orldly point of view? Polly answered all these
questions of Major Sugarplums to the very best of her
power.

And in the midst of their walk an incident occurred
which, though very simple in its nature, was productive
of the greatest delight to Major Dobbin.  A pale young
man with feeble whiskers and a stiff white neckcloth came
walking down the lane, en sandwich--having a lady, that
is, on each arm.  One was a tall and commanding middle-
aged female, with features and a complexion similar to
those of the clergyman of the Church of England by
whose side she marched, and the other a stunted little
woman with a dark face, ornamented by a fine new bonnet
and white ribbons, and in a smart pelisse, with a rich
gold watch in the midst of her person.  The gentleman,
pinioned as he was by these two ladies, carried further a
parasol, shawl, and basket, so that his arms were entirely
engaged, and of course he was unable to touch his hat in
acknowledgement of the curtsey with which Miss Mary
Clapp greeted him.

He merely bowed his head in reply to her salutation,
which the two ladies returned with a patronizing air, and
at the same time looking severely at the individual in the
blue coat and bamboo cane who accompanied Miss Polly.

"Who's that?" asked the Major, amused by the group,
and after he had made way for the three to pass up the
lane.  Mary looked at him rather roguishly.

"That is our curate, the Reverend Mr. Binny (a twitch
from Major Dobbin), and his sister Miss B.  Lord bless us,
how she did use to worret us at Sunday-school; and the
other lady, the little one with a cast in her eye and the
handsome watch, is Mrs. Binny--Miss Grits that was;
her pa was a grocer, and kept the Little Original Gold
Tea Pot in Kensington Gravel Pits.  They were married last
month, and are just come back from Margate.  She's five
thousand pound to her fortune; but her and Miss B., who
made the match, have quarrelled already."

If the Major had twitched before, he started now, and
slapped the bamboo on the ground with an emphasis
which made Miss Clapp cry, "Law," and laugh too.  He
stood for a moment, silent, with open mouth, looking
after the retreating young couple, while Miss Mary told
their history; but he did not hear beyond the announcement
of the reverend gentleman's marriage; his head was
swimming with felicity.  After this rencontre he began to
walk double quick towards the place of his destination
--and yet they were too soon (for he was in a great
tremor at the idea of a meeting for which he had been
longing any time these ten years)--through the Brompton
lanes, and entering at the little old portal in Kensington
Garden wall.

"There they are," said Miss Polly, and she felt him
again start back on her arm.  She was a confidante at once
of the whole business.  She knew the story as well as if
she had read it in one of her favourite novel-books--
Fatherless Fanny, or the Scottish Chiefs.

"Suppose you were to run on and tell her," the Major
said.  Polly ran forward, her yellow shawl streaming in the
breeze.

Old Sedley was seated on a bench, his handkerchief
placed over his knees, prattling away, according to his
wont, with some old story about old times to which
Amelia had listened and awarded a patient smile many
a time before.  She could of late think of her own affairs,
and smile or make other marks of recognition of her
father's stories, scarcely hearing a word of the old man's
tales.  As Mary came bouncing along, and Amelia caught
sight of her, she started up from her bench.  Her first
thought was that something had happened to Georgy,
but the sight of the messenger's eager and happy face
dissipated that fear in the timorous mother's bosom.

"News!  News!" cried the emissary of Major Dobbin.
"He's come!  He's come!"

"Who is come?" said Emmy, still thinking of her son.

"Look there," answered Miss Clapp, turning round and
pointing; in which direction Amelia looking, saw
Dobbin's lean figure and long shadow stalking across the
grass.  Amelia started in her turn, blushed up, and, of
course, began to cry.  At all this simple little creature's
fetes, the grandes eaux were accustomed to play.
He looked at her--oh, how fondly--as she came
running towards him, her hands before her, ready to give
them to him.  She wasn't changed.  She was a little pale,
a little stouter in figure.  Her eyes were the same, the
kind trustful eyes.  There were scarce three lines of silver
in her soft brown hair.  She gave him both her hands as
she looked up flushing and smiling through her tears into
his honest homely face.  He took the two little hands
between his two and held them there.  He was speechless
for a moment.  Why did he not take her in his arms and
swear that he would never leave her? She must have
yielded:  she could not but have obeyed him.

"I--I've another arrival to announce," he said after a
pause.

"Mrs. Dobbin?" Amelia said, making a movement
back--why didn't he speak?

"No," he said, letting her hands go:  "Who has told
you those lies? I mean, your brother Jos came in the
same ship with me, and is come home to make you all
happy."

"Papa, Papa!" Emmy cried out, "here are news!  My
brother is in England.  He is come to take care of you.
Here is Major Dobbin."

Mr. Sedley started up, shaking a great deal and gathering
up his thoughts.  Then he stepped forward and made an
old-fashioned bow to the Major, whom he called Mr.
Dobbin, and hoped his worthy father, Sir William, was
quite well.  He proposed to call upon Sir William, who had
done him the honour of a visit a short time ago.  Sir
William had not called upon the old gentleman for eight
years--it was that visit he was thinking of returning.

"He is very much shaken," Emmy whispered as Dobbin
went up and cordially shook hands with the old man.

Although he had such particular business in London
that evening, the Major consented to forego it upon Mr.
Sedley's invitation to him to come home and partake of
tea.  Amelia put her arm under that of her young friend
with the yellow shawl and headed the party on their
return homewards, so that Mr. Sedley fell to Dobbin's share.
The old man walked very slowly and told a number of
ancient histories about himself and his poor Bessy, his
former prosperity, and his bankruptcy.  His thoughts, as is
usual with failing old men, were quite in former times.
The present, with the exception of the one catastrophe
which he felt, he knew little about.  The Major was glad to
let him talk on.  His eyes were fixed upon the figure in
front of him--the dear little figure always present to his
imagination and in his prayers, and visiting his dreams
wakeful or slumbering.

Amelia was very happy, smiling, and active all that
evening, performing her duties as hostess of the little
entertainment with the utmost grace and propriety, as
Dobbin thought.  His eyes followed her about as they sat
in the twilight.  How many a time had he longed for that
moment and thought of her far away under hot winds
and in weary marches, gentle and happy, kindly ministering
to the wants of old age, and decorating poverty with
sweet submission--as he saw her now.  I do not say that
his taste was the highest, or that it is the duty of great
intellects to be content with a bread-and-butter paradise,
such as sufficed our simple old friend; but his desires
were of this sort, whether for good or bad, and, with
Amelia to help him, he was as ready to drink as many
cups of tea as Doctor Johnson.

Amelia seeing this propensity, laughingly encouraged
it and looked exceedingly roguish as she administered to
him cup after cup.  It is true she did not know that the
Major had had no dinner and that the cloth was laid for
him at the Slaughters', and a plate laid thereon to mark
that the table was retained, in that very box in which
the Major and George had sat many a time carousing,
when she was a child just come home from Miss
Pinkerton's school.

The first thing Mrs. Osborne showed the Major was
Georgy's miniature, for which she ran upstairs on her
arrival at home.  It was not half handsome enough of
course for the boy, but wasn't it noble of him to think of
bringing it to his mother? Whilst her papa was awake she
did not talk much about Georgy.  To hear about Mr.
Osborne and Russell Square was not agreeable to the
old man, who very likely was unconscious that he had
been living for some months past mainly on the bounty
of his richer rival, and lost his temper if allusion was
made to the other.

Dobbin told him all, and a little more perhaps than
all, that had happened on board the Ramchunder, and
exaggerated Jos's benevolent dispositions towards his
father and resolution to make him comfortable in his
old days.  The truth is that during the voyage the Major
had impressed this duty most strongly upon his fellow-
passenger and extorted promises from him that he would
take charge of his sister and her child.  He soothed Jos's
irritation with regard to the bills which the old gentleman
had drawn upon him, gave a laughing account of his
own sufferings on the same score and of the famous
consignment of wine with which the old man had favoured
him, and brought Mr. Jos, who was by no means an ill-
natured person when well-pleased and moderately
flattered, to a very good state of feeling regarding his
relatives in Europe.

And in fine I am ashamed to say that the Major
stretched the truth so far as to tell old Mr. Sedley that it
was mainly a desire to see his parent which brought Jos
once more to Europe.

At his accustomed hour Mr. Sedley began to doze in
his chair, and then it was Amelia's opportunity to
commence her conversation, which she did with great
eagerness--it related exclusively to Georgy.  She did not talk
at all about her own sufferings at breaking from him, for
indeed, this worthy woman, though she was half-killed
by the separation from the child, yet thought it was very
wicked in her to repine at losing him; but everything
concerning him, his virtues, talents, and prospects, she
poured out.  She described his angelic beauty; narrated
a hundred instances of his generosity and greatness of
mind whilst living with her; how a Royal Duchess had
stopped and admired him in Kensington Gardens; how
splendidly he was cared for now, and how he had a
groom and a pony; what quickness and cleverness he
had, and what a prodigiously well-read and delightful
person the Reverend Lawrence Veal was, George's
master.  "He knows EVERYTHING," Amelia said.  "He has the
most delightful parties.  You who are so learned yourself,
and have read so much, and are so clever and
accomplished--don't shake your head and say no--HE
always used to say you were--you will be charmed with
Mr. Veal's parties.  The last Tuesday in every month.  He
says there is no place in the bar or the senate that
Georgy may not aspire to.  Look here," and she went to
the piano-drawer and drew out a theme of Georgy's
composition.  This great effort of genius, which is still
in the possession of George's mother, is as follows:

On Selfishness--Of all the vices which degrade the
human character, Selfishness is the most odious and
contemptible.  An undue love of Self leads to the most
monstrous crimes and occasions the greatest misfortunes both
in States and Families.  As a selfish man will impoverish
his family and often bring them to ruin, so a selfish
king brings ruin on his people and often plunges them
into war.

Example:  The selfishness of Achilles, as remarked by
the poet Homer, occasioned a thousand woes to the
Greeks--muri Achaiois alge etheke--(Hom. Il. A. 2).
The selfishness of the late Napoleon Bonaparte
occasioned innumerable wars in Europe and caused him to
perish, himself, in a miserable island--that of Saint Helena in
the Atlantic Ocean.

We see by these examples that we are not to consult
our own interest and ambition, but that we are to
consider the interests of others as well as our own.

George S.  Osborne
Athene House, 24 April, 1827

"Think of him writing such a hand, and quoting Greek
too, at his age," the delighted mother said.  "Oh, William,"
she added, holding out her hand to the Major, "what a
treasure Heaven has given me in that boy!  He is the
comfort of my life--and he is the image of--of him that's
gone!"

"Ought I to be angry with her for being faithful to
him?" William thought.  "Ought I to be jealous of my
friend in the grave, or hurt that such a heart as Amelia's
can love only once and for ever? Oh, George, George,
how little you knew the prize you had, though." This
sentiment passed rapidly through William's mind as he
was holding Amelia's hand, whilst the handkerchief was
veiling her eyes.

"Dear friend," she said, pressing the hand which held
hers, "how good, how kind you always have been to me!
See!  Papa is stirring.  You will go and see Georgy
tomorrow, won't you?"

"Not to-morrow," said poor old Dobbin.  "I have
business." He did not like to own that he had not as yet
been to his parents' and his dear sister Anne--a
remissness for which I am sure every well-regulated
person will blame the Major.  And presently he took his
leave, leaving his address behind him for Jos, against the
latter's arrival.  And so the first day was over, and he
had seen her.

When he got back to the Slaughters', the roast fowl
was of course cold, in which condition he ate it for
supper.  And knowing what early hours his family kept, and
that it would be needless to disturb their slumbers at so
late an hour, it is on record, that Major Dobbin treated
himself to half-price at the Haymarket Theatre that
evening, where let us hope he enjoyed himself.



CHAPTER LIX


The Old Piano

The Major's visit left old John Sedley in a great state of
agitation and excitement.  His daughter could not induce
him to settle down to his customary occupations or
amusements that night.  He passed the evening fumbling
amongst his boxes and desks, untying his papers with
trembling hands, and sorting and arranging them against
Jos's arrival.  He had them in the greatest order--his
tapes and his files, his receipts, and his letters with
lawyers and correspondents; the documents relative to
the wine project (which failed from a most unaccountable
accident, after commencing with the most splendid
prospects), the coal project (which only a want of capital
prevented from becoming the most successful scheme
ever put before the public), the patent saw-mills and
sawdust consolidation project, &c., &c.  All night, until a
very late hour, he passed in the preparation of these
documents, trembling about from one room to another,
with a quivering candle and shaky hands.  Here's the wine
papers, here's the sawdust, here's the coals; here's my
letters to Calcutta and Madras, and replies from Major
Dobbin, C.B., and Mr. Joseph Sedley to the same.  "He
shall find no irregularity about ME, Emmy," the old
gentleman said.

Emmy smiled.  "I don't think Jos will care about seeing
those papers, Papa," she said.

"You don't know anything about business, my dear,"
answered the sire, shaking his head with an important
air.  And it must be confessed that on this point Emmy
was very ignorant, and that is a pity some people are so
knowing.  All these twopenny documents arranged on a
side table, old Sedley covered them carefully over with
a clean bandanna handkerchief (one out of Major
Dobbin's lot) and enjoined the maid and landlady of the
house, in the most solemn way, not to disturb those
papers, which were arranged for the arrival of Mr. Joseph
Sedley the next morning, "Mr. Joseph Sedley of the
Honourable East India Company's Bengal Civil Service."

Amelia found him up very early the next morning,
more eager, more hectic, and more shaky than ever.  "I
didn't sleep much, Emmy, my dear," he said.  "I was
thinking of my poor Bessy.  I wish she was alive, to ride
in Jos's carriage once again.  She kept her own and
became it very well." And his eyes filled with tears, which
trickled down his furrowed old face.  Amelia wiped them
away, and smilingly kissed him, and tied the old man's
neckcloth in a smart bow, and put his brooch into his
best shirt frill, in which, in his Sunday suit of mourning,
he sat from six o'clock in the morning awaiting the
arrival of his son.

However, when the postman made his appearance, the
little party were put out of suspense by the receipt of a
letter from Jos to his sister, who announced that he felt
a little fatigued after his voyage, and should not be able
to move on that day, but that he would leave Southampton
early the next morning and be with his father and
mother at evening.  Amelia, as she read out the letter to
her father, paused over the latter word; her brother, it
was clear, did not know what had happened in the family.
Nor could he, for the fact is that, though the Major
rightly suspected that his travelling companion never
would be got into motion in so short a space as twenty-
four hours, and would find some excuse for delaying, yet
Dobbin had not written to Jos to inform him of the
calamity which had befallen the Sedley family, being
occupied in talking with Amelia until long after post-hour.

There are some splendid tailors' shops in the High
Street of Southampton, in the fine plate-glass windows
of which hang gorgeous waistcoats of all sorts, of silk
and velvet, and gold and crimson, and pictures of the
last new fashions, in which those wonderful gentlemen
with quizzing glasses, and holding on to little boys with
the exceeding large eyes and curly hair, ogle ladies in
riding habits prancing by the Statue of Achilles at Apsley
House.  Jos, although provided with some of the most
splendid vests that Calcutta could furnish, thought he
could not go to town until he was supplied with one or
two of these garments, and selected a crimson satin,
embroidered with gold butterflies, and a black and red
velvet tartan with white stripes and a rolling collar, with
which, and a rich blue satin stock and a gold pin,
consisting of a five-barred gate with a horseman in pink
enamel jumping over it, he thought he might make his
entry into London with some dignity.  For Jos's former
shyness and blundering blushing timidity had given way
to a more candid and courageous self-assertion of his
worth.  "I don't care about owning it," Waterloo Sedley
would say to his friends, "I am a dressy man"; and
though rather uneasy if the ladies looked at him at the
Government House balls, and though he blushed and
turned away alarmed under their glances, it was chiefly
from a dread lest they should make love to him that he
avoided them, being averse to marriage altogether.  But
there was no such swell in Calcutta as Waterloo Sedley,
I have heard say, and he had the handsomest turn-out,
gave the best bachelor dinners, and had the finest plate
in the whole place.

To make these waistcoats for a man of his size and
dignity took at least a day, part of which he employed in
hiring a servant to wait upon him and his native and in
instructing the agent who cleared his baggage, his boxes,
his books, which he never read, his chests of mangoes,
chutney, and curry-powders, his shawls for presents to
people whom he didn't know as yet, and the rest of his
Persicos apparatus.

At length, he drove leisurely to London on the third
day and in the new waistcoat, the native, with chattering
teeth, shuddering in a shawl on the box by the side of the
new European servant; Jos puffing his pipe at intervals
within and looking so majestic that the little boys cried
Hooray, and many people thought he must be a
Governor-General.  HE, I promise, did not decline the
obsequious invitation of the landlords to alight and refresh
himself in the neat country towns.  Having partaken of a
copious breakfast, with fish, and rice, and hard eggs, at
Southampton, he had so far rallied at Winchester as to
think a glass of sherry necessary.  At Alton he stepped
out of the carriage at his servant's request and imbibed
some of the ale for which the place is famous.  At Farnham
he stopped to view the Bishop's Castle and to partake
of a light dinner of stewed eels, veal cutlets, and
French beans, with a bottle of claret.  He was cold over
Bagshot Heath, where the native chattered more and
more, and Jos Sahib took some brandy-and-water; in
fact, when he drove into town he was as full of wine,
beer, meat, pickles, cherry-brandy, and tobacco as the
steward's cabin of a steam-packet.  It was evening when
his carriage thundered up to the little door in Brompton,
whither the affectionate fellow drove first, and before
hieing to the apartments secured for him by Mr. Dobbin
at the Slaughters'.

All the faces in the street were in the windows; the
little maidservant flew to the wicket-gate; the Mesdames
Clapp looked out from the casement of the ornamented
kitchen; Emmy, in a great flutter, was in the passage
among the hats and coats; and old Sedley in the parlour
inside, shaking all over.  Jos descended from the post-
chaise and down the creaking swaying steps in awful
state, supported by the new valet from Southampton and
the shuddering native, whose brown face was now livid
with cold and of the colour of a turkey's gizzard.  He
created an immense sensation in the passage presently,
where Mrs. and Miss Clapp, coming perhaps to listen
at the parlour door, found Loll Jewab shaking upon the
hall-bench under the coats, moaning in a strange piteous
way, and showing his yellow eyeballs and white teeth.

For, you see, we have adroitly shut the door upon the
meeting between Jos and the old father and the poor little
gentle sister inside.  The old man was very much affected;
so, of course, was his daughter; nor was Jos without
feeling.  In that long absence of ten years, the most selfish
will think about home and early ties.  Distance sanctifies
both.  Long brooding over those lost pleasures exaggerates
their charm and sweetness.  Jos was unaffectedly glad to
see and shake the hand of his father, between whom
and himself there had been a coolness--glad to see his
little sister, whom he remembered so pretty and smiling,
and pained at the alteration which time, grief, and
misfortune had made in the shattered old man.  Emmy had
come out to the door in her black clothes and whispered
to him of her mother's death, and not to speak of it to
their father.  There was no need of this caution, for the
elder Sedley himself began immediately to speak of the
event, and prattled about it, and wept over it plenteously.
It shocked the Indian not a little and made him think of
himself less than the poor fellow was accustomed to do.

The result of the interview must have been very
satisfactory, for when Jos had reascended his post-chaise
and had driven away to his hotel, Emmy embraced her father
tenderly, appealing to him with an air of triumph, and
asking the old man whether she did not always say that
her brother had a good heart?

Indeed, Joseph Sedley, affected by the humble position
in which he found his relations, and in the expansiveness
and overflowing of heart occasioned by the first meeting,
declared that they should never suffer want or
discomfort any more, that he was at home for some time
at any rate, during which his house and everything he
had should be theirs:  and that Amelia would look very
pretty at the head of his table--until she would accept
one of her own.

She shook her head sadly and had, as usual, recourse
to the waterworks.  She knew what he meant.  She and
her young confidante, Miss Mary, had talked over the
matter most fully, the very night of the Major's visit,
beyond which time the impetuous Polly could not refrain
from talking of the discovery which she had made, and
describing the start and tremor of joy by which Major
Dobbin betrayed himself when Mr. Binny passed with his
bride and the Major learned that he had no longer a
rival to fear.  "Didn't you see how he shook all over
when you asked if he was married and he said, 'Who told
you those lies?' Oh, M'am," Polly said, "he never kept his
eyes off you, and I'm sure he's grown grey athinking of
you."

But Amelia, looking up at her bed, over which hung
the portraits of her husband and son, told her young
protegee never, never, to speak on that subject again;
that Major Dobbin had been her husband's dearest friend
and her own and George's most kind and affectionate
guardian; that she loved him as a brother--but that a
woman who had been married to such an angel as that,
and she pointed to the wall, could never think of any
other union.  Poor Polly sighed:  she thought what she
should do if young Mr. Tomkins, at the surgery, who
always looked at her so at church, and who, by those
mere aggressive glances had put her timorous little heart
into such a flutter that she was ready to surrender at
once,--what she should do if he were to die? She knew
he was consumptive, his cheeks were so red and he was
so uncommon thin in the waist.

Not that Emmy, being made aware of the honest
Major's passion, rebuffed him in any way, or felt
displeased with him.  Such an attachment from so true and
loyal a gentleman could make no woman angry.
Desdemona was not angry with Cassio, though there is
very little doubt she saw the Lieutenant's partiality for
her (and I for my part believe that many more things
took place in that sad affair than the worthy Moorish
officer ever knew of); why, Miranda was even very kind
to Caliban, and we may be pretty sure for the same
reason.  Not that she would encourage him in the least--
the poor uncouth monster--of course not.  No more
would Emmy by any means encourage her admirer, the
Major.  She would give him that friendly regard, which
so much excellence and fidelity merited; she would treat
him with perfect cordiality and frankness until he made
his proposals, and THEN it would be time enough for her
to speak and to put an end to hopes which never could be
realized.

She slept, therefore, very soundly that evening, after
the conversation with Miss Polly, and was more than
ordinarily happy, in spite of Jos's delaying.  "I am glad
he is not going to marry that Miss O'Dowd," she thought.
"Colonel O'Dowd never could have a sister fit for such
an accomplished man as Major William." Who was there
amongst her little circle who would make him a good
wife? Not Miss Binny, she was too old and ill-tempered;
Miss Osborne? too old too.  Little Polly was too young.
Mrs. Osborne could not find anybody to suit the Major
before she went to sleep.

The same morning brought Major Dobbin a letter to the
Slaughters' Coffee-house from his friend at Southampton,
begging dear Dob to excuse Jos for being in a rage when
awakened the day before (he had a confounded headache,
and was just in his first sleep), and entreating Dob to
engage comfortable rooms at the Slaughters' for Mr. Sedley
and his servants.  The Major had become necessary to
Jos during the voyage.  He was attached to him, and hung
upon him.  The other passengers were away to London.
Young Ricketts and little Chaffers went away on the
coach that day--Ricketts on the box, and taking the
reins from Botley; the Doctor was off to his family at
Portsea; Bragg gone to town to his co-partners; and the
first mate busy in the unloading of the Ramchunder.  Mr.
Joe was very lonely at Southampton, and got the landlord
of the George to take a glass of wine with him that
day, at the very hour at which Major Dobbin was
seated at the table of his father, Sir William, where his
sister found out (for it was impossible for the Major to
tell fibs) that he had been to see Mrs. George Osborne.

Jos was so comfortably situated in St.  Martin's Lane, he
could enjoy his hookah there with such perfect ease, and
could swagger down to the theatres, when minded, so
agreeably, that, perhaps, he would have remained
altogether at the Slaughters' had not his friend, the Major,
been at his elbow.  That gentleman would not let the
Bengalee rest until he had executed his promise of having
a home for Amelia and his father.  Jos was a soft fellow
in anybody's hands, Dobbin most active in anybody's
concerns but his own; the civilian was, therefore, an easy
victim to the guileless arts of this good-natured diplomatist
and was ready to do, to purchase, hire, or relinquish
whatever his friend thought fit.  Loll Jewab, of whom the
boys about St.  Martin's Lane used to make cruel fun
whenever he showed his dusky countenance in the street, was
sent back to Calcutta in the Lady Kicklebury East
Indiaman, in which Sir William Dobbin had a share, having
previously taught Jos's European the art of preparing
curries, pilaus, and pipes.  It was a matter of great delight
and occupation to Jos to superintend the building of a
smart chariot which he and the Major ordered in the
neighbouring Long Acre:  and a pair of handsome horses
were jobbed, with which Jos drove about in state in the
park, or to call upon his Indian friends.  Amelia was not
seldom by his side on these excursions, when also Major
Dobbin would be seen in the back seat of the carriage.
At other times old Sedley and his daughter took
advantage of it, and Miss Clapp, who frequently
accompanied her friend, had great pleasure in being recognized
as she sat in the carriage, dressed in the famous yellow
shawl, by the young gentleman at the surgery, whose face
might commonly be seen over the window-blinds as she
passed.

Shortly after Jos's first appearance at Brompton, a
dismal scene, indeed, took place at that humble cottage at
which the Sedleys had passed the last ten years of their
life.  Jos's carriage (the temporary one, not the chariot
under construction) arrived one day and carried off old
Sedley and his daughter--to return no more.  The tears
that were shed by the landlady and the landlady's
daughter at that event were as genuine tears of sorrow as any
that have been outpoured in the course of this history.
In their long acquaintanceship and intimacy they could
not recall a harsh word that had been uttered by Amelia
She had been all sweetness and kindness, always
thankful, always gentle, even when Mrs. Clapp lost her own
temper and pressed for the rent.  When the kind creature
was going away for good and all, the landlady reproached
herself bitterly for ever having used a rough expression to
her--how she wept, as they stuck up with wafers on the
window, a paper notifying that the little rooms so long
occupied were to let!  They never would have such lodgers
again, that was quite clear.  After-life proved the truth of
this melancholy prophecy, and Mrs. Clapp revenged
herself for the deterioration of mankind by levying the most
savage contributions upon the tea-caddies and legs of
mutton of her locataires.  Most of them scolded and
grumbled; some of them did not pay; none of them stayed.
The landlady might well regret those old, old friends, who
had left her.

As for Miss Mary, her sorrow at Amelia's departure
was such as I shall not attempt to depict.  From childhood
upwards she had been with her daily and had attached
herself so passionately to that dear good lady that when
the grand barouche came to carry her off into splendour,
she fainted in the arms of her friend, who was indeed
scarcely less affected than the good-natured girl.  Amelia
loved her like a daughter.  During eleven years the girl had
been her constant friend and associate.  The separation was
a very painful one indeed to her.  But it was of course
arranged that Mary was to come and stay often at the
grand new house whither Mrs. Osborne was going, and
where Mary was sure she would never be so happy as
she had been in their humble cot, as Miss Clapp called it,
in the language of the novels which she loved.

Let us hope she was wrong in her judgement.  Poor
Emmy's days of happiness had been very few in that
humble cot.  A gloomy Fate had oppressed her there.  She
never liked to come back to the house after she had left
it, or to face the landlady who had tyrannized over her
when ill-humoured and unpaid, or when pleased had
treated her with a coarse familiarity scarcely less odious.
Her servility and fulsome compliments when Emmy was
in prosperity were not more to that lady's liking.  She
cast about notes of admiration all over the new house,
extolling every article of furniture or ornament; she
fingered Mrs. Osborne's dresses and calculated their price.
Nothing could be too good for that sweet lady, she
vowed and protested.  But in the vulgar sycophant who
now paid court to her, Emmy always remembered the
coarse tyrant who had made her miserable many a time,
to whom she had been forced to put up petitions for
time, when the rent was overdue; who cried out at her
extravagance if she bought delicacies for her ailing mother
or father; who had seen her humble and trampled upon
her.

Nobody ever heard of these griefs, which had been
part of our poor little woman's lot in life.  She kept them
secret from her father, whose improvidence was the cause
of much of her misery.  She had to bear all the blame of
his misdoings, and indeed was so utterly gentle and
humble as to be made by nature for a victim.

I hope she is not to suffer much more of that hard
usage.  And, as in all griefs there is said to be some
consolation, I may mention that poor Mary, when left at her
friend's departure in a hysterical condition, was placed
under the medical treatment of the young fellow from
the surgery, under whose care she rallied after a short
period.  Emmy, when she went away from Brompton,
endowed Mary with every article of furniture that the house
contained, only taking away her pictures (the two
pictures over the bed) and her piano--that little old piano
which had now passed into a plaintive jingling old age,
but which she loved for reasons of her own.  She was a
child when first she played on it, and her parents gave it
her.  It had been given to her again since, as the reader
may remember, when her father's house was gone to ruin
and the instrument was recovered out of the wreck.

Major Dobbin was exceedingly pleased when, as he
was superintending the arrangements of Jos's new house
--which the Major insisted should be very handsome and
comfortable--the cart arrived from Brompton, bringing
the trunks and bandboxes of the emigrants from that
village, and with them the old piano.  Amelia would have it
up in her sitting-room, a neat little apartment on the
second floor, adjoining her father's chamber, and where
the old gentleman sat commonly of evenings.

When the men appeared then bearing this old music-
box, and Amelia gave orders that it should be placed
in the chamber aforesaid, Dobbin was quite elated.  "I'm
glad you've kept it," he said in a very sentimental
manner.  "I was afraid you didn't care about it."

"I value it more than anything I have in the world,"
said Amelia.

"Do you, Amelia?" cried the Major.  The fact was,
as he had bought it himself, though he never said
anything about it, it never entered into his head to suppose
that Emmy should think anybody else was the purchaser,
and as a matter of course he fancied that she knew the
gift came from him.  "Do you, Amelia?" he said; and
the question, the great question of all, was trembling
on his lips, when Emmy replied--

"Can I do otherwise?--did not he give it me?"

"I did not know," said poor old Dob, and his
countenance fell.

Emmy did not note the circumstance at the time, nor
take immediate heed of the very dismal expression which
honest Dobbin's countenance assumed, but she thought
of it afterwards.  And then it struck her, with inexpressible
pain and mortification too, that it was William who
was the giver of the piano, and not George, as she had
fancied.  It was not George's gift; the only one which she
had received from her lover, as she thought--the thing
she had cherished beyond all others--her dearest relic
and prize.  She had spoken to it about George; played
his favourite airs upon it; sat for long evening hours,
touching, to the best of her simple art, melancholy
harmonies on the keys, and weeping over them in silence.
It was not George's relic.  It was valueless now.  The next
time that old Sedley asked her to play, she said it was
shockingly out of tune, that she had a headache, that
she couldn't play.

Then, according to her custom, she rebuked herself
for her pettishness and ingratitude and determined to
make a reparation to honest William for the slight she
had not expressed to him, but had felt for his piano.
A few days afterwards, as they were seated in the
drawing-room, where Jos had fallen asleep with great comfort
after dinner, Amelia said with rather a faltering voice
to Major Dobbin--

"I have to beg your pardon for something."

"About what?" said he.

"About--about that little square piano.  I never thanked
you for it when you gave it me, many, many years ago,
before I was married.  I thought somebody else had given
it.  Thank you, William." She held out her hand, but the
poor little woman's heart was bleeding; and as for her
eyes, of course they were at their work.

But William could hold no more.  "Amelia, Amelia,"
he said, "I did buy it for you.  I loved you then as I
do now.  I must tell you.  I think I loved you from the
first minute that I saw you, when George brought me to
your house, to show me the Amelia whom he was
engaged to.  You were but a girl, in white, with large
ringlets; you came down singing--do you remember?--
and we went to Vauxhall.  Since then I have thought of
but one woman in the world, and that was you.  I
think there is no hour in the day has passed for twelve
years that I haven't thought of you.  I came to tell you
this before I went to India, but you did not care, and
I hadn't the heart to speak.  You did not care whether
I stayed or went."

"I was very ungrateful," Amelia said.

"No, only indifferent," Dobbin continued desperately.
"I have nothing to make a woman to be otherwise.  I
know what you are feeling now.  You are hurt in your
heart at the discovery about the piano, and that it came
from me and not from George.  I forgot, or I should
never have spoken of it so.  It is for me to ask your
pardon for being a fool for a moment, and thinking
that years of constancy and devotion might have pleaded
with you."

"It is you who are cruel now," Amelia said with some
spirit.  "George is my husband, here and in heaven.  How
could I love any other but him? I am his now as when
you first saw me, dear William.  It was he who told me
how good and generous you were, and who taught me
to love you as a brother.  Have you not been everything
to me and my boy? Our dearest, truest, kindest friend
and protector? Had you come a few months sooner
perhaps you might have spared me that--that dreadful
parting.  Oh, it nearly killed me, William--but you didn't
come, though I wished and prayed for you to come,
and they took him too away from me.  Isn't he a noble
boy, William? Be his friend still and mine"--and here her
voice broke, and she hid her face on his shoulder.

The Major folded his arms round her, holding her to
him as if she was a child, and kissed her head.  "I will
not change, dear Amelia," he said.  "I ask for no more
than your love.  I think I would not have it otherwise.
Only let me stay near you and see you often."

"Yes, often," Amelia said.  And so William was at
liberty to look and long--as the poor boy at school
who has no money may sigh after the contents of the
tart-woman's tray.




CHAPTER LX


Returns to the Genteel World

Good fortune now begins to smile upon Amelia.  We are
glad to get her out of that low sphere in which she has
been creeping hitherto and introduce her into a polite
circle--not so grand and refined as that in which our
other female friend, Mrs. Becky, has appeared, but still
having no small pretensions to gentility and fashion.  Jos's
friends were all from the three presidencies, and his new
house was in the comfortable Anglo-Indian district of
which Moira Place is the centre.  Minto Square, Great
Clive Street, Warren Street, Hastings Street, Ochterlony
Place, Plassy Square, Assaye Terrace ("gardens" was
a felicitous word not applied to stucco houses with
asphalt terraces in front, so early as 1827)--who does not
know these respectable abodes of the retired Indian
aristocracy, and the quarter which Mr. Wenham calls the
Black Hole, in a word? Jos's position in life was not grand
enough to entitle him to a house in Moira Place, where
none can live but retired Members of Council, and
partners of Indian firms (who break, after having settled a
hundred thousand pounds on their wives, and retire into
comparative penury to a country place and four thousand
a year); he engaged a comfortable house of a
second- or third-rate order in Gillespie Street, purchasing the
carpets, costly mirrors, and handsome and appropriate
planned furniture by Seddons from the assignees of Mr.
Scape, lately admitted partner into the great Calcutta
House of Fogle, Fake, and Cracksman, in which poor
Scape had embarked seventy thousand pounds, the
earnings of a long and honourable life, taking Fake's place,
who retired to a princely park in Sussex (the Fogles have
been long out of the firm, and Sir Horace Fogle is about
to be raised to the peerage as Baron Bandanna)--admitted,
I say, partner into the great agency house of Fogle
and Fake two years before it failed for a million and
plunged half the Indian public into misery and ruin.

Scape, ruined, honest, and broken-hearted at sixty-five
years of age, went out to Calcutta to wind up the affairs
of the house.  Walter Scape was withdrawn from Eton
and put into a merchant's house.  Florence Scape, Fanny
Scape, and their mother faded away to Boulogne, and
will be heard of no more.  To be brief, Jos stepped in and
bought their carpets and sideboards and admired
himself in the mirrors which had reflected their kind
handsome faces.  The Scape tradesmen, all honourably paid,
left their cards, and were eager to supply the new
household.  The large men in white waistcoats who waited at
Scape's dinners, greengrocers, bank-porters, and
milkmen in their private capacity, left their addresses and
ingratiated themselves with the butler.  Mr. Chummy, the
chimney-purifier, who had swept the last three families,
tried to coax the butler and the boy under him, whose
duty it was to go out covered with buttons and with
stripes down his trousers, for the protection of Mrs.
Amelia whenever she chose to walk abroad.

It was a modest establishment.  The butler was Jos's
valet also, and never was more drunk than a butler in a
small family should be who has a proper regard for his
master's wine.  Emmy was supplied with a maid, grown on
Sir William Dobbin's suburban estate; a good girl, whose
kindness and humility disarmed Mrs. Osborne, who was
at first terrified at the idea of having a servant to wait
upon herself, who did not in the least know how to use
one, and who always spoke to domestics with the most
reverential politeness.  But this maid was very useful in
the family, in dexterously tending old Mr. Sedley, who
kept almost entirely to his own quarter of the house
and never mixed in any of the gay doings which took
place there.

Numbers of people came to see Mrs. Osborne.  Lady
Dobbin and daughters were delighted at her change of
fortune, and waited upon her.  Miss Osborne from Russell
Square came in her grand chariot with the flaming
hammer-cloth emblazoned with the Leeds arms.  Jos was
reported to be immensely rich.  Old Osborne had no
objection that Georgy should inherit his uncle's property as
well as his own.  "Damn it, we will make a man of the
feller," he said; "and I'll see him in Parliament before I
die.  You may go and see his mother, Miss O., though I'll
never set eyes on her":  and Miss Osborne came.  Emmy,
you may be sure, was very glad to see her, and so be
brought nearer to George.  That young fellow was
allowed to come much more frequently than before to visit
his mother.  He dined once or twice a week in Gillespie
Street and bullied the servants and his relations there, just
as he did in Russell Square.

He was always respectful to Major Dobbin, however,
and more modest in his demeanour when that gentleman
was present.  He was a clever lad and afraid of the
Major.  George could not help admiring his friend's
simplicity, his good humour, his various learning quietly
imparted, his general love of truth and justice.  He had met
no such man as yet in the course of his experience, and
he had an instinctive liking for a gentleman.  He hung
fondly by his godfather's side, and it was his delight to
walk in the parks and hear Dobbin talk.  William told
George about his father, about India and Waterloo, about
everything but himself.  When George was more than
usually pert and conceited, the Major made jokes at him,
which Mrs. Osborne thought very cruel.  One day, taking
him to the play, and the boy declining to go into the pit
because it was vulgar, the Major took him to the boxes,
left him there, and went down himself to the pit.  He
had not been seated there very long before he felt an arm
thrust under his and a dandy little hand in a kid glove
squeezing his arm.  George had seen the absurdity of his
ways and come down from the upper region.  A tender
laugh of benevolence lighted up old Dobbin's face and
eyes as he looked at the repentant little prodigal.  He
loved the boy, as he did everything that belonged to
Amelia.  How charmed she was when she heard of this
instance of George's goodness!  Her eyes looked more
kindly on Dobbin than they ever had done.  She blushed,
he thought, after looking at him so.

Georgy never tired of his praises of the Major to his
mother.  "I like him, Mamma, because he knows such lots
of things; and he ain't like old Veal, who is always
bragging and using such long words, don't you know? The
chaps call him 'Longtail' at school.  I gave him the name;
ain't it capital? But Dob reads Latin like English, and
French and that; and when we go out together he tells me
stories about my Papa, and never about himself; though I
heard Colonel Buckler, at Grandpapa's, say that he was
one of the bravest officers in the army, and had
distinguished himself ever so much.  Grandpapa was quite
surprised, and said, 'THAT feller!  Why, I didn't think he could
say Bo to a goose'--but l know he could, couldn't he,
Mamma?"

Emmy laughed:  she thought it was very likely the
Major could do thus much.

If there was a sincere liking between George and the
Major, it must be confessed that between the boy and his
uncle no great love existed.  George had got a way of
blowing out his cheeks, and putting his hands in his
waistcoat pockets, and saying, "God bless my soul, you don't
say so," so exactly after the fashion of old Jos that it was
impossible to refrain from laughter.  The servants would
explode at dinner if the lad, asking for something which
wasn't at table, put on that countenance and used that
favourite phrase.  Even Dobbin would shoot out a sudden
peal at the boy's mimicry.  If George did not mimic his
uncle to his face, it was only by Dobbin's rebukes and
Amelia's terrified entreaties that the little scapegrace was
induced to desist.  And the worthy civilian being haunted
by a dim consciousness that the lad thought him an ass,
and was inclined to turn him into ridicule, used to be
extremely timorous and, of course, doubly pompous and
dignified in the presence of Master Georgy.  When it was
announced that the young gentleman was expected in
Gillespie Street to dine with his mother, Mr. Jos
commonly found that he had an engagement at the Club.
Perhaps nobody was much grieved at his absence.  On
those days Mr. Sedley would commonly be induced to
come out from his place of refuge in the upper stories,
and there would be a small family party, whereof Major
Dobbin pretty generally formed one.  He was the ami de
la maison--old Sedley's friend, Emmy's friend, Georgy's
friend, Jos's counsel and adviser.  "He might almost as
well be at Madras for anything WE see of him," Miss
Ann Dobbin remarked at Camberwell.  Ah!  Miss Ann, did
it not strike you that it was not YOU whom the Major
wanted to marry?

Joseph Sedley then led a life of dignified otiosity such
as became a person of his eminence.  His very first point,
of course, was to become a member of the Oriental Club,
where he spent his mornings in the company of his
brother Indians, where he dined, or whence he brought
home men to dine.

Amelia had to receive and entertain these gentlemen
and their ladies.  From these she heard how soon Smith
would be in Council; how many lacs Jones had brought
home with him, how Thomson's House in London had
refused the bills drawn by Thomson, Kibobjee, and Co.,
the Bombay House, and how it was thought the Calcutta
House must go too; how very imprudent, to say the
least of it, Mrs. Brown's conduct (wife of Brown of the
Ahmednuggur Irregulars) had been with young Swankey
of the Body Guard, sitting up with him on deck until all
hours, and losing themselves as they were riding out at
the Cape; how Mrs. Hardyman had had out her thirteen
sisters, daughters of a country curate, the Rev:  Felix
Rabbits, and married eleven of them, seven high up in
the service; how Hornby was wild because his wife
would stay in Europe, and Trotter was appointed
Collector at Ummerapoora.  This and similar talk took place
at the grand dinners all round.  They had the same
conversation; the same silver dishes; the same saddles of
mutton, boiled turkeys, and entrees.  Politics set in a
short time after dessert, when the ladies retired upstairs
and talked about their complaints and their children.

Mutato nomine, it is all the same.  Don't the barristers'
wives talk about Circuit? Don't the soldiers' ladies
gossip about the Regiment? Don't the clergymen's ladies
discourse about Sunday-schools and who takes whose duty?
Don't the very greatest ladies of all talk about that small
clique of persons to whom they belong? And why should
our Indian friends not have their own conversation?--
only I admit it is slow for the laymen whose fate it
sometimes is to sit by and listen.

Before long Emmy had a visiting-book, and was driving
about regularly in a carriage, calling upon Lady Bludyer
(wife of Major-General Sir Roger Bludyer, K.C.B., Bengal
Army); Lady Huff, wife of Sir G.  Huff, Bombay ditto;
Mrs. Pice, the Lady of Pice the Director, &c.  We are not
long in using ourselves to changes in life.  That carriage
came round to Gillespie Street every day; that buttony
boy sprang up and down from the box with Emmy's and
Jos's visiting-cards; at stated hours Emmy and the
carriage went for Jos to the Club and took him an airing;
or, putting old Sedley into the vehicle, she drove the old
man round the Regent's Park.  The lady's maid and the
chariot, the visiting-book and the buttony page, became
soon as familiar to Amelia as the humble routine of
Brompton.  She accommodated herself to one as to the
other.  If Fate had ordained that she should be a Duchess,
she would even have done that duty too.  She was voted, in
Jos's female society, rather a pleasing young person--
not much in her, but pleasing, and that sort of thing.

The men, as usual, liked her artless kindness and
simple refined demeanour.  The gallant young Indian dandies
at home on furlough--immense dandies these--chained
and moustached--driving in tearing cabs, the pillars of
the theatres, living at West End hotels--nevertheless
admired Mrs. Osborne, liked to bow to her carriage in the
park, and to be admitted to have the honour of paying
her a morning visit.  Swankey of the Body Guard
himself, that dangerous youth, and the greatest buck of all
the Indian army now on leave, was one day discovered
by Major Dobbin tete-a-tete with Amelia, and
describing the sport of pig-sticking to her with great humour and
eloquence; and he spoke afterwards of a d--d king's
officer that's always hanging about the house--a long,
thin, queer-looking, oldish fellow--a dry fellow though,
that took the shine out of a man in the talking line.

Had the Major possessed a little more personal vanity
he would have been jealous of so dangerous a young
buck as that fascinating Bengal Captain.  But Dobbin was
of too simple and generous a nature to have any doubts
about Amelia.  He was glad that the young men should
pay her respect, and that others should admire her.  Ever
since her womanhood almost, had she not been
persecuted and undervalued? It pleased him to see how
kindness bought out her good qualities and how her spirits
gently rose with her prosperity.  Any person who
appreciated her paid a compliment to the Major's good
judgement--that is, if a man may be said to have good
judgement who is under the influence of Love's delusion.

After Jos went to Court, which we may be sure he
did as a loyal subject of his Sovereign (showing himself
in his full court suit at the Club, whither Dobbin came
to fetch him in a very shabby old uniform) he who had
always been a staunch Loyalist and admirer of George
IV, became such a tremendous Tory and pillar of the
State that he was for having Amelia to go to a
Drawing-room, too.  He somehow had worked himself up
to believe that he was implicated in the maintenance of the
public welfare and that the Sovereign would not be happy
unless Jos Sedley and his family appeared to rally round
him at St.  James's.

Emmy laughed.  "Shall I wear the family diamonds,
Jos?" she said.

"I wish you would let me buy you some," thought the
Major.  "I should like to see any that were too good for
you."



CHAPTER LXI


In Which Two Lights are Put Out

There came a day when the round of decorous pleasures
and solemn gaieties in which Mr. Jos Sedley's family
indulged was interrupted by an event which happens in
most houses.  As you ascend the staircase of your house
from the drawing towards the bedroom floors, you may
have remarked a little arch in the wall right before you,
which at once gives light to the stair which leads from
the second story to the third (where the nursery and
servants' chambers commonly are) and serves for
another purpose of utility, of which the undertaker's men
can give you a notion.  They rest the coffins upon that
arch, or pass them through it so as not to disturb in any
unseemly manner the cold tenant slumbering within the
black ark.

That second-floor arch in a London house, looking up
and down the well of the staircase and commanding the
main thoroughfare by which the inhabitants are passing;
by which cook lurks down before daylight to scour her
pots and pans in the kitchen; by which young master
stealthily ascends, having left his boots in the hall, and
let himself in after dawn from a jolly night at the Club;
down which miss comes rustling in fresh ribbons and
spreading muslins, brilliant and beautiful, and prepared
for conquest and the ball; or Master Tommy slides,
preferring the banisters for a mode of conveyance, and
disdaining danger and the stair; down which the mother is
fondly carried smiling in her strong husband's arms, as
he steps steadily step by step, and followed by the monthly
nurse, on the day when the medical man has pronounced
that the charming patient may go downstairs;
up which John lurks to bed, yawning, with a sputtering
tallow candle, and to gather up before sunrise the boots
which are awaiting him in the passages--that stair, up or
down which babies are carried, old people are helped,
guests are marshalled to the ball, the parson walks to the
christening, the doctor to the sick-room, and the
undertaker's men to the upper floor--what a memento of Life,
Death, and Vanity it is--that arch and stair--if you
choose to consider it, and sit on the landing, looking up
and down the well!  The doctor will come up to us too
for the last time there, my friend in motley.  The nurse
will look in at the curtains, and you take no notice--and
then she will fling open the windows for a little and let in
the air.  Then they will pull down all the front blinds of the
house and live in the back rooms--then they will send
for the lawyer and other men in black, &c.  Your comedy
and mine will have been played then, and we shall be
removed, oh, how far, from the trumpets, and the shouting,
and the posture-making.  If we are gentlefolks they
will put hatchments over our late domicile, with gilt
cherubim, and mottoes stating that there is "Quiet in
Heaven." Your son will new furnish the house, or
perhaps let it, and go into a more modern quarter; your
name will be among the "Members Deceased" in the
lists of your clubs next year.  However much you may be
mourned, your widow will like to have her weeds neatly
made--the cook will send or come up to ask about
dinner--the survivor will soon bear to look at your picture
over the mantelpiece, which will presently be deposed
from the place of honour, to make way for the portrait of
the son who reigns.

Which of the dead are most tenderly and passionately
deplored? Those who love the survivors the least, I
believe.  The death of a child occasions a passion of grief
and frantic tears, such as your end, brother reader, will
never inspire.  The death of an infant which scarce knew
you, which a week's absence from you would have caused
to forget you, will strike you down more than the loss of
your closest friend, or your first-born son--a man grown
like yourself, with children of his own.  We may be harsh
and stern with Judah and Simeon--our love and pity gush
out for Benjamin, the little one.  And if you are old, as
some reader of this may be or shall be old and rich, or
old and poor--you may one day be thinking for yourself
--"These people are very good round about me, but
they won't grieve too much when I am gone.  I am very
rich, and they want my inheritance--or very poor, and
they are tired of supporting me."

The period of mourning for Mrs. Sedley's death was
only just concluded, and Jos scarcely had had time to
cast off his black and appear in the splendid waistcoats
which he loved, when it became evident to those about
Mr. Sedley that another event was at hand, and that the
old man was about to go seek for his wife in the dark land
whither she had preceded him.  "The state of my father's
health," Jos Sedley solemnly remarked at the Club,
"prevents me from giving any LARGE parties this season:  but if
you will come in quietly at half-past six, Chutney, my
boy, and fake a homely dinner with one or two of the
old set--I shall be always glad to see you." So Jos and
his acquaintances dined and drank their claret among
themselves in silence, whilst the sands of life were
running out in the old man's glass upstairs.  The velvet-footed
butler brought them their wine, and they composed
themselves to a rubber after dinner, at which Major Dobbin
would sometimes come and take a hand; and Mrs.
Osborne would occasionally descend, when her patient
above was settled for the night, and had commenced one
of those lightly troubled slumbers which visit the pillow
of old age.

The old man clung to his daughter during this
sickness.  He would take his broths and medicines from
scarcely any other hand.  To tend him became almost the
sole business of her life.  Her bed was placed close by the
door which opened into his chamber, and she was alive
at the slightest noise or disturbance from the couch of
the querulous invalid.  Though, to do him justice, he lay
awake many an hour, silent and without stirring,
unwilling to awaken his kind and vigilant nurse.

He loved his daughter with more fondness now,
perhaps, than ever he had done since the days of her
childhood.  In the discharge of gentle offices and kind filial
duties, this simple creature shone most especially.  "She
walks into the room as silently as a sunbeam," Mr.
Dobbin thought as he saw her passing in and out from her
father's room, a cheerful sweetness lighting up her face
as she moved to and fro, graceful and noiseless.  When
women are brooding over their children, or busied in a
sick-room, who has not seen in their faces those sweet
angelic beams of love and pity?

A secret feud of some years' standing was thus
healed, and with a tacit reconciliation.  In these last
hours, and touched by her love and goodness, the old
man forgot all his grief against her, and wrongs which
he and his wife had many a long night debated:  how she
had given up everything for her boy; how she was
careless of her parents in their old age and misfortune, and
only thought of the child; how absurdly and foolishly,
impiously indeed, she took on when George was
removed from her.  Old Sedley forgot these charges as he
was making up his last account, and did justice to the
gentle and uncomplaining little martyr.  One night when
she stole into his room, she found him awake, when the
broken old man made his confession.  "Oh, Emmy, I've
been thinking we were very unkind and unjust to you,"
he said and put out his cold and feeble hand to her.  She
knelt down and prayed by his bedside, as he did too,
having still hold of her hand.  When our turn comes, friend,
may we have such company in our prayers!

Perhaps as he was lying awake then, his life may have
passed before him--his early hopeful struggles, his manly
successes and prosperity, his downfall in his declining
years, and his present helpless condition--no chance of
revenge against Fortune, which had had the better of
him--neither name nor money to bequeath--a spent-out,
bootless life of defeat and disappointment, and the
end here!  Which, I wonder, brother reader, is the better
lot, to die prosperous and famous, or poor and
disappointed? To have, and to be forced to yield; or to
sink out of life, having played and lost the game? That
must be a strange feeling, when a day of our life comes
and we say, "To-morrow, success or failure won't
matter much, and the sun will rise, and all the myriads of
mankind go to their work or their pleasure as usual, but
I shall be out of the turmoil."

So there came one morning and sunrise when all the
world got up and set about its various works and
pleasures, with the exception of old John Sedley, who was not
to fight with fortune, or to hope or scheme any more,
but to go and take up a quiet and utterly unknown
residence in a churchyard at Brompton by the side of
his old wife.

Major Dobbin, Jos, and Georgy followed his remains
to the grave, in a black cloth coach.  Jos came on
purpose from the Star and Garter at Richmond, whither he
retreated after the deplorable event.  He did not care
to remain in the house, with the--under the circumstances,
you understand.  But Emmy stayed and did her
duty as usual.  She was bowed down by no especial grief,
and rather solemn than sorrowful.  She prayed that her
own end might be as calm and painless, and thought
with trust and reverence of the words which she had
heard from her father during his illness, indicative of his
faith, his resignation, and his future hope.

Yes, I think that will be the better ending of the two,
after all.  Suppose you are particularly rich and well-to-
do and say on that last day, "I am very rich; I am
tolerably well known; I have lived all my life in the best
society, and thank Heaven, come of a most respectable
family.  I have served my King and country with honour.
I was in Parliament for several years, where, I may say,
my speeches were listened to and pretty well received.
I don't owe any man a shilling:  on the contrary, I lent
my old college friend, Jack Lazarus, fifty pounds, for which
my executors will not press him.  I leave my daughters
with ten thousand pounds apiece--very good portions
for girls; I bequeath my plate and furniture, my house in
Baker Street, with a handsome jointure, to my widow for
her life; and my landed property, besides money in the
funds, and my cellar of well-selected wine in Baker Street,
to my son.  I leave twenty pound a year to my valet; and
I defy any man after I have gone to find anything against
my character." Or suppose, on the other hand, your
swan sings quite a different sort of dirge and you say,
"I am a poor blighted, disappointed old fellow, and have
made an utter failure through life.  I was not endowed
either with brains or with good fortune, and confess
that I have committed a hundred mistakes and blunders.
I own to having forgotten my duty many a time.  I can't
pay what I owe.  On my last bed I lie utterly helpless
and humble, and I pray forgiveness for my weakness and
throw myself, with a contrite heart, at the feet of the
Divine Mercy." Which of these two speeches, think
you, would be the best oration for your own funeral?
Old Sedley made the last; and in that humble frame of
mind, and holding by the hand of his daughter, life and
disappointment and vanity sank away from under him.

"You see," said old Osborne to George, "what comes
of merit, and industry, and judicious speculations, and
that.  Look at me and my banker's account.  Look at your
poor Grandfather Sedley and his failure.  And yet he was
a better man than I was, this day twenty years--a better
man, I should say, by ten thousand pound."

Beyond these people and Mr. Clapp's family, who
came over from Brompton to pay a visit of condolence,
not a single soul alive ever cared a penny piece about
old John Sedley, or remembered the existence of such a
person.

When old Osborne first heard from his friend Colonel
Buckler (as little Georgy had already informed us) how
distinguished an officer Major Dobbin was, he exhibited
a great deal of scornful incredulity and expressed his
surprise how ever such a feller as that should possess
either brains or reputation.  But he heard of the Major's
fame from various members of his society.  Sir William
Dobbin had a great opinion of his son and narrated
many stories illustrative of the Major's learning, valour,
and estimation in the world's opinion.  Finally, his name
appeared in the lists of one or two great parties of the
nobility, and this circumstance had a prodigious effect
upon the old aristocrat of Russell Square.

The Major's position, as guardian to Georgy, whose
possession had been ceded to his grandfather, rendered
some meetings between the two gentlemen inevitable;
and it was in one of these that old Osborne, a keen man
of business, looking into the Major's accounts with his
ward and the boy's mother, got a hint, which staggered
him very much, and at once pained and pleased him,
that it was out of William Dobbin's own pocket that a
part of the fund had been supplied upon which the
poor widow and the child had subsisted.

When pressed upon the point, Dobbin, who could not
tell lies, blushed and stammered a good deal and finally
confessed.  "The marriage," he said (at which his
interlocutor's face grew dark) "was very much my doing.  I
thought my poor friend had gone so far that retreat from
his engagement would have been dishonour to him and
death to Mrs. Osborne, and I could do no less, when she
was left without resources, than give what money I could
spare to maintain her."

"Major D.," Mr. Osborne said, looking hard at him and
turning very red too--"you did me a great injury; but
give me leave to tell you, sir, you are an honest feller.
There's my hand, sir, though I little thought that my
flesh and blood was living on you--" and the pair shook
hands, with great confusion on Major Dobbin's part, thus
found out in his act of charitable hypocrisy.

He strove to soften the old man and reconcile him
towards his son's memory.  "He was such a noble fellow,"
he said, "that all of us loved him, and would have done
anything for him.  I, as a young man in those days, was
flattered beyond measure by his preference for me, and
was more pleased to be seen in his company than in
that of the Commander-in-Chief.  I never saw his equal
for pluck and daring and all the qualities of a soldier";
and Dobbin told the old father as many stories as he
could remember regarding the gallantry and achievements
of his son.  "And Georgy is so like him," the
Major added.

"He's so like him that he makes me tremble sometimes,"
the grandfather said.

On one or two evenings the Major came to dine with
Mr. Osborne (it was during the time of the sickness of
Mr. Sedley), and as the two sat together in the evening
after dinner, all their talk was about the departed hero.
The father boasted about him according to his wont,
glorifying himself in recounting his son's feats and
gallantry, but his mood was at any rate better and more
charitable than that in which he had been disposed until
now to regard the poor fellow; and the Christian heart of
the kind Major was pleased at these symptoms of
returning peace and good-will.  On the second evening old
Osborne called Dobbin William, just as he used to do at
the time when Dobbin and George were boys together,
and the honest gentleman was pleased by that mark of
reconciliation .

On the next day at breakfast, when Miss Osborne,
with the asperity of her age and character, ventured to
make some remark reflecting slightingly upon the Major's
appearance or behaviour--the master of the house
interrupted her.  "You'd have been glad enough to git him
for yourself, Miss O.  But them grapes are sour.  Ha!  ha!
Major William is a fine feller."

"That he is, Grandpapa," said Georgy approvingly;
and going up close to the old gentleman, he took a hold
of his large grey whiskers, and laughed in his face
good-humouredly, and kissed him.  And he told the story at
night to his mother, who fully agreed with the boy.
"Indeed he is," she said.  "Your dear father always said so.
He is one of the best and most upright of men." Dobbin
happened to drop in very soon after this conversation,
which made Amelia blush perhaps, and the young
scapegrace increased the confusion by telling Dobbin
the other part of the story.  "I say, Dob," he said, "there's
such an uncommon nice girl wants to marry you.  She's
plenty of tin; she wears a front; and she scolds the
servants from morning till night." "Who is it?" asked
Dobbin.
  "It's Aunt O.," the boy answered.  "Grandpapa said
so.  And I say, Dob, how prime it would be to have you
for my uncle." Old Sedley's quavering voice from the
next room at this moment weakly called for Amelia, and
the laughing ended.

That old Osborne's mind was changing was pretty clear.
He asked George about his uncle sometimes, and laughed
at the boy's imitation of the way in which Jos said
"God-bless-my-soul" and gobbled his soup.  Then he said,
"It's not respectful, sir, of you younkers to be imitating of
your relations.  Miss O., when you go out adriving
to-day, leave my card upon Mr. Sedley, do you hear?
There's no quarrel betwigst me and him anyhow."

The card was returned, and Jos and the Major were
asked to dinner--to a dinner the most splendid and
stupid that perhaps ever Mr. Osborne gave; every inch
of the family plate was exhibited, and the best company
was asked.  Mr. Sedley took down Miss O.  to dinner,
and she was very gracious to him; whereas she
hardly spoke to the Major, who sat apart from her, and
by the side of Mr. Osborne, very timid.  Jos said, with
great solemnity, it was the best turtle soup he had ever
tasted in his life, and asked Mr. Osborne where he got his
Madeira.

"It is some of Sedley's wine," whispered the butler to
his master.  "I've had it a long time, and paid a good
figure for it, too," Mr. Osborne said aloud to his guest,
and then whispered to his right-hand neighbour how
he had got it "at the old chap's sale."

More than once he asked the Major about--about Mrs.
George Osborne--a theme on which the Major could be
very eloquent when he chose.  He told Mr. Osborne of
her sufferings--of her passionate attachment to her
husband, whose memory she worshipped still--of the tender
and dutiful manner in which she had supported her
parents, and given up her boy, when it seemed to her her
duty to do so.  "You don't know what she endured, sir,"
said honest Dobbin with a tremor in his voice, "and I
hope and trust you will be reconciled to her.  If she
took your son away from you, she gave hers to you;
and however much you loved your George, depend on it,
she loved hers ten times more."

"By God, you are a good feller, sir," was all Mr. Os-
borne said.  It had never struck him that the widow would
feel any pain at parting from the boy, or that his having
a fine fortune could grieve her.  A reconciliation was
announced as speedy and inevitable, and Amelia's heart
already began to beat at the notion of the awful meeting
with George's father.

It was never, however, destined to take place.  Old
Sedley's lingering illness and death supervened, after
which a meeting was for some time impossible.  That
catastrophe and other events may have worked upon Mr.
Osborne.  He was much shaken of late, and aged, and his
mind was working inwardly.  He had sent for his lawyers,
and probably changed something in his will.  The medical
man who looked in pronounced him shaky, agitated, and
talked of a little blood and the seaside; but he took
neither of these remedies.

One day when he should have come down to breakfast,
his servant missing him, went into his dressing-room
and found him lying at the foot of the dressing-table in a
fit.  Miss Osborne was apprised; the doctors were sent
for; Georgy stopped away from school; the bleeders
and cuppers came.  Osborne partially regained cognizance,
but never could speak again, though he tried
dreadfully once or twice, and in four days he died.  The
doctors went down, and the undertaker's men went up
the stairs, and all the shutters were shut towards the
garden in Russell Square.  Bullock rushed from the City
in a hurry.  "How much money had he left to that boy?
Not half, surely? Surely share and share alike between
the three?" It was an agitating moment.

What was it that poor old man tried once or twice
in vain to say? I hope it was that he wanted to see
Amelia and be reconciled before he left the world to one
dear and faithful wife of his son:  it was most likely
that, for his will showed that the hatred which he had
so long cherished had gone out of his heart.

They found in the pocket of his dressing-gown the
letter with the great red seal which George had written
him from Waterloo.  He had looked at the other papers
too, relative to his son, for the key of the box in which
he kept them was also in his pocket, and it was found
the seals and envelopes had been broken--very likely on
the night before the seizure--when the butler had taken
him tea into his study, and found him reading in the
great red family Bible.

When the will was opened, it was found that half the
property was left to George, and the remainder between
the two sisters.  Mr. Bullock to continue, for their joint
benefit, the affairs of the commercial house, or to go out,
as he thought fit.  An annuity of five hundred pounds,
chargeable on George's property, was left to his mother,
"the widow of my beloved son, George Osborne," who
was to resume the guardianship of the boy.

"Major William Dobbin, my beloved son's friend," was
appointed executor; "and as out of his kindness and
bounty, and with his own private funds, he maintained
my grandson and my son's widow, when they were
otherwise without means of support" (the testator went on
to say) "I hereby thank him heartily for his love and
regard for them, and beseech him to accept such a sum
as may be sufficient to purchase his commission as a
Lieutenant-Colonel, or to be disposed of in any way he
may think fit."

When Amelia heard that her father-in-law was
reconciled to her, her heart melted, and she was grateful
for the fortune left to her.  But when she heard how
Georgy was restored to her, and knew how and by
whom, and how it was William's bounty that supported
her in poverty, how it was William who gave her her
husband and her son--oh, then she sank on her knees,
and prayed for blessings on that constant and kind heart;
she bowed down and humbled herself, and kissed the
feet, as it were, of that beautiful and generous affection.

And gratitude was all that she had to pay back for
such admirable devotion and benefits--only gratitude!  If
she thought of any other return, the image of George
stood up out of the grave and said, "You are mine,
and mine only, now and forever."

William knew her feelings:  had he not passed his
whole life in divining them?

When the nature of Mr. Osborne's will became known
to the world, it was edifying to remark how Mrs. George
Osborne rose in the estimation of the people forming her
circle of acquaintance.  The servants of Jos's establishment,
who used to question her humble orders and say
they would "ask Master" whether or not they could obey,
never thought now of that sort of appeal.  The cook
forgot to sneer at her shabby old gowns (which, indeed,
were quite eclipsed by that lady's finery when she was
dressed to go to church of a Sunday evening), the others
no longer grumbled at the sound of her bell, or delayed
to answer that summons.  The coachman, who grumbled
that his 'osses should be brought out and his
carriage made into an hospital for that old feller and
Mrs. O., drove her with the utmost alacrity now, and
trembling lest he should be superseded by Mr. Osborne's
coachman, asked "what them there Russell Square
coachmen knew about town, and whether they was fit to sit
on a box before a lady?" Jos's friends, male and female,
suddenly became interested about Emmy, and cards
of condolence multiplied on her hall table.  Jos himself,
who had looked on her as a good-natured harmless
pauper, to whom it was his duty to give victuals and
shelter, paid her and the rich little boy, his nephew, the
greatest respect--was anxious that she should have
change and amusement after her troubles and trials,
"poor dear girl"--and began to appear at the breakfast-
table, and most particularly to ask how she would like
to dispose of the day.

In her capacity of guardian to Georgy, she, with the
consent of the Major, her fellow-trustee, begged Miss
Osborne to live in the Russell Square house as long as
ever she chose to dwell there; but that lady, with thanks,
declared that she never could think of remaining alone
in that melancholy mansion, and departed in deep mourning
to Cheltenham, with a couple of her old domestics.
The rest were liberally paid and dismissed, the faithful
old butler, whom Mrs. Osborne proposed to retain,
resigning and preferring to invest his savings in a public-
house, where, let us hope, he was not unprosperous.
Miss Osborne not choosing to live in Russell Square, Mrs.
Osborne also, after consultation, declined to occupy the
gloomy old mansion there.  The house was dismantled;
the rich furniture and effects, the awful chandeliers and
dreary blank mirrors packed away and hidden, the rich
rosewood drawing-room suite was muffled in straw, the
carpets were rolled up and corded, the small select
library of well-bound books was stowed into two wine-
chests, and the whole paraphernalia rolled away in
several enormous vans to the Pantechnicon, where they
were to lie until Georgy's majority.  And the great heavy
dark plate-chests went off to Messrs.  Stumpy and Rowdy,
to lie in the cellars of those eminent bankers until the
same period should arrive.

One day Emmy, with George in her hand and clad in
deep sables, went to visit the deserted mansion which she
had not entered since she was a girl.  The place in front
was littered with straw where the vans had been laden
and rolled off.  They went into the great blank rooms, the
walls of which bore the marks where the pictures and
mirrors had hung.  Then they went up the great blank
stone staircases into the upper rooms, into that where
grandpapa died, as George said in a whisper, and then
higher still into George's own room.  The boy was still
clinging by her side, but she thought of another besides
him.  She knew that it had been his father's room as well
as his own.

She went up to one of the open windows (one of
those at which she used to gaze with a sick heart when
the child was first taken from her), and thence as she
looked out she could see, over the trees of Russell Square,
the old house in which she herself was born, and where
she had passed so many happy days of sacred youth.
They all came back to her, the pleasant holidays,
the kind faces, the careless, joyful past times, and the
long pains and trials that had since cast her down.
She thought of these and of the man who had been her
constant protector, her good genius, her sole benefactor,
her tender and generous friend.

"Look here, Mother," said Georgy, "here's a G.O.
scratched on the glass with a diamond, I never saw it
before, I never did it."

"It was your father's room long before you were born,
George," she said, and she blushed as she kissed the
boy.

She was very silent as they drove back to Richmond,
where they had taken a temporary house:  where the
smiling lawyers used to come bustling over to see her (and
we may be sure noted the visit in the bill):  and where of
course there was a room for Major Dobbin too, who
rode over frequently, having much business to transact
on behalf of his little ward.

Georgy at this time was removed from Mr. Veal's on
an unlimited holiday, and that gentleman was engaged
to prepare an inscription for a fine marble slab, to be
placed up in the Foundling under the monument of
Captain George Osborne.

The female Bullock, aunt of Georgy, although
despoiled by that little monster of one-half of the sum
which she expected from her father, nevertheless showed
her charitableness of spirit by being reconciled to the
mother and the boy.  Roehampton is not far from
Richmond, and one day the chariot, with the golden bullocks
emblazoned on the panels, and the flaccid children within,
drove to Amelia's house at Richmond; and the Bullock
family made an irruption into the garden, where Amelia
was reading a book, Jos was in an arbour placidly
dipping strawberries into wine, and the Major in one of
his Indian jackets was giving a back to Georgy, who
chose to jump over him.  He went over his head and
bounded into the little advance of Bullocks, with
immense black bows in their hats, and huge black sashes,
accompanying their mourning mamma.

"He is just of the age for Rosa," the fond parent
thought, and glanced towards that dear child, an
unwholesome little miss of seven years of age.

"Rosa, go and kiss your dear cousin," Mrs. Frederick
said.  "Don't you know me, George? I am your aunt."

"I know you well enough," George said; "but I don't
like kissing, please"; and he retreated from the obedient
caresses of his cousin.

"Take me to your dear mamma, you droll child," Mrs.
Frederick said, and those ladies accordingly met, after
an absence of more than fifteen years.  During Emmy's
cares and poverty the other had never once thought
about coming to see her, but now that she was decently
prosperous in the world, her sister-in-law came to her as
a matter of course.

So did numbers more.  Our old friend, Miss Swartz, and
her husband came thundering over from Hampton Court,
with flaming yellow liveries, and was as impetuously fond
of Amelia as ever.  Miss Swartz would have liked her
always if she could have seen her.  One must do her that
justice.  But, que voulez vous?--in this vast town one
has not the time to go and seek one's friends; if they
drop out of the rank they disappear, and we march on
without them.  Who is ever missed in Vanity Fair?

But so, in a word, and before the period of grief for
Mr. Osborne's death had subsided, Emmy found herself
in the centre of a very genteel circle indeed, the
members of which could not conceive that anybody
belonging to it was not very lucky.  There was scarce one
of the ladies that hadn't a relation a Peer, though the
husband might be a drysalter in the City.  Some of the
ladies were very blue and well informed, reading Mrs.
Somerville and frequenting the Royal Institution; others
were severe and Evangelical, and held by Exeter Hall.
Emmy, it must be owned, found herself entirely at a loss in
the midst of their clavers, and suffered woefully on the
one or two occasions on which she was compelled to
accept Mrs. Frederick Bullock's hospitalities.  That lady
persisted in patronizing her and determined most graciously
to form her.  She found Amelia's milliners for her and
regulated her household and her manners.  She drove
over constantly from Roehampton and entertained her
friend with faint fashionable fiddle-faddle and feeble
Court slip-slop.  Jos liked to hear it, but the Major used
to go off growling at the appearance of this woman, with
her twopenny gentility.  He went to sleep under Frederick
Bullock's bald head, after dinner, at one of the banker's
best parties (Fred was still anxious that the balance of
the Osborne property should be transferred from Stumpy
and Rowdy's to them), and whilst Amelia, who did not
know Latin, or who wrote the last crack article in the
Edinburgh, and did not in the least deplore, or
otherwise, Mr. Peel's late extraordinary tergiversation on the
fatal Catholic Relief Bill, sat dumb amongst the ladies in
the grand drawing-room, looking out upon velvet lawns,
trim gravel walks, and glistening hot-houses.

"She seems good-natured but insipid," said Mrs.
Rowdy; "that Major seems to be particularly epris."

"She wants ton sadly," said Mrs. Hollyock.  "My dear
creature, you never will be able to form her."

"She is dreadfully ignorant or indifferent," said Mrs.
Glowry with a voice as if from the grave, and a sad
shake of the head and turban.  "I asked her if she thought
that it was in 1836, according to Mr. Jowls, or in 1839,
according to Mr. Wapshot, that the Pope was to fall:
and she said--'Poor Pope!  I hope not--What has he
done?' "

"She is my brother's widow, my dear friends," Mrs.
Frederick replied, "and as such I think we're all bound to
give her every attention and instruction on entering into
the world.  You may fancy there can be no MERCENARY
motives in those whose DISAPPOINTMENTS are well known."

"That poor dear Mrs. Bullock," said Rowdy to Hollyock,
as they drove away together--"she is always scheming
and managing.  She wants Mrs. Osborne's account
to be taken from our house to hers--and the way in
which she coaxes that boy and makes him sit by that
blear-eyed little Rosa is perfectly ridiculous."

"I wish Glowry was choked with her Man of Sin and
her Battle of Armageddon," cried the other, and the
carriage rolled away over Putney Bridge.

But this sort of society was too cruelly genteel for
Emmy, and all jumped for joy when a foreign tour was
proposed.



CHAPTER LXII


Am Rhein

The above everyday events had occurred, and a few
weeks had passed, when on one fine morning, Parliament
being over, the summer advanced, and all the good
company in London about to quit that city for their annual
tour in search of pleasure or health, the Batavier steamboat
left the Tower-stairs laden with a goodly company of English
fugitives.  The quarter-deck awnings were up, and the
benches and gangways crowded with scores of rosy children,
bustling nursemaids; ladies in the prettiest pink
bonnets and summer dresses; gentlemen in travelling caps
and linen-jackets, whose mustachios had just begun to
sprout for the ensuing tour; and stout trim old veterans
with starched neckcloths and neat-brushed hats, such as
have invaded Europe any time since the conclusion of the
war, and carry the national Goddem into every city of
the Continent.  The congregation of hat-boxes, and
Bramah desks, and dressing-cases was prodigious.  There
were jaunty young Cambridge-men travelling with their
tutor, and going for a reading excursion to Nonnenwerth
or Konigswinter; there were Irish gentlemen, with the
most dashing whiskers and jewellery, talking about
horses incessantly, and prodigiously polite to the young
ladies on board, whom, on the contrary, the Cambridge
lads and their pale-faced tutor avoided with maiden
coyness; there were old Pall Mall loungers bound for Ems
and Wiesbaden and a course of waters to clear off the
dinners of the season, and a little roulette and trente-
et-quarante to keep the excitement going; there was old
Methuselah, who had married his young wife, with Captain
Papillon of the Guards holding her parasol and
guide-books; there was young May who was carrying off
his bride on a pleasure tour (Mrs. Winter that was, and
who had been at school with May's grandmother); there
was Sir John and my Lady with a dozen children, and
corresponding nursemaids; and the great grandee
Bareacres family that sat by themselves near the wheel,
stared at everybody, and spoke to no one.  Their
carriages, emblazoned with coronets and heaped with
shining imperials, were on the foredeck, locked in with a
dozen more such vehicles:  it was difficult to pass in and
out amongst them; and the poor inmates of the
fore-cabin had scarcely any space for locomotion.  These
consisted of a few magnificently attired gentlemen from
Houndsditch, who brought their own provisions, and
could have bought half the gay people in the grand
saloon; a few honest fellows with mustachios and portfolios,
who set to sketching before they had been half an hour
on board; one or two French femmes de chambre who
began to be dreadfully ill by the time the boat had
passed Greenwich; a groom or two who lounged in the
neighbourhood of the horse-boxes under their charge, or
leaned over the side by the paddle-wheels, and talked
about who was good for the Leger, and what they stood
to win or lose for the Goodwood cup.

All the couriers, when they had done plunging about
the ship and had settled their various masters in the
cabins or on the deck, congregated together and began to
chatter and smoke; the Hebrew gentlemen joining them
and looking at the carriages.  There was Sir John's great
carriage that would hold thirteen people; my Lord
Methuselah's carriage, my Lord Bareacres' chariot,
britzska, and fourgon, that anybody might pay for who liked.
It was a wonder how my Lord got the ready money to
pay for the expenses of the journey.  The Hebrew gentlemen
knew how he got it.  They knew what money his
Lordship had in his pocket at that instant, and what
interest he paid for it, and who gave it him.  Finally there
was a very neat, handsome travelling carriage, about
which the gentlemen speculated.

"A qui cette voiture la?" said one gentleman-courier
with a large morocco money-bag and ear-rings to another
with ear-rings and a large morocco money-bag.

"C'est a Kirsch je bense--je l'ai vu toute a l'heure--
qui brenoit des sangviches dans la voiture," said the
courier in a fine German French.

Kirsch emerging presently from the neighbourhood of
the hold, where he had been bellowing instructions
intermingled with polyglot oaths to the ship's men engaged
in secreting the passengers' luggage, came to give an
account of himself to his brother interpreters.  He
informed them that the carriage belonged to a Nabob from
Calcutta and Jamaica enormously rich, and with whom
he was engaged to travel; and at this moment a young
gentleman who had been warned off the bridge between
the paddle-boxes, and who had dropped thence on to the
roof of Lord Methuselah's carriage, from which he made
his way over other carriages and imperials until he had
clambered on to his own, descended thence and through
the window into the body of the carriage, to the applause
of the couriers looking on.

"Nous allons avoir une belle traversee, Monsieur
George," said the courier with a grin, as he lifted his
gold-laced cap.

"D-- your French," said the young gentleman, "where's
the biscuits, ay?" Whereupon Kirsch answered him in the
English language or in such an imitation of it as he could
command--for though he was familiar with all languages,
Mr. Kirsch was not acquainted with a single one, and
spoke all with indifferent volubility and incorrectness.

The imperious young gentleman who gobbled the
biscuits (and indeed it was time to refresh himself, for he
had breakfasted at Richmond full three hours before)
was our young friend George Osborne.  Uncle Jos and his
mamma were on the quarter-deck with a gentleman of
whom they used to see a good deal, and the four were
about to make a summer tour.

Jos was seated at that moment on deck under the
awning, and pretty nearly opposite to the Earl of
Bareacres and his family, whose proceedings absorbed
the Bengalee almost entirely.  Both the noble couple
looked rather younger than in the eventful year '15, when
Jos remembered to have seen them at Brussels (indeed,
he always gave out in India that he was intimately
acquainted with them).  Lady Bareacres' hair, which was
then dark, was now a beautiful golden auburn, whereas
Lord Bareacres' whiskers, formerly red, were at present
of a rich black with purple and green reflections in the
light.  But changed as they were, the movements of the
noble pair occupied Jos's mind entirely.  The presence of
a Lord fascinated him, and he could look at nothing else.

"Those people seem to interest you a good deal," said
Dobbin, laughing and watching him.  Amelia too laughed.
She was in a straw bonnet with black ribbons, and
otherwise dressed in mourning, but the little bustle and
holiday of the journey pleased and excited her, and she
looked particularly happy.

"What a heavenly day!" Emmy said and added, with
great originality, "I hope we shall have a calm passage."

Jos waved his hand, scornfully glancing at the same
time under his eyelids at the great folks opposite.  "If you
had made the voyages we have," he said, "you wouldn't
much care about the weather." But nevertheless, traveller
as he was, he passed the night direfully sick in his
carriage, where his courier tended him with brandy-and-
water and every luxury.

In due time this happy party landed at the quays of
Rotterdam, whence they were transported by another
steamer to the city of Cologne.  Here the carriage and
the family took to the shore, and Jos was not a little
gratified to see his arrival announced in the Cologne
newspapers as "Herr Graf Lord von Sedley nebst
Begleitung aus London." He had his court dress with him;
he had insisted that Dobbin should bring his regimental
paraphernalia; he announced that it was his intention to
be presented at some foreign courts, and pay his respects
to the Sovereigns of the countries which he honoured
with a visit.

Wherever the party stopped, and an opportunity was
offered, Mr. Jos left his own card and the Major's upon
"Our Minister." It was with great difficulty that he could
be restrained from putting on his cocked hat and tights
to wait upon the English consul at the Free City of
Judenstadt, when that hospitable functionary asked our
travellers to dinner.  He kept a journal of his voyage and
noted elaborately the defects or excellences of the various
inns at which he put up, and of the wines and dishes of
which he partook.

As for Emmy, she was very happy and pleased.  Dobbin
used to carry about for her her stool and sketch-book,
and admired the drawings of the good-natured little artist
as they never had been admired before.  She sat upon
steamers' decks and drew crags and castles, or she
mounted upon donkeys and ascended to ancient robber-
towers, attended by her two aides-de-camp, Georgy and
Dobbin.  She laughed, and the Major did too, at his droll
figure on donkey-back, with his long legs touching the
ground.  He was the interpreter for the party; having a
good military knowledge of the German language, and
he and the delighted George fought the campaigns of the
Rhine and the Palatinate.  In the course of a few weeks,
and by assiduously conversing with Herr Kirsch on the
box of the carriage, Georgy made prodigious advance in
the knowledge of High Dutch, and could talk to hotel
waiters and postilions in a way that charmed his mother
and amused his guardian.

Mr. Jos did not much engage in the afternoon
excursions of his fellow-travellers.  He slept a good deal
after dinner, or basked in the arbours of the pleasant
inn-gardens.  Pleasant Rhine gardens!  Fair scenes of peace
and sunshine--noble purple mountains, whose crests are
reflected in the magnificent stream--who has ever seen
you that has not a grateful memory of those scenes of
friendly repose and beauty? To lay down the pen and
even to think of that beautiful Rhineland makes one
happy.  At this time of summer evening, the cows are
trooping down from the hills, lowing and with their bells
tinkling, to the old town, with its old moats, and gates,
and spires, and chestnut-trees, with long blue shadows
stretching over the grass; the sky and the river below
flame in-crimson and gold; and the moon is already out,
looking pale towards the sunset.  The sun sinks behind
the great castle-crested mountains, the night falls suddenly,
the river grows darker and darker, lights quiver in it
from the windows in the old ramparts, and twinkle
peacefully in the villages under the hills on the opposite shore.

So Jos used to go to sleep a good deal with his bandanna
over his face and be very comfortable, and read all
the English news, and every word of Galignani's admirable newspaper (may the blessings of all Englishmen who
have ever been abroad rest on the founders and proprietors
of that piratical print!  ) and whether he woke or
slept, his friends did not very much miss him.  Yes, they
were very happy.  They went to the opera often of
evenings--to those snug, unassuming, dear old operas in the
German towns, where the noblesse sits and cries, and
knits stockings on the one side, over against the bourgeoisie
on the other; and His Transparency the Duke and his
Transparent family, all very fat and good-natured, come
and occupy the great box in the middle; and the pit is
full of the most elegant slim-waisted officers with straw-
coloured mustachios, and twopence a day on full pay.
Here it was that Emmy found her delight, and was
introduced for the first time to the wonders of Mozart and
Cimarosa.  The Major's musical taste has been before
alluded to, and his performances on the flute commended.
But perhaps the chief pleasure he had in these operas
was in watching Emmy's rapture while listening to them.
A new world of love and beauty broke upon her when
she was introduced to those divine compositions; this
lady had the keenest and finest sensibility, and how could
she be indifferent when she heard Mozart? The tender
parts of "Don Juan" awakened in her raptures so
exquisite that she would ask herself when she went to say
her prayers of a night whether it was not wicked to feel
so much delight as that with which "Vedrai Carino" and
"Batti Batti" filled her gentle little bosom? But the Major,
whom she consulted upon this head, as her theological
adviser (and who himself had a pious and reverent soul),
said that for his part, every beauty of art or nature made
him thankful as well as happy, and that the pleasure to
be had in listening to fine music, as in looking at the stars
in the sky, or at a beautiful landscape or picture, was a
benefit for which we might thank Heaven as sincerely as
for any other worldly blessing.  And in reply to some faint
objections of Mrs. Amelia's (taken from certain theological
works like the Washerwoman of Finchley Common
and others of that school, with which Mrs. Osborne had
been furnished during her life at Brompton) he told her
an Eastern fable of the Owl who thought that the
sunshine was unbearable for the eyes and that the
Nightingale was a most overrated bird.  "It is one's nature to
sing and the other's to hoot," he said, laughing, "and
with such a sweet voice as you have yourself, you must
belong to the Bulbul faction."

I like to dwell upon this period of her life and to think
that she was cheerful and happy.  You see, she has not
had too much of that sort of existence as yet, and has not
fallen in the way of means to educate her tastes or her
intelligence.  She has been domineered over hitherto by
vulgar intellects.  It is the lot of many a woman.  And as
every one of the dear sex is the rival of the rest of her
kind, timidity passes for folly in their charitable
judgments; and gentleness for dulness; and silence--which is
but timid denial of the unwelcome assertion of ruling
folks, and tacit protestantism--above all, finds no mercy
at the hands of the female Inquisition.  Thus, my dear and
civilized reader, if you and I were to find ourselves this
evening in a society of greengrocers, let us say, it is
probable that our conversation would not be brilliant; if, on
the other hand, a greengrocer should find himself at your
refined and polite tea-table, where everybody was saying
witty things, and everybody of fashion and repute tearing
her friends to pieces in the most delightful manner, it is
possible that the stranger would not be very talkative and
by no means interesting or interested.

And it must be remembered that this poor lady had
never met a gentleman in her life until this present
moment.  Perhaps these are rarer personages than some of
us think for.  Which of us can point out many such in his
circle--men whose aims are generous, whose truth is
constant, and not only constant in its kind but elevated
in its degree; whose want of meanness makes them
simple; who can look the world honestly in the face with
an equal manly sympathy for the great and the small?
We all know a hundred whose coats are very well made,
and a score who have excellent manners, and one or two
happy beings who are what they call in the inner circles,
and have shot into the very centre and bull's-eye of the
fashion; but of gentlemen how many? Let us take a little
scrap of paper and each make out his list.

My friend the Major I write, without any doubt, in
mine.  He had very long legs, a yellow face, and a slight
lisp, which at first was rather ridiculous.  But his thoughts
were just, his brains were fairly good, his life was honest
and pure, and his heart warm and humble.  He certainly
had very large hands and feet, which the two George
Osbornes used to caricature and laugh at; and their jeers
and laughter perhaps led poor little Emmy astray as to
his worth.  But have we not all been misled about our
heroes and changed our opinions a hundred times? Emmy,
in this happy time, found that hers underwent a very great
change in respect of the merits of the Major.

Perhaps it was the happiest time of both their lives,
indeed, if they did but know it--and who does? Which
of us can point out and say that was the culmination--
that was the summit of human joy? But at all events,
this couple were very decently contented, a