Ladyship and his aunt had long held
ascendency over him; but sometimes he felt that she commanded him too
much.  To be considered young was complimentary, doubtless, but at
six-and-forty to be treated as a boy was sometimes mortifying.  Lady
Jane yielded up everything, however, to her mother.  She was only fond
of her children in private, and it was lucky for her that Lady
Southdown's multifarious business, her conferences with ministers, and
her correspondence with all the missionaries of Africa, Asia, and
Australasia, &c., occupied the venerable Countess a great deal, so that
she had but little time to devote to her granddaughter, the little
Matilda, and her grandson, Master Pitt Crawley. The latter was a feeble
child, and it was only by prodigious quantities of calomel that Lady
Southdown was able to keep him in life at all.

As for Sir Pitt he retired into those very apartments where Lady
Crawley had been previously extinguished, and here was tended by Miss
Hester, the girl upon her promotion, with constant care and assiduity.
What love, what fidelity, what constancy is there equal to that of a
nurse with good wages? They smooth pillows; and make arrowroot; they
get up at nights; they bear complaints and querulousness; they see the
sun shining out of doors and don't want to go abroad; they sleep on
arm-chairs and eat their meals in solitude; they pass long long
evenings doing nothing, watching the embers, and the patient's drink
simmering in the jug; they read the weekly paper the whole week
through; and Law's Serious Call or the Whole Duty of Man suffices them
for literature for the year--and we quarrel with them because, when
their relations come to see them once a week, a little gin is smuggled
in in their linen basket. Ladies, what man's love is there that would
stand a year's nursing of the object of his affection? Whereas a nurse
will stand by you for ten pounds a quarter, and we think her too highly
paid.  At least Mr. Crawley grumbled a good deal about paying half as
much to Miss Hester for her constant attendance upon the Baronet his
father.

Of sunshiny days this old gentleman was taken out in a chair on the
terrace--the very chair which Miss Crawley had had at Brighton, and
which had been transported thence with a number of Lady Southdown's
effects to Queen's Crawley.  Lady Jane always walked by the old man,
and was an evident favourite with him.  He used to nod many times to
her and smile when she came in, and utter inarticulate deprecatory
moans when she was going away.  When the door shut upon her he would
cry and sob--whereupon Hester's face and manner, which was always
exceedingly bland and gentle while her lady was present, would change
at once, and she would make faces at him and clench her fist and scream
out "Hold your tongue, you stoopid old fool," and twirl away his chair
from the fire which he loved to look at--at which he would cry more.
For this was all that was left after more than seventy years of
cunning, and struggling, and drinking, and scheming, and sin and
selfishness--a whimpering old idiot put in and out of bed and cleaned
and fed like a baby.

At last a day came when the nurse's occupation was over.  Early one
morning, as Pitt Crawley was at his steward's and bailiff's books in
the study, a knock came to the door, and Hester presented herself,
dropping a curtsey, and said,

"If you please, Sir Pitt, Sir Pitt died this morning, Sir Pitt.  I was
a-making of his toast, Sir Pitt, for his gruel, Sir Pitt, which he took
every morning regular at six, Sir Pitt, and--I thought I heard a
moan-like, Sir Pitt--and--and--and--" She dropped another curtsey.

What was it that made Pitt's pale face flush quite red? Was it because
he was Sir Pitt at last, with a seat in Parliament, and perhaps future
honours in prospect? "I'll clear the estate now with the ready money,"
he thought and rapidly calculated its incumbrances and the improvements
which he would make.  He would not use his aunt's money previously lest
Sir Pitt should recover and his outlay be in vain.

All the blinds were pulled down at the Hall and Rectory: the church
bell was tolled, and the chancel hung in black; and Bute Crawley didn't
go to a coursing meeting, but went and dined quietly at Fuddleston,
where they talked about his deceased brother and young Sir Pitt over
their port.  Miss Betsy, who was by this time married to a saddler at
Mudbury, cried a good deal. The family surgeon rode over and paid his
respectful compliments, and inquiries for the health of their
ladyships.  The death was talked about at Mudbury and at the Crawley
Arms, the landlord whereof had become reconciled with the Rector of
late, who was occasionally known to step into the parlour and taste Mr.
Horrocks' mild beer.

"Shall I write to your brother--or will you?" asked Lady Jane of her
husband, Sir Pitt.

"I will write, of course," Sir Pitt said, "and invite him to the
funeral:  it will be but becoming."

"And--and--Mrs. Rawdon," said Lady Jane timidly.

"Jane!" said Lady Southdown, "how can you think of such a thing?"

"Mrs. Rawdon must of course be asked," said Sir Pitt, resolutely.

"Not whilst I am in the house!" said Lady Southdown.

"Your Ladyship will be pleased to recollect that I am the head of this
family," Sir Pitt replied.  "If you please, Lady Jane, you will write a
letter to Mrs. Rawdon Crawley, requesting her presence upon this
melancholy occasion."

"Jane, I forbid you to put pen to paper!" cried the Countess.

"I believe I am the head of this family," Sir Pitt repeated; "and
however much I may regret any circumstance which may lead to your
Ladyship quitting this house, must, if you please, continue to govern
it as I see fit."

Lady Southdown rose up as magnificent as Mrs. Siddons in Lady Macbeth
and ordered that horses might be put to her carriage.  If her son and
daughter turned her out of their house, she would hide her sorrows
somewhere in loneliness and pray for their conversion to better
thoughts.

"We don't turn you out of our house, Mamma," said the timid Lady Jane
imploringly.

"You invite such company to it as no Christian lady should meet, and I
will have my horses to-morrow morning."

"Have the goodness to write, Jane, under my dictation," said Sir Pitt,
rising and throwing himself into an attitude of command, like the
portrait of a Gentleman in the Exhibition, "and begin.  'Queen's
Crawley, September 14, 1822.--My dear brother--'"

Hearing these decisive and terrible words, Lady Macbeth, who had been
waiting for a sign of weakness or vacillation on the part of her
son-in-law, rose and, with a scared look, left the library. Lady Jane
looked up to her husband as if she would fain follow and soothe her
mamma, but Pitt forbade his wife to move.

"She won't go away," he said.  "She has let her house at Brighton and
has spent her last half-year's dividends. A Countess living at an inn
is a ruined woman.  I have been waiting long for an opportunity--to
take this--this decisive step, my love; for, as you must perceive, it
is impossible that there should be two chiefs in a family: and now, if
you please, we will resume the dictation.  'My dear brother, the
melancholy intelligence which it is my duty to convey to my family must
have been long anticipated by,'" &c.

In a word, Pitt having come to his kingdom, and having by good luck, or
desert rather, as he considered, assumed almost all the fortune which
his other relatives had expected, was determined to treat his family
kindly and respectably and make a house of Queen's Crawley once more.
It pleased him to think that he should be its chief.  He proposed to
use the vast influence that his commanding talents and position must
speedily acquire for him in the county to get his brother placed and
his cousins decently provided for, and perhaps had a little sting of
repentance as he thought that he was the proprietor of all that they
had hoped for.  In the course of three or four days' reign his bearing
was changed and his plans quite fixed:  he determined to rule justly
and honestly, to depose Lady Southdown, and to be on the friendliest
possible terms with all the relations of his blood.

So he dictated a letter to his brother Rawdon--a solemn and elaborate
letter, containing the profoundest observations, couched in the longest
words, and filling with wonder the simple little secretary, who wrote
under her husband's order.  "What an orator this will be," thought she,
"when he enters the House of Commons" (on which point, and on the
tyranny of Lady Southdown, Pitt had sometimes dropped hints to his wife
in bed); "how wise and good, and what a genius my husband is!  I
fancied him a little cold; but how good, and what a genius!"

The fact is, Pitt Crawley had got every word of the letter by heart and
had studied it, with diplomatic secrecy, deeply and perfectly, long
before he thought fit to communicate it to his astonished wife.

This letter, with a huge black border and seal, was accordingly
despatched by Sir Pitt Crawley to his brother the Colonel, in London.
Rawdon Crawley was but half-pleased at the receipt of it. "What's the
use of going down to that stupid place?" thought he.  "I can't stand
being alone with Pitt after dinner, and horses there and back will cost
us twenty pound."

He carried the letter, as he did all difficulties, to Becky, upstairs
in her bedroom--with her chocolate, which he always made and took to
her of a morning.

He put the tray with the breakfast and the letter on the dressing-table,
before which Becky sat combing her yellow hair.  She took up the
black-edged missive, and having read it, she jumped up from the chair,
crying "Hurray!" and waving the note round her head.

"Hurray?" said Rawdon, wondering at the little figure capering about in
a streaming flannel dressing-gown, with tawny locks dishevelled. "He's
not left us anything, Becky.  I had my share when I came of age."

"You'll never be of age, you silly old man," Becky replied.  "Run out
now to Madam Brunoy's, for I must have some mourning:  and get a crape
on your hat, and a black waistcoat--I don't think you've got one; order
it to be brought home to-morrow, so that we may be able to start on
Thursday."

"You don't mean to go?" Rawdon interposed.

"Of course I mean to go.  I mean that Lady Jane shall present me at
Court next year.  I mean that your brother shall give you a seat in
Parliament, you stupid old creature.  I mean that Lord Steyne shall
have your vote and his, my dear, old silly man; and that you shall be
an Irish Secretary, or a West Indian Governor:  or a Treasurer, or a
Consul, or some such thing."

"Posting will cost a dooce of a lot of money," grumbled Rawdon.

"We might take Southdown's carriage, which ought to be present at the
funeral, as he is a relation of the family:  but, no--I intend that we
shall go by the coach. They'll like it better.  It seems more humble--"

"Rawdy goes, of course?" the Colonel asked.

"No such thing; why pay an extra place? He's too big to travel bodkin
between you and me.  Let him stay here in the nursery, and Briggs can
make him a black frock.  Go you, and do as I bid you. And you had best
tell Sparks, your man, that old Sir Pitt is dead and that you will come
in for something considerable when the affairs are arranged.  He'll
tell this to Raggles, who has been pressing for money, and it will
console poor Raggles." And so Becky began sipping her chocolate.

When the faithful Lord Steyne arrived in the evening, he found Becky
and her companion, who was no other than our friend Briggs, busy
cutting, ripping, snipping, and tearing all sorts of black stuffs
available for the melancholy occasion.

"Miss Briggs and I are plunged in grief and despondency for the death
of our Papa," Rebecca said.  "Sir Pitt Crawley is dead, my lord.  We
have been tearing our hair all the morning, and now we are tearing up
our old clothes."

"Oh, Rebecca, how can you--" was all that Briggs could say as she
turned up her eyes.

"Oh, Rebecca, how can you--" echoed my Lord.  "So that old scoundrel's
dead, is he? He might have been a Peer if he had played his cards
better.  Mr. Pitt had very nearly made him; but he ratted always at the
wrong time.  What an old Silenus it was!"

"I might have been Silenus's widow," said Rebecca. "Don't you remember,
Miss Briggs, how you peeped in at the door and saw old Sir Pitt on his
knees to me?" Miss Briggs, our old friend, blushed very much at this
reminiscence, and was glad when Lord Steyne ordered her to go
downstairs and make him a cup of tea.

Briggs was the house-dog whom Rebecca had provided as guardian of her
innocence and reputation.  Miss Crawley had left her a little annuity.
She would have been content to remain in the Crawley family with Lady
Jane, who was good to her and to everybody; but Lady Southdown
dismissed poor Briggs as quickly as decency permitted; and Mr. Pitt
(who thought himself much injured by the uncalled-for generosity of his
deceased relative towards a lady who had only been Miss Crawley's
faithful retainer a score of years) made no objection to that exercise
of the dowager's authority. Bowls and Firkin likewise received their
legacies and their dismissals, and married and set up a lodging-house,
according to the custom of their kind.

Briggs tried to live with her relations in the country, but found that
attempt was vain after the better society to which she had been
accustomed.  Briggs's friends, small tradesmen, in a country town,
quarrelled over Miss Briggs's forty pounds a year as eagerly and more
openly than Miss Crawley's kinsfolk had for that lady's inheritance.
Briggs's brother, a radical hatter and grocer, called his sister a
purse-proud aristocrat, because she would not advance a part of her
capital to stock his shop; and she would have done so most likely, but
that their sister, a dissenting shoemaker's lady, at variance with the
hatter and grocer, who went to another chapel, showed how their brother
was on the verge of bankruptcy, and took possession of Briggs for a
while.  The dissenting shoemaker wanted Miss Briggs to send his son to
college and make a gentleman of him. Between them the two families got
a great portion of her private savings out of her, and finally she fled
to London followed by the anathemas of both, and determined to seek for
servitude again as infinitely less onerous than liberty.  And
advertising in the papers that a "Gentlewoman of agreeable manners, and
accustomed to the best society, was anxious to," &c., she took up her
residence with Mr. Bowls in Half Moon Street, and waited the result of
the advertisement.

So it was that she fell in with Rebecca.  Mrs. Rawdon's dashing little
carriage and ponies was whirling down the street one day, just as Miss
Briggs, fatigued, had reached Mr. Bowls's door, after a weary walk to
the Times Office in the City to insert her advertisement for the sixth
time.  Rebecca was driving, and at once recognized the gentlewoman with
agreeable manners, and being a perfectly good-humoured woman, as we
have seen, and having a regard for Briggs, she pulled up the ponies at
the doorsteps, gave the reins to the groom, and jumping out, had hold
of both Briggs's hands, before she of the agreeable manners had
recovered from the shock of seeing an old friend.

Briggs cried, and Becky laughed a great deal and kissed the gentlewoman
as soon as they got into the passage; and thence into Mrs. Bowls's
front parlour, with the red moreen curtains, and the round
looking-glass, with the chained eagle above, gazing upon the back of
the ticket in the window which announced "Apartments to Let."

Briggs told all her history amidst those perfectly uncalled-for sobs
and ejaculations of wonder with which women of her soft nature salute
an old acquaintance, or regard a rencontre in the street; for though
people meet other people every day, yet some there are who insist upon
discovering miracles; and women, even though they have disliked each
other, begin to cry when they meet, deploring and remembering the time
when they last quarrelled.  So, in a word, Briggs told all her history,
and Becky gave a narrative of her own life, with her usual artlessness
and candour.

Mrs. Bowls, late Firkin, came and listened grimly in the passage to the
hysterical sniffling and giggling which went on in the front parlour.
Becky had never been a favourite of hers.  Since the establishment of
the married couple in London they had frequented their former friends
of the house of Raggles, and did not like the latter's account of the
Colonel's menage.  "I wouldn't trust him, Ragg, my boy," Bowls
remarked; and his wife, when Mrs. Rawdon issued from the parlour, only
saluted the lady with a very sour curtsey; and her fingers were like so
many sausages, cold and lifeless, when she held them out in deference
to Mrs. Rawdon, who persisted in shaking hands with the retired lady's
maid.  She whirled away into Piccadilly, nodding with the sweetest of
smiles towards Miss Briggs, who hung nodding at the window close under
the advertisement-card, and at the next moment was in the park with a
half-dozen of dandies cantering after her carriage.

When she found how her friend was situated, and how having a snug
legacy from Miss Crawley, salary was no object to our gentlewoman,
Becky instantly formed some benevolent little domestic plans concerning
her.  This was just such a companion as would suit her establishment,
and she invited Briggs to come to dinner with her that very evening,
when she should see Becky's dear little darling Rawdon.

Mrs. Bowls cautioned her lodger against venturing into the lion's den,
"wherein you will rue it, Miss B., mark my words, and as sure as my
name is Bowls." And Briggs promised to be very cautious.  The upshot of
which caution was that she went to live with Mrs. Rawdon the next week,
and had lent Rawdon Crawley six hundred pounds upon annuity before six
months were over.

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

completion: Mr. Pitt comes back to Queen's Crawley and basically takes over as heir, even though Sir Pitt is still technically alive. He finds the estate tangled up in all sorts of crazy mortgages, lawsuits, and other business dealings and begins to try to make sense of the mess his father has made. Mr. Horrocks and his daughter aren't arrested but instead buy and run the town's tavern. Lady Southdown moves to Queen's Crawley with her daughter and son-in-law and proceeds to boss both of them around, and their two kids as well . Finally, in a few months old Sir Pitt dies. His son, Mr. Pitt, is now the new Sir Pitt. We will call him young Sir Pitt to avoid confusion. Young Sir Pitt wants to write a letter to his brother Rawdon telling him about their father's death. He invites him to come and stay at Queen's Crawley. Jane asks whether they can invite Becky, too. Young Sir Pitt says of course, but Lady Southdown says absolutely not. Finally the time has come for young Sir Pitt to make his stand. He tells Lady Southdown to go stuff it and that he will be the only master of the house. She tries to call his bluff by pretending to leave...but he's not bluffing, so she stays. Young Sir Pitt then dictates a letter to Rawdon and has Jane write it down from his dictation. It's long, complex, beautifully worded, full of quotations, and just generally amazing. Jane is totally floored by how smart her husband apparently is. Little does she know that he has actually written this letter weeks ago and has been memorizing it all this time just so he can impress her. Becky is psyched when she gets the letter. Rawdon is sort of grumpy about having to go down to the country, but Becky fills him in on her plans: "I mean that Lady Jane shall present me at Court next year. I mean that your brother shall give you a seat in Parliament, you stupid old creature. I mean that Lord Steyne shall have your vote and his, my dear, old silly man; and that you shall be an Irish Secretary, or a West Indian Governor; or a Treasurer, or a Consul, or some such thing" . She plans to go with Rawdon and to leave Rawdon Jr. behind. The next time Lord Steyne comes over he finds Becky and her companion remaking all the clothes into official mourning clothes. Her companion turns out to be...Briggs! She's back! OK, you're right, meh.