Middlemarch

The scene moves to the Garths' large parlor at breakfast: Caleb reading his letters, Mrs. Garth opposite, five of the children about — and Mary at home, waiting for a situation. She is finishing embroidery for Rosamond Vincy, who is to be married next week and cannot be married without this handkerchief (it is one of a dozen, and without it there would only be eleven). She has decided to take a post at a school in York — thirty-five pounds a year, and extra pay for teaching the smallest strummers at the piano. She dislikes schoolrooms: "I like the outside world better. It is a very inconvenient fault of mine." Mrs. Garth holds that teaching is the most delightful work in the world. Alfred calls it a nasty duty, and is told to find a fitter word. Then Caleb reads a letter from Sir James Chettam — and his face, which had shown grave surprise, is suddenly shaken by a little joyous laugh. He holds it up to his wife; they read it together. Sir James offers Caleb the management of the Freshitt estate and — on Brooke's behalf — the agency of Tipton as well. The two together would come to between four and five hundred pounds a year. Mrs. Garth puts her chin on her husband's head. The children erupt: Ben quotes Cincinnatus and rides his chair. Caleb tells Mary to write immediately and give up the school. "Stay and help your mother. I'm as pleased as Punch, now I've thought of that." Mary and her father laugh; she colors and tries to conceal that the tears are coming. Caleb speaks of the work with the awe of a man who finds his vocation restored: "I'd sooner have it than a fortune. I hold it the most honorable work that is." He pauses. "It's a great gift of God, Susan." Mrs. Garth cannot say anything more to him then about the pay. In the evening, Farebrother arrives as envoy from Fred Vincy. Fred has poured himself out to the Vicar and is going away — too miserable about the Garth debt to come and say good-by himself. He means to go up again for his degree. Caleb waves the debt aside: "It doesn't signify a farthing. We've had the pinch and have got over it." Then, with Mary out of the room, Caleb tells Farebrother the secret known only to himself and Susan: on the night Featherstone died, the old man asked Mary to burn the later will — the one that gave everything to Rigg and left nothing for Fred. He offered her nearly two hundred pounds if she would do it. Mary refused. "The will he wanted burnt was this last, so that if Mary had done what he wanted, Fred Vincy would have had ten thousand pounds." "She was in the right to do what she did, but she feels, as she says, much as if she had knocked down somebody's property and broken it against her will, when she was rightfully defending herself." After Farebrother leaves, Caleb tells Susan he is thinking of offering Fred work under him as a land agent. Mrs. Garth objects — the Vincys think the Garths beneath them. Caleb says: "I call it improper pride to let fools' notions hinder you from doing a good action." He then mentions almost as an afterthought that Bulstrode has asked him to do a valuation — and Rigg Featherstone may be about to sell Stone Court. Featherstone always hated Bulstrode. "The old man hated him, and never would bank with him."