kins and Hessian
boots, with several immense neckcloths that rose almost
to his nose, with a red striped waistcoat and an apple
green coat with steel buttons almost as large as crown
pieces (it was the morning costume of a dandy or blood
of those days) was reading the paper by the fire when
the two girls entered, and bounced off his arm-chair,
and blushed excessively, and hid his entire face almost
in his neckcloths at this apparition.

"It's only your sister, Joseph," said Amelia, laughing
and shaking the two fingers which he held out.  "I've
come home FOR GOOD, you know; and this is my friend,
Miss Sharp, whom you have heard me mention."

"No, never, upon my word," said the head under the
neckcloth, shaking very much--"that is, yes--what
abominably cold weather, Miss"--and herewith he fell
to poking the fire with all his might, although it was in the
middle of June.

"He's very handsome," whispered Rebecca to Amelia,
rather loud.

"Do you think so?" said the latter.  "I'll tell him."

"Darling! not for worlds," said Miss Sharp, starting
back as timid as a fawn.  She had previously made a
respectful virgin-like curtsey to the gentleman, and her
modest eyes gazed so perseveringly on the carpet that it
was a wonder how she should have found an opportunity
to see him.

"Thank you for the beautiful shawls, brother," said
Amelia to the fire poker.  "Are they not beautiful, Rebecca?"

"O heavenly!" said Miss Sharp, and her eyes went
from the carpet straight to the chandelier.

Joseph still continued a huge clattering at the poker
and tongs, puffing and blowing the while, and turning
as red as his yellow face would allow him.  "I can't
make you such handsome presents, Joseph," continued
his sister, "but while I was at school, I have embroidered
for you a very beautiful pair of braces."

"Good Gad! Amelia," cried the brother, in serious
alarm, "what do you mean?" and plunging with all his
might at the bell-rope, that article of furniture came
away in his hand, and increased the honest fellow's
confusion.  "For heaven's sake see if my buggy's at the
door.  I CAN'T wait.  I must go.  D-- that groom of mine.
I must go."

At this minute the father of the family walked in,
rattling his seals like a true British merchant.  "What's
the matter, Emmy?" says he.

"Joseph wants me to see if his--his buggy is at the
door.  What is a buggy, Papa?"

"It is a one-horse palanquin," said the old gentleman,
who was a wag in his way.

Joseph at this burst out into a wild fit of laughter;
in which, encountering the eye of Miss Sharp, he stopped
all of a sudden, as if he had been shot.

"This young lady is your friend? Miss Sharp, I am
very happy to see you.  Have you and Emmy been
quarrelling already with Joseph, that he wants to be off?"

"I promised Bonamy of our service, sir," said Joseph,
"to dine with him."

"O fie! didn't you tell your mother you would dine
here?"

"But in this dress it's impossible."

"Look at him, isn't he handsome enough to dine
anywhere, Miss Sharp?"

On which, of course, Miss Sharp looked at her friend,
and they both set off in a fit of laughter, highly
agreeable to the old gentleman.

"Did you ever see a pair of buckskins like those at
Miss Pinkerton's?" continued he, following up his
advantage.

"Gracious heavens! Father," cried Joseph.

"There now, I have hurt his feelings.  Mrs. Sedley,
my dear, I have hurt your son's feelings.  I have alluded
to his buckskins.  Ask Miss Sharp if I haven't? Come,
Joseph, be friends with Miss Sharp, and let us all go to
dinner."

"There's a pillau, Joseph, just as you like it, and Papa
has brought home the best turbot in Billingsgate."

"Come, come, sir, walk downstairs with Miss Sharp,
and I will follow with these two young women," said
the father, and he took an arm of wife and daughter
and walked merrily off.

If Miss Rebecca Sharp had determined in her heart
upon making the conquest of this big beau, I don't
think, ladies, we have any right to blame her; for though
the task of husband-hunting is generally, and with
becoming modesty, entrusted by young persons to their
mammas, recollect that Miss Sharp had no kind parent
to arrange these delicate matters for her, and that if
she did not get a husband for herself, there was no one
else in the wide world who would take the trouble off
her hands.  What causes young people to "come out,"
but the noble ambition of matrimony? What sends them
trooping to watering-places? What keeps them dancing
till five o'clock in the morning through a whole mortal
season? What causes them to labour at pianoforte sonatas,
and to learn four songs from a fashionable master at a
guinea a lesson, and to play the harp if they have
handsome arms and neat elbows, and to wear Lincoln
Green toxophilite hats and feathers, but that they may bring
down some "desirable" young man with those killing bows
and arrows of theirs? What causes respectable parents
to take up their carpets, set their houses topsy-turvy, and
spend a fifth of their year's income in ball suppers and
iced champagne? Is it sheer love of their species, and
an unadulterated wish to see young people happy and
dancing? Psha! they want to marry their daughters; and,
as honest Mrs. Sedley has, in the depths of her kind
heart, already arranged a score of little schemes for the
settlement of her Amelia, so also had our beloved but
unprotected Rebecca determined to do her very best to
secure the husband, who was even more necessary for
her than for her friend.  She had a vivid imagination; she
had, besides, read the Arabian Nights and Guthrie's
Geography; and it is a fact that while she was dressing for
dinner, and after she had asked Amelia whether her
brother was very rich, she had built for herself a most
magnificent castle in the air, of which she was mistress,
with a husband somewhere in the background (she had
not seen him as yet, and his figure would not therefore
be very distinct); she had arrayed herself in an infinity
of shawls, turbans, and diamond necklaces, and had
mounted upon an elephant to the sound of the march in
Bluebeard, in order to pay a visit of ceremony to the
Grand Mogul.  Charming Alnaschar visions! it is the
happy privilege of youth to construct you, and many
a fanciful young creature besides Rebecca Sharp has
indulged in these delightful day-dreams ere now!

Joseph Sedley was twelve years older than his sister
Amelia.  He was in the East India Company's Civil
Service, and his name appeared, at the period of which
we write, in the Bengal division of the East India Register,
as collector of Boggley Wollah, an honourable and
lucrative post, as everybody knows: in order to know
to what higher posts Joseph rose in the service, the
reader is referred to the same periodical.

Boggley Wollah is situated in a fine, lonely, marshy,
jungly district, famous for snipe-shooting, and where
not unfrequently you may flush a tiger.  Ramgunge, where
there is a magistrate, is only forty miles off, and there
is a cavalry station about thirty miles farther; so Joseph
wrote home to his parents, when he took possession of
his collectorship.  He had lived for about eight years of
his life, quite alone, at this charming place, scarcely
seeing a Christian face except twice a year, when the
detachment arrived to carry off the revenues which he
had collected, to Calcutta.

Luckily, at this time he caught a liver complaint, for
the cure of which he returned to Europe, and which
was the source of great comfort and amusement to him
in his native country.  He did not live with his family
while in London, but had lodgings of his own, like
a gay young bachelor.  Before he went to India he was
too young to partake of the delightful pleasures of a
man about town, and plunged into them on his return
with considerable assiduity.  He drove his horses in the
Park; he dined at the fashionable taverns (for the
Oriental Club was not as yet invented); he frequented
the theatres, as the mode was in those days, or made
his appearance at the opera, laboriously attired in tights
and a cocked hat.

On returning to India, and ever after, he used to talk
of the pleasure of this period of his existence with great
enthusiasm, and give you to understand that he and
Brummel were the leading bucks of the day.  But he was
as lonely here as in his jungle at Boggley Wollah.  He
scarcely knew a single soul in the metropolis: and were
it not for his doctor, and the society of his blue-pill,
and his liver complaint, he must have died of loneliness.
He was lazy, peevish, and a bon-vivan; the appearance
of a lady frightened him beyond measure; hence it was
but seldom that he joined the paternal circle in Russell
Square, where there was plenty of gaiety, and where the
jokes of his good-natured old father frightened his
amour-propre.  His bulk caused Joseph much anxious
thought and alarm; now and then he would make a
desperate attempt to get rid of his superabundant fat;
but his indolence and love of good living speedily got
the better of these endeavours at reform, and he found
himself again at his three meals a day.  He never was
well dressed; but he took the hugest pains to adorn his
big person, and passed many hours daily in that occupation.
His valet made a fortune out of his wardrobe: his
toilet-table was covered with as many pomatums and
essences as ever were employed by an old beauty: he had
tried, in order to give himself a waist, every girth, stay,
and waistband then invented.  Like most fat men, he
would have his clothes made too tight, and took care
they should be of the most brilliant colours and youthful
cut.  When dressed at length, in the afternoon, he would
issue forth to take a drive with nobody in the Park;
and then would come back in order to dress again and
go and dine with nobody at the Piazza Coffee-House.
He was as vain as a girl; and perhaps his extreme
shyness was one of the results of his extreme vanity.  If
Miss Rebecca can get the better of him, and at her first
entrance into life, she is a young person of no ordinary
cleverness.

The first move showed considerable skill.  When she
called Sedley a very handsome man, she knew that
Amelia would tell her mother, who would probably tell
Joseph, or who, at any rate, would be pleased by the
compliment paid to her son.  All mothers are.  If you
had told Sycorax that her son Caliban was as handsome
as Apollo, she would have been pleased, witch as she
was.  Perhaps, too, Joseph Sedley would overhear the
compliment--Rebecca spoke loud enough--and he did
hear, and (thinking in his heart that he was a very fine
man) the praise thrilled through every fibre of his big
body, and made it tingle with pleasure.  Then, however,
came a recoil.  "Is the girl making fun of me?" he thought,
and straightway he bounced towards the bell, and was
for retreating, as we have seen, when his father's jokes
and his mother's entreaties caused him to pause and
stay where he was.  He conducted the young lady down
to dinner in a dubious and agitated frame of mind.
"Does she really think I am handsome?" thought he,
"or is she only making game of me?" We have talked
of Joseph Sedley being as vain as a girl.  Heaven help
us! the girls have only to turn the tables, and say
of one of their own sex, "She is as vain as a man,"
and they will have perfect reason.  The bearded creatures
are quite as eager for praise, quite as finikin over their
toilettes, quite as proud of their personal advantages,
quite as conscious of their powers of fascination, as
any coquette in the world.

Downstairs, then, they went, Joseph very red and
blushing, Rebecca very modest, and holding her green
eyes downwards.  She was dressed in white, with bare
shoulders as white as snow--the picture of youth,
unprotected innocence, and humble virgin simplicity.
"I must be very quiet," thought Rebecca, "and very much
interested about India."

Now we have heard how Mrs. Sedley had prepared a
fine curry for her son, just as he liked it, and in the
course of dinner a portion of this dish was offered to
Rebecca.  "What is it?" said she, turning an appealing
look to Mr. Joseph.

"Capital," said he.  His mouth was full of it: his face
quite red with the delightful exercise of gobbling.
"Mother, it's as good as my own curries in India."

"Oh, I must try some, if it is an Indian dish," said
Miss Rebecca.  "I am sure everything must be good that
comes from there."

"Give Miss Sharp some curry, my dear," said Mr.
Sedley, laughing.

Rebecca had never tasted the dish before.

"Do you find it as good as everything else from India?"
said Mr. Sedley.

"Oh, excellent!" said Rebecca, who was suffering
tortures with the cayenne pepper.

"Try a chili with it, Miss Sharp," said Joseph, really
interested.

"A chili," said Rebecca, gasping.  "Oh yes!"  She thought
a chili was something cool, as its name imported,
and was served with some.  "How fresh and green they
look," she said, and put one into her mouth.  It was
hotter than the curry; flesh and blood could bear it no
longer.  She laid down her fork.  "Water, for Heaven's
sake, water!" she cried.  Mr. Sedley burst out laughing
(he was a coarse man, from the Stock Exchange, where
they love all sorts of practical jokes).  "They are real
Indian, I assure you," said he.  "Sambo, give Miss Sharp
some water."

The paternal laugh was echoed by Joseph, who thought
the joke capital.  The ladies only smiled a little.  They
thought poor Rebecca suffered too much.  She would have
liked to choke old Sedley, but she swallowed her
mortification as well as she had the abominable curry
before it, and as soon as she could speak, said, with a comical,
good-humoured air, "I ought to have remembered the
pepper which the Princess of Persia puts in the cream-
tarts in the Arabian Nights.  Do you put cayenne into
your cream-tarts in India, sir?"

Old Sedley began to laugh, and thought Rebecca
was a good-humoured girl.  Joseph simply said, "Cream-
tarts, Miss? Our cream is very bad in Bengal.  We
generally use goats' milk; and, 'gad, do you know, I've got
to prefer it!"

"You won't like EVERYTHING from India now, Miss
Sharp," said the old gentleman; but when the ladies had
retired after dinner, the wily old fellow said to his son,
"Have a care, Joe; that girl is setting her cap at you."

"Pooh! nonsense!" said Joe, highly flattered.  "I recollect,
sir, there was a girl at Dumdum, a daughter of
Cutler of the Artillery, and afterwards married to Lance,
the surgeon, who made a dead set at me in the year
'4--at me and Mulligatawney, whom I mentioned to you
before dinner--a devilish good fellow Mulligatawney--
he's a magistrate at Budgebudge, and sure to be in
council in five years.  Well, sir, the Artillery gave a ball,
and Quintin, of the King's 14th, said to me, 'Sedley,' said
he, 'I bet you thirteen to ten that Sophy Cutler hooks
either you or Mulligatawney before the rains.' 'Done,'
says I; and egad, sir--this claret's very good.  Adamson's
or Carbonell's?"

A slight snore was the only reply: the honest stockbroker
was asleep, and so the rest of Joseph's story was lost
for that day.  But he was always exceedingly
communicative in a man's party, and has told this
delightful tale many scores of times to his apothecary,
Dr. Gollop, when he came to inquire about the liver and
the blue-pill.

Being an invalid, Joseph Sedley contented himself with
a bottle of claret besides his Madeira at dinner, and
he managed a couple of plates full of strawberries and
cream, and twenty-four little rout cakes that were lying
neglected in a plate near him, and certainly (for
novelists have the privilege of knowing everything)
he thought a great deal about the girl upstairs.  "A nice,
gay, merry young creature," thought he to himself.  "How
she looked at me when I picked up her handkerchief at
dinner!  She dropped it twice.  Who's that singing in the
drawing-room? 'Gad! shall I go up and see?"

But his modesty came rushing upon him with
uncontrollable force.  His father was asleep: his hat
was in the hall: there was a hackney-coach standing
hard by in Southampton Row.  "I'll go and see the Forty
Thieves," said he, "and Miss Decamp's dance"; and he
slipped away gently on the pointed toes of his boots, and disappeared, without waking his worthy parent.

"There goes Joseph," said Amelia, who was looking
from the open windows of the drawing-room, while
Rebecca was singing at the piano.

"Miss Sharp has frightened him away," said Mrs.
Sedley.  "Poor Joe, why WILL he be so shy?"




CHAPTER IV


The Green Silk Purse

Poor Joe's panic lasted for two or three days; during
which he did not visit the house, nor during that period
did Miss Rebecca ever mention his name.  She was all
respectful gratitude to Mrs. Sedley; delighted beyond
measure at the Bazaars; and in a whirl of wonder at the
theatre, whither the good-natured lady took her.  One
day, Amelia had a headache, and could not go upon some
party of pleasure to which the two young people were
invited: nothing could induce her friend to go without her.
"What! you who have shown the poor orphan what
happiness and love are for the first time in her life--quit
YOU?  Never!"  and the green eyes looked up to Heaven
and filled with tears; and Mrs. Sedley could not but own
that her daughter's friend had a charming kind heart
of her own.

As for Mr. Sedley's jokes, Rebecca laughed at them
with a cordiality and perseverance which not a little
pleased and softened that good-natured gentleman.  Nor
was it with the chiefs of the family alone that Miss
Sharp found favour.  She interested Mrs. Blenkinsop by
evincing the deepest sympathy in the raspberry-jam
preserving, which operation was then going on in the
Housekeeper's room; she persisted in calling Sambo "Sir,"
and "Mr. Sambo," to the delight of that attendant; and she
apologised to the lady's maid for giving her trouble in
venturing to ring the bell, with such sweetness and
humility, that the Servants' Hall was almost as charmed
with her as the Drawing Room.

Once, in looking over some drawings which Amelia
had sent from school, Rebecca suddenly came upon one
which caused her to burst into tears and leave the room.
It was on the day when Joe Sedley made his second
appearance.

Amelia hastened after her friend to know the cause
of this display of feeling, and the good-natured girl came
back without her companion, rather affected too.  "You
know, her father was our drawing-master, Mamma, at
Chiswick, and used to do all the best parts of our drawings."

"My love! I'm sure I always heard Miss Pinkerton say
that he did not touch them--he only mounted them."
"It was called mounting, Mamma.  Rebecca remembers
the drawing, and her father working at it, and the
thought of it came upon her rather suddenly--and so,
you know, she--"

"The poor child is all heart," said Mrs. Sedley.

"I wish she could stay with us another week," said
Amelia.

"She's devilish like Miss Cutler that I used to meet
at Dumdum, only fairer.  She's married now to Lance,
the Artillery Surgeon.  Do you know, Ma'am, that once
Quintin, of the 14th, bet me--"

"0 Joseph, we know that story," said Amelia, laughing.
Never mind about telling that; but persuade Mamma
to write to Sir Something Crawley for leave of absence
for poor dear Rebecca: here she comes, her eyes red
with weeping."

"I'm better, now," said the girl, with the sweetest smile
possible, taking good-natured Mrs. Sedley's extended hand
and kissing it respectfully.  "How kind you all are to me!
All," she added, with a laugh, "except you, Mr. Joseph."

"Me!" said Joseph, meditating an instant departure
"Gracious Heavens! Good Gad! Miss Sharp!'

"Yes; how could you be so cruel as to make me eat
that horrid pepper-dish at dinner, the first day I ever
saw you? You are not so good to me as dear Amelia."

"He doesn't know you so well," cried Amelia.

"I defy anybody not to be good to you, my dear,"
said her mother.

"The curry was capital; indeed it was," said Joe, quite
gravely.  "Perhaps there was NOT enough citron juice in
it--no, there was NOT."

"And the chilis?"

"By Jove, how they made you cry out!" said Joe,
caught by the ridicule of the circumstance, and
exploding in a fit of laughter which ended quite
suddenly, as usual.

"I shall take care how I let YOU choose for me
another time," said Rebecca, as they went down
again to dinner.  "I didn't think men were fond of
putting poor harmless girls to pain."

"By Gad, Miss Rebecca, I wouldn't hurt you for the
world."

"No," said she, "I KNOW you wouldn't"; and then she
gave him ever so gentle a pressure with her little hand,
and drew it back quite frightened, and looked first for
one instant in his face, and then down at the carpet-
rods; and I am not prepared to say that Joe's heart did
not thump at this little involuntary, timid, gentle motion
of regard on the part of the simple girl.

It was an advance, and as such, perhaps, some ladies
of indisputable correctness and gentility will condemn the
action as immodest; but, you see, poor dear Rebecca
had all this work to do for herself.  If a person is too
poor to keep a servant, though ever so elegant, he must
sweep his own rooms: if a dear girl has no dear Mamma
to settle matters with the young man, she must do it
for herself.  And oh, what a mercy it is that these women
do not exercise their powers oftener! We can't resist
them, if they do.  Let them show ever so little inclination,
and men go down on their knees at once: old or ugly,
it is all the same.  And this I set down as a positive
truth.  A woman with fair opportunities, and without an
absolute hump, may marry WHOM SHE LIKES.  Only let us
be thankful that the darlings are like the beasts of the
field, and don't know their own power.  They would
overcome us entirely if they did.

"Egad!" thought Joseph, entering the dining-room, "I
exactly begin to feel as I did at Dumdum with Miss
Cutler." Many sweet little appeals, half tender, half
jocular, did Miss Sharp make to him about the dishes
at dinner; for by this time she was on a footing of
considerable familiarity with the family, and as for the
girls, they loved each other like sisters.  Young unmarried
girls always do, if they are in a house together for ten
days.

As if bent upon advancing Rebecca's plans in every
way--what must Amelia do, but remind her brother of
a promise made last Easter holidays--"When I was a
girl at school," said she, laughing--a promise that he,
Joseph, would take her to Vauxhall.  "Now," she said,
"that Rebecca is with us, will be the very time."

"O, delightful!" said Rebecca, going to clap her hands;
but she recollected herself, and paused, like a modest
creature, as she was.

"To-night is not the night," said Joe.

"Well, to-morrow."

"To-morrow your Papa and I dine out," said Mrs.
Sedley.

"You don't suppose that I'm going, Mrs. Sed?" said
her husband, "and that a woman of your years and size
is to catch cold, in such an abominable damp place?"

'The children must have someone with them," cried
Mrs. Sedley.

"Let Joe go," said-his father, laughing.  "He's big
enough." At which speech even Mr. Sambo at the
sideboard burst out laughing, and poor fat Joe felt
inclined to become a parricide almost.

"Undo his stays!" continued the pitiless old gentleman.
"Fling some water in his face, Miss Sharp, or carry him
upstairs: the dear creature's fainting.  Poor victim! carry
him up; he's as light as a feather!"

"If I stand this, sir, I'm d--!" roared Joseph.

"Order Mr. Jos's elephant, Sambo!" cried the father.
"Send to Exeter 'Change, Sambo"; but seeing Jos ready
almost to cry with vexation, the old joker stopped his
laughter, and said, holding out his hand to his son, "It's
all fair on the Stock Exchange, Jos--and, Sambo, never
mind the elephant, but give me and Mr. Jos a glass of
Champagne.  Boney himself hasn't got such in his cellar,
my boy!"

A goblet of Champagne restored Joseph's equanimity,
and before the bottle was emptied, of which as an invalid
he took two-thirds, he had agreed to take the young
ladies to Vauxhall.

"The girls must have a gentleman apiece," said the old
gentleman.  "Jos will be sure to leave Emmy in the crowd,
he will be so taken up with Miss Sharp here.  Send to 96,
and ask George Osborne if he'll come."

At this, I don't know in the least for what reason,
Mrs. Sedley looked at her husband and laughed.  Mr.
Sedley's eyes twinkled in a manner indescribably
roguish, and he looked at Amelia; and Amelia, hanging
down her head, blushed as only young ladies of seventeen
know how to blush, and as Miss Rebecca Sharp never
blushed in her life--at least not since she was eight
years old, and when she was caught stealing jam out of
a cupboard by her godmother.  "Amelia had better write
a note," said her father; "and let George Osborne see
what a beautiful handwriting we have brought back from
Miss Pinkerton's.  Do you remember when you wrote to
him to come on Twelfth-night, Emmy, and spelt twelfth
without the f?"

"That was years ago," said Amelia.

"It seems like yesterday, don't it, John?" said Mrs.
Sedley to her husband; and that night in a conversation
which took place in a front room in the second floor,
in a sort of tent, hung round with chintz of a rich and
fantastic India pattern, and double with calico of a
tender rose-colour; in the interior of which species of
marquee was a featherbed, on which were two pillows,
on which were two round red faces, one in a laced
nightcap, and one in a simple cotton one, ending in a tassel
--in A CURTAIN LECTURE, I say, Mrs. Sedley took her
husband to task for his cruel conduct to poor Joe.

"It was quite wicked of you, Mr. Sedley," said she,
"to torment the poor boy so."

"My dear," said the cotton-tassel in defence of his
conduct, "Jos is a great deal vainer than you ever were
in your life, and that's saying a good deal.  Though, some
thirty years ago, in the year seventeen hundred and
eighty--what was it?--perhaps you had a right to be
vain--I don't say no.  But I've no patience with Jos and
his dandified modesty.  It is out-Josephing Joseph, my dear,
and all the while the boy is only thinking of himself,
and what a fine fellow he is.  I doubt, Ma'am, we shall
have some trouble with him yet.  Here is Emmy's little
friend making love to him as hard as she can; that's
quite clear; and if she does not catch him some other
will.  That man is destined to be a prey to woman, as
I am to go on 'Change every day.  It's a mercy he did
not bring us over a black daughter-in-law, my dear.  But,
mark my words, the first woman who fishes for him,
hooks him."

"She shall go off to-morrow, the little artful creature,"
said Mrs. Sedley, with great energy.

"Why not she as well as another, Mrs. Sedley? The
girl's a white face at any rate.  I don't care who marries
him.  Let Joe please himself."

And presently the voices of the two speakers were
hushed, or were replaced by the gentle but unromantic
music of the nose; and save when the church bells
tolled the hour and the watchman called it, all was
silent at the house of John Sedley, Esquire, of Russell
Square, and the Stock Exchange.

When morning came, the good-natured Mrs. Sedley no
longer thought of executing her threats with regard to
Miss Sharp; for though nothing is more keen, nor more
common, nor more justifiable, than maternal jealousy,
yet she could not bring herself to suppose that the little,
humble, grateful, gentle governess would dare to look
up to such a magnificent personage as the Collector of
Boggley Wollah.  The petition, too, for an extension of
the young lady's leave of absence had already been
despatched, and it would be difficult to find a pretext for
abruptly dismissing her.

And as if all things conspired in favour of the gentle
Rebecca, the very elements (although she was not
inclined at first to acknowledge their action in her behalf)
interposed to aid her.  For on the evening appointed for
the Vauxhall party, George Osborne having come to
dinner, and the elders of the house having departed,
according to invitation, to dine with Alderman Balls at
Highbury Barn, there came on such a thunder-storm as only
happens on Vauxhall nights, and as obliged the young
people, perforce, to remain at home.  Mr. Osborne did
not seem in the least disappointed at this occurrence.
He and Joseph Sedley drank a fitting quantity of
port-wine, tete-a-tete, in the dining-room, during the
drinking of which Sedley told a number of his best Indian
stories; for he was extremely talkative in man's society;
and afterwards Miss Amelia Sedley did the honours of
the drawing-room; and these four young persons passed
such a comfortable evening together, that they declared
they were rather glad of the thunder-storm than
otherwise, which had caused them to put off their
visit to Vauxhall.

Osborne was Sedley's godson, and had been one of the
family any time these three-and-twenty years.  At six
weeks old, he had received from John Sedley a present
of a silver cup; at six months old, a coral with gold
whistle and bells; from his youth upwards he was
"tipped" regularly by the old gentleman at Christmas:
and on going back to school, he remembered perfectly
well being thrashed by Joseph Sedley, when the latter
was a big, swaggering hobbadyhoy, and George an
impudent urchin of ten years old.  In a word, George was
as familiar with the family as such daily acts of
kindness and intercourse could make him.

"Do you remember, Sedley, what a fury you were in,
when I cut off the tassels of your Hessian boots, and
how Miss--hem!--how Amelia rescued me from a
beating, by falling down on her knees and crying out to
her brother Jos, not to beat little George?"

Jos remembered this remarkable circumstance
perfectly well, but vowed that he had totally
forgotten it.

"Well, do you remember coming down in a gig to Dr.
Swishtail's to see me, before you went to India, and
giving me half a guinea and a pat on the head? I always
had an idea that you were at least seven feet high, and
was quite astonished at your return from India to find
you no taller than myself."

"How good of Mr. Sedley to go to your school and
give you the money!" exclaimed Rebecca, in accents of
extreme delight.

"Yes, and after I had cut the tassels of his boots too.
Boys never forget those tips at school, nor the givers."

"I delight in Hessian boots," said Rebecca.  Jos Sedley,
who admired his own legs prodigiously, and always
wore this ornamental chaussure, was extremely pleased
at this remark, though he drew his legs under his chair
as it was made.

"Miss Sharp!" said George Osborne, "you who are
so clever an artist, you must make a grand historical
picture of the scene of the boots.  Sedley shall be
represented in buckskins, and holding one of the
injured boots in one hand; by the other he shall have
hold of my shirt-frill.  Amelia shall be kneeling near him,
with her little hands up; and the picture shall have a
grand allegorical title, as the frontispieces have in the
Medulla and the spelling-book."

"I shan't have time to do it here," said Rebecca.  'I'll
do it when--when I'm gone." And she dropped her voice,
and looked so sad and piteous, that everybody felt how
cruel her lot was, and how sorry they would be to
part with her.

"O that you could stay longer, dear Rebecca," said
Amelia.

"Why?" answered the other, still more sadly.  "That
I may be only the more unhap--unwilling to lose you?"
And she turned away her head.  Amelia began to give
way to that natural infirmity of tears which, we have
said, was one of the defects of this silly little thing.  George
Osborne looked at the two young women with a touched
curiosity; and Joseph Sedley heaved something very like
a sigh out of his big chest, as he cast his eyes down
towards his favourite Hessian boots.

"Let us have some music, Miss Sedley--Amelia," said
George, who felt at that moment an extraordinary,
almost irresistible impulse to seize the above-mentioned
young woman in his arms, and to kiss her in the face of
the company; and she looked at him for a moment, and
if I should say that they fell in love with each other at
that single instant of time, I should perhaps be telling
an untruth, for the fact is that these two young people
had been bred up by their parents for this very purpose,
and their banns had, as it were, been read in their
respective families any time these ten years.  They went
off to the piano, which was situated, as pianos usually
are, in the back drawing-room; and as it was rather dark,
Miss Amelia, in the most unaffected way in the world,
put her hand into Mr. Osborne's, who, of course, could
see the way among the chairs and ottomans a great deal
better than she could.  But this arrangement left Mr.
Joseph Sedley tete-a-tete with Rebecca, at the
drawing-room table, where the latter was occupied
in knitting a green silk purse.

"There is no need to ask family secrets," said Miss
Sharp.  "Those two have told theirs."

"As soon as he gets his company," said Joseph, "I
believe the affair is settled.  George Osborne is a capital
fellow."

"And your sister the dearest creature in the world,"
said Rebecca.  "Happy the man who wins her!" With
this, Miss Sharp gave a great sigh.

When two unmarried persons get together, and talk
upon such delicate subjects as the present, a great deal
of confidence and intimacy is presently established
between them.  There is no need of giving a special report
of the conversation which now took place between Mr.
Sedley and the young lady; for the conversation, as may
be judged from the foregoing specimen, was not especially
witty or eloquent; it seldom is in private societies, or
anywhere except in very high-flown and ingenious novels.
As there was music in the next room, the talk was
carried on, of course, in a low and becoming tone, though,
for the matter of that, the couple in the next apartment
would not have been disturbed had the talking been ever
so loud, so occupied were they with their own pursuits.

Almost for the first time in his life, Mr. Sedley found
himself talking, without the least timidity or hesitation,
to a person of the other sex.  Miss Rebecca asked him a
great number of questions about India, which gave him
an opportunity of narrating many interesting anecdotes
about that country and himself.  He described the balls
at Government House, and the manner in which they
kept themselves cool in the hot weather, with punkahs,
tatties, and other contrivances; and he was very witty
regarding the number of Scotchmen whom Lord Minto,
the Governor-General, patronised; and then he described
a tiger-hunt; and the manner in which the mahout of his
elephant had been pulled off his seat by one of the
infuriated animals.  How delighted Miss Rebecca was at
the Government balls, and how she laughed at the stories
of the Scotch aides-de-camp, and called Mr. Sedley a
sad wicked satirical creature; and how frightened she was
Joseph Sedley tete-a-tete with Rebecca, at the
drawing-room table, where the latter was occupied
in knitting a green silk purse.

"There is no need to ask family secrets," said Miss
Sharp.  "Those two have told theirs."

"As soon as he gets his company," said Joseph, "I
believe the affair is settled.  George Osborne is a capital
fellow."

"And your sister the dearest creature in the world,"
said Rebecca.  "Happy the man who wins her!" With
this, Miss Sharp gave a great sigh.

When two unmarried persons get together, and talk
upon such delicate subjects as the present, a great deal
of confidence and intimacy is presently established
between them.  There is no need of giving a special report
of the conversation which now took place between Mr.
Sedley and the young lady; for the conversation, as may
be judged from the foregoing specimen, was not especially
witty or eloquent; it seldom is in private societies, or
anywhere except in very high-flown and ingenious novels.
As there was music in the next room, the talk was
carried on, of course, in a low and becoming tone, though,
for the matter of that, the couple in the next apartment
would not have been disturbed had the talking been ever
so loud, so occupied were they with their own pursuits.

Almost for the first time in his life, Mr. Sedley found
himself talking, without the least timidity or hesitation,
to a person of the other sex.  Miss Rebecca asked him a
great number of questions about India, which gave him
an opportunity of narrating many interesting anecdotes
about that country and himself.  He described the balls
at Government House, and the manner in which they
kept themselves cool in the hot weather, with punkahs,
tatties, and other contrivances; and he was very witty
regarding the number of Scotchmen whom Lord Minto,
the Governor-General, patronised; and then he described
a tiger-hunt; and the manner in which the mahout of his
elephant had been pulled off his seat by one of the
infuriated animals.  How delighted Miss Rebecca was at
the Government balls, and how she laughed at the stories
of the Scotch aides-de-camp, and called Mr. Sedley a
sad wicked satirical creature; and how frightened she was
at the story of the elephant! "For your mother's sake,
dear Mr. Sedley," she said, "for the sake of all your
friends, promise NEVER to go on one of those horrid
expeditions."

"Pooh, pooh, Miss Sharp," said he, pulling up his shirt-
collars; "the danger makes the sport only the pleasanter."
He had never been but once at a tiger-hunt, when the
accident in question occurred, and when he was half
killed--not by the tiger, but by the fright.  And as he
talked on, he grew quite bold, and actually had the
audacity to ask Miss Rebecca for whom she was
knitting the green silk purse? He was quite surprised
and delighted at his own graceful familiar manner.

"For any one who wants a purse," replied Miss
Rebecca, looking at him in the most gentle winning way.
Sedley was going to make one of the most eloquent
speeches possible, and had begun--"O Miss Sharp,
how--" when some song which was performed in the
other room came to an end, and caused him to hear
his own voice so distinctly that he stopped, blushed, and
blew his nose in great agitation.

"Did you ever hear anything like your brother's
eloquence?" whispered Mr. Osborne to Amelia.  "Why,
your friend has worked miracles."

"The more the better," said Miss Amelia; who, like
almost all women who are worth a pin, was a match-
maker in her heart, and would have been delighted that
Joseph should carry back a wife to India.  She had, too,
in the course of this few days' constant intercourse,
warmed into a most tender friendship for Rebecca, and
discovered a million of virtues and amiable qualities in
her which she had not perceived when they were at
Chiswick together.  For the affection of young ladies is
of as rapid growth as Jack's bean-stalk, and reaches up
to the sky in a night.  It is no blame to them that after
marriage this Sehnsucht nach der Liebe subsides.  It is
what sentimentalists, who deal in very big words, call a
yearning after the Ideal, and simply means that women
are commonly not satisfied until they have husbands
and children on whom they may centre affections, which
are spent elsewhere, as it were, in small change.

Having expended her little store of songs, or having
stayed long enough in the back drawing-room, it now
appeared proper to Miss Amelia to ask her friend to
sing.  "You would not have listened to me," she said to
Mr. Osborne (though she knew she was telling a fib),
"had you heard Rebecca first."

"I give Miss Sharp warning, though," said Osborne,
"that, right or wrong, I consider Miss Amelia Sedley
the first singer in the world."

"You shall hear," said Amelia; and Joseph Sedley was
actually polite enough to carry the candles to the piano.
Osborne hinted that he should like quite as well to sit
in the dark; but Miss Sedley, laughing, declined to bear
him company any farther, and the two accordingly
followed Mr. Joseph.  Rebecca sang far better than her
friend (though of course Osborne was free to keep his
opinion), and exerted herself to the utmost, and,
indeed, to the wonder of Amelia, who had never known
her perform so well.  She sang a French song, which
Joseph did not understand in the least, and which George
confessed he did not understand, and then a number of
those simple ballads which were the fashion forty years
ago, and in which British tars, our King, poor Susan,
blue-eyed Mary, and the like, were the principal themes.
They are not, it is said, very brilliant, in a musical point
of view, but contain numberless good-natured, simple
appeals to the affections, which people understood better
than the milk-and-water lagrime, sospiri, and felicita
of the eternal Donizettian music with which we are
favoured now-a-days.

Conversation of a sentimental sort, befitting the
subject, was carried on between the songs, to which
Sambo, after he had brought the tea, the delighted cook,
and even Mrs. Blenkinsop, the housekeeper, condescended
to listen on the landing-place.

Among these di