prompt:
Chapter: "Nous causames longtemps; elle etait simple et bonne.
     Ne sachant pas le mal, elle faisait le bien;
     Des richesses du coeur elle me fit l'aumone,
     Et tout en ecoutant comme le coeur se donne,
     Sans oser y penser je lui donnai le mien;
     Elle emporta ma vie, et n'en sut jamais rien."
                                         --ALFRED DE MUSSET.

Will Ladislaw was delightfully agreeable at dinner the next day, and
gave no opportunity for Mr. Casaubon to show disapprobation.  On the
contrary it seemed to Dorothea that Will had a happier way of drawing
her husband into conversation and of deferentially listening to him
than she had ever observed in any one before.  To be sure, the
listeners about Tipton were not highly gifted!  Will talked a good deal
himself, but what he said was thrown in with such rapidity, and with
such an unimportant air of saying something by the way, that it seemed
a gay little chime after the great bell.  If Will was not always
perfect, this was certainly one of his good days.  He described touches
of incident among the poor people in Rome, only to be seen by one who
could move about freely; he found himself in agreement with Mr.
Casaubon as to the unsound opinions of Middleton concerning the
relations of Judaism and Catholicism; and passed easily to a
half-enthusiastic half-playful picture of the enjoyment he got out of
the very miscellaneousness of Rome, which made the mind flexible with
constant comparison, and saved you from seeing the world's ages as a
set of box-like partitions without vital connection.  Mr. Casaubon's
studies, Will observed, had always been of too broad a kind for that,
and he had perhaps never felt any such sudden effect, but for himself
he confessed that Rome had given him quite a new sense of history as a
whole: the fragments stimulated his imagination and made him
constructive.  Then occasionally, but not too often, he appealed to
Dorothea, and discussed what she said, as if her sentiment were an item
to be considered in the final judgment even of the Madonna di Foligno
or the Laocoon.  A sense of contributing to form the world's opinion
makes conversation particularly cheerful; and Mr. Casaubon too was not
without his pride in his young wife, who spoke better than most women,
as indeed he had perceived in choosing her.

Since things were going on so pleasantly, Mr. Casaubon's statement that
his labors in the Library would be suspended for a couple of days, and
that after a brief renewal he should have no further reason for staying
in Rome, encouraged Will to urge that Mrs. Casaubon should not go away
without seeing a studio or two.  Would not Mr. Casaubon take her?  That
sort of thing ought not to be missed: it was quite special: it was a
form of life that grew like a small fresh vegetation with its
population of insects on huge fossils.  Will would be happy to conduct
them--not to anything wearisome, only to a few examples.

Mr. Casaubon, seeing Dorothea look earnestly towards him, could not but
ask her if she would be interested in such visits: he was now at her
service during the whole day; and it was agreed that Will should come
on the morrow and drive with them.

Will could not omit Thorwaldsen, a living celebrity about whom even Mr.
Casaubon inquired, but before the day was far advanced he led the way
to the studio of his friend Adolf Naumann, whom he mentioned as one of
the chief renovators of Christian art, one of those who had not only
revived but expanded that grand conception of supreme events as
mysteries at which the successive ages were spectators, and in relation
to which the great souls of all periods became as it were
contemporaries.  Will added that he had made himself Naumann's pupil
for the nonce.

"I have been making some oil-sketches under him," said Will.  "I hate
copying.  I must put something of my own in.  Naumann has been painting
the Saints drawing the Car of the Church, and I have been making a
sketch of Marlowe's Tamburlaine Driving the Conquered Kings in his
Chariot.  I am not so ecclesiastical as Naumann, and I sometimes twit
him with his excess of meaning.  But this time I mean to outdo him in
breadth of intention.  I take Tamburlaine in his chariot for the
tremendous course of the world's physical history lashing on the
harnessed dynasties.  In my opinion, that is a good mythical
interpretation."  Will here looked at Mr. Casaubon, who received this
offhand treatment of symbolism very uneasily, and bowed with a neutral
air.

"The sketch must be very grand, if it conveys so much," said Dorothea.
"I should need some explanation even of the meaning you give.  Do you
intend Tamburlaine to represent earthquakes and volcanoes?"

"Oh yes," said Will, laughing, "and migrations of races and clearings
of forests--and America and the steam-engine. Everything you can
imagine!"

"What a difficult kind of shorthand!" said Dorothea, smiling towards
her husband.  "It would require all your knowledge to be able to read
it."

Mr. Casaubon blinked furtively at Will.  He had a suspicion that he was
being laughed at.  But it was not possible to include Dorothea in the
suspicion.

They found Naumann painting industriously, but no model was present;
his pictures were advantageously arranged, and his own plain vivacious
person set off by a dove-colored blouse and a maroon velvet cap, so
that everything was as fortunate as if he had expected the beautiful
young English lady exactly at that time.

The painter in his confident English gave little dissertations on his
finished and unfinished subjects, seeming to observe Mr. Casaubon as
much as he did Dorothea.  Will burst in here and there with ardent
words of praise, marking out particular merits in his friend's work;
and Dorothea felt that she was getting quite new notions as to the
significance of Madonnas seated under inexplicable canopied thrones
with the simple country as a background, and of saints with
architectural models in their hands, or knives accidentally wedged in
their skulls.  Some things which had seemed monstrous to her were
gathering intelligibility and even a natural meaning: but all this was
apparently a branch of knowledge in which Mr. Casaubon had not
interested himself.

"I think I would rather feel that painting is beautiful than have to
read it as an enigma; but I should learn to understand these pictures
sooner than yours with the very wide meaning," said Dorothea, speaking
to Will.

"Don't speak of my painting before Naumann," said Will.  "He will tell
you, it is all pfuscherei, which is his most opprobrious word!"

"Is that true?" said Dorothea, turning her sincere eyes on Naumann, who
made a slight grimace and said--

"Oh, he does not mean it seriously with painting.  His walk must be
belles-lettres. That is wi-ide."

Naumann's pronunciation of the vowel seemed to stretch the word
satirically.  Will did not half like it, but managed to laugh: and Mr.
Casaubon, while he felt some disgust at the artist's German accent,
began to entertain a little respect for his judicious severity.

The respect was not diminished when Naumann, after drawing Will aside
for a moment and looking, first at a large canvas, then at Mr.
Casaubon, came forward again and said--

"My friend Ladislaw thinks you will pardon me, sir, if I say that a
sketch of your head would be invaluable to me for the St. Thomas
Aquinas in my picture there.  It is too much to ask; but I so seldom
see just what I want--the idealistic in the real."

"You astonish me greatly, sir," said Mr. Casaubon, his looks improved
with a glow of delight; "but if my poor physiognomy, which I have been
accustomed to regard as of the commonest order, can be of any use to
you in furnishing some traits for the angelical doctor, I shall feel
honored.  That is to say, if the operation will not be a lengthy one;
and if Mrs. Casaubon will not object to the delay."

As for Dorothea, nothing could have pleased her more, unless it had
been a miraculous voice pronouncing Mr. Casaubon the wisest and
worthiest among the sons of men.  In that case her tottering faith
would have become firm again.

Naumann's apparatus was at hand in wonderful completeness, and the
sketch went on at once as well as the conversation.  Dorothea sat down
and subsided into calm silence, feeling happier than she had done for a
long while before.  Every one about her seemed good, and she said to
herself that Rome, if she had only been less ignorant, would have been
full of beauty: its sadness would have been winged with hope.  No nature
could be less suspicious than hers: when she was a child she believed
in the gratitude of wasps and the honorable susceptibility of sparrows,
and was proportionately indignant when their baseness was made manifest.

The adroit artist was asking Mr. Casaubon questions about English
polities, which brought long answers, and, Will meanwhile had perched
himself on some steps in the background overlooking all.

Presently Naumann said--"Now if I could lay this by for half an hour
and take it up again--come and look, Ladislaw--I think it is perfect so
far."

Will vented those adjuring interjections which imply that admiration is
too strong for syntax; and Naumann said in a tone of piteous regret--

"Ah--now--if I could but have had more--but you have other
engagements--I could not ask it--or even to come again to-morrow."

"Oh, let us stay!" said Dorothea.  "We have nothing to do to-day except
go about, have we?" she added, looking entreatingly at Mr. Casaubon.
"It would be a pity not to make the head as good as possible."

"I am at your service, sir, in the matter," said Mr. Casaubon, with
polite condescension.  "Having given up the interior of my head to
idleness, it is as well that the exterior should work in this way."

"You are unspeakably good--now I am happy!" said Naumann, and then went
on in German to Will, pointing here and there to the sketch as if he
were considering that.  Putting it aside for a moment, he looked round
vaguely, as if seeking some occupation for his visitors, and afterwards
turning to Mr. Casaubon, said--

"Perhaps the beautiful bride, the gracious lady, would not be unwilling
to let me fill up the time by trying to make a slight sketch of
her--not, of course, as you see, for that picture--only as a single
study."

Mr. Casaubon, bowing, doubted not that Mrs. Casaubon would oblige him,
and Dorothea said, at once, "Where shall I put myself?"

Naumann was all apologies in asking her to stand, and allow him to
adjust her attitude, to which she submitted without any of the affected
airs and laughs frequently thought necessary on such occasions, when
the painter said, "It is as Santa Clara that I want you to
stand--leaning so, with your cheek against your hand--so--looking at
that stool, please, so!"

Will was divided between the inclination to fall at the Saint's feet
and kiss her robe, and the temptation to knock Naumann down while he
was adjusting her arm.  All this was impudence and desecration, and he
repented that he had brought her.

The artist was diligent, and Will recovering himself moved about and
occupied Mr. Casaubon as ingeniously as he could; but he did not in the
end prevent the time from seeming long to that gentleman, as was clear
from his expressing a fear that Mrs. Casaubon would be tired.  Naumann
took the hint and said--

"Now, sir, if you can oblige me again; I will release the lady-wife."

So Mr. Casaubon's patience held out further, and when after all it
turned out that the head of Saint Thomas Aquinas would be more perfect
if another sitting could be had, it was granted for the morrow.  On the
morrow Santa Clara too was retouched more than once.  The result of all
was so far from displeasing to Mr. Casaubon, that he arranged for the
purchase of the picture in which Saint Thomas Aquinas sat among the
doctors of the Church in a disputation too abstract to be represented,
but listened to with more or less attention by an audience above.  The
Santa Clara, which was spoken of in the second place, Naumann declared
himself to be dissatisfied with--he could not, in conscience, engage
to make a worthy picture of it; so about the Santa Clara the
arrangement was conditional.

I will not dwell on Naumann's jokes at the expense of Mr. Casaubon that
evening, or on his dithyrambs about Dorothea's charm, in all which Will
joined, but with a difference.  No sooner did Naumann mention any
detail of Dorothea's beauty, than Will got exasperated at his
presumption: there was grossness in his choice of the most ordinary
words, and what business had he to talk of her lips?  She was not a
woman to be spoken of as other women were.  Will could not say just
what he thought, but he became irritable.  And yet, when after some
resistance he had consented to take the Casaubons to his friend's
studio, he had been allured by the gratification of his pride in being
the person who could grant Naumann such an opportunity of studying her
loveliness--or rather her divineness, for the ordinary phrases which
might apply to mere bodily prettiness were not applicable to her.
(Certainly all Tipton and its neighborhood, as well as Dorothea
herself, would have been surprised at her beauty being made so much of.
In that part of the world Miss Brooke had been only a "fine young
woman.")

"Oblige me by letting the subject drop, Naumann.  Mrs. Casaubon is not
to be talked of as if she were a model," said Will.  Naumann stared at
him.

"Schon!  I will talk of my Aquinas.  The head is not a bad type, after
all.  I dare say the great scholastic himself would have been flattered
to have his portrait asked for.  Nothing like these starchy doctors for
vanity!  It was as I thought: he cared much less for her portrait than
his own."

"He's a cursed white-blooded pedantic coxcomb," said Will, with
gnashing impetuosity.  His obligations to Mr. Casaubon were not known
to his hearer, but Will himself was thinking of them, and wishing that
he could discharge them all by a check.

Naumann gave a shrug and said, "It is good they go away soon, my dear.
They are spoiling your fine temper."

All Will's hope and contrivance were now concentrated on seeing
Dorothea when she was alone.  He only wanted her to take more emphatic
notice of him; he only wanted to be something more special in her
remembrance than he could yet believe himself likely to be.  He was
rather impatient under that open ardent good-will, which he saw was her
usual state of feeling.  The remote worship of a woman throned out of
their reach plays a great part in men's lives, but in most cases the
worshipper longs for some queenly recognition, some approving sign by
which his soul's sovereign may cheer him without descending from her
high place.  That was precisely what Will wanted.  But there were
plenty of contradictions in his imaginative demands.  It was beautiful
to see how Dorothea's eyes turned with wifely anxiety and beseeching to
Mr. Casaubon: she would have lost some of her halo if she had been
without that duteous preoccupation; and yet at the next moment the
husband's sandy absorption of such nectar was too intolerable; and
Will's longing to say damaging things about him was perhaps not the
less tormenting because he felt the strongest reasons for restraining
it.

Will had not been invited to dine the next day.  Hence he persuaded
himself that he was bound to call, and that the only eligible time was
the middle of the day, when Mr. Casaubon would not be at home.

Dorothea, who had not been made aware that her former reception of Will
had displeased her husband, had no hesitation about seeing him,
especially as he might be come to pay a farewell visit.  When he
entered she was looking at some cameos which she had been buying for
Celia.  She greeted Will as if his visit were quite a matter of course,
and said at once, having a cameo bracelet in her hand--

"I am so glad you are come.  Perhaps you understand all about cameos,
and can tell me if these are really good.  I wished to have you with us
in choosing them, but Mr. Casaubon objected: he thought there was not
time.  He will finish his work to-morrow, and we shall go away in three
days.  I have been uneasy about these cameos.  Pray sit down and look
at them."

"I am not particularly knowing, but there can be no great mistake about
these little Homeric bits: they are exquisitely neat.  And the color is
fine: it will just suit you."

"Oh, they are for my sister, who has quite a different complexion.  You
saw her with me at Lowick: she is light-haired and very pretty--at
least I think so.  We were never so long away from each other in our
lives before.  She is a great pet and never was naughty in her life.  I
found out before I came away that she wanted me to buy her some cameos,
and I should be sorry for them not to be good--after their kind."
Dorothea added the last words with a smile.

"You seem not to care about cameos," said Will, seating himself at some
distance from her, and observing her while she closed the cases.

"No, frankly, I don't think them a great object in life," said Dorothea

"I fear you are a heretic about art generally.  How is that?  I should
have expected you to be very sensitive to the beautiful everywhere."

"I suppose I am dull about many things," said Dorothea, simply.  "I
should like to make life beautiful--I mean everybody's life.  And then
all this immense expense of art, that seems somehow to lie outside life
and make it no better for the world, pains one.  It spoils my enjoyment
of anything when I am made to think that most people are shut out from
it."

"I call that the fanaticism of sympathy," said Will, impetuously.  "You
might say the same of landscape, of poetry, of all refinement.  If you
carried it out you ought to be miserable in your own goodness, and turn
evil that you might have no advantage over others.  The best piety is
to enjoy--when you can.  You are doing the most then to save the
earth's character as an agreeable planet.  And enjoyment radiates.  It
is of no use to try and take care of all the world; that is being taken
care of when you feel delight--in art or in anything else.  Would you
turn all the youth of the world into a tragic chorus, wailing and
moralizing over misery?  I suspect that you have some false belief in
the virtues of misery, and want to make your life a martyrdom."  Will
had gone further than he intended, and checked himself.  But Dorothea's
thought was not taking just the same direction as his own, and she
answered without any special emotion--

"Indeed you mistake me.  I am not a sad, melancholy creature.  I am
never unhappy long together.  I am angry and naughty--not like Celia: I
have a great outburst, and then all seems glorious again.  I cannot
help believing in glorious things in a blind sort of way.  I should be
quite willing to enjoy the art here, but there is so much that I don't
know the reason of--so much that seems to me a consecration of ugliness
rather than beauty.  The painting and sculpture may be wonderful, but
the feeling is often low and brutal, and sometimes even ridiculous.
Here and there I see what takes me at once as noble--something that I
might compare with the Alban Mountains or the sunset from the Pincian
Hill; but that makes it the greater pity that there is so little of the
best kind among all that mass of things over which men have toiled so."

"Of course there is always a great deal of poor work: the rarer things
want that soil to grow in."

"Oh dear," said Dorothea, taking up that thought into the chief current
of her anxiety; "I see it must be very difficult to do anything good.
I have often felt since I have been in Rome that most of our lives
would look much uglier and more bungling than the pictures, if they
could be put on the wall."

Dorothea parted her lips again as if she were going to say more, but
changed her mind and paused.

"You are too young--it is an anachronism for you to have such
thoughts," said Will, energetically, with a quick shake of the head
habitual to him.  "You talk as if you had never known any youth.  It is
monstrous--as if you had had a vision of Hades in your childhood, like
the boy in the legend.  You have been brought up in some of those
horrible notions that choose the sweetest women to devour--like
Minotaurs. And now you will go and be shut up in that stone prison at
Lowick: you will be buried alive.  It makes me savage to think of it!
I would rather never have seen you than think of you with such a
prospect."

Will again feared that he had gone too far; but the meaning we attach
to words depends on our feeling, and his tone of angry regret had so
much kindness in it for Dorothea's heart, which had always been giving
out ardor and had never been fed with much from the living beings
around her, that she felt a new sense of gratitude and answered with a
gentle smile--

"It is very good of you to be anxious about me.  It is because you did
not like Lowick yourself: you had set your heart on another kind of
life.  But Lowick is my chosen home."

The last sentence was spoken with an almost solemn cadence, and Will
did not know what to say, since it would not be useful for him to
embrace her slippers, and tell her that he would die for her: it was
clear that she required nothing of the sort; and they were both silent
for a moment or two, when Dorothea began again with an air of saying at
last what had been in her mind beforehand.

"I wanted to ask you again about something you said the other day.
Perhaps it was half of it your lively way of speaking: I notice that
you like to put things strongly; I myself often exaggerate when I speak
hastily."

"What was it?" said Will, observing that she spoke with a timidity
quite new in her.  "I have a hyperbolical tongue: it catches fire as it
goes.  I dare say I shall have to retract."

"I mean what you said about the necessity of knowing German--I mean,
for the subjects that Mr. Casaubon is engaged in.  I have been thinking
about it; and it seems to me that with Mr. Casaubon's learning he must
have before him the same materials as German scholars--has he not?"
Dorothea's timidity was due to an indistinct consciousness that she was
in the strange situation of consulting a third person about the
adequacy of Mr. Casaubon's learning.

"Not exactly the same materials," said Will, thinking that he would be
duly reserved.  "He is not an Orientalist, you know.  He does not
profess to have more than second-hand knowledge there."

"But there are very valuable books about antiquities which were written
a long while ago by scholars who knew nothing about these modern
things; and they are still used.  Why should Mr. Casaubon's not be
valuable, like theirs?" said Dorothea, with more remonstrant energy.
She was impelled to have the argument aloud, which she had been having
in her own mind.

"That depends on the line of study taken," said Will, also getting a
tone of rejoinder.  "The subject Mr. Casaubon has chosen is as changing
as chemistry: new discoveries are constantly making new points of view.
Who wants a system on the basis of the four elements, or a book to
refute Paracelsus?  Do you not see that it is no use now to be crawling
a little way after men of the last century--men like Bryant--and
correcting their mistakes?--living in a lumber-room and furbishing up
broken-legged theories about Chus and Mizraim?"

"How can you bear to speak so lightly?" said Dorothea, with a look
between sorrow and anger.  "If it were as you say, what could be sadder
than so much ardent labor all in vain?  I wonder it does not affect you
more painfully, if you really think that a man like Mr. Casaubon, of so
much goodness, power, and learning, should in any way fail in what has
been the labor of his best years." She was beginning to be shocked that
she had got to such a point of supposition, and indignant with Will for
having led her to it.

"You questioned me about the matter of fact, not of feeling," said
Will.  "But if you wish to punish me for the fact, I submit.  I am not
in a position to express my feeling toward Mr. Casaubon: it would be at
best a pensioner's eulogy."

"Pray excuse me," said Dorothea, coloring deeply.  "I am aware, as you
say, that I am in fault in having introduced the subject.  Indeed, I am
wrong altogether.  Failure after long perseverance is much grander than
never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure."

"I quite agree with you," said Will, determined to change the
situation--"so much so that I have made up my mind not to run that
risk of never attaining a failure.  Mr. Casaubon's generosity has
perhaps been dangerous to me, and I mean to renounce the liberty it has
given me.  I mean to go back to England shortly and work my own
way--depend on nobody else than myself."

"That is fine--I respect that feeling," said Dorothea, with returning
kindness.  "But Mr. Casaubon, I am sure, has never thought of anything
in the matter except what was most for your welfare."

"She has obstinacy and pride enough to serve instead of love, now she
has married him," said Will to himself.  Aloud he said, rising--

"I shall not see you again."

"Oh, stay till Mr. Casaubon comes," said Dorothea, earnestly.  "I am so
glad we met in Rome.  I wanted to know you."

"And I have made you angry," said Will.  "I have made you think ill of
me."

"Oh no.  My sister tells me I am always angry with people who do not
say just what I like.  But I hope I am not given to think ill of them.
In the end I am usually obliged to think ill of myself for being so
impatient."

"Still, you don't like me; I have made myself an unpleasant thought to
you."

"Not at all," said Dorothea, with the most open kindness.  "I like you
very much."

Will was not quite contented, thinking that he would apparently have
been of more importance if he had been disliked.  He said nothing, but
looked dull, not to say sulky.

"And I am quite interested to see what you will do," Dorothea went on
cheerfully.  "I believe devoutly in a natural difference of vocation.
If it were not for that belief, I suppose I should be very narrow--there
are so many things, besides painting, that I am quite ignorant
of.  You would hardly believe how little I have taken in of music and
literature, which you know so much of.  I wonder what your vocation
will turn out to be: perhaps you will be a poet?"

"That depends.  To be a poet is to have a soul so quick to discern that
no shade of quality escapes it, and so quick to feel, that discernment
is but a hand playing with finely ordered variety on the chords of
emotion--a soul in which knowledge passes instantaneously into feeling,
and feeling flashes back as a new organ of knowledge.  One may have
that condition by fits only."

"But you leave out the poems," said Dorothea.  "I think they are wanted
to complete the poet.  I understand what you mean about knowledge
passing into feeling, for that seems to be just what I experience.  But
I am sure I could never produce a poem."

"You _are_ a poem--and that is to be the best part of a poet--what
makes up the poet's consciousness in his best moods," said Will,
showing such originality as we all share with the morning and the
spring-time and other endless renewals.

"I am very glad to hear it," said Dorothea, laughing out her words in a
bird-like modulation, and looking at Will with playful gratitude in her
eyes.  "What very kind things you say to me!"

"I wish I could ever do anything that would be what you call kind--that
I could ever be of the slightest service to you. I fear I shall never
have the opportunity."  Will spoke with fervor.

"Oh yes," said Dorothea, cordially.  "It will come; and I shall
remember how well you wish me.  I quite hoped that we should be friends
when I first saw you--because of your relationship to Mr. Casaubon."
There was a certain liquid brightness in her eyes, and Will was
conscious that his own were obeying a law of nature and filling too.
The allusion to Mr. Casaubon would have spoiled all if anything at that
moment could have spoiled the subduing power, the sweet dignity, of her
noble unsuspicious inexperience.

"And there is one thing even now that you can do," said Dorothea,
rising and walking a little way under the strength of a recurring
impulse.  "Promise me that you will not again, to any one, speak of
that subject--I mean about Mr. Casaubon's writings--I mean in that
kind of way.  It was I who led to it.  It was my fault.  But promise
me."

She had returned from her brief pacing and stood opposite Will, looking
gravely at him.

"Certainly, I will promise you," said Will, reddening however.  If he
never said a cutting word about Mr. Casaubon again and left off
receiving favors from him, it would clearly be permissible to hate him
the more.  The poet must know how to hate, says Goethe; and Will was at
least ready with that accomplishment.  He said that he must go now
without waiting for Mr. Casaubon, whom he would come to take leave of
at the last moment.  Dorothea gave him her hand, and they exchanged a
simple "Good-by."

But going out of the porte cochere he met Mr. Casaubon, and that
gentleman, expressing the best wishes for his cousin, politely waived
the pleasure of any further leave-taking on the morrow, which would be
sufficiently crowded with the preparations for departure.

"I have something to tell you about our cousin Mr. Ladislaw, which I
think will heighten your opinion of him," said Dorothea to her husband
in the course of the evening.  She had mentioned immediately on his
entering that Will had just gone away, and would come again, but Mr.
Casaubon had said, "I met him outside, and we made our final adieux, I
believe," saying this with the air and tone by which we imply that any
subject, whether private or public, does not interest us enough to wish
for a further remark upon it.  So Dorothea had waited.

"What is that, my love?" said Mr Casaubon (he always said "my love"
when his manner was the coldest).

"He has made up his mind to leave off wandering at once, and to give up
his dependence on your generosity.  He means soon to go back to
England, and work his own way.  I thought you would consider that a
good sign," said Dorothea, with an appealing look into her husband's
neutral face.

"Did he mention the precise order of occupation to which he would
addict himself?"

"No. But he said that he felt the danger which lay for him in your
generosity.  Of course he will write to you about it.  Do you not think
better of him for his resolve?"

"I shall await his communication on the subject," said Mr. Casaubon.

"I told him I was sure that the thing you considered in all you did for
him was his own welfare.  I remembered your goodness in what you said
about him when I first saw him at Lowick," said Dorothea, putting her
hand on her husband's.

"I had a duty towards him," said Mr. Casaubon, laying his other hand on
Dorothea's in conscientious acceptance of her caress, but with a glance
which he could not hinder from being uneasy.  "The young man, I
confess, is not otherwise an object of interest to me, nor need we, I
think, discuss his future course, which it is not ours to determine
beyond the limits which I have sufficiently indicated." Dorothea did
not mention Will again.

BOOK III.

WAITING FOR DEATH.

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

completion: Will is at dinner with Mr. Casaubon and Dorothea, and is making himself charming to everyone because he's in a good mood. Mr. Casaubon mentions that they'll be leaving Rome in a few days, so Will encourages him to take Dorothea to visit a few artists' studios. Dorothea wants to go, so Mr. Casaubon agrees, and Will promises to go with them the next day. They visit Naumann's studio the next morning. Naumann pleases the heck out of Mr. Casaubon by asking to sketch his portrait to use in a painting of St Thomas Aquinas. Of course Casaubon is delighted to be a model for a saint - he's not used to having people compliment his looks, since most people can't see past his crusty oldness and his moles. After having softened Casaubon by sketching him first, Naumann asks if he could paint Dorothea as Saint Clara, and of course she agrees. Will doesn't like seeing Naumann arrange Dorothea's gown and posture for the painting, but he does think that she looks fit to be worshipped as a saint. Casaubon and Dorothea return the next day for Naumann to finish their portraits. The day before they're scheduled to leave Rome, Will decides to visit Dorothea in the middle of the day, when he knows Mr. Casaubon will be out. He hates being indebted to Mr. Casaubon, because it makes him feel that it's unfair and ungrateful to dislike him. Dorothea doesn't know that Mr. Casaubon was jealous the last time she saw Will alone, so she's happy to visit with him. She's trying to decide what cameos to buy for Celia, and Will helps her decide. The subject turns again to Mr. Casaubon's work - Dorothea is still distressed by the idea that Will put in her head before, that Mr. Casaubon's work has already been done. Will defends what he'd said before, but softens it a bit so that it won't upset her so much. Mr. Casaubon, Will says, is behind the times. Will then adds that he plans to return to England and work for himself, so that he won't have to rely on Mr. Casaubon's charity anymore. Dorothea admires his independence. Then they say goodbye, and Will says several impassioned things about how much he hates the idea of her being entombed at Lowick . Dorothea is totally unsuspicious of the crush Will is developing, and she just takes his words as kindness. So they say goodbye. Will sees Mr. Casaubon on his way out of the hotel, and they say goodbye, too - but rather less warmly. Mr. Casaubon isn't happy that Dorothea saw Will alone, but doesn't say so. Dorothea tells him about Will's decision to work for himself, thinking that it will make her husband happy, but Mr. Casaubon doesn't seem to care.


prompt:
Chapter: "Your horses of the Sun," he said,
    "And first-rate whip Apollo!
     Whate'er they be, I'll eat my head,
     But I will beat them hollow."

Fred Vincy, we have seen, had a debt on his mind, and though no such
immaterial burthen could depress that buoyant-hearted young gentleman
for many hours together, there were circumstances connected with this
debt which made the thought of it unusually importunate.  The creditor
was Mr. Bambridge a horse-dealer of the neighborhood, whose company was
much sought in Middlemarch by young men understood to be "addicted to
pleasure."  During the vacations Fred had naturally required more
amusements than he had ready money for, and Mr. Bambridge had been
accommodating enough not only to trust him for the hire of horses and
the accidental expense of ruining a fine hunter, but also to make a
small advance by which he might be able to meet some losses at
billiards.  The total debt was a hundred and sixty pounds.  Bambridge
was in no alarm about his money, being sure that young Vincy had
backers; but he had required something to show for it, and Fred had at
first given a bill with his own signature.  Three months later he had
renewed this bill with the signature of Caleb Garth.  On both occasions
Fred had felt confident that he should meet the bill himself, having
ample funds at disposal in his own hopefulness.  You will hardly demand
that his confidence should have a basis in external facts; such
confidence, we know, is something less coarse and materialistic: it is
a comfortable disposition leading us to expect that the wisdom of
providence or the folly of our friends, the mysteries of luck or the
still greater mystery of our high individual value in the universe,
will bring about agreeable issues, such as are consistent with our good
taste in costume, and our general preference for the best style of
thing.  Fred felt sure that he should have a present from his uncle,
that he should have a run of luck, that by dint of "swapping" he should
gradually metamorphose a horse worth forty pounds into a horse that
would fetch a hundred at any moment--"judgment" being always equivalent
to an unspecified sum in hard cash.  And in any case, even supposing
negations which only a morbid distrust could imagine, Fred had always
(at that time) his father's pocket as a last resource, so that his
assets of hopefulness had a sort of gorgeous superfluity about them.
Of what might be the capacity of his father's pocket, Fred had only a
vague notion: was not trade elastic?  And would not the deficiencies of
one year be made up for by the surplus of another?  The Vincys lived in
an easy profuse way, not with any new ostentation, but according to the
family habits and traditions, so that the children had no standard of
economy, and the elder ones retained some of their infantine notion
that their father might pay for anything if he would.  Mr. Vincy
himself had expensive Middlemarch habits--spent money on coursing, on
his cellar, and on dinner-giving, while mamma had those running
accounts with tradespeople, which give a cheerful sense of getting
everything one wants without any question of payment.  But it was in
the nature of fathers, Fred knew, to bully one about expenses: there
was always a little storm over his extravagance if he had to disclose a
debt, and Fred disliked bad weather within doors.  He was too filial to
be disrespectful to his father, and he bore the thunder with the
certainty that it was transient; but in the mean time it was
disagreeable to see his mother cry, and also to be obliged to look
sulky instead of having fun; for Fred was so good-tempered that if he
looked glum under scolding, it was chiefly for propriety's sake.  The
easier course plainly, was to renew the bill with a friend's signature.
Why not? With the superfluous securities of hope at his command, there
was no reason why he should not have increased other people's
liabilities to any extent, but for the fact that men whose names were
good for anything were usually pessimists, indisposed to believe that
the universal order of things would necessarily be agreeable to an
agreeable young gentleman.

With a favor to ask we review our list of friends, do justice to their
more amiable qualities, forgive their little offenses, and concerning
each in turn, try to arrive at the conclusion that he will be eager to
oblige us, our own eagerness to be obliged being as communicable as
other warmth.  Still there is always a certain number who are dismissed
as but moderately eager until the others have refused; and it happened
that Fred checked off all his friends but one, on the ground that
applying to them would be disagreeable; being implicitly convinced that
he at least (whatever might be maintained about mankind generally) had
a right to be free from anything disagreeable.  That he should ever
fall into a thoroughly unpleasant position--wear trousers shrunk with
washing, eat cold mutton, have to walk for want of a horse, or to "duck
under" in any sort of way--was an absurdity irreconcilable with those
cheerful intuitions implanted in him by nature.  And Fred winced under
the idea of being looked down upon as wanting funds for small debts.
Thus it came to pass that the friend whom he chose to apply to was at
once the poorest and the kindest--namely, Caleb Garth.

The Garths were very fond of Fred, as he was of them; for when he and
Rosamond were little ones, and the Garths were better off, the slight
connection between the two families through Mr. Featherstone's double
marriage (the first to Mr. Garth's sister, and the second to Mrs.
Vincy's) had led to an acquaintance which was carried on between the
children rather than the parents: the children drank tea together out
of their toy teacups, and spent whole days together in play.  Mary was
a little hoyden, and Fred at six years old thought her the nicest girl
in the world, making her his wife with a brass ring which he had cut
from an umbrella.  Through all the stages of his education he had kept
his affection for the Garths, and his habit of going to their house as
a second home, though any intercourse between them and the elders of
his family had long ceased.  Even when Caleb Garth was prosperous, the
Vincys were on condescending terms with him and his wife, for there
were nice distinctions of rank in Middlemarch; and though old
manufacturers could not any more than dukes be connected with none but
equals, they were conscious of an inherent social superiority which was
defined with great nicety in practice, though hardly expressible
theoretically.  Since then Mr. Garth had failed in the building
business, which he had unfortunately added to his other avocations of
surveyor, valuer, and agent, had conducted that business for a time
entirely for the benefit of his assignees, and had been living
narrowly, exerting himself to the utmost that he might after all pay
twenty shillings in the pound.  He had now achieved this, and from all
who did not think it a bad precedent, his honorable exertions had won
him due esteem; but in no part of the world is genteel visiting founded
on esteem, in the absence of suitable furniture and complete
dinner-service.  Mrs. Vincy had never been at her ease with Mrs. Garth,
and frequently spoke of her as a woman who had had to work for her
bread--meaning that Mrs. Garth had been a teacher before her marriage;
in which case an intimacy with Lindley Murray and Mangnall's Questions
was something like a draper's discrimination of calico trademarks, or a
courier's acquaintance with foreign countries: no woman who was better
off needed that sort of thing.  And since Mary had been keeping Mr.
Featherstone's house, Mrs. Vincy's want of liking for the Garths had
been converted into something more positive, by alarm lest Fred should
engage himself to this plain girl, whose parents "lived in such a small
way."  Fred, being aware of this, never spoke at home of his visits to
Mrs. Garth, which had of late become more frequent, the increasing
ardor of his affection for Mary inclining him the more towards those
who belonged to her.

Mr. Garth had a small office in the town, and to this Fred went with
his request.  He obtained it without much difficulty, for a large
amount of painful experience had not sufficed to make Caleb Garth
cautious about his own affairs, or distrustful of his fellow-men when
they had not proved themselves untrustworthy; and he had the highest
opinion of Fred, was "sure the lad would turn out well--an open
affectionate fellow, with a good bottom to his character--you might
trust him for anything." Such was Caleb's psychological argument.  He
was one of those rare men who are rigid to themselves and indulgent to
others.  He had a certain shame about his neighbors' errors, and never
spoke of them willingly; hence he was not likely to divert his mind
from the best mode of hardening timber and other ingenious devices in
order to preconceive those errors.  If he had to blame any one, it was
necessary for him to move all the papers within his reach, or describe
various diagrams with his stick, or make calculations with the odd
money in his pocket, before he could begin; and he would rather do
other men's work than find fault with their doing.  I fear he was a bad
disciplinarian.

When Fred stated the circumstances of his debt, his wish to meet it
without troubling his father, and the certainty that the money would be
forthcoming so as to cause no one any inconvenience, Caleb pushed his
spectacles upward, listened, looked into his favorite's clear young
eyes, and believed him, not distinguishing confidence about the future
from veracity about the past; but he felt that it was an occasion for a
friendly hint as to conduct, and that before giving his signature he
must give a rather strong admonition.  Accordingly, he took the paper
and lowered his spectacles, measured the space at his command, reached
his pen and examined it, dipped it in the ink and examined it again,
then pushed the paper a little way from him, lifted up his spectacles
again, showed a deepened depression in the outer angle of his bushy
eyebrows, which gave his face a peculiar mildness (pardon these details
for once--you would have learned to love them if you had known Caleb
Garth), and said in a comfortable tone--

"It was a misfortune, eh, that breaking the horse's knees?  And then,
these exchanges, they don't answer when you have 'cute jockeys to deal
with.  You'll be wiser another time, my boy."

Whereupon Caleb drew down his spectacles, and proceeded to write his
signature with the care which he always gave to that performance; for
whatever he did in the way of business he did well.  He contemplated
the large well-proportioned letters and final flourish, with his head a
trifle on one side for an instant, then handed it to Fred, said
"Good-by," and returned forthwith to his absorption in a plan for Sir
James Chettam's new farm-buildings.

Either because his interest in this work thrust the incident of the
signature from his memory, or for some reason of which Caleb was more
conscious, Mrs. Garth remained ignorant of the affair.

Since it occurred, a change had come over Fred's sky, which altered his
view of the distance, and was the reason why his uncle Featherstone's
present of money was of importance enough to make his color come and
go, first with a too definite expectation, and afterwards with a
proportionate disappointment.  His failure in passing his examination,
had made his accumulation of college debts the more unpardonable by his
father, and there had been an unprecedented storm at home.  Mr. Vincy
had sworn that if he had anything more of that sort to put up with,
Fred should turn out and get his living how he could; and he had never
yet quite recovered his good-humored tone to his son, who had
especially enraged him by saying at this stage of things that he did
not want to be a clergyman, and would rather not "go on with that."
Fred was conscious that he would have been yet more severely dealt with
if his family as well as himself had not secretly regarded him as Mr.
Featherstone's heir; that old gentleman's pride in him, and apparent
fondness for him, serving in the stead of more exemplary conduct--just
as when a youthful nobleman steals jewellery we call the act
kleptomania, speak of it with a philosophical smile, and never think of
his being sent to the house of correction as if he were a ragged boy
who had stolen turnips.  In fact, tacit expectations of what would be
done for him by uncle Featherstone determined the angle at which most
people viewed Fred Vincy in Middlemarch; and in his own consciousness,
what uncle Featherstone would do for him in an emergency, or what he
would do simply as an incorporated luck, formed always an immeasurable
depth of aerial perspective.  But that present of bank-notes, once
made, was measurable, and being applied to the amount of the debt,
showed a deficit which had still to be filled up either by Fred's
"judgment" or by luck in some other shape.  For that little episode of
the alleged borrowing, in which he had made his father the agent in
getting the Bulstrode certificate, was a new reason against going to
his father for money towards meeting his actual debt.  Fred was keen
enough to foresee that anger would confuse distinctions, and that his
denial of having borrowed expressly on the strength of his uncle's will
would be taken as a falsehood.  He had gone to his father and told him
one vexatious affair, and he had left another untold: in such cases the
complete revelation always produces the impression of a previous
duplicity.  Now Fred piqued himself on keeping clear of lies, and even
fibs; he often shrugged his shoulders and made a significant grimace at
what he called Rosamond's fibs (it is only brothers who can associate
such ideas with a lovely girl); and rather than incur the accusation of
falsehood he would even incur some trouble and self-restraint.  It was
under strong inward pressure of this kind that Fred had taken the wise
step of depositing the eighty pounds with his mother.  It was a pity
that he had not at once given them to Mr. Garth; but he meant to make
the sum complete with another sixty, and with a view to this, he had
kept twenty pounds in his own pocket as a sort of seed-corn, which,
planted by judgment, and watered by luck, might yield more than
threefold--a very poor rate of multiplication when the field is a young
gentleman's infinite soul, with all the numerals at command.

Fred was not a gambler: he had not that specific disease in which the
suspension of the whole nervous energy on a chance or risk becomes as
necessary as the dram to the drunkard; he had only the tendency to that
diffusive form of gambling which has no alcoholic intensity, but is
carried on with the healthiest chyle-fed blood, keeping up a joyous
imaginative activity which fashions events according to desire, and
having no fears about its own weather, only sees the advantage there
must be to others in going aboard with it.  Hopefulness has a pleasure
in making a throw of any kind, because the prospect of success is
certain; and only a more generous pleasure in offering as many as
possible a share in the stake.  Fred liked play, especially billiards,
as he liked hunting or riding a steeple-chase; and he only liked it the
better because he wanted money and hoped to win.  But the twenty
pounds' worth of seed-corn had been planted in vain in the seductive
green plot--all of it at least which had not been dispersed by the
roadside--and Fred found himself close upon the term of payment with no
money at command beyond the eighty pounds which he had deposited with
his mother.  The broken-winded horse which he rode represented a
present which had been made to him a long while ago by his uncle
Featherstone: his father always allowed him to keep a horse, Mr.
Vincy's own habits making him regard this as a reasonable demand even
for a son who was rather exasperating.  This horse, then, was Fred's
property, and in his anxiety to meet the imminent bill he determined to
sacrifice a possession without which life would certainly be worth
little.  He made the resolution with a sense of heroism--heroism forced
on him by the dread of breaking his word to Mr. Garth, by his love for
Mary and awe of her opinion.  He would start for Houndsley horse-fair
which was to be held the next morning, and--simply sell his horse,
bringing back the money by coach?--Well, the horse would hardly fetch
more than thirty pounds, and there was no knowing what might happen; it
would be folly to balk himself of luck beforehand.  It was a hundred to
one that some good chance would fall in his way; the longer he thought
of it, the less possible it seemed that he should not have a good
chance, and the less reasonable that he should not equip himself with
the powder and shot for bringing it down.  He would ride to Houndsley
with Bambridge and with Horrock "the vet," and without asking them
anything expressly, he should virtually get the benefit of their
opinion.  Before he set out, Fred got the eighty pounds from his mother.

Most of those who saw Fred riding out of Middlemarch in company with
Bambridge and Horrock, on his way of course to Houndsley horse-fair,
thought that young Vincy was pleasure-seeking as usual; and but for an
unwonted consciousness of grave matters on hand, he himself would have
had a sense of dissipation, and of doing what might be expected of a
gay young fellow.  Considering that Fred was not at all coarse, that he
rather looked down on the manners and speech of young men who had not
been to the university, and that he had written stanzas as pastoral and
unvoluptuous as his flute-playing, his attraction towards Bambridge and
Horrock was an interesting fact which even the love of horse-flesh
would not wholly account for without that mysterious influence of
Naming which determinates so much of mortal choice.  Under any other
name than "pleasure" the society of Messieurs Bambridge and Horrock
must certainly have been regarded as monotonous; and to arrive with
them at Houndsley on a drizzling afternoon, to get down at the Red Lion
in a street shaded with coal-dust, and dine in a room furnished with a
dirt-enamelled map of the county, a bad portrait of an anonymous horse
in a stable, His Majesty George the Fourth with legs and cravat, and
various leaden spittoons, might have seemed a hard business, but for
the sustaining power of nomenclature which determined that the pursuit
of these things was "gay."

In Mr. Horrock there was certainly an apparent unfathomableness which
offered play to the imagination.  Costume, at a glance, gave him a
thrilling association with horses (enough to specify the hat-brim which
took the slightest upward angle just to escape the suspicion of bending
downwards), and nature had given him a face which by dint of Mongolian
eyes, and a nose, mouth, and chin seeming to follow his hat-brim in a
moderate inclination upwards, gave the effect of a subdued unchangeable
sceptical smile, of all expressions the most tyrannous over a
susceptible mind, and, when accompanied by adequate silence, likely to
create the reputation of an invincible understanding, an infinite fund
of humor--too dry to flow, and probably in a state of immovable
crust,--and a critical judgment which, if you could ever be fortunate
enough to know it, would be _the_ thing and no other.  It is a
physiognomy seen in all vocations, but perhaps it has never been more
powerful over the youth of England than in a judge of horses.

Mr. Horrock, at a question from Fred about his horse's fetlock, turned
sideways in his saddle, and watched the horse's action for the space of
three minutes, then turned forward, twitched his own bridle, and
remained silent with a profile neither more nor less sceptical than it
had been.

The part thus played in dialogue by Mr. Horrock was terribly effective.
A mixture of passions was excited in Fred--a mad desire to thrash
Horrock's opinion into utterance, restrained by anxiety to retain the
advantage of his friendship.  There was always the chance that Horrock
might say something quite invaluable at the right moment.

Mr. Bambridge had more open manners, and appeared to give forth his
ideas without economy.  He was loud, robust, and was sometimes spoken
of as being "given to indulgence"--chiefly in swearing, drinking, and
beating his wife.  Some people who had lost by him called him a vicious
man; but he regarded horse-dealing as the finest of the arts, and might
have argued plausibly that it had nothing to do with morality.  He was
undeniably a prosperous man, bore his drinking better than others bore
their moderation, and, on the whole, flourished like the green
bay-tree. But his range of conversation was limited, and like the fine
old tune, "Drops of brandy," gave you after a while a sense of
returning upon itself in a way that might make weak heads dizzy.  But a
slight infusion of Mr. Bambridge was felt to give tone and character to
several circles in Middlemarch; and he was a distinguished figure in
the bar and billiard-room at the Green Dragon.  He knew some anecdotes
about the heroes of the turf, and various clever tricks of Marquesses
and Viscounts which seemed to prove that blood asserted its
pre-eminence even among black-legs; but the minute retentiveness of his
memory was chiefly shown about the horses he had himself bought and
sold; the number of miles they would trot you in no time without
turning a hair being, after the lapse of years, still a subject of
passionate asseveration, in which he would assist the imagination of
his hearers by solemnly swearing that they never saw anything like it.
In short, Mr. Bambridge was a man of pleasure and a gay companion.

Fred was subtle, and did not tell his friends that he was going to
Houndsley bent on selling his horse: he wished to get indirectly at
their genuine opinion of its value, not being aware that a genuine
opinion was the last thing likely to be extracted from such eminent
critics.  It was not Mr. Bambridge's weakness to be a gratuitous
flatterer.  He had never before been so much struck with the fact that
this unfortunate bay was a roarer to a degree which required the
roundest word for perdition to give you any idea of it.

"You made a bad hand at swapping when you went to anybody but me,
Vincy!  Why, you never threw your leg across a finer horse than that
chestnut, and you gave him for this brute.  If you set him cantering,
he goes on like twenty sawyers.  I never heard but one worse roarer in
my life, and that was a roan: it belonged to Pegwell, the corn-factor;
he used to drive him in his gig seven years ago, and he wanted me to
take him, but I said, 'Thank you, Peg, I don't deal in
wind-instruments.' That was what I said.  It went the round of the
country, that joke did.  But, what the hell! the horse was a penny
trumpet to that roarer of yours."

"Why, you said just now his was worse than mine," said Fred, more
irritable than usual.

"I said a lie, then," said Mr. Bambridge, emphatically.  "There wasn't
a penny to choose between 'em."

Fred spurred his horse, and they trotted on a little way.  When they
slackened again, Mr. Bambridge said--

"Not but what the roan was a better trotter than yours."

"I'm quite satisfied with his paces, I know," said Fred, who required
all the consciousness of being in gay company to support him; "I say
his trot is an uncommonly clean one, eh, Horrock?"

Mr. Horrock looked before him with as complete a neutrality as if he
had been a portrait by a great master.

Fred gave up the fallacious hope of getting a genuine opinion; but on
reflection he saw that Bambridge's depreciation and Horrock's silence
were both virtually encouraging, and indicated that they thought better
of the horse than they chose to say.

That very evening, indeed, before the fair had set in, Fred thought he
saw a favorable opening for disposing advantageously of his horse, but
an opening which made him congratulate himself on his foresight in
bringing with him his eighty pounds.  A young farmer, acquainted with
Mr. Bambridge, came into the Red Lion, and entered into conversation
about parting with a hunter, which he introduced at once as Diamond,
implying that it was a public character.  For himself he only wanted a
useful hack, which would draw upon occasion; being about to marry and
to give up hunting.  The hunter was in a friend's stable at some little
distance; there was still time for gentlemen to see it before dark.
The friend's stable had to be reached through a back street where you
might as easily have been poisoned without expense of drugs as in any
grim street of that unsanitary period.  Fred was not fortified against
disgust by brandy, as his companions were, but the hope of having at
last seen the horse that would enable him to make money was
exhilarating enough to lead him over the same ground again the first
thing in the morning.  He felt sure that if he did not come to a
bargain with the farmer, Bambridge would; for the stress of
circumstances, Fred felt, was sharpening his acuteness and endowing him
with all the constructive power of suspicion.  Bambridge had run down
Diamond in a way that he never would have done (the horse being a
friend's) if he had not thought of buying it; every one who looked at
the animal--even Horrock--was evidently impressed with its merit.  To
get all the advantage of being with men of this sort, you must know how
to draw your inferences, and not be a spoon who takes things literally.
The color of the horse was a dappled gray, and Fred happened to know
that Lord Medlicote's man was on the look-out for just such a horse.
After all his running down, Bambridge let it out in the course of the
evening, when the farmer was absent, that he had seen worse horses go
for eighty pounds.  Of course he contradicted himself twenty times
over, but when you know what is likely to be true you can test a man's
admissions.  And Fred could not but reckon his own judgment of a horse
as worth something.  The farmer had paused over Fred's respectable
though broken-winded steed long enough to show that he thought it worth
consideration, and it seemed probable that he would take it, with
five-and-twenty pounds in addition, as the equivalent of Diamond.  In
that case Fred, when he had parted with his new horse for at least
eighty pounds, would be fifty-five pounds in pocket by the transaction,
and would have a hundred and thirty-five pounds towards meeting the
bill; so that the deficit temporarily thrown on Mr. Garth would at the
utmost be twenty-five pounds.  By the time he was hurrying on his
clothes in the morning, he saw so clearly the importance of not losing
this rare chance, that if Bambridge and Horrock had both dissuaded him,
he would not have been deluded into a direct interpretation of their
purpose: he would have been aware that those deep hands held something
else than a young fellow's interest.  With regard to horses, distrust
was your only clew.  But scepticism, as we know, can never be
thoroughly applied, else life would come to a standstill: something we
must believe in and do, and whatever that something may be called, it
is virtually our own judgment, even when it seems like the most slavish
reliance on another.  Fred believed in the excellence of his bargain,
and even before the fair had well set in, had got possession of the
dappled gray, at the price of his old horse and thirty pounds in
addition--only five pounds more than he had expected to give.

But he felt a little worried and wearied, perhaps with mental debate,
and without waiting for the further gayeties of the horse-fair, he set
out alone on his fourteen miles' journey, meaning to take it very
quietly and keep his horse fresh.

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

completion: Fred's debt, as you will no doubt remember from an earlier chapter, was for 160 pounds , and Caleb Garth had been a co-signer for it. Fred had gotten Mr. Garth to agree to sign it by assuring him that he'd pay it back promptly. Of course, if he doesn't pay it promptly, it'll be on Mr. Garth to pay it, and the Garths can't really afford it. Fred asked Mr. Garth to co-sign on it because he knew Mr. Garth would say yes, not because he thought the Garths would be able to pay it back. But Fred is young and self-confident, and felt sure that his old uncle, Mr. Featherstone, would give him enough money to pay back the debt. Caleb Garth is a respectable man, and was a builder and a manager of estates for a long time. He has since fallen on harder times, which is why his daughter, Mary Garth, has to work for Mr. Featherstone. Even back when the Garths were richer, they were still lower on the social scale than the Vincys, but Fred stayed friends with them even after Mr. Garth lost a lot of his business. But back to the debt: Mr. Featherstone only gave Fred a hundred pounds, so Fred is sixty pounds short of the total he needs to clear himself and Mr. Garth. He gave eighty to his mother immediately to keep for him, and kept the other twenty himself, hoping to make some investment or gamble that would somehow triple or quadruple it. Fred makes a plan to buy and sell a horse and make a profit, and gets the other eighty out of his mother to do so. He makes the bargain - he trades his own horse and fifty pounds in exchange for another horse, which he expects to get at least eighty pounds for when he goes to sell it.


prompt:
Chapter: "The offender's sorrow brings but small relief
     To him who wears the strong offence's cross."
                                        --SHAKESPEARE: Sonnets.

I am sorry to say that only the third day after the propitious events
at Houndsley Fred Vincy had fallen into worse spirits than he had known
in his life before.  Not that he had been disappointed as to the
possible market for his horse, but that before the bargain could be
concluded with Lord Medlicote's man, this Diamond, in which hope to the
amount of eighty pounds had been invested, had without the slightest
warning exhibited in the stable a most vicious energy in kicking, had
just missed killing the groom, and had ended in laming himself severely
by catching his leg in a rope that overhung the stable-board. There was
no more redress for this than for the discovery of bad temper after
marriage--which of course old companions were aware of before the
ceremony.  For some reason or other, Fred had none of his usual
elasticity under this stroke of ill-fortune: he was simply aware that
he had only fifty pounds, that there was no chance of his getting any
more at present, and that the bill for a hundred and sixty would be
presented in five days.  Even if he had applied to his father on the
plea that Mr. Garth should be saved from loss, Fred felt smartingly
that his father would angrily refuse to rescue Mr. Garth from the
consequence of what he would call encouraging extravagance and deceit.
He was so utterly downcast that he could frame no other project than to
go straight to Mr. Garth and tell him the sad truth, carrying with him
the fifty pounds, and getting that sum at least safely out of his own
hands.  His father, being at the warehouse, did not yet know of the
accident: when he did, he would storm about the vicious brute being
brought into his stable; and before meeting that lesser annoyance Fred
wanted to get away with all his courage to face the greater.  He took
his father's nag, for he had made up his mind that when he had told Mr.
Garth, he would ride to Stone Court and confess all to Mary.  In fact,
it is probable that but for Mary's existence and Fred's love for her,
his conscience would have been much less active both in previously
urging the debt on his thought and impelling him not to spare himself
after his usual fashion by deferring an unpleasant task, but to act as
directly and simply as he could.  Even much stronger mortals than Fred
Vincy hold half their rectitude in the mind of the being they love
best.  "The theatre of all my actions is fallen," said an antique
personage when his chief friend was dead; and they are fortunate who
get a theatre where the audience demands their best.  Certainly it
would have made a considerable difference to Fred at that time if Mary
Garth had had no decided notions as to what was admirable in character.

Mr. Garth was not at the office, and Fred rode on to his house, which
was a little way outside the town--a homely place with an orchard in
front of it, a rambling, old-fashioned, half-timbered building, which
before the town had spread had been a farm-house, but was now
surrounded with the private gardens of the townsmen.  We get the fonder
of our houses if they have a physiognomy of their own, as our friends
have.  The Garth family, which was rather a large one, for Mary had
four brothers and one sister, were very fond of their old house, from
which all the best furniture had long been sold.  Fred liked it too,
knowing it by heart even to the attic which smelt deliciously of apples
and quinces, and until to-day he had never come to it without pleasant
expectations; but his heart beat uneasily now with the sense that he
should probably have to make his confession before Mrs. Garth, of whom
he was rather more in awe than of her husband.  Not that she was
inclined to sarcasm and to impulsive sallies, as Mary was.  In her
present matronly age at least, Mrs. Garth never committed herself by
over-hasty speech; having, as she said, borne the yoke in her youth,
and learned self-control. She had that rare sense which discerns what
is unalterable, and submits to it without murmuring.  Adoring her
husband's virtues, she had very early made up her mind to his
incapacity of minding his own interests, and had met the consequences
cheerfully.  She had been magnanimous enough to renounce all pride in
teapots or children's frilling, and had never poured any pathetic
confidences into the ears of her feminine neighbors concerning Mr.
Garth's want of prudence and the sums he might have had if he had been
like other men.  Hence these fair neighbors thought her either proud or
eccentric, and sometimes spoke of her to their husbands as "your fine
Mrs. Garth." She was not without her criticism of them in return, being
more accurately instructed than most matrons in Middlemarch, and--where
is the blameless woman?--apt to be a little severe towards her own sex,
which in her opinion was framed to be entirely subordinate.  On the
other hand, she was disproportionately indulgent towards the failings
of men, and was often heard to say that these were natural.  Also, it
must be admitted that Mrs. Garth was a trifle too emphatic in her
resistance to what she held to be follies: the passage from governess
into housewife had wrought itself a little too strongly into her
consciousness, and she rarely forgot that while her grammar and accent
were above the town standard, she wore a plain cap, cooked the family
dinner, and darned all the stockings.  She had sometimes taken pupils
in a peripatetic fashion, making them follow her about in the kitchen
with their book or slate.  She thought it good for them to see that she
could make an excellent lather while she corrected their blunders
"without looking,"--that a woman with her sleeves tucked up above her
elbows might know all about the Subjunctive Mood or the Torrid
Zone--that, in short, she might possess "education" and other good
things ending in "tion," and worthy to be pronounced emphatically,
without being a useless doll.  When she made remarks to this edifying
effect, she had a firm little frown on her brow, which yet did not
hinder her face from looking benevolent, and her words which came forth
like a procession were uttered in a fervid agreeable contralto.
Certainly, the exemplary Mrs. Garth had her droll aspects, but her
character sustained her oddities, as a very fine wine sustains a flavor
of skin.

Towards Fred Vincy she had a motherly feeling, and had always been
disposed to excuse his errors, though she would probably not have
excused Mary for engaging herself to him, her daughter being included
in that more rigorous judgment which she applied to her own sex.  But
this very fact of her exceptional indulgence towards him made it the
harder to Fred that he must now inevitably sink in her opinion.  And
the circumstances of his visit turned out to be still more unpleasant
than he had expected; for Caleb Garth had gone out early to look at
some repairs not far off.  Mrs. Garth at certain hours was always in
the kitchen, and this morning she was carrying on several occupations
at once there--making her pies at the well-scoured deal table on one
side of that airy room, observing Sally's movements at the oven and
dough-tub through an open door, and giving lessons to her youngest boy
and girl, who were standing opposite to her at the table with their
books and slates before them.  A tub and a clothes-horse at the other
end of the kitchen indicated an intermittent wash of small things also
going on.

Mrs. Garth, with her sleeves turned above her elbows, deftly handling
her pastry--applying her rolling-pin and giving ornamental pinches,
while she expounded with grammatical fervor what were the right views
about the concord of verbs and pronouns with "nouns of multitude or
signifying many," was a sight agreeably amusing.  She was of the same
curly-haired, square-faced type as Mary, but handsomer, with more
delicacy of feature, a pale skin, a solid matronly figure, and a
remarkable firmness of glance.  In her snowy-frilled cap she reminded
one of that delightful Frenchwoman whom we have all seen marketing,
basket on arm.  Looking at the mother, you might hope that the daughter
would become like her, which is a prospective advantage equal to a
dowry--the mother too often standing behind the daughter like a
malignant prophecy--"Such as I am, she will shortly be."

"Now let us go through that once more," said Mrs. Garth, pinching an
apple-puff which seemed to distract Ben, an energetic young male with a
heavy brow, from due attention to the lesson.  "'Not without regard to
the import of the word as conveying unity or plurality of idea'--tell
me again what that means, Ben."

(Mrs. Garth, like more celebrated educators, had her favorite ancient
paths, and in a general wreck of society would have tried to hold her
"Lindley Murray" above the waves.)

"Oh--it means--you must think what you mean," said Ben, rather
peevishly.  "I hate grammar.  What's the use of it?"

"To teach you to speak and write correctly, so that you can be
understood," said Mrs. Garth, with severe precision.  "Should you like
to speak as old Job does?"

"Yes," said Ben, stoutly; "it's funnier.  He says, 'Yo goo'--that's
just as good as 'You go.'"

"But he says, 'A ship's in the garden,' instead of 'a sheep,'" said
Letty, with an air of superiority.  "You might think he meant a ship
off the sea."

"No, you mightn't, if you weren't silly," said Ben.  "How could a ship
off the sea come there?"

"These things belong only to pronunciation, which is the least part of
grammar," said Mrs. Garth.  "That apple-peel is to be eaten by the
pigs, Ben; if you eat it, I must give them your piece of pasty.  Job
has only to speak about very plain things.  How do you think you would
write or speak about anything more difficult, if you knew no more of
grammar than he does?  You would use wrong words, and put words in the
wrong places, and instead of making people understand you, they would
turn away from you as a tiresome person.  What would you do then?"

"I shouldn't care, I should leave off," said Ben, with a sense that
this was an agreeable issue where grammar was concerned.

"I see you are getting tired and stupid, Ben," said Mrs. Garth,
accustomed to these obstructive arguments from her male offspring.
Having finished her pies, she moved towards the clothes-horse, and
said, "Come here and tell me the story I told you on Wednesday, about
Cincinnatus."

"I know! he was a farmer," said Ben.

"Now, Ben, he was a Roman--let _me_ tell," said Letty, using her elbow
contentiously.

"You silly thing, he was a Roman farmer, and he was ploughing."

"Yes, but before that--that didn't come first--people wanted him," said
Letty.

"Well, but you must say what sort of a man he was first," insisted Ben.
"He was a wise man, like my father, and that made the people want his
advice.  And he was a brave man, and could fight.  And so could my
father--couldn't he, mother?"

"Now, Ben, let me tell the story straight on, as mother told it us,"
said Letty, frowning.  "Please, mother, tell Ben not to speak."

"Letty, I am ashamed of you," said her mother, wringing out the caps
from the tub.  "When your brother began, you ought to have waited to
see if he could not tell the story.  How rude you look, pushing and
frowning, as if you wanted to conquer with your elbows!  Cincinnatus, I
am sure, would have been sorry to see his daughter behave so."  (Mrs.
Garth delivered this awful sentence with much majesty of enunciation,
and Letty felt that between repressed volubility and general disesteem,
that of the Romans inclusive, life was already a painful affair.) "Now,
Ben."

"Well--oh--well--why, there was a great deal of fighting, and they were
all blockheads, and--I can't tell it just how you told it--but they
wanted a man to be captain and king and everything--"

"Dictator, now," said Letty, with injured looks, and not without a wish
to make her mother repent.

"Very well, dictator!" said Ben, contemptuously.  "But that isn't a
good word: he didn't tell them to write on slates."

"Come, come, Ben, you are not so ignorant as that," said Mrs. Garth,
carefully serious.  "Hark, there is a knock at the door!  Run, Letty,
and open it."

The knock was Fred's; and when Letty said that her father was not in
yet, but that her mother was in the kitchen, Fred had no alternative.
He could not depart from his usual practice of going to see Mrs. Garth
in the kitchen if she happened to be at work there.  He put his arm
round Letty's neck silently, and led her into the kitchen without his
usual jokes and caresses.

Mrs. Garth was surprised to see Fred at this hour, but surprise was not
a feeling that she was given to express, and she only said, quietly
continuing her work--

"You, Fred, so early in the day?  You look quite pale.  Has anything
happened?"

"I want to speak to Mr. Garth," said Fred, not yet ready to say
more--"and to you also," he added, after a little pause, for he had no
doubt that Mrs. Garth knew everything about the bill, and he must in the
end speak of it before her, if not to her solely.

"Caleb will be in again in a few minutes," said Mrs. Garth, who
imagined some trouble between Fred and his father.  "He is sure not to
be long, because he has some work at his desk that must be done this
morning.  Do you mind staying with me, while I finish my matters here?"

"But we needn't go on about Cincinnatus, need we?" said Ben, who had
taken Fred's whip out of his hand, and was trying its efficiency on the
cat.

"No, go out now.  But put that whip down.  How very mean of you to whip
poor old Tortoise!  Pray take the whip from him, Fred."

"Come, old boy, give it me," said Fred, putting out his hand.

"Will you let me ride on your horse to-day?" said Ben, rendering up the
whip, with an air of not being obliged to do it.

"Not to-day--another time.  I am not riding my own horse."

"Shall you see Mary to-day?"

"Yes, I think so," said Fred, with an unpleasant twinge.

"Tell her to come home soon, and play at forfeits, and make fun."

"Enough, enough, Ben! run away," said Mrs. Garth, seeing that Fred was
teased. . .

"Are Letty and Ben your only pupils now, Mrs. Garth?" said Fred, when
the children were gone and it was needful to say something that would
pass the time.  He was not yet sure whether he should wait for Mr.
Garth, or use any good opportunity in conversation to confess to Mrs.
Garth herself, give her the money and ride away.

"One--only one.  Fanny Hackbutt comes at half past eleven.  I am not
getting a great income now," said Mrs. Garth, smiling.  "I am at a low
ebb with pupils.  But I have saved my little purse for Alfred's
premium: I have ninety-two pounds.  He can go to Mr. Hanmer's now; he
is just at the right age."

This did not lead well towards the news that Mr. Garth was on the brink
of losing ninety-two pounds and more.  Fred was silent.  "Young
gentlemen who go to college are rather more costly than that," Mrs.
Garth innocently continued, pulling out the edging on a cap-border.
"And Caleb thinks that Alfred will turn out a distinguished engineer:
he wants to give the boy a good chance.  There he is!  I hear him
coming in.  We will go to him in the parlor, shall we?"

When they entered the parlor Caleb had thrown down his hat and was
seated at his desk.

"What!  Fred, my boy!" he said, in a tone of mild surprise, holding his
pen still undipped; "you are here betimes."  But missing the usual
expression of cheerful greeting in Fred's face, he immediately added,
"Is there anything up at home?--anything the matter?"

"Yes, Mr. Garth, I am come to tell something that I am afraid will give
you a bad opinion of me.  I am come to tell you and Mrs. Garth that I
can't keep my word.  I can't find the money to meet the bill after all.
I have been unfortunate; I have only got these fifty pounds towards the
hundred and sixty."

While Fred was speaking, he had taken out the notes and laid them on
the desk before Mr. Garth.  He had burst forth at once with the plain
fact, feeling boyishly miserable and without verbal resources.  Mrs.
Garth was mutely astonished, and looked at her husband for an
explanation.  Caleb blushed, and after a little pause said--

"Oh, I didn't tell you, Susan: I put my name to a bill for Fred; it was
for a hundred and sixty pounds.  He made sure he could meet it himself."

There was an evident change in Mrs. Garth's face, but it was like a
change below the surface of water which remains smooth.  She fixed her
eyes on Fred, saying--

"I suppose you have asked your father for the rest of the money and he
has refused you."

"No," said Fred, biting his lip, and speaking with more difficulty;
"but I know it will be of no use to ask him; and unless it were of use,
I should not like to mention Mr. Garth's name in the matter."

"It has come at an unfortunate time," said Caleb, in his hesitating
way, looking down at the notes and nervously fingering the paper,
"Christmas upon us--I'm rather hard up just now.  You see, I have to
cut out everything like a tailor with short measure.  What can we do,
Susan?  I shall want every farthing we have in the bank.  It's a
hundred and ten pounds, the deuce take it!"

"I must give you the ninety-two pounds that I have put by for Alfred's
premium," said Mrs. Garth, gravely and decisively, though a nice ear
might have discerned a slight tremor in some of the words.  "And I have
no doubt that Mary has twenty pounds saved from her salary by this
time.  She will advance it."

Mrs. Garth had not again looked at Fred, and was not in the least
calculating what words she should use to cut him the most effectively.
Like the eccentric woman she was, she was at present absorbed in
considering what was to be done, and did not fancy that the end could
be better achieved by bitter remarks or explosions.  But she had made
Fred feel for the first time something like the tooth of remorse.
Curiously enough, his pain in the affair beforehand had consisted
almost entirely in the sense that he must seem dishonorable, and sink
in the opinion of the Garths: he had not occupied himself with the
inconvenience and possible injury that his breach might occasion them,
for this exercise of the imagination on other people's needs is not
common with hopeful young gentlemen.  Indeed we are most of us brought
up in the notion that the highest motive for not doing a wrong is
something irrespective of the beings who would suffer the wrong.  But
at this moment he suddenly saw himself as a pitiful rascal who was
robbing two women of their savings.

"I shall certainly pay it all, Mrs. Garth--ultimately," he stammered
out.

"Yes, ultimately," said Mrs. Garth, who having a special dislike to
fine words on ugly occasions, could not now repress an epigram.  "But
boys cannot well be apprenticed ultimately: they should be apprenticed
at fifteen."  She had never been so little inclined to make excuses for
Fred.

"I was the most in the wrong, Susan," said Caleb.  "Fred made sure of
finding the money.  But I'd no business to be fingering bills.  I
suppose you have looked all round and tried all honest means?" he
added, fixing his merciful gray eyes on Fred.  Caleb was too delicate,
to specify Mr. Featherstone.

"Yes, I have tried everything--I really have.  I should have had a
hundred and thirty pounds ready but for a misfortune with a horse which
I was about to sell.  My uncle had given me eighty pounds, and I paid
away thirty with my old horse in order to get another which I was going
to sell for eighty or more--I meant to go without a horse--but now it
has turned out vicious and lamed itself.  I wish I and the horses too
had been at the devil, before I had brought this on you.  There's no
one else I care so much for: you and Mrs. Garth have always been so
kind to me.  However, it's no use saying that.  You will always think
me a rascal now."

Fred turned round and hurried out of the room, conscious that he was
getting rather womanish, and feeling confusedly that his being sorry
was not of much use to the Garths.  They could see him mount, and
quickly pass through the gate.

"I am disappointed in Fred Vincy," said Mrs. Garth.  "I would not have
believed beforehand that he would have drawn you into his debts.  I
knew he was extravagant, but I did not think that he would be so mean
as to hang his risks on his oldest friend, who could the least afford
to lose."

"I was a fool, Susan:"

"That you were," said the wife, nodding and smiling.  "But I should not
have gone to publish it in the market-place. Why should you keep such
things from me?  It is just so with your buttons: you let them burst
off without telling me, and go out with your wristband hanging.  If I
had only known I might have been ready with some better plan."

"You are sadly cut up, I know, Susan," said Caleb, looking feelingly at
her.  "I can't abide your losing the money you've scraped together for
Alfred."

"It is very well that I _had_ scraped it together; and it is you who
will have to suffer, for you must teach the boy yourself.  You must
give up your bad habits.  Some men take to drinking, and you have taken
to working without pay.  You must indulge yourself a little less in
that.  And you must ride over to Mary, and ask the child what money she
has."

Caleb had pushed his chair back, and was leaning forward, shaking his
head slowly, and fitting his finger-tips together with much nicety.

"Poor Mary!" he said.  "Susan," he went on in a lowered tone, "I'm
afraid she may be fond of Fred."

"Oh no!  She always laughs at him; and he is not likely to think of her
in any other than a brotherly way."

Caleb made no rejoinder, but presently lowered his spectacles, drew up
his chair to the desk, and said, "Deuce take the bill--I wish it was
at Hanover!  These things are a sad interruption to business!"

The first part of this speech comprised his whole store of maledictory
expression, and was uttered with a slight snarl easy to imagine.  But
it would be difficult to convey to those who never heard him utter the
word "business," the peculiar tone of fervid veneration, of religious
regard, in which he wrapped it, as a consecrated symbol is wrapped in
its gold-fringed linen.

Caleb Garth often shook his head in meditation on the value, the
indispensable might of that myriad-headed, myriad-handed labor by which
the social body is fed, clothed, and housed.  It had laid hold of his
imagination in boyhood.  The echoes of the great hammer where roof or
keel were a-making, the signal-shouts of the workmen, the roar of the
furnace, the thunder and plash of the engine, were a sublime music to
him; the felling and lading of timber, and the huge trunk vibrating
star-like in the distance along the highway, the crane at work on the
wharf, the piled-up produce in warehouses, the precision and variety of
muscular effort wherever exact work had to be turned out,--all these
sights of his youth had acted on him as poetry without the aid of the
poets, had made a philosophy for him without the aid of philosophers,
a religion without the aid of theology.  His early ambition had been to
have as effective a share as possible in this sublime labor, which was
peculiarly dignified by him with the name of "business;" and though he
had only been a short time under a surveyor, and had been chiefly his
own teacher, he knew more of land, building, and mining than most of
the special men in the county.

His classification of human employments was rather crude, and, like the
categories of more celebrated men, would not be acceptable in these
advanced times.  He divided them into "business, politics, preaching,
learning, and amusement."  He had nothing to say against the last four;
but he regarded them as a reverential pagan regarded other gods than
his own.  In the same way, he thought very well of all ranks, but he
would not himself have liked to be of any rank in which he had not such
close contact with "business" as to get often honorably decorated with
marks of dust and mortar, the damp of the engine, or the sweet soil of
the woods and fields.  Though he had never regarded himself as other
than an orthodox Christian, and would argue on prevenient grace if the
subject were proposed to him, I think his virtual divinities were good
practical schemes, accurate work, and the faithful completion of
undertakings: his prince of darkness was a slack workman.  But there
was no spirit of denial in Caleb, and the world seemed so wondrous to
him that he was ready to accept any number of systems, like any number
of firmaments, if they did not obviously interfere with the best
land-drainage, solid building, correct measuring, and judicious boring
(for coal). In fact, he had a reverential soul with a strong practical
intelligence.  But he could not manage finance: he knew values well,
but he had no keenness of imagination for monetary results in the shape
of profit and loss: and having ascertained this to his cost, he
determined to give up all forms of his beloved "business" which
required that talent.  He gave himself up entirely to the many kinds of
work which he could do without handling capital, and was one of those
precious men within his own district whom everybody would choose to
work for them, because he did his work well, charged very little, and
often declined to charge at all.  It is no wonder, then, that the
Garths were poor, and "lived in a small way."  However, they did not
mind it.

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

completion: Unfortunately, the horse Fred buys turns out to have temper problems, and it gives itself a bum leg by kicking at the groom and catching its foot in a rope. So now the horse is worthless, and Fred only has fifty pounds towards repaying the debt. He decides that the only thing he can do is to go and confess everything to Mr. Garth, and then go and tell Mary himself. Mr. Garth isn't at his office, so Fred goes to his house. Mrs. Garth is there, working in the kitchen while teaching two of the younger children at the same time. Mrs. Garth is an intelligent and serious woman, but she feels motherly towards Fred in spite of his occasional stupidity. She doesn't know anything about the debt that her husband had co-signed, though. She's happy to see Fred, and invites him to sit and wait for Caleb to come home. While Fred waits, Mrs. Garth tells him about their plan to send Alfred, the oldest of the boys, to school for a good education. They've been saving money for it, and have just scraped 92 pounds together for the purpose. Fred winces when he hears this - all that money is going to have to go to pay the debt. He tells them both when Mr. Garth comes home, and Mrs. Garth immediately realizes that they'll have to give up Alfred's school money, and borrow money from Mary, besides. Fred leaves them to discuss it by themselves. Mrs. Garth tells Caleb that he'll have to stop working for free so often.