Eddie was glad to have found, among his father’s uncountable underlinings, a passage that seemed to please Minty’s former students. Eddie chose the last paragraph from Vanity Fair, for Minty had always been a Thackeray man. “Ah! Vanitas Vanitatum! which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?— come, children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out.” Then Eddie returned to the matter of his parents’
