prompt:
Chapter: "Negli occhi porta la mia donna Amore;
         Per che si fa gentil eio ch'ella mira:
         Ov'ella passa, ogni uom ver lei si gira,
         E cui saluta fa tremar lo core.

     Sicche, bassando il viso, tutto smore,
         E d'ogni suo difetto allor sospira:
         Fuggon dinanzi a lei Superbia ed Ira:
         Aiutatemi, donne, a farle onore.

     Ogni dolcezza, ogni pensiero umile
         Nasce nel core a chi parlar la sente;
         Ond'e beato chi prima la vide.
     Quel ch'ella par quand' un poco sorride,
         Non si puo dicer, ne tener a mente,
         Si e nuovo miracolo gentile."
                        --DANTE: la Vita Nuova.

By that delightful morning when the hay-ricks at Stone Court were
scenting the air quite impartially, as if Mr. Raffles had been a guest
worthy of finest incense, Dorothea had again taken up her abode at
Lowick Manor.  After three months Freshitt had become rather
oppressive: to sit like a model for Saint Catherine looking rapturously
at Celia's baby would not do for many hours in the day, and to remain
in that momentous babe's presence with persistent disregard was a
course that could not have been tolerated in a childless sister.
Dorothea would have been capable of carrying baby joyfully for a mile
if there had been need, and of loving it the more tenderly for that
labor; but to an aunt who does not recognize her infant nephew as
Bouddha, and has nothing to do for him but to admire, his behavior is
apt to appear monotonous, and the interest of watching him exhaustible.
This possibility was quite hidden from Celia, who felt that Dorothea's
childless widowhood fell in quite prettily with the birth of little
Arthur (baby was named after Mr. Brooke).

"Dodo is just the creature not to mind about having anything of her
own--children or anything!" said Celia to her husband.  "And if she
had had a baby, it never could have been such a dear as Arthur.  Could
it, James?

"Not if it had been like Casaubon," said Sir James, conscious of some
indirectness in his answer, and of holding a strictly private opinion
as to the perfections of his first-born.

"No! just imagine!  Really it was a mercy," said Celia; "and I think it
is very nice for Dodo to be a widow.  She can be just as fond of our
baby as if it were her own, and she can have as many notions of her own
as she likes."

"It is a pity she was not a queen," said the devout Sir James.

"But what should we have been then?  We must have been something else,"
said Celia, objecting to so laborious a flight of imagination.  "I like
her better as she is."

Hence, when she found that Dorothea was making arrangements for her
final departure to Lowick, Celia raised her eyebrows with
disappointment, and in her quiet unemphatic way shot a needle-arrow of
sarcasm.

"What will you do at Lowick, Dodo?  You say yourself there is nothing
to be done there: everybody is so clean and well off, it makes you
quite melancholy.  And here you have been so happy going all about
Tipton with Mr. Garth into the worst backyards.  And now uncle is
abroad, you and Mr. Garth can have it all your own way; and I am sure
James does everything you tell him."

"I shall often come here, and I shall see how baby grows all the
better," said Dorothea.

"But you will never see him washed," said Celia; "and that is quite the
best part of the day."  She was almost pouting: it did seem to her very
hard in Dodo to go away from the baby when she might stay.

"Dear Kitty, I will come and stay all night on purpose," said Dorothea;
"but I want to be alone now, and in my own home.  I wish to know the
Farebrothers better, and to talk to Mr. Farebrother about what there is
to be done in Middlemarch."

Dorothea's native strength of will was no longer all converted into
resolute submission.  She had a great yearning to be at Lowick, and was
simply determined to go, not feeling bound to tell all her reasons.
But every one around her disapproved.  Sir James was much pained, and
offered that they should all migrate to Cheltenham for a few months
with the sacred ark, otherwise called a cradle: at that period a man
could hardly know what to propose if Cheltenham were rejected.

The Dowager Lady Chettam, just returned from a visit to her daughter in
town, wished, at least, that Mrs. Vigo should be written to, and
invited to accept the office of companion to Mrs. Casaubon: it was not
credible that Dorothea as a young widow would think of living alone in
the house at Lowick.  Mrs. Vigo had been reader and secretary to royal
personages, and in point of knowledge and sentiments even Dorothea
could have nothing to object to her.

Mrs. Cadwallader said, privately, "You will certainly go mad in that
house alone, my dear.  You will see visions.  We have all got to exert
ourselves a little to keep sane, and call things by the same names as
other people call them by.  To be sure, for younger sons and women who
have no money, it is a sort of provision to go mad: they are taken care
of then.  But you must not run into that.  I dare say you are a little
bored here with our good dowager; but think what a bore you might
become yourself to your fellow-creatures if you were always playing
tragedy queen and taking things sublimely.  Sitting alone in that
library at Lowick you may fancy yourself ruling the weather; you must
get a few people round you who wouldn't believe you if you told them.
That is a good lowering medicine."

"I never called everything by the same name that all the people about
me did," said Dorothea, stoutly.

"But I suppose you have found out your mistake, my dear," said Mrs.
Cadwallader, "and that is a proof of sanity."

Dorothea was aware of the sting, but it did not hurt her.  "No," she
said, "I still think that the greater part of the world is mistaken
about many things.  Surely one may be sane and yet think so, since the
greater part of the world has often had to come round from its opinion."

Mrs. Cadwallader said no more on that point to Dorothea, but to her
husband she remarked, "It will be well for her to marry again as soon
as it is proper, if one could get her among the right people.  Of
course the Chettams would not wish it.  But I see clearly a husband is
the best thing to keep her in order.  If we were not so poor I would
invite Lord Triton.  He will be marquis some day, and there is no
denying that she would make a good marchioness: she looks handsomer
than ever in her mourning."

"My dear Elinor, do let the poor woman alone.  Such contrivances are of
no use," said the easy Rector.

"No use?  How are matches made, except by bringing men and women
together?  And it is a shame that her uncle should have run away and
shut up the Grange just now.  There ought to be plenty of eligible
matches invited to Freshitt and the Grange.  Lord Triton is precisely
the man: full of plans for making the people happy in a soft-headed
sort of way.  That would just suit Mrs. Casaubon."

"Let Mrs. Casaubon choose for herself, Elinor."

"That is the nonsense you wise men talk!  How can she choose if she has
no variety to choose from?  A woman's choice usually means taking the
only man she can get.  Mark my words, Humphrey.  If her friends don't
exert themselves, there will be a worse business than the Casaubon
business yet."

"For heaven's sake don't touch on that topic, Elinor! It is a very sore
point with Sir James. He would be deeply offended if you entered on it
to him unnecessarily."

"I have never entered on it," said Mrs Cadwallader, opening her hands.
"Celia told me all about the will at the beginning, without any asking
of mine."

"Yes, yes; but they want the thing hushed up, and I understand that the
young fellow is going out of the neighborhood."

Mrs. Cadwallader said nothing, but gave her husband three significant
nods, with a very sarcastic expression in her dark eyes.

Dorothea quietly persisted in spite of remonstrance and persuasion.  So
by the end of June the shutters were all opened at Lowick Manor, and
the morning gazed calmly into the library, shining on the rows of
note-books as it shines on the weary waste planted with huge stones,
the mute memorial of a forgotten faith; and the evening laden with
roses entered silently into the blue-green boudoir where Dorothea chose
oftenest to sit.  At first she walked into every room, questioning the
eighteen months of her married life, and carrying on her thoughts as if
they were a speech to be heard by her husband.  Then, she lingered in
the library and could not be at rest till she had carefully ranged all
the note-books as she imagined that he would wish to see them, in
orderly sequence.  The pity which had been the restraining compelling
motive in her life with him still clung about his image, even while she
remonstrated with him in indignant thought and told him that he was
unjust.  One little act of hers may perhaps be smiled at as
superstitious.  The Synoptical Tabulation for the use of Mrs. Casaubon,
she carefully enclosed and sealed, writing within the envelope, "I
could not use it.  Do you not see now that I could not submit my soul
to yours, by working hopelessly at what I have no belief in--Dorothea?"
Then she deposited the paper in her own desk.

That silent colloquy was perhaps only the more earnest because
underneath and through it all there was always the deep longing which
had really determined her to come to Lowick.  The longing was to see
Will Ladislaw.  She did not know any good that could come of their
meeting: she was helpless; her hands had been tied from making up to
him for any unfairness in his lot.  But her soul thirsted to see him.
How could it be otherwise?  If a princess in the days of enchantment
had seen a four-footed creature from among those which live in herds
come to her once and again with a human gaze which rested upon her with
choice and beseeching, what would she think of in her journeying, what
would she look for when the herds passed her?  Surely for the gaze
which had found her, and which she would know again.  Life would be no
better than candle-light tinsel and daylight rubbish if our spirits
were not touched by what has been, to issues of longing and constancy.
It was true that Dorothea wanted to know the Farebrothers better, and
especially to talk to the new rector, but also true that remembering
what Lydgate had told her about Will Ladislaw and little Miss Noble,
she counted on Will's coming to Lowick to see the Farebrother family.
The very first Sunday, _before_ she entered the church, she saw him as
she had seen him the last time she was there, alone in the clergyman's
pew; but _when_ she entered his figure was gone.

In the week-days when she went to see the ladies at the Rectory, she
listened in vain for some word that they might let fall about Will; but
it seemed to her that Mrs. Farebrother talked of every one else in the
neighborhood and out of it.

"Probably some of Mr. Farebrother's Middlemarch hearers may follow him
to Lowick sometimes.  Do you not think so?" said Dorothea, rather
despising herself for having a secret motive in asking the question.

"If they are wise they will, Mrs. Casaubon," said the old lady.  "I see
that you set a right value on my son's preaching.  His grandfather on
my side was an excellent clergyman, but his father was in the law:--most
exemplary and honest nevertheless, which is a reason for our never
being rich.  They say Fortune is a woman and capricious.  But sometimes
she is a good woman and gives to those who merit, which has been the
case with you, Mrs. Casaubon, who have given a living to my son."

Mrs. Farebrother recurred to her knitting with a dignified satisfaction
in her neat little effort at oratory, but this was not what Dorothea
wanted to hear.  Poor thing! she did not even know whether Will
Ladislaw was still at Middlemarch, and there was no one whom she dared
to ask, unless it were Lydgate.  But just now she could not see Lydgate
without sending for him or going to seek him.  Perhaps Will Ladislaw,
having heard of that strange ban against him left by Mr. Casaubon, had
felt it better that he and she should not meet again, and perhaps she
was wrong to wish for a meeting that others might find many good
reasons against.  Still "I do wish it" came at the end of those wise
reflections as naturally as a sob after holding the breath.  And the
meeting did happen, but in a formal way quite unexpected by her.

One morning, about eleven, Dorothea was seated in her boudoir with a
map of the land attached to the manor and other papers before her,
which were to help her in making an exact statement for herself of her
income and affairs.  She had not yet applied herself to her work, but
was seated with her hands folded on her lap, looking out along the
avenue of limes to the distant fields.  Every leaf was at rest in the
sunshine, the familiar scene was changeless, and seemed to represent
the prospect of her life, full of motiveless ease--motiveless, if her
own energy could not seek out reasons for ardent action.  The widow's
cap of those times made an oval frame for the face, and had a crown
standing up; the dress was an experiment in the utmost laying on of
crape; but this heavy solemnity of clothing made her face look all the
younger, with its recovered bloom, and the sweet, inquiring candor of
her eyes.

Her reverie was broken by Tantripp, who came to say that Mr. Ladislaw
was below, and begged permission to see Madam if it were not too early.

"I will see him," said Dorothea, rising immediately.  "Let him be shown
into the drawing-room."

The drawing-room was the most neutral room in the house to her--the
one least associated with the trials of her married life: the damask
matched the wood-work, which was all white and gold; there were two
tall mirrors and tables with nothing on them--in brief, it was a room
where you had no reason for sitting in one place rather than in
another.  It was below the boudoir, and had also a bow-window looking
out on the avenue.  But when Pratt showed Will Ladislaw into it the
window was open; and a winged visitor, buzzing in and out now and then
without minding the furniture, made the room look less formal and
uninhabited.

"Glad to see you here again, sir," said Pratt, lingering to adjust a
blind.

"I am only come to say good-by, Pratt," said Will, who wished even the
butler to know that he was too proud to hang about Mrs. Casaubon now
she was a rich widow.

"Very sorry to hear it, sir," said Pratt, retiring.  Of course, as a
servant who was to be told nothing, he knew the fact of which Ladislaw
was still ignorant, and had drawn his inferences; indeed, had not
differed from his betrothed Tantripp when she said, "Your master was as
jealous as a fiend--and no reason.  Madam would look higher than Mr.
Ladislaw, else I don't know her.  Mrs. Cadwallader's maid says there's
a lord coming who is to marry her when the mourning's over."

There were not many moments for Will to walk about with his hat in his
hand before Dorothea entered.  The meeting was very different from that
first meeting in Rome when Will had been embarrassed and Dorothea calm.
This time he felt miserable but determined, while she was in a state of
agitation which could not be hidden.  Just outside the door she had
felt that this longed-for meeting was after all too difficult, and when
she saw Will advancing towards her, the deep blush which was rare in
her came with painful suddenness.  Neither of them knew how it was, but
neither of them spoke.  She gave her hand for a moment, and then they
went to sit down near the window, she on one settee and he on another
opposite.  Will was peculiarly uneasy: it seemed to him not like
Dorothea that the mere fact of her being a widow should cause such a
change in her manner of receiving him; and he knew of no other
condition which could have affected their previous relation to each
other--except that, as his imagination at once told him, her friends
might have been poisoning her mind with their suspicions of him.

"I hope I have not presumed too much in calling," said Will; "I could
not bear to leave the neighborhood and begin a new life without seeing
you to say good-by."

"Presumed?  Surely not.  I should have thought it unkind if you had not
wished to see me," said Dorothea, her habit of speaking with perfect
genuineness asserting itself through all her uncertainty and agitation.
"Are you going away immediately?"

"Very soon, I think.  I intend to go to town and eat my dinners as a
barrister, since, they say, that is the preparation for all public
business.  There will be a great deal of political work to be done
by-and-by, and I mean to try and do some of it.  Other men have managed
to win an honorable position for themselves without family or money."

"And that will make it all the more honorable," said Dorothea,
ardently.  "Besides, you have so many talents.  I have heard from my
uncle how well you speak in public, so that every one is sorry when you
leave off, and how clearly you can explain things.  And you care that
justice should be done to every one.  I am so glad.  When we were in
Rome, I thought you only cared for poetry and art, and the things that
adorn life for us who are well off.  But now I know you think about the
rest of the world."

While she was speaking Dorothea had lost her personal embarrassment,
and had become like her former self.  She looked at Will with a direct
glance, full of delighted confidence.

"You approve of my going away for years, then, and never coming here
again till I have made myself of some mark in the world?" said Will,
trying hard to reconcile the utmost pride with the utmost effort to get
an expression of strong feeling from Dorothea.

She was not aware how long it was before she answered.  She had turned
her head and was looking out of the window on the rose-bushes, which
seemed to have in them the summers of all the years when Will would be
away.  This was not judicious behavior.  But Dorothea never thought of
studying her manners: she thought only of bowing to a sad necessity
which divided her from Will.  Those first words of his about his
intentions had seemed to make everything clear to her: he knew, she
supposed, all about Mr. Casaubon's final conduct in relation to him,
and it had come to him with the same sort of shock as to herself.  He
had never felt more than friendship for her--had never had anything in
his mind to justify what she felt to be her husband's outrage on the
feelings of both: and that friendship he still felt.  Something which
may be called an inward silent sob had gone on in Dorothea before she
said with a pure voice, just trembling in the last words as if only
from its liquid flexibility--

"Yes, it must be right for you to do as you say.  I shall be very happy
when I hear that you have made your value felt.  But you must have
patience.  It will perhaps be a long while."

Will never quite knew how it was that he saved himself from falling
down at her feet, when the "long while" came forth with its gentle
tremor.  He used to say that the horrible hue and surface of her crape
dress was most likely the sufficient controlling force.  He sat still,
however, and only said--

"I shall never hear from you.  And you will forget all about me."

"No," said Dorothea, "I shall never forget you.  I have never forgotten
any one whom I once knew.  My life has never been crowded, and seems
not likely to be so.  And I have a great deal of space for memory at
Lowick, haven't I?"  She smiled.

"Good God!"  Will burst out passionately, rising, with his hat still in
his hand, and walking away to a marble table, where he suddenly turned
and leaned his back against it.  The blood had mounted to his face and
neck, and he looked almost angry.  It had seemed to him as if they were
like two creatures slowly turning to marble in each other's presence,
while their hearts were conscious and their eyes were yearning.  But
there was no help for it.  It should never be true of him that in this
meeting to which he had come with bitter resolution he had ended by a
confession which might be interpreted into asking for her fortune.
Moreover, it was actually true that he was fearful of the effect which
such confessions might have on Dorothea herself.

She looked at him from that distance in some trouble, imagining that
there might have been an offence in her words.  But all the while there
was a current of thought in her about his probable want of money, and
the impossibility of her helping him.  If her uncle had been at home,
something might have been done through him!  It was this preoccupation
with the hardship of Will's wanting money, while she had what ought to
have been his share, which led her to say, seeing that he remained
silent and looked away from her--

"I wonder whether you would like to have that miniature which hangs
up-stairs--I mean that beautiful miniature of your grandmother.  I
think it is not right for me to keep it, if you would wish to have it.
It is wonderfully like you."

"You are very good," said Will, irritably.  "No; I don't mind about it.
It is not very consoling to have one's own likeness.  It would be more
consoling if others wanted to have it."

"I thought you would like to cherish her memory--I thought--" Dorothea
broke off an instant, her imagination suddenly warning her away from
Aunt Julia's history--"you would surely like to have the miniature as a
family memorial."

"Why should I have that, when I have nothing else!  A man with only a
portmanteau for his stowage must keep his memorials in his head."

Will spoke at random: he was merely venting his petulance; it was a
little too exasperating to have his grandmother's portrait offered him
at that moment.  But to Dorothea's feeling his words had a peculiar
sting.  She rose and said with a touch of indignation as well as
hauteur--

"You are much the happier of us two, Mr. Ladislaw, to have nothing."

Will was startled.  Whatever the words might be, the tone seemed like a
dismissal; and quitting his leaning posture, he walked a little way
towards her.  Their eyes met, but with a strange questioning gravity.
Something was keeping their minds aloof, and each was left to
conjecture what was in the other.  Will had really never thought of
himself as having a claim of inheritance on the property which was held
by Dorothea, and would have required a narrative to make him understand
her present feeling.

"I never felt it a misfortune to have nothing till now," he said.  "But
poverty may be as bad as leprosy, if it divides us from what we most
care for."

The words cut Dorothea to the heart, and made her relent.  She answered
in a tone of sad fellowship.

"Sorrow comes in so many ways.  Two years ago I had no notion of
that--I mean of the unexpected way in which trouble comes, and ties our
hands, and makes us silent when we long to speak.  I used to despise
women a little for not shaping their lives more, and doing better
things.  I was very fond of doing as I liked, but I have almost given
it up," she ended, smiling playfully.

"I have not given up doing as I like, but I can very seldom do it,"
said Will.  He was standing two yards from her with his mind full of
contradictory desires and resolves--desiring some unmistakable proof
that she loved him, and yet dreading the position into which such a
proof might bring him.  "The thing one most longs for may be surrounded
with conditions that would be intolerable."

At this moment Pratt entered and said, "Sir James Chettam is in the
library, madam."

"Ask Sir James to come in here," said Dorothea, immediately.  It was as
if the same electric shock had passed through her and Will.  Each of
them felt proudly resistant, and neither looked at the other, while
they awaited Sir James's entrance.

After shaking hands with Dorothea, he bowed as slightly as possible to
Ladislaw, who repaid the slightness exactly, and then going towards
Dorothea, said--

"I must say good-by, Mrs. Casaubon; and probably for a long while."

Dorothea put out her hand and said her good-by cordially.  The sense
that Sir James was depreciating Will, and behaving rudely to him,
roused her resolution and dignity: there was no touch of confusion in
her manner.  And when Will had left the room, she looked with such calm
self-possession at Sir James, saying, "How is Celia?" that he was
obliged to behave as if nothing had annoyed him.  And what would be the
use of behaving otherwise?  Indeed, Sir James shrank with so much
dislike from the association even in thought of Dorothea with Ladislaw
as her possible lover, that he would himself have wished to avoid an
outward show of displeasure which would have recognized the
disagreeable possibility.  If any one had asked him why he shrank in
that way, I am not sure that he would at first have said anything
fuller or more precise than "_That_ Ladislaw!"--though on reflection
he might have urged that Mr. Casaubon's codicil, barring Dorothea's
marriage with Will, except under a penalty, was enough to cast
unfitness over any relation at all between them.  His aversion was all
the stronger because he felt himself unable to interfere.

But Sir James was a power in a way unguessed by himself.  Entering at
that moment, he was an incorporation of the strongest reasons through
which Will's pride became a repellent force, keeping him asunder from
Dorothea.

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

completion: Dorothea has decided to move back to Lowick, despite Celia's pleadings. Dorothea isn't interested in staring at Celia's baby all day. She'd be happy to help take care of it, but there's a nurse to do all the dirty work, and watching the every move of an infant isn't her idea of a good time. Mrs. Cadwallader thinks that Dorothea will go crazy in that big house all by herself, but Dorothea has made up her mind. She's twenty-one . Mrs. Cadwallader thinks Dorothea should get remarried, and tells her husband so, but he tells her to lay off the matchmaking. So Dorothea goes home to Lowick, resolved to do some good with her money if she can. She has also resolved not to do anything with Mr. Casaubon's research. Her biggest desire is to see Will Ladislaw, but she doesn't know how to arrange it. She wants to make up for her husband's injustice to him . But Will makes it easy - he comes to see her, but just to say goodbye. Their meeting is awkward. He knows about the will, and Mr. Casaubon's suspicions, and he's just plain embarrassed. He says that he's going away to London to work as a lawyer for all the political goings-on. Dorothea is happy that he's going to be working for the betterment of mankind and all that, but is sorry that he'll be gone for so long. Just then, Sir James Chettam comes in. Sir James still thinks of Dorothea as some kind of saint , and he doesn't like the idea of Will Ladislaw poking around her shrine. In fact, he suspects Will of trying to marry her because she's rich. So he's a little stiff and rude when he sees that Will is there. Will and Dorothea say goodbye, and Will leaves. Dorothea is annoyed with Sir James - she knows what he's thinking, because she knows about Casaubon's will. But she acts as though nothing is wrong so that Sir James won't say anything about Will.


prompt:
Chapter: Hath she her faults?  I would you had them too.
    They are the fruity must of soundest wine;
    Or say, they are regenerating fire
    Such as hath turned the dense black element
    Into a crystal pathway for the sun.

If youth is the season of hope, it is often so only in the sense that
our elders are hopeful about us; for no age is so apt as youth to think
its emotions, partings, and resolves are the last of their kind.  Each
crisis seems final, simply because it is new.  We are told that the
oldest inhabitants in Peru do not cease to be agitated by the
earthquakes, but they probably see beyond each shock, and reflect that
there are plenty more to come.

To Dorothea, still in that time of youth when the eyes with their long
full lashes look out after their rain of tears unsoiled and unwearied
as a freshly opened passion-flower, that morning's parting with Will
Ladislaw seemed to be the close of their personal relations.  He was
going away into the distance of unknown years, and if ever he came back
he would be another man.  The actual state of his mind--his proud
resolve to give the lie beforehand to any suspicion that he would play
the needy adventurer seeking a rich woman--lay quite out of her
imagination, and she had interpreted all his behavior easily enough by
her supposition that Mr. Casaubon's codicil seemed to him, as it did to
her, a gross and cruel interdict on any active friendship between them.
Their young delight in speaking to each other, and saying what no one
else would care to hear, was forever ended, and become a treasure of
the past.  For this very reason she dwelt on it without inward check.
That unique happiness too was dead, and in its shadowed silent chamber
she might vent the passionate grief which she herself wondered at.  For
the first time she took down the miniature from the wall and kept it
before her, liking to blend the woman who had been too hardly judged
with the grandson whom her own heart and judgment defended.  Can any
one who has rejoiced in woman's tenderness think it a reproach to her
that she took the little oval picture in her palm and made a bed for it
there, and leaned her cheek upon it, as if that would soothe the
creatures who had suffered unjust condemnation?  She did not know then
that it was Love who had come to her briefly, as in a dream before
awaking, with the hues of morning on his wings--that it was Love to
whom she was sobbing her farewell as his image was banished by the
blameless rigor of irresistible day.  She only felt that there was
something irrevocably amiss and lost in her lot, and her thoughts about
the future were the more readily shapen into resolve.  Ardent souls,
ready to construct their coming lives, are apt to commit themselves to
the fulfilment of their own visions.

One day that she went to Freshitt to fulfil her promise of staying all
night and seeing baby washed, Mrs. Cadwallader came to dine, the Rector
being gone on a fishing excursion.  It was a warm evening, and even in
the delightful drawing-room, where the fine old turf sloped from the
open window towards a lilied pool and well-planted mounds, the heat was
enough to make Celia in her white muslin and light curls reflect with
pity on what Dodo must feel in her black dress and close cap.  But this
was not until some episodes with baby were over, and had left her mind
at leisure.  She had seated herself and taken up a fan for some time
before she said, in her quiet guttural--

"Dear Dodo, do throw off that cap.  I am sure your dress must make you
feel ill."

"I am so used to the cap--it has become a sort of shell," said
Dorothea, smiling.  "I feel rather bare and exposed when it is off."

"I must see you without it; it makes us all warm," said Celia, throwing
down her fan, and going to Dorothea.  It was a pretty picture to see
this little lady in white muslin unfastening the widow's cap from her
more majestic sister, and tossing it on to a chair.  Just as the coils
and braids of dark-brown hair had been set free, Sir James entered the
room.  He looked at the released head, and said, "Ah!" in a tone of
satisfaction.

"It was I who did it, James," said Celia.  "Dodo need not make such a
slavery of her mourning; she need not wear that cap any more among her
friends."

"My dear Celia," said Lady Chettam, "a widow must wear her mourning at
least a year."

"Not if she marries again before the end of it," said Mrs. Cadwallader,
who had some pleasure in startling her good friend the Dowager.  Sir
James was annoyed, and leaned forward to play with Celia's Maltese dog.

"That is very rare, I hope," said Lady Chettam, in a tone intended to
guard against such events.  "No friend of ours ever committed herself
in that way except Mrs. Beevor, and it was very painful to Lord
Grinsell when she did so.  Her first husband was objectionable, which
made it the greater wonder.  And severely she was punished for it.
They said Captain Beevor dragged her about by the hair, and held up
loaded pistols at her."

"Oh, if she took the wrong man!" said Mrs. Cadwallader, who was in a
decidedly wicked mood.  "Marriage is always bad then, first or second.
Priority is a poor recommendation in a husband if he has got no other.
I would rather have a good second husband than an indifferent first."

"My dear, your clever tongue runs away with you," said Lady Chettam.
"I am sure you would be the last woman to marry again prematurely, if
our dear Rector were taken away."

"Oh, I make no vows; it might be a necessary economy.  It is lawful to
marry again, I suppose; else we might as well be Hindoos instead of
Christians.  Of course if a woman accepts the wrong man, she must take
the consequences, and one who does it twice over deserves her fate.
But if she can marry blood, beauty, and bravery--the sooner the
better."

"I think the subject of our conversation is very ill-chosen," said Sir
James, with a look of disgust.  "Suppose we change it."

"Not on my account, Sir James," said Dorothea, determined not to lose
the opportunity of freeing herself from certain oblique references to
excellent matches.  "If you are speaking on my behalf, I can assure you
that no question can be more indifferent and impersonal to me than
second marriage.  It is no more to me than if you talked of women going
fox-hunting: whether it is admirable in them or not, I shall not follow
them.  Pray let Mrs. Cadwallader amuse herself on that subject as much
as on any other."

"My dear Mrs. Casaubon," said Lady Chettam, in her stateliest way, "you
do not, I hope, think there was any allusion to you in my mentioning
Mrs. Beevor.  It was only an instance that occurred to me.  She was
step-daughter to Lord Grinsell: he married Mrs. Teveroy for his second
wife.  There could be no possible allusion to you."

"Oh no," said Celia.  "Nobody chose the subject; it all came out of
Dodo's cap.  Mrs. Cadwallader only said what was quite true.  A woman
could not be married in a widow's cap, James."

"Hush, my dear!" said Mrs. Cadwallader.  "I will not offend again.  I
will not even refer to Dido or Zenobia.  Only what are we to talk
about?  I, for my part, object to the discussion of Human Nature,
because that is the nature of rectors' wives."

Later in the evening, after Mrs. Cadwallader was gone, Celia said
privately to Dorothea, "Really, Dodo, taking your cap off made you like
yourself again in more ways than one.  You spoke up just as you used to
do, when anything was said to displease you.  But I could hardly make
out whether it was James that you thought wrong, or Mrs. Cadwallader."

"Neither," said Dorothea.  "James spoke out of delicacy to me, but he
was mistaken in supposing that I minded what Mrs. Cadwallader said.  I
should only mind if there were a law obliging me to take any piece of
blood and beauty that she or anybody else recommended."

"But you know, Dodo, if you ever did marry, it would be all the better
to have blood and beauty," said Celia, reflecting that Mr. Casaubon had
not been richly endowed with those gifts, and that it would be well to
caution Dorothea in time.

"Don't be anxious, Kitty; I have quite other thoughts about my life.  I
shall never marry again," said Dorothea, touching her sister's chin,
and looking at her with indulgent affection.  Celia was nursing her
baby, and Dorothea had come to say good-night to her.

"Really--quite?" said Celia.  "Not anybody at all--if he were very
wonderful indeed?"

Dorothea shook her head slowly.  "Not anybody at all.  I have
delightful plans.  I should like to take a great deal of land, and
drain it, and make a little colony, where everybody should work, and
all the work should be done well.  I should know every one of the
people and be their friend.  I am going to have great consultations
with Mr. Garth: he can tell me almost everything I want to know."

"Then you _will_ be happy, if you have a plan, Dodo?" said Celia.
"Perhaps little Arthur will like plans when he grows up, and then he
can help you."

Sir James was informed that same night that Dorothea was really quite
set against marrying anybody at all, and was going to take to "all
sorts of plans," just like what she used to have.  Sir James made no
remark.  To his secret feeling there was something repulsive in a
woman's second marriage, and no match would prevent him from feeling it
a sort of desecration for Dorothea.  He was aware that the world would
regard such a sentiment as preposterous, especially in relation to a
woman of one-and-twenty; the practice of "the world" being to treat of
a young widow's second marriage as certain and probably near, and to
smile with meaning if the widow acts accordingly.  But if Dorothea did
choose to espouse her solitude, he felt that the resolution would well
become her.

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

completion: Dorothea doesn't realize that she's falling in love with Will. She only considers that she's losing the only person she's ever really been able to talk to openly, and all because of Casaubon's unfair suspicions and jealousy. Dorothea's at dinner at Celia and Sir James' house, and Sir James' mother and Mrs. Cadwallader are there, too. The subject of second marriages comes up, and Dorothea assures them all that she has no intention of remarrying. She emphasizes it further to Celia, in private, and tells her sister that she plans on making a Utopian colony instead. Sir James hears of this from Celia and is happy.


prompt:
Chapter: "How happy is he born and taught
     That serveth not another's will;
     Whose armor is his honest thought,
     And simple truth his only skill!
        .   .   .   .   .   .   .
     This man is freed from servile bands
     Of hope to rise or fear to fall;
     Lord of himself though not of lands;
     And having nothing yet hath all."
                             --SIR HENRY WOTTON.

Dorothea's confidence in Caleb Garth's knowledge, which had begun on
her hearing that he approved of her cottages, had grown fast during her
stay at Freshitt, Sir James having induced her to take rides over the
two estates in company with himself and Caleb, who quite returned her
admiration, and told his wife that Mrs. Casaubon had a head for
business most uncommon in a woman.  It must be remembered that by
"business" Caleb never meant money transactions, but the skilful
application of labor.

"Most uncommon!" repeated Caleb.  "She said a thing I often used to
think myself when I was a lad:--'Mr. Garth, I should like to feel, if I
lived to be old, that I had improved a great piece of land and built a
great many good cottages, because the work is of a healthy kind while
it is being done, and after it is done, men are the better for it.'
Those were the very words: she sees into things in that way."

"But womanly, I hope," said Mrs. Garth, half suspecting that Mrs.
Casaubon might not hold the true principle of subordination.

"Oh, you can't think!" said Caleb, shaking his head.  "You would like
to hear her speak, Susan.  She speaks in such plain words, and a voice
like music.  Bless me! it reminds me of bits in the 'Messiah'--'and
straightway there appeared a multitude of the heavenly host, praising
God and saying;' it has a tone with it that satisfies your ear."

Caleb was very fond of music, and when he could afford it went to hear
an oratorio that came within his reach, returning from it with a
profound reverence for this mighty structure of tones, which made him
sit meditatively, looking on the floor and throwing much unutterable
language into his outstretched hands.

With this good understanding between them, it was natural that Dorothea
asked Mr. Garth to undertake any business connected with the three
farms and the numerous tenements attached to Lowick Manor; indeed, his
expectation of getting work for two was being fast fulfilled.  As he
said, "Business breeds."  And one form of business which was beginning
to breed just then was the construction of railways.  A projected line
was to run through Lowick parish where the cattle had hitherto grazed
in a peace unbroken by astonishment; and thus it happened that the
infant struggles of the railway system entered into the affairs of
Caleb Garth, and determined the course of this history with regard to
two persons who were dear to him.  The submarine railway may have its
difficulties; but the bed of the sea is not divided among various
landed proprietors with claims for damages not only measurable but
sentimental.  In the hundred to which Middlemarch belonged railways
were as exciting a topic as the Reform Bill or the imminent horrors of
Cholera, and those who held the most decided views on the subject were
women and landholders.  Women both old and young regarded travelling by
steam as presumptuous and dangerous, and argued against it by saying
that nothing should induce them to get into a railway carriage; while
proprietors, differing from each other in their arguments as much as
Mr. Solomon Featherstone differed from Lord Medlicote, were yet
unanimous in the opinion that in selling land, whether to the Enemy of
mankind or to a company obliged to purchase, these pernicious agencies
must be made to pay a very high price to landowners for permission to
injure mankind.

But the slower wits, such as Mr. Solomon and Mrs. Waule, who both
occupied land of their own, took a long time to arrive at this
conclusion, their minds halting at the vivid conception of what it
would be to cut the Big Pasture in two, and turn it into three-cornered
bits, which would be "nohow;" while accommodation-bridges and high
payments were remote and incredible.

"The cows will all cast their calves, brother," said Mrs. Waule, in a
tone of deep melancholy, "if the railway comes across the Near Close;
and I shouldn't wonder at the mare too, if she was in foal.  It's a
poor tale if a widow's property is to be spaded away, and the law say
nothing to it.  What's to hinder 'em from cutting right and left if
they begin?  It's well known, _I_ can't fight."

"The best way would be to say nothing, and set somebody on to send 'em
away with a flea in their ear, when they came spying and measuring,"
said Solomon.  "Folks did that about Brassing, by what I can
understand.  It's all a pretence, if the truth was known, about their
being forced to take one way.  Let 'em go cutting in another parish.
And I don't believe in any pay to make amends for bringing a lot of
ruffians to trample your crops.  Where's a company's pocket?"

"Brother Peter, God forgive him, got money out of a company," said Mrs.
Waule.  "But that was for the manganese.  That wasn't for railways to
blow you to pieces right and left."

"Well, there's this to be said, Jane," Mr. Solomon concluded, lowering
his voice in a cautious manner--"the more spokes we put in their wheel,
the more they'll pay us to let 'em go on, if they must come whether or
not."

This reasoning of Mr. Solomon's was perhaps less thorough than he
imagined, his cunning bearing about the same relation to the course of
railways as the cunning of a diplomatist bears to the general chill or
catarrh of the solar system.  But he set about acting on his views in a
thoroughly diplomatic manner, by stimulating suspicion.  His side of
Lowick was the most remote from the village, and the houses of the
laboring people were either lone cottages or were collected in a hamlet
called Frick, where a water-mill and some stone-pits made a little
centre of slow, heavy-shouldered industry.

In the absence of any precise idea as to what railways were, public
opinion in Frick was against them; for the human mind in that grassy
corner had not the proverbial tendency to admire the unknown, holding
rather that it was likely to be against the poor man, and that
suspicion was the only wise attitude with regard to it.  Even the rumor
of Reform had not yet excited any millennial expectations in Frick,
there being no definite promise in it, as of gratuitous grains to
fatten Hiram Ford's pig, or of a publican at the "Weights and Scales"
who would brew beer for nothing, or of an offer on the part of the
three neighboring farmers to raise wages during winter.  And without
distinct good of this kind in its promises, Reform seemed on a footing
with the bragging of pedlers, which was a hint for distrust to every
knowing person.  The men of Frick were not ill-fed, and were less given
to fanaticism than to a strong muscular suspicion; less inclined to
believe that they were peculiarly cared for by heaven, than to regard
heaven itself as rather disposed to take them in--a disposition
observable in the weather.

Thus the mind of Frick was exactly of the sort for Mr. Solomon
Featherstone to work upon, he having more plenteous ideas of the same
order, with a suspicion of heaven and earth which was better fed and
more entirely at leisure.  Solomon was overseer of the roads at that
time, and on his slow-paced cob often took his rounds by Frick to look
at the workmen getting the stones there, pausing with a mysterious
deliberation, which might have misled you into supposing that he had
some other reason for staying than the mere want of impulse to move.
After looking for a long while at any work that was going on, he would
raise his eyes a little and look at the horizon; finally he would shake
his bridle, touch his horse with the whip, and get it to move slowly
onward.  The hour-hand of a clock was quick by comparison with Mr.
Solomon, who had an agreeable sense that he could afford to be slow.
He was in the habit of pausing for a cautious, vaguely designing chat
with every hedger or ditcher on his way, and was especially willing to
listen even to news which he had heard before, feeling himself at an
advantage over all narrators in partially disbelieving them.  One day,
however, he got into a dialogue with Hiram Ford, a wagoner, in which he
himself contributed information.  He wished to know whether Hiram had
seen fellows with staves and instruments spying about: they called
themselves railroad people, but there was no telling what they were or
what they meant to do.  The least they pretended was that they were
going to cut Lowick Parish into sixes and sevens.

"Why, there'll be no stirrin' from one pla-ace to another," said Hiram,
thinking of his wagon and horses.

"Not a bit," said Mr. Solomon.  "And cutting up fine land such as this
parish!  Let 'em go into Tipton, say I. But there's no knowing what
there is at the bottom of it.  Traffic is what they put for'ard; but
it's to do harm to the land and the poor man in the long-run."

"Why, they're Lunnon chaps, I reckon," said Hiram, who had a dim notion
of London as a centre of hostility to the country.

"Ay, to be sure.  And in some parts against Brassing, by what I've
heard say, the folks fell on 'em when they were spying, and broke their
peep-holes as they carry, and drove 'em away, so as they knew better
than come again."

"It war good foon, I'd be bound," said Hiram, whose fun was much
restricted by circumstances.

"Well, I wouldn't meddle with 'em myself," said Solomon.  "But some say
this country's seen its best days, and the sign is, as it's being
overrun with these fellows trampling right and left, and wanting to cut
it up into railways; and all for the big traffic to swallow up the
little, so as there shan't be a team left on the land, nor a whip to
crack."

"I'll crack _my_ whip about their ear'n, afore they bring it to that,
though," said Hiram, while Mr. Solomon, shaking his bridle, moved
onward.

Nettle-seed needs no digging.  The ruin of this countryside by
railroads was discussed, not only at the "Weights and Scales," but in
the hay-field, where the muster of working hands gave opportunities for
talk such as were rarely had through the rural year.

One morning, not long after that interview between Mr. Farebrother and
Mary Garth, in which she confessed to him her feeling for Fred Vincy,
it happened that her father had some business which took him to
Yoddrell's farm in the direction of Frick: it was to measure and value
an outlying piece of land belonging to Lowick Manor, which Caleb
expected to dispose of advantageously for Dorothea (it must be
confessed that his bias was towards getting the best possible terms
from railroad companies). He put up his gig at Yoddrell's, and in
walking with his assistant and measuring-chain to the scene of his
work, he encountered the party of the company's agents, who were
adjusting their spirit-level. After a little chat he left them,
observing that by-and-by they would reach him again where he was going
to measure.  It was one of those gray mornings after light rains, which
become delicious about twelve o'clock, when the clouds part a little,
and the scent of the earth is sweet along the lanes and by the
hedgerows.

The scent would have been sweeter to Fred Vincy, who was coming along
the lanes on horseback, if his mind had not been worried by
unsuccessful efforts to imagine what he was to do, with his father on
one side expecting him straightway to enter the Church, with Mary on
the other threatening to forsake him if he did enter it, and with the
working-day world showing no eager need whatever of a young gentleman
without capital and generally unskilled.  It was the harder to Fred's
disposition because his father, satisfied that he was no longer
rebellious, was in good humor with him, and had sent him on this
pleasant ride to see after some greyhounds.  Even when he had fixed on
what he should do, there would be the task of telling his father.  But
it must be admitted that the fixing, which had to come first, was the
more difficult task:--what secular avocation on earth was there for a
young man (whose friends could not get him an "appointment") which was
at once gentlemanly, lucrative, and to be followed without special
knowledge?  Riding along the lanes by Frick in this mood, and
slackening his pace while he reflected whether he should venture to go
round by Lowick Parsonage to call on Mary, he could see over the hedges
from one field to another.  Suddenly a noise roused his attention, and
on the far side of a field on his left hand he could see six or seven
men in smock-frocks with hay-forks in their hands making an offensive
approach towards the four railway agents who were facing them, while
Caleb Garth and his assistant were hastening across the field to join
the threatened group.  Fred, delayed a few moments by having to find
the gate, could not gallop up to the spot before the party in
smock-frocks, whose work of turning the hay had not been too pressing
after swallowing their mid-day beer, were driving the men in coats
before them with their hay-forks; while Caleb Garth's assistant, a lad
of seventeen, who had snatched up the spirit-level at Caleb's order,
had been knocked down and seemed to be lying helpless.  The coated men
had the advantage as runners, and Fred covered their retreat by getting
in front of the smock-frocks and charging them suddenly enough to throw
their chase into confusion.  "What do you confounded fools mean?"
shouted Fred, pursuing the divided group in a zigzag, and cutting right
and left with his whip.  "I'll swear to every one of you before the
magistrate.  You've knocked the lad down and killed him, for what I
know.  You'll every one of you be hanged at the next assizes, if you
don't mind," said Fred, who afterwards laughed heartily as he
remembered his own phrases.

The laborers had been driven through the gate-way into their hay-field,
and Fred had checked his horse, when Hiram Ford, observing himself at a
safe challenging distance, turned back and shouted a defiance which he
did not know to be Homeric.

"Yo're a coward, yo are.  Yo git off your horse, young measter, and
I'll have a round wi' ye, I wull.  Yo daredn't come on wi'out your hoss
an' whip.  I'd soon knock the breath out on ye, I would."

"Wait a minute, and I'll come back presently, and have a round with you
all in turn, if you like," said Fred, who felt confidence in his power
of boxing with his dearly beloved brethren.  But just now he wanted to
hasten back to Caleb and the prostrate youth.

The lad's ankle was strained, and he was in much pain from it, but he
was no further hurt, and Fred placed him on the horse that he might
ride to Yoddrell's and be taken care of there.

"Let them put the horse in the stable, and tell the surveyors they can
come back for their traps," said Fred.  "The ground is clear now."

"No, no," said Caleb, "here's a breakage.  They'll have to give up for
to-day, and it will be as well.  Here, take the things before you on
the horse, Tom.  They'll see you coming, and they'll turn back."

"I'm glad I happened to be here at the right moment, Mr. Garth," said
Fred, as Tom rode away.  "No knowing what might have happened if the
cavalry had not come up in time."

"Ay, ay, it was lucky," said Caleb, speaking rather absently, and
looking towards the spot where he had been at work at the moment of
interruption.  "But--deuce take it--this is what comes of men being
fools--I'm hindered of my day's work.  I can't get along without
somebody to help me with the measuring-chain. However!" He was
beginning to move towards the spot with a look of vexation, as if he
had forgotten Fred's presence, but suddenly he turned round and said
quickly, "What have you got to do to-day, young fellow?"

"Nothing, Mr. Garth.  I'll help you with pleasure--can I?" said Fred,
with a sense that he should be courting Mary when he was helping her
father.

"Well, you mustn't mind stooping and getting hot."

"I don't mind anything.  Only I want to go first and have a round with
that hulky fellow who turned to challenge me.  It would be a good
lesson for him.  I shall not be five minutes."

"Nonsense!" said Caleb, with his most peremptory intonation.  "I shall
go and speak to the men myself.  It's all ignorance.  Somebody has been
telling them lies.  The poor fools don't know any better."

"I shall go with you, then," said Fred.

"No, no; stay where you are.  I don't want your young blood.  I can
take care of myself."

Caleb was a powerful man and knew little of any fear except the fear of
hurting others and the fear of having to speechify.  But he felt it his
duty at this moment to try and give a little harangue.  There was a
striking mixture in him--which came from his having always been a
hard-working man himself--of rigorous notions about workmen and
practical indulgence towards them.  To do a good day's work and to do
it well, he held to be part of their welfare, as it was the chief part
of his own happiness; but he had a strong sense of fellowship with
them.  When he advanced towards the laborers they had not gone to work
again, but were standing in that form of rural grouping which consists
in each turning a shoulder towards the other, at a distance of two or
three yards.  They looked rather sulkily at Caleb, who walked quickly
with one hand in his pocket and the other thrust between the buttons of
his waistcoat, and had his every-day mild air when he paused among them.

"Why, my lads, how's this?" he began, taking as usual to brief phrases,
which seemed pregnant to himself, because he had many thoughts lying
under them, like the abundant roots of a plant that just manages to
peep above the water.  "How came you to make such a mistake as this?
Somebody has been telling you lies.  You thought those men up there
wanted to do mischief."

"Aw!" was the answer, dropped at intervals by each according to his
degree of unreadiness.

"Nonsense!  No such thing!  They're looking out to see which way the
railroad is to take.  Now, my lads, you can't hinder the railroad: it
will be made whether you like it or not.  And if you go fighting
against it, you'll get yourselves into trouble.  The law gives those
men leave to come here on the land.  The owner has nothing to say
against it, and if you meddle with them you'll have to do with the
constable and Justice Blakesley, and with the handcuffs and Middlemarch
jail.  And you might be in for it now, if anybody informed against you."

Caleb paused here, and perhaps the greatest orator could not have
chosen either his pause or his images better for the occasion.

"But come, you didn't mean any harm.  Somebody told you the railroad
was a bad thing.  That was a lie.  It may do a bit of harm here and
there, to this and to that; and so does the sun in heaven.  But the
railway's a good thing."

"Aw! good for the big folks to make money out on," said old Timothy
Cooper, who had stayed behind turning his hay while the others had been
gone on their spree;--"I'n seen lots o' things turn up sin' I war a
young un--the war an' the peace, and the canells, an' the oald King
George, an' the Regen', an' the new King George, an' the new un as has
got a new ne-ame--an' it's been all aloike to the poor mon.  What's the
canells been t' him?  They'n brought him neyther me-at nor be-acon, nor
wage to lay by, if he didn't save it wi' clemmin' his own inside.
Times ha' got wusser for him sin' I war a young un.  An' so it'll be
wi' the railroads.  They'll on'y leave the poor mon furder behind.  But
them are fools as meddle, and so I told the chaps here.  This is the
big folks's world, this is.  But yo're for the big folks, Muster Garth,
yo are."

Timothy was a wiry old laborer, of a type lingering in those times--who
had his savings in a stocking-foot, lived in a lone cottage, and was
not to be wrought on by any oratory, having as little of the feudal
spirit, and believing as little, as if he had not been totally
unacquainted with the Age of Reason and the Rights of Man.  Caleb was
in a difficulty known to any person attempting in dark times and
unassisted by miracle to reason with rustics who are in possession of
an undeniable truth which they know through a hard process of feeling,
and can let it fall like a giant's club on your neatly carved argument
for a social benefit which they do not feel.  Caleb had no cant at
command, even if he could have chosen to use it; and he had been
accustomed to meet all such difficulties in no other way than by doing
his "business" faithfully.  He answered--

"If you don't think well of me, Tim, never mind; that's neither here
nor there now.  Things may be bad for the poor man--bad they are; but I
want the lads here not to do what will make things worse for
themselves.  The cattle may have a heavy load, but it won't help 'em to
throw it over into the roadside pit, when it's partly their own fodder."

"We war on'y for a bit o' foon," said Hiram, who was beginning to see
consequences.  "That war all we war arter."

"Well, promise me not to meddle again, and I'll see that nobody informs
against you."

"I'n ne'er meddled, an' I'n no call to promise," said Timothy.

"No, but the rest.  Come, I'm as hard at work as any of you to-day, and
I can't spare much time.  Say you'll be quiet without the constable."

"Aw, we wooant meddle--they may do as they loike for oos"--were the
forms in which Caleb got his pledges; and then he hastened back to
Fred, who had followed him, and watched him in the gateway.

They went to work, and Fred helped vigorously.  His spirits had risen,
and he heartily enjoyed a good slip in the moist earth under the
hedgerow, which soiled his perfect summer trousers.  Was it his
successful onset which had elated him, or the satisfaction of helping
Mary's father?  Something more.  The accidents of the morning had
helped his frustrated imagination to shape an employment for himself
which had several attractions.  I am not sure that certain fibres in
Mr. Garth's mind had not resumed their old vibration towards the very
end which now revealed itself to Fred.  For the effective accident is
but the touch of fire where there is oil and tow; and it always
appeared to Fred that the railway brought the needed touch.  But they
went on in silence except when their business demanded speech.  At
last, when they had finished and were walking away, Mr. Garth said--

"A young fellow needn't be a B. A. to do this sort of work, eh, Fred?"

"I wish I had taken to it before I had thought of being a B. A.," said
Fred.  He paused a moment, and then added, more hesitatingly, "Do you
think I am too old to learn your business, Mr. Garth?"

"My business is of many sorts, my boy," said Mr. Garth, smiling.  "A
good deal of what I know can only come from experience: you can't learn
it off as you learn things out of a book.  But you are young enough to
lay a foundation yet."  Caleb pronounced the last sentence
emphatically, but paused in some uncertainty.  He had been under the
impression lately that Fred had made up his mind to enter the Church.

"You do think I could do some good at it, if I were to try?" said Fred,
more eagerly.

"That depends," said Caleb, turning his head on one side and lowering
his voice, with the air of a man who felt himself to be saying
something deeply religious.  "You must be sure of two things: you must
love your work, and not be always looking over the edge of it, wanting
your play to begin.  And the other is, you must not be ashamed of your
work, and think it would be more honorable to you to be doing something
else.  You must have a pride in your own work and in learning to do it
well, and not be always saying, There's this and there's that--if I had
this or that to do, I might make something of it.  No matter what a man
is--I wouldn't give twopence for him"--here Caleb's mouth looked
bitter, and he snapped his fingers--"whether he was the prime minister
or the rick-thatcher, if he didn't do well what he undertook to do."

"I can never feel that I should do that in being a clergyman," said
Fred, meaning to take a step in argument.

"Then let it alone, my boy," said Caleb, abruptly, "else you'll never
be easy.  Or, if you _are_ easy, you'll be a poor stick."

"That is very nearly what Mary thinks about it," said Fred, coloring.
"I think you must know what I feel for Mary, Mr. Garth: I hope it does
not displease you that I have always loved her better than any one
else, and that I shall never love any one as I love her."

The expression of Caleb's face was visibly softening while Fred spoke.
But he swung his head with a solemn slowness, and said--

"That makes things more serious, Fred, if you want to take Mary's
happiness into your keeping."

"I know that, Mr. Garth," said Fred, eagerly, "and I would do anything
for _her_.  She says she will never have me if I go into the Church;
and I shall be the most miserable devil in the world if I lose all hope
of Mary.  Really, if I could get some other profession,
business--anything that I am at all fit for, I would work hard, I would
deserve your good opinion.  I should like to have to do with outdoor
things.  I know a good deal about land and cattle already.  I used to
believe, you know--though you will think me rather foolish for it--that
I should have land of my own.  I am sure knowledge of that sort would
come easily to me, especially if I could be under you in any way."

"Softly, my boy," said Caleb, having the image of "Susan" before his
eyes.  "What have you said to your father about all this?"

"Nothing, yet; but I must tell him.  I am only waiting to know what I
can do instead of entering the Church.  I am very sorry to disappoint
him, but a man ought to be allowed to judge for himself when he is
four-and-twenty. How could I know when I was fifteen, what it would be
right for me to do now?  My education was a mistake."

"But hearken to this, Fred," said Caleb.  "Are you sure Mary is fond of
you, or would ever have you?"

"I asked Mr. Farebrother to talk to her, because she had forbidden
me--I didn't know what else to do," said Fred, apologetically.  "And he
says that I have every reason to hope, if I can put myself in an
honorable position--I mean, out of the Church. I dare say you think it
unwarrantable in me, Mr. Garth, to be troubling you and obtruding my
own wishes about Mary, before I have done anything at all for myself.
Of course I have not the least claim--indeed, I have already a debt to
you which will never be discharged, even when I have been, able to pay
it in the shape of money."

"Yes, my boy, you have a claim," said Caleb, with much feeling in his
voice.  "The young ones have always a claim on the old to help them
forward.  I was young myself once and had to do without much help; but
help would have been welcome to me, if it had been only for the
fellow-feeling's sake.  But I must consider.  Come to me to-morrow at
the office, at nine o'clock. At the office, mind."

Mr. Garth would take no important step without consulting Susan, but it
must be confessed that before he reached home he had taken his
resolution.  With regard to a large number of matters about which other
men are decided or obstinate, he was the most easily manageable man in
the world.  He never knew what meat he would choose, and if Susan had
said that they ought to live in a four-roomed cottage, in order to
save, he would have said, "Let us go," without inquiring into details.
But where Caleb's feeling and judgment strongly pronounced, he was a
ruler; and in spite of his mildness and timidity in reproving, every
one about him knew that on the exceptional occasions when he chose, he
was absolute.  He never, indeed, chose to be absolute except on some
one else's behalf.  On ninety-nine points Mrs. Garth decided, but on
the hundredth she was often aware that she would have to perform the
singularly difficult task of carrying out her own principle, and to
make herself subordinate.

"It is come round as I thought, Susan," said Caleb, when they were
seated alone in the evening.  He had already narrated the adventure
which had brought about Fred's sharing in his work, but had kept back
the further result.  "The children _are_ fond of each other--I mean,
Fred and Mary."

Mrs. Garth laid her work on her knee, and fixed her penetrating eyes
anxiously on her husband.

"After we'd done our work, Fred poured it all out to me.  He can't bear
to be a clergyman, and Mary says she won't have him if he is one; and
the lad would like to be under me and give his mind to business.  And
I've determined to take him and make a man of him."

"Caleb!" said Mrs. Garth, in a deep contralto, expressive of resigned
astonishment.

"It's a fine thing to do," said Mr. Garth, settling himself firmly
against the back of his chair, and grasping the elbows.  "I shall have
trouble with him, but I think I shall carry it through.  The lad loves
Mary, and a true love for a good woman is a great thing, Susan.  It
shapes many a rough fellow."

"Has Mary spoken to you on the subject?" said Mrs Garth, secretly a
little hurt that she had to be informed on it herself.

"Not a word.  I asked her about Fred once; I gave her a bit of a
warning.  But she assured me she would never marry an idle
self-indulgent man--nothing since.  But it seems Fred set on Mr.
Farebrother to talk to her, because she had forbidden him to speak
himself, and Mr. Farebrother has found out that she is fond of Fred,
but says he must not be a clergyman.  Fred's heart is fixed on Mary,
that I can see: it gives me a good opinion of the lad--and we always
liked him, Susan."

"It is a pity for Mary, I think," said Mrs. Garth.

"Why--a pity?"

"Because, Caleb, she might have had a man who is worth twenty Fred
Vincy's."

"Ah?" said Caleb, with surprise.

"I firmly believe that Mr. Farebrother is attached to her, and meant to
make her an offer; but of course, now that Fred has used him as an
envoy, there is an end to that better prospect." There was a severe
precision in Mrs. Garth's utterance.  She was vexed and disappointed,
but she was bent on abstaining from useless words.

Caleb was silent a few moments under a conflict of feelings.  He looked
at the floor and moved his head and hands in accompaniment to some
inward argumentation.  At last he said--

"That would have made me very proud and happy, Susan, and I should have
been glad for your sake.  I've always felt that your belongings have
never been on a level with you.  But you took me, though I was a plain
man."

"I took the best and cleverest man I had ever known," said Mrs. Garth,
convinced that _she_ would never have loved any one who came short of
that mark.

"Well, perhaps others thought you might have done better.  But it would
have been worse for me.  And that is what touches me close about Fred.
The lad is good at bottom, and clever enough to do, if he's put in the
right way; and he loves and honors my daughter beyond anything, and she
has given him a sort of promise according to what he turns out.  I say,
that young man's soul is in my hand; and I'll do the best I can for
him, so help me God!  It's my duty, Susan."

Mrs. Garth was not given to tears, but there was a large one rolling
down her face before her husband had finished.  It came from the
pressure of various feelings, in which there was much affection and
some vexation.  She wiped it away quickly, saying--

"Few men besides you would think it a duty to add to their anxieties in
that way, Caleb."

"That signifies nothing--what other men would think.  I've got a clear
feeling inside me, and that I shall follow; and I hope your heart will
go with me, Susan, in making everything as light as can be to Mary,
poor child."

Caleb, leaning back in his chair, looked with anxious appeal towards
his wife.  She rose and kissed him, saying, "God bless you, Caleb!  Our
children have a good father."

But she went out and had a hearty cry to make up for the suppression of
her words.  She felt sure that her husband's conduct would be
misunderstood, and about Fred she was rational and unhopeful.  Which
would turn out to have the more foresight in it--her rationality or
Caleb's ardent generosity?

When Fred went to the office the next morning, there was a test to be
gone through which he was not prepared for.

"Now Fred," said Caleb, "you will have some desk-work. I have always
done a good deal of writing myself, but I can't do without help, and as
I want you to understand the accounts and get the values into your
head, I mean to do without another clerk.  So you must buckle to.  How
are you at writing and arithmetic?"

Fred felt an awkward movement of the heart; he had not thought of
desk-work; but he was in a resolute mood, and not going to shrink.
"I'm not afraid of arithmetic, Mr. Garth: it always came easily to me.
I think you know my writing."

"Let us see," said Caleb, taking up a pen, examining it carefully and
handing it, well dipped, to Fred with a sheet of ruled paper.  "Copy me
a line or two of that valuation, with the figures at the end."

At that time the opinion existed that it was beneath a gentleman to
write legibly, or with a hand in the least suitable to a clerk.  Fred
wrote the lines demanded in a hand as gentlemanly as that of any
viscount or bishop of the day: the vowels were all alike and the
consonants only distinguishable as turning up or down, the strokes had
a blotted solidity and the letters disdained to keep the line--in
short, it was a manuscript of that venerable kind easy to interpret
when you know beforehand what the writer means.

As Caleb looked on, his visage showed a growing depression, but when
Fred handed him the paper he gave something like a snarl, and rapped
the paper passionately with the back of his hand.  Bad work like this
dispelled all Caleb's mildness.

"The deuce!" he exclaimed, snarlingly.  "To think that this is a
country where a man's education may cost hundreds and hundreds, and it
turns you out this!"  Then in a more pathetic tone, pushing up his
spectacles and looking at the unfortunate scribe, "The Lord have mercy
on us, Fred, I can't put up with this!"

"What can I do, Mr. Garth?" said Fred, whose spirits had sunk very low,
not only at the estimate of his handwriting, but at the vision of
himself as liable to be ranked with office clerks.

"Do?  Why, you must learn to form your letters and keep the line.
What's the use of writing at all if nobody can understand it?" asked
Caleb, energetically, quite preoccupied with the bad quality of the
work.  "Is there so little business in the world that you must be
sending puzzles over the country?  But that's the way people are
brought up.  I should lose no end of time with the letters some people
send me, if Susan did not make them out for me.  It's disgusting." Here
Caleb tossed the paper from him.

Any stranger peeping into the office at that moment might have wondered
what was the drama between the indignant man of business, and the
fine-looking young fellow whose blond complexion was getting rather
patchy as he bit his lip with mortification.  Fred was struggling with
many thoughts.  Mr. Garth had been so kind and encouraging at the
beginning of their interview, that gratitude and hopefulness had been
at a high pitch, and the downfall was proportionate.  He had not
thought of desk-work--in fact, like the majority of young gentlemen, he
wanted an occupation which should be free from disagreeables.  I cannot
tell what might have been the consequences if he had not distinctly
promised himself that he would go to Lowick to see Mary and tell her
that he was engaged to work under her father.  He did not like to
disappoint himself there.

"I am very sorry," were all the words that he could muster.  But Mr.
Garth was already relenting.

"We must make the best of it, Fred," he began, with a return to his
usual quiet tone.  "Every man can learn to write.  I taught myself.  Go
at it with a will, and sit up at night if the day-time isn't enough.
We'll be patient, my boy.  Callum shall go on with the books for a bit,
while you are learning.  But now I must be off," said Caleb, rising.
"You must let your father know our agreement.  You'll save me Callum's
salary, you know, when you can write; and I can afford to give you
eighty pounds for the first year, and more after."

When Fred made the necessary disclosure to his parents, the relative
effect on the two was a surprise which entered very deeply into his
memory.  He went straight from Mr. Garth's office to the warehouse,
rightly feeling that the most respectful way in which he could behave
to his father was to make the painful communication as gravely and
formally as possible.  Moreover, the decision would be more certainly
understood to be final, if the interview took place in his father's
gravest hours, which were always those spent in his private room at the
warehouse.

Fred entered on the subject directly, and declared briefly what he had
done and was resolved to do, expressing at the end his regret that he
should be the cause of disappointment to his father, and taking the
blame on his own deficiencies.  The regret was genuine, and inspired
Fred with strong, simple words.

Mr. Vincy listened in profound surprise without uttering even an
exclamation, a silence which in his impatient temperament was a sign of
unusual emotion.  He had not been in good spirits about trade that
morning, and the slight bitterness in his lips grew intense as he
listened.  When Fred had ended, there was a pause of nearly a minute,
during which Mr. Vincy replaced a book in his desk and turned the key
emphatically.  Then he looked at his son steadily, and said--

"So you've made up your mind at last, sir?"

"Yes, father."

"Very well; stick to it.  I've no more to say.  You've thrown away your
education, and gone down a step in life, when I had given you the means
of rising, that's all."

"I am very sorry that we differ, father.  I think I can be quite as
much of a gentleman at the work I have undertaken, as if I had been a
curate.  But I am grateful to you for wishing to do the best for me."

"Very well; I have no more to say.  I wash my hands of you.  I only
hope, when you have a son of your own he will make a better return for
the pains you spend on him."

This was very cutting to Fred.  His father was using that unfair
advantage possessed by us all when we are in a pathetic situation and
see our own past as if it were simply part of the pathos.  In reality,
Mr. Vincy's wishes about his son had had a great deal of pride,
inconsiderateness, and egoistic folly in them.  But still the
disappointed father held a strong lever; and Fred felt as if he were
being banished with a malediction.

"I hope you will not object to my remaining at home, sir?" he said,
after rising to go; "I shall have a sufficient salary to pay for my
board, as of course I should wish to do."

"Board be hanged!" said Mr. Vincy, recovering himself in his disgust at
the notion that Fred's keep would be missed at his table.  "Of course
your mother will want you to stay.  But I shall keep no horse for you,
you understand; and you will pay your own tailor.  You will do with a
suit or two less, I fancy, when you have to pay for 'em."

Fred lingered; there was still something to be said.  At last it came.

"I hope you will shake hands with me, father, and forgive me the
vexation I have caused you."

Mr. Vincy from his chair threw a quick glance upward at his son, who
had advanced near to him, and then gave his hand, saying hurriedly,
"Yes, yes, let us say no more."

Fred went through much more narrative and explanation with his mother,
but she was inconsolable, having before her eyes what perhaps her
husband had never thought of, the certainty that Fred would marry Mary
Garth, that her life would henceforth be spoiled by a perpetual
infusion of Garths and their ways, and that her darling boy, with his
beautiful face and stylish air "beyond anybody else's son in
Middlemarch," would be sure to get like that family in plainness of
appearance and carelessness about his clothes.  To her it seemed that
there was a Garth conspiracy to get possession of the desirable Fred,
but she dared not enlarge on this opinion, because a slight hint of it
had made him "fly out" at her as he had never done before.  Her temper
was too sweet for her to show any anger, but she felt that her
happiness had received a bruise, and for several days merely to look at
Fred made her cry a little as if he were the subject of some baleful
prophecy.  Perhaps she was the slower to recover her usual cheerfulness
because Fred had warned her that she must not reopen the sore question
with his father, who had accepted his decision and forgiven him.  If
her husband had been vehement against Fred, she would have been urged
into defence of her darling.  It was the end of the fourth day when Mr.
Vincy said to her--

"Come, Lucy, my dear, don't be so down-hearted. You always have spoiled
the boy, and you must go on spoiling him."

"Nothing ever did cut me so before, Vincy," said the wife, her fair
throat and chin beginning to tremble again, "only his illness."

"Pooh, pooh, never mind!  We must expect to have trouble with our
children.  Don't make it worse by letting me see you out of spirits."

"Well, I won't," said Mrs. Vincy, roused by this appeal and adjusting
herself with a little shake as of a bird which lays down its ruffled
plumage.

"It won't do to begin making a fuss about one," said Mr. Vincy, wishing
to combine a little grumbling with domestic cheerfulness.  "There's
Rosamond as well as Fred."

"Yes, poor thing.  I'm sure I felt for her being disappointed of her
baby; but she got over it nicely."

"Baby, pooh!  I can see Lydgate is making a mess of his practice, and
getting into debt too, by what I hear.  I shall have Rosamond coming to
me with a pretty tale one of these days.  But they'll get no money from
me, I know.  Let _his_ family help him.  I never did like that
marriage.  But it's no use talking.  Ring the bell for lemons, and
don't look dull any more, Lucy.  I'll drive you and Louisa to Riverston
to-morrow."

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

completion: Caleb tells his wife that Mrs. Casaubon is sensible, and understands how farms should operate. Dorothea has hired him as manager for all the farms on the Lowick estate. Caleb Garth is rapidly getting more work than he can do by himself. Eliot steps back to give us some broader historical context: the steam engine has been invented, and railroads are spreading all over England. Some farmers are anxious about it. They're afraid that the noise of the trains will be bad for their livestock if the railroad goes through their property. Many people in the Lowick area don't trust the railroad, partly because they don't really understand what it is. Mr. Solomon Featherstone lives in the area, and he contributes to the mistrust and misunderstanding of the rest of the farmers about the railroad. One day, Caleb Garth is out measuring a piece of land for Dorothea that she was planning on selling to a railroad company. A group of railroad agents is there, too, to discuss the matter with Mr. Garth. But then a group of angry farm workers show up and start to threaten the railroad agents. Caleb and his assistant, a seventeen-year-old boy, hurry to get between the two groups, and Caleb's assistant gets knocked down. Just then, Fred Vincy shows up on horseback . He has the advantage of being on horseback, and intimidates the group of farm workers. The young assistant has a broken arm, so Caleb sends him away on Fred's horse. Caleb is annoyed that he won't be able to finish his day's work on his own, but Fred volunteers to help him. Caleb then leaves Fred for a few minutes to go and scold the farm laborers for attacking the railroad people. He figures someone has been spreading false rumors about the railroad, and he's right. The farm workers sulk a bit, but promise not to get in the way again. Caleb and Fred finish the day's work of measuring in the field, and Fred has a grand time working outdoors and using his head at the same time. He asks Caleb if he thinks that he could learn his business, and admits that he's in love with Mary Garth. Caleb considers it for a while, and decides that he'd be doing a favor to Mary and to Fred if he agreed to hire Fred and teach him the business. He tells Fred to meet him at his office the next morning, and goes home to tell his wife, Susan Garth, about his decision. Mrs. Garth is disappointed, in a way. She was hoping that Mary would marry Mr. Farebrother, but she's proud of her husband for being so generous to Fred. The next morning, Fred sets to work - at a desk. He's good at arithmetic, but his handwriting is terrible. Caleb Garth can't stand bad handwriting, or bad handiwork of any kind. He says Fred will have to work hard at improving it. Mr. Garth promises a decent starting salary to Fred, and Fred goes home to break the news to his family. His father's disappointed, but not all that angry, and Mrs. Vincy cries a bit. Mr. Vincy cheers her up by reminding her that Rosamond wanted pity as much as Fred - after all, Mr. Lydgate is going into debt! What a cheering thought.