nterval.

What were the adventures of Mr. Osborne and Miss
Amelia? That is a secret.  But be sure of this--they were
perfectly happy, and correct in their behaviour; and as
they had been in the habit of being together any time these
fifteen years, their tete-a-tete offered no particular
novelty.

But when Miss Rebecca Sharp and her stout companion
lost themselves in a solitary walk, in which there were not
above five score more of couples similarly straying, they
both felt that the situation was extremely tender and
critical, and now or never was the moment Miss Sharp
thought, to provoke that declaration which was trembling
on the timid lips of Mr. Sedley.  They had previously been
to the panorama of Moscow, where a rude fellow, treading
on Miss Sharp's foot, caused her to fall back with a little
shriek into the arms of Mr. Sedley, and this little incident
increased the tenderness and confidence of that gentleman
to such a degree, that he told her several of his favourite
Indian stories over again for, at least, the sixth time.

"How I should like to see India!" said Rebecca.

"SHOULD you?" said Joseph, with a most killing tenderness;
and was no doubt about to follow up this artful
interrogatory by a question still more tender (for he puffed
and panted a great deal, and Rebecca's hand, which was
placed near his heart, could count the feverish pulsations
of that organ), when, oh, provoking! the bell rang for the
fireworks, and, a great scuffling and running taking place,
these interesting lovers were obliged to follow in the
stream of people.

Captain Dobbin had some thoughts of joining the party
at supper: as, in truth, he found the Vauxhall
amusements not particularly lively--but he paraded
twice before the box where the now united couples were
met, and nobody took any notice of him.  Covers were laid for
four.  The mated pairs were prattling away quite happily,
and Dobbin knew he was as clean forgotten as if he had
never existed in this world.

"I should only be de trop," said the Captain, looking at
them rather wistfully.  "I'd best go and talk to the hermit,"
--and so he strolled off out of the hum of men, and noise,
and clatter of the banquet, into the dark walk, at the end
of which lived that well-known pasteboard Solitary.  It
wasn't very good fun for Dobbin--and, indeed, to be
alone at Vauxhall, I have found, from my own experience,
to be one of the most dismal sports ever entered into by a
bachelor.

The two couples were perfectly happy then in their
box: where the most delightful and intimate conversation
took place.  Jos was in his glory, ordering about the waiters
with great majesty.  He made the salad; and uncorked
the Champagne; and carved the chickens; and ate and
drank the greater part of the refreshments on the tables.
Finally, he insisted upon having a bowl of rack punch;
everybody had rack punch at Vauxhall.  "Waiter, rack
punch."

That bowl of rack punch was the cause of all this
history.  And why not a bowl of rack punch as well as any
other cause? Was not a bowl of prussic acid the cause of
Fair Rosamond's retiring from the world? Was not a bowl
of wine the cause of the demise of Alexander the Great,
or, at least, does not Dr. Lempriere say so?--so did this
bowl of rack punch influence the fates of all the principal
characters in this "Novel without a Hero," which we are
now relating.  It influenced their life, although most of
them did not taste a drop of it.

The young ladies did not drink it; Osborne did not
like it; and the consequence was that Jos, that fat
gourmand, drank up the whole contents of the bowl;
and the consequence of his drinking up the whole contents
of the bowl was a liveliness which at first was astonishing,
and then became almost painful; for he talked and laughed so
loud as to bring scores of listeners round the box, much
to the confusion of the innocent party within it; and,
volunteering to sing a song (which he did in that maudlin
high key peculiar to gentlemen in an inebriated state), he
almost drew away the audience who were gathered round
the musicians in the gilt scollop-shell, and received from
his hearers a great deal of applause.

"Brayvo, Fat un!" said one; "Angcore, Daniel Lambert!"
said another; "What a figure for the tight-rope!"
exclaimed another wag, to the inexpressible alarm of
the ladies, and the great anger of Mr. Osborne.

"For Heaven's sake, Jos, let us get up and go," cried
that gentleman, and the young women rose.

"Stop, my dearest diddle-diddle-darling," shouted Jos,
now as bold as a lion, and clasping Miss Rebecca round
the waist.  Rebecca started, but she could not get away her
hand.  The laughter outside redoubled.  Jos continued to
drink, to make love, and to sing; and, winking and waving
his glass gracefully to his audience, challenged all or any
to come in and take a share of his punch.

Mr. Osborne was just on the point of knocking down a
gentleman in top-boots, who proposed to take advantage
of this invitation, and a commotion seemed to be
inevitable, when by the greatest good luck a gentleman
of the name of Dobbin, who had been walking about the
gardens, stepped up to the box.  "Be off, you fools!" said
this gentleman--shouldering off a great number of the crowd,
who vanished presently before his cocked hat and fierce
appearance--and he entered the box in a most agitated state.

"Good Heavens! Dobbin, where have you been?" 0sborne
said, seizing the white cashmere shawl from his
friend's arm, and huddling up Amelia in it.--"Make
yourself useful, and take charge of Jos here, whilst I
take the ladies to the carriage."

Jos was for rising to interfere--but a single push from
Osborne's finger sent him puffing back into his seat again,
and the lieutenant was enabled to remove the ladies in
safety.  Jos kissed his hand to them as they retreated, and
hiccupped out "Bless you! Bless you!" Then, seizing
Captain Dobbin's hand, and weeping in the most pitiful way,
he confided to that gentleman the secret of his loves.  He
adored that girl who had just gone out; he had broken
her heart, he knew he had, by his conduct; he would marry
her next morning at St. George's, Hanover Square; he'd
knock up the Archbishop of Canterbury at Lambeth: he
would, by Jove! and have him in readiness; and, acting on
this hint, Captain Dobbin shrewdly induced him to leave
the gardens and hasten to Lambeth Palace, and, when once
out of the gates, easily conveyed Mr. Jos Sedley into a
hackney-coach, which deposited him safely at his lodgings.

George Osborne conducted the girls home in safety:
and when the door was closed upon them, and as he
walked across Russell Square, laughed so as to astonish
the watchman.  Amelia looked very ruefully at her friend,
as they went up stairs, and kissed her, and went to bed
without any more talking.

"He must propose to-morrow," thought Rebecca.  "He
called me his soul's darling, four times; he squeezed my
hand in Amelia's presence.  He must propose to-morrow."
And so thought Amelia, too.  And I dare say she thought
of the dress she was to wear as bridesmaid, and of the
presents which she should make to her nice little sister-in-
law, and of a subsequent ceremony in which she herself
might play a principal part, &c., and &c., and &c., and &c.

Oh, ignorant young creatures! How little do you know
the effect of rack punch! What is the rack in the punch,
at night, to the rack in the head of a morning? To this
truth I can vouch as a man; there is no headache in the
world like that caused by Vauxhall punch.  Through the
lapse of twenty years, I can remember the consequence
of two glasses!two wine-glasses!but two, upon the
honour of a gentleman; and Joseph Sedley, who had a
liver complaint, had swallowed at least a quart of the
abominable mixture.

That next morning, which Rebecca thought was to
dawn upon her fortune, found Sedley groaning in agonies
which the pen refuses to describe.  Soda-water was not
invented yet.  Small beer--will it be believed!--was the
only drink with which unhappy gentlemen soothed the
fever of their previous night's potation.  With this mild
beverage before him, George Osborne found the ex-
Collector of Boggley Wollah groaning on the sofa at
his lodgings.  Dobbin was already in the room, good-
naturedly tending his patient of the night before.  The two
officers, looking at the prostrate Bacchanalian, and
askance at each other, exchanged the most frightful
sympathetic grins.  Even Sedley's valet, the most solemn
and correct of gentlemen, with the muteness and gravity of
an undertaker, could hardly keep his countenance in
order, as he looked at his unfortunate master.

"Mr. Sedley was uncommon wild last night, sir," he
whispered in confidence to Osborne, as the latter mounted
the stair.  "He wanted to fight the 'ackney-coachman, sir.
The Capting was obliged to bring him upstairs in his
harms like a babby." A momentary smile flickered over
Mr. Brush's features as he spoke; instantly, however, they
relapsed into their usual unfathomable calm, as he flung
open the drawing-room door, and announced "Mr.
Hosbin."

"How are you, Sedley?" that young wag began, after
surveying his victim.  "No bones broke? There's a
hackney-coachman downstairs with a black eye, and a
tied-up head, vowing he'll have the law of you."

"What do you mean--law?" Sedley faintly asked.

"For thrashing him last night--didn't he, Dobbin? You
hit out, sir, like Molyneux.  The watchman says he never
saw a fellow go down so straight.  Ask Dobbin."

"You DID have a round with the coachman," Captain
Dobbin said, "and showed plenty of fight too."

"And that fellow with the white coat at Vauxhall! How
Jos drove at him! How the women screamed! By Jove,
sir, it did my heart good to see you.  I thought you civilians
had no pluck; but I'll never get in your way when you
are in your cups, Jos."

"I believe I'm very terrible, when I'm roused,"
ejaculated Jos from the sofa, and made a grimace so
dreary and ludicrous, that the Captain's politeness could
restrain him no longer, and he and Osborne fired off a
ringing volley of laughter.

Osborne pursued his advantage pitilessly.  He thought
Jos a milksop.  He had been revolving in his mind the
marriage question pending between Jos and Rebecca, and
was not over well pleased that a member of a family into
which he, George Osborne, of the --th, was going
to marry, should make a mesalliance with a little nobody
--a little upstart governess.  "You hit, you poor old
fellow!" said Osborne.  "You terrible! Why, man, you
couldn't stand--you made everybody laugh in the
Gardens, though you were crying yourself.  You were
maudlin, Jos.  Don't you remember singing a song?"

"A what?" Jos asked.

"A sentimental song, and calling Rosa, Rebecca, what's
her name, Amelia's little friend--your dearest diddle-
diddle-darling?" And this ruthless young fellow, seizing
hold of Dobbin's hand, acted over the scene, to the horror
of the original performer, and in spite of Dobbin's good-
natured entreaties to him to have mercy.

"Why should I spare him?" Osborne said to his friend's
remonstrances, when they quitted the invalid, leaving him
under the hands of Doctor Gollop.  "What the deuce right
has he to give himself his patronizing airs, and make fools
of us at Vauxhall? Who's this little schoolgirl that is
ogling and making love to him? Hang it, the family's
low enough already, without HER.  A governess is all very
well, but I'd rather have a lady for my sister-in-law.  I'm
a liberal man; but I've proper pride, and know my own
station: let her know hers.  And I'll take down that great
hectoring Nabob, and prevent him from being made a
greater fool than he is.  That's why I told him to look out,
lest she brought an action against him."

"I suppose you know best," Dobbin said, though rather
dubiously.  "You always were a Tory, and your family's
one of the oldest in England.  But --"

"Come and see the girls, and make love to Miss Sharp
yourself," the lieutenant here interrupted his friend; but
Captain Dobbin declined to join Osborne in his daily visit
to the young ladies in Russell Square.

As George walked down Southampton Row, from
Holborn, he laughed as he saw, at the Sedley Mansion,
in two different stories two heads on the look-out.

The fact is, Miss Amelia, in the drawing-room balcony,
was looking very eagerly towards the opposite side of the
Square, where Mr. Osborne dwelt, on the watch for the
lieutenant himself; and Miss Sharp, from her little bed-
room on the second floor, was in observation until Mr.
Joseph's great form should heave in sight.

"Sister Anne is on the watch-tower," said he to Amelia,
"but there's nobody coming"; and laughing and enjoying
the joke hugely, he described in the most ludicrous terms
to Miss Sedley, the dismal condition of her brother.

"I think it's very cruel of you to laugh, George," she
said, looking particularly unhappy; but George only
laughed the more at her piteous and discomfited mien,
persisted in thinking the joke a most diverting one, and
when Miss Sharp came downstairs, bantered her with a
great deal of liveliness upon the effect of her charms on
the fat civilian.

"O Miss Sharp! if you could but see him this morning,"
he said--"moaning in his flowered dressing-gown--
writhing on his sofa; if you could but have seen him
lolling out his tongue to Gollop the apothecary."

"See whom?" said Miss Sharp.

"Whom? O whom?  Captain Dobbin, of course, to whom
we were all so attentive, by the way, last night."

"We were very unkind to him," Emmy said, blushing
very much.  "I--I quite forgot him."

"Of course you did," cried Osborne, still on the laugh.

"One can't be ALWAYS thinking about Dobbin, you know,
Amelia.  Can one, Miss Sharp?"

"Except when he overset the glass of wine at dinner,"
Miss Sharp said, with a haughty air and a toss of the
head, "I never gave the existence of Captain Dobbin one
single moment's consideration."

"Very good, Miss Sharp, I'll tell him," Osborne said;
and as he spoke Miss Sharp began to have a feeling of
distrust and hatred towards this young officer, which he
was quite unconscious of having inspired.  "He is to make
fun of me, is he?" thought Rebecca.  "Has he been
laughing about me to Joseph?  Has he frightened him?
Perhaps he won't come."--A film passed over her eyes,
and her heart beat quite quick.

"You're always joking," said she, smiling as innocently
as she could.  "Joke away, Mr. George; there's nobody
to defend ME." And George Osborne, as she walked away
--and Amelia looked reprovingly at him--felt some little
manly compunction for having inflicted any unnecessary
unkindness upon this helpless creature.  "My dearest
Amelia," said he, "you are too good--too kind.  You
don't know the world.  I do.  And your little friend Miss
Sharp must learn her station."

"Don't you think Jos will--"

"Upon my word, my dear, I don't know.  He may, or
may not.  I'm not his master.  I only know he is a very
foolish vain fellow, and put my dear little girl into a very
painful and awkward position last night.  My dearest
diddle-diddle-darling!" He was off laughing again, and he
did it so drolly that Emmy laughed too.

All that day Jos never came.  But Amelia had no fear
about this; for the little schemer had actually sent away
the page, Mr. Sambo's aide-de-camp, to Mr. Joseph's
lodgings, to ask for some book he had promised, and how
he was; and the reply through Jos's man, Mr. Brush, was,
that his master was ill in bed, and had just had the doctor
with him.  He must come to-morrow, she thought, but she
never had the courage to speak a word on the subject
to Rebecca; nor did that young woman herself allude
to it in any way during the whole evening after the night
at Vauxhall.

The next day, however, as the two young ladies sate on
the sofa, pretending to work, or to write letters, or to
read novels, Sambo came into the room with his usual
engaging grin, with a packet under his arm, and a note
on a tray.  "Note from Mr. Jos, Miss," says Sambo.

How Amelia trembled as she opened it!

So it ran:

Dear Amelia,--I send you the "Orphan of the Forest."
I was too ill to come yesterday.  I leave town to-day
for Cheltenham.  Pray excuse me, if you can, to the
amiable Miss Sharp, for my conduct at Vauxhall, and
entreat her to pardon and forget every word I may have
uttered when excited by that fatal supper.  As soon as
I have recovered, for my health is very much shaken, I
shall go to Scotland for some months, and am

Truly yours,
Jos Sedley


It was the death-warrant.  All was over.  Amelia did
not dare to look at Rebecca's pale face and burning eyes,
but she dropt the letter into her friend's lap; and got up,
and went upstairs to her room, and cried her little heart
out.

Blenkinsop, the housekeeper, there sought her presently
with consolation, on whose shoulder Amelia wept
confidentially, and relieved herself a good deal.  "Don't take
on, Miss.  I didn't like to tell you.  But none of us in the
house have liked her except at fust.  I sor her with my
own eyes reading your Ma's letters.  Pinner says she's
always about your trinket-box and drawers, and
everybody's drawers, and she's sure she's put your white
ribbing into her box."

"I gave it her, I gave it her," Amelia said.

But this did not alter Mrs. Blenkinsop's opinion of Miss
Sharp.  "I don't trust them governesses, Pinner," she
remarked to the maid.  "They give themselves the hairs and
hupstarts of ladies, and their wages is no better than
you nor me."

It now became clear to every soul in the house, except
poor Amelia, that Rebecca should take her departure,
and high and low (always with the one exception) agreed
that that event should take place as speedily as possible.
Our good child ransacked all her drawers, cupboards,
reticules, and gimcrack boxes--passed in review all her
gowns, fichus, tags, bobbins, laces, silk stockings, and
fallals--selecting this thing and that and the other, to
make a little heap for Rebecca.  And going to her Papa,
that generous British merchant, who had promised to
give her as many guineas as she was years old--she
begged the old gentleman to give the money to dear
Rebecca, who must want it, while she lacked for nothing.

She even made George Osborne contribute, and
nothing loth (for he was as free-handed a young fellow
as any in the army), he went to Bond Street, and bought
the best hat and spenser that money could buy.

"That's George's present to you, Rebecca, dear," said
Amelia, quite proud of the bandbox conveying these
gifts.  "What a taste he has! There's nobody like him."

"Nobody," Rebecca answered.  "How thankful I am to
him!" She was thinking in her heart, "It was George
Osborne who prevented my marriage."--And she loved
George Osborne accordingly.

She made her preparations for departure with great
equanimity; and accepted all the kind little Amelia's
presents, after just the proper degree of hesitation and
reluctance.  She vowed eternal gratitude to Mrs. Sedley,
of course; but did not intrude herself upon that good
lady too much, who was embarrassed, and evidently
wishing to avoid her.  She kissed Mr. Sedley's hand, when
he presented her with the purse; and asked permission to
consider him for the future as her kind, kind friend and
protector.  Her behaviour was so affecting that he was
going to write her a cheque for twenty pounds more;
but he restrained his feelings: the carriage was in waiting
to take him to dinner, so he tripped away with a "God
bless you, my dear, always come here when you come to
town, you know.--Drive to the Mansion House, James."

Finally came the parting with Miss Amelia, over which
picture I intend to throw a veil.  But after a scene in
which one person was in earnest and the other a perfect
performer--after the tenderest caresses, the most pathetic
tears, the smelling-bottle, and some of the very best
feelings of the heart, had been called into requisition--
Rebecca and Amelia parted, the former vowing to love
her friend for ever and ever and ever.




CHAPTER VII


Crawley of Queen's Crawley

Among the most respected of the names beginning in C
which the Court-Guide contained, in the year 18--, was
that of Crawley, Sir Pitt, Baronet, Great Gaunt Street,
and Queen's Crawley, Hants.  This honourable name had
figured constantly also in the Parliamentary list for many
years, in conjunction with that of a number of other
worthy gentlemen who sat in turns for the borough.

It is related, with regard to the borough of Queen's
Crawley, that Queen Elizabeth in one of her progresses,
stopping at Crawley to breakfast, was so delighted with
some remarkably fine Hampshire beer which was then
presented to her by the Crawley of the day (a handsome
gentleman with a trim beard and a good leg), that she
forthwith erected Crawley into a borough to send two
members to Parliament; and the place, from the day of
that illustrious visit, took the name of Queen's Crawley,
which it holds up to the present moment.  And though, by
the lapse of time, and those mutations which age produces
in empires, cities, and boroughs, Queen's Crawley was no
longer so populous a place as it had been in Queen Bess's
time--nay, was come down to that condition of borough
which used to be denominated rotten--yet, as Sir Pitt
Crawley would say with perfect justice in his elegant
way, "Rotten! be hanged--it produces me a good fifteen
hundred a year."

Sir Pitt Crawley (named after the great Commoner)
was the son of Walpole Crawley, first Baronet, of the
Tape and Sealing-Wax Office in the reign of George II.,
when he was impeached for peculation, as were a great
number of other honest gentlemen of those days; and
Walpole Crawley was, as need scarcely be said, son of
John Churchill Crawley, named after the celebrated
military commander of the reign of Queen Anne.  The family
tree (which hangs up at Queen's Crawley) furthermore
mentions Charles Stuart, afterwards called Barebones
Crawley, son of the Crawley of James the First's time;
and finally, Queen Elizabeth's Crawley, who is represented
as the foreground of the picture in his forked beard and
armour.  Out of his waistcoat, as usual, grows a tree, on
the main branches of which the above illustrious names
are inscribed.  Close by the name of Sir Pitt Crawley,
Baronet (the subject of the present memoir), are written
that of his brother, the Reverend Bute Crawley (the great
Commoner was in disgrace when the reverend gentleman
was born), rector of Crawley-cum-Snailby, and of various
other male and female members of the Crawley family.

Sir Pitt was first married to Grizzel, sixth daughter of
Mungo Binkie, Lord Binkie, and cousin, in consequence,
of Mr. Dundas.  She brought him two sons: Pitt, named
not so much after his father as after the heaven-born
minister; and Rawdon Crawley, from the Prince of
Wales's friend, whom his Majesty George IV forgot so
completely.  Many years after her ladyship's demise, Sir
Pitt led to the altar Rosa, daughter of Mr. G. Dawson,
of Mudbury, by whom he had two daughters, for whose
benefit Miss Rebecca Sharp was now engaged as
governess.  It will be seen that the young lady was come into a
family of very genteel connexions, and was about to move
in a much more distinguished circle than that humble one
which she had just quitted in Russell Square.

She had received her orders to join her pupils, in a
note which was written upon an old envelope, and which
contained the following words:

Sir Pitt Crawley begs Miss Sharp and baggidge may be
hear on Tuesday, as I leaf for Queen's Crawley to-morrow
morning ERLY.

Great Gaunt Street.

Rebecca had never seen a Baronet, as far as she knew,
and as soon as she had taken leave of Amelia, and
counted the guineas which good-natured Mr. Sedley had
put into a purse for her, and as soon as she had done
wiping her eyes with her handkerchief (which operation
she concluded the very moment the carriage had turned
the corner of the street), she began to depict in her own
mind what a Baronet must be.  "I wonder, does he wear
a star?" thought she, "or is it only lords that wear stars?
But he will be very handsomely dressed in a court suit,
with ruffles, and his hair a little powdered, like Mr.
Wroughton at Covent Garden.  I suppose he will be
awfully proud, and that I shall be treated most
contemptuously.  Still I must bear my hard lot as well
as I can--at least, I shall be amongst GENTLEFOLKS, and
not with vulgar city people": and she fell to thinking of
her Russell Square friends with that very same philosophical
bitterness with which, in a certain apologue, the fox is
represented as speaking of the grapes.

Having passed through Gaunt Square into Great Gaunt
Street, the carriage at length stopped at a tall gloomy
house between two other tall gloomy houses, each with a
hatchment over the middle drawing-room window; as is
the custom of houses in Great Gaunt Street, in which
gloomy locality death seems to reign perpetual.  The
shutters of the first-floor windows of Sir Pitt's mansion
were closed--those of the dining-room were partially open,
and the blinds neatly covered up in old newspapers.

John, the groom, who had driven the carriage alone,
did not care to descend to ring the bell; and so prayed a
passing milk-boy to perform that office for him.  When the
bell was rung, a head appeared between the interstices of
the dining-room shutters, and the door was opened by a
man in drab breeches and gaiters, with a dirty old coat,
a foul old neckcloth lashed round his bristly neck, a
shining bald head, a leering red face, a pair of twinkling grey
eyes, and a mouth perpetually on the grin

"This Sir Pitt Crawley's?" says John, from the box.

"Ees," says the man at the door, with a nod.

"Hand down these 'ere trunks then," said John.

"Hand 'n down yourself," said the porter.

"Don't you see I can't leave my hosses? Come, bear a
hand, my fine feller, and Miss will give you some beer,"
said John, with a horse-laugh, for he was no longer
respectful to Miss Sharp, as her connexion with the family
was broken off, and as she had given nothing to the
servants on coming away.

The bald-headed man, taking his hands out of his
breeches pockets, advanced on this summons, and
throwing Miss Sharp's trunk over his shoulder, carried it into
the house.

"Take this basket and shawl, if you please, and open
the door," said Miss Sharp, and descended from the
carriage in much indignation.  "I shall write to Mr. Sedley
and inform him of your conduct," said she to the groom.

"Don't," replied that functionary.  "I hope you've forgot
nothink? Miss 'Melia's gownds--have you got them--as
the lady's maid was to have 'ad? I hope they'll fit you.
Shut the door, Jim, you'll get no good out of 'ER,"
continued John, pointing with his thumb towards Miss Sharp:
"a bad lot, I tell you, a bad lot," and so saying, Mr.
Sedley's groom drove away.  The truth is, he was attached
to the lady's maid in question, and indignant that she
should have been robbed of her perquisites.

On entering the dining-room, by the orders of the
individual in gaiters, Rebecca found that apartment not
more cheerful than such rooms usually are, when genteel
families are out of town.  The faithful chambers seem, as
it were, to mourn the absence of their masters.  The turkey
carpet has rolled itself up, and retired sulkily under the
sideboard: the pictures have hidden their faces behind old
sheets of brown paper: the ceiling lamp is muffled up in a
dismal sack of brown holland: the window-curtains have
disappeared under all sorts of shabby envelopes: the
marble bust of Sir Walpole Crawley is looking from its
black corner at the bare boards and the oiled fire-irons,
and the empty card-racks over the mantelpiece: the
cellaret has lurked away behind the carpet: the chairs are
turned up heads and tails along the walls: and in the
dark corner opposite the statue, is an old-fashioned
crabbed knife-box, locked and sitting on a dumb waiter.

Two kitchen chairs, and a round table, and an
attenuated old poker and tongs were, however, gathered
round the fire-place, as was a saucepan over a feeble
sputtering fire.  There was a bit of cheese and bread, and
a tin candlestick on the table, and a little black porter
in a pint-pot.

"Had your dinner, I suppose? It is not too warm for
you? Like a drop of beer?"

"Where is Sir Pitt Crawley?" said Miss Sharp
majestically.

"He, he! I'm Sir Pitt Crawley.  Reklect you owe me a
pint for bringing down your luggage.  He, he! Ask
Tinker if I aynt.  Mrs. Tinker, Miss Sharp; Miss
Governess, Mrs. Charwoman.  Ho, ho!"

The lady addressed as Mrs. Tinker at this moment
made her appearance with a pipe and a paper of tobacco,
for which she had been despatched a minute before
Miss Sharp's arrival; and she handed the articles over to
Sir Pitt, who had taken his seat by the fire.

"Where's the farden?" said he.  "I gave you three
halfpence.  Where's the change, old Tinker?"

"There!" replied Mrs. Tinker, flinging down the coin;
it's only baronets as cares about farthings."

"A farthing a day is seven shillings a year," answered
the M.P.; "seven shillings a year is the interest of seven
guineas.  Take care of your farthings, old Tinker, and your
guineas will come quite nat'ral."

"You may be sure it's Sir Pitt Crawley, young woman,"
said Mrs. Tinker, surlily; "because he looks to his
farthings.  You'll know him better afore long."

"And like me none the worse, Miss Sharp," said the
old gentleman, with an air almost of politeness.  "I must
be just before I'm generous."

 "He never gave away a farthing in his life," growled
Tinker.

"Never, and never will: it's against my principle.  Go
and get another chair from the kitchen, Tinker, if you
want to sit down; and then we'll have a bit of supper."

Presently the baronet plunged a fork into the saucepan
on the fire, and withdrew from the pot a piece of tripe
and an onion, which he divided into pretty equal
portions, and of which he partook with Mrs. Tinker.  "You
see, Miss Sharp, when I'm not here Tinker's on board
wages: when I'm in town she dines with the family.
Haw! haw! I'm glad Miss Sharp's not hungry, ain't you,
Tink?" And they fell to upon their frugal supper.

After supper Sir Pitt Crawley began to smoke his
pipe; and when it became quite dark, he lighted the
rushlight in the tin candlestick, and producing from an
interminable pocket a huge mass of papers, began reading
them, and putting them in order.

"I'm here on law business, my dear, and that's how it
happens that I shall have the pleasure of such a pretty
travelling companion to-morrow."

"He's always at law business," said Mrs. Tinker,
taking up the pot of porter.

"Drink and drink about," said the Baronet.  "Yes; my
dear, Tinker is quite right: I've lost and won more
lawsuits than any man in England.  Look here at Crawley,
Bart. v. Snaffle.  I'll throw him over, or my name's not
Pitt Crawley.  Podder and another versus Crawley, Bart.
Overseers of Snaily parish against Crawley, Bart.  They
can't prove it's common: I'll defy 'em; the land's mine.
It no more belongs to the parish than it does to you or
Tinker here.  I'll beat 'em, if it cost me a thousand guineas.
Look over the papers; you may if you like, my dear.
Do you write a good hand? I'll make you useful when
we're at Queen's Crawley, depend on it, Miss Sharp.
Now the dowager's dead I want some one."

"She was as bad as he," said Tinker.  "She took the
law of every one of her tradesmen; and turned away
forty-eight footmen in four year."

"She was close--very close," said the Baronet, simply;
"but she was a valyble woman to me, and saved me a
steward."--And in this confidential strain, and much to
the amusement of the new-comer, the conversation
continued for a considerable time.  Whatever Sir Pitt
Crawley's qualities might be, good or bad, he did not make
the least disguise of them.  He talked of himself incessantly, sometimes in the coarsest and vulgarest Hampshire accent; sometimes adopting the tone of a man of the world.  And so,
with injunctions to Miss Sharp to be ready at five in the
morning, he bade her good night.   "You'll sleep with Tinker
to-night," he said; "it's a big bed, and there's room for two.
Lady Crawley died in it.  Good night."

Sir Pitt went off after this benediction, and the solemn
Tinker, rushlight in hand, led the way up the great
bleak stone stairs, past the great dreary drawing-room
doors, with the handles muffled up in paper, into the
great front bedroom, where Lady Crawley had slept her
last.  The bed and chamber were so funereal and gloomy,
you might have fancied, not only that Lady Crawley died
in the room, but that her ghost inhabited it.  Rebecca
sprang about the apartment, however, with the greatest
liveliness, and had peeped into the huge wardrobes, and
the closets, and the cupboards, and tried the drawers
which were locked, and examined the dreary pictures
and toilette appointments, while the old charwoman
was saying her prayers.  "I shouldn't like to sleep in this
yeer bed without a good conscience, Miss," said the old
woman.  "There's room for us and a half-dozen of ghosts
in it," says Rebecca.  "Tell me all about Lady Crawley
and Sir Pitt Crawley, and everybody, my DEAR Mrs.
Tinker."

But old Tinker was not to be pumped by this little
cross-questioner; and signifying to her that bed was a
place for sleeping, not conversation, set up in her corner
of the bed such a snore as only the nose of innocence
can produce.  Rebecca lay awake for a long, long time,
thinking of the morrow, and of the new world into which
she was going, and of her chances of success there.  The
rushlight flickered in the basin.  The mantelpiece cast up
a great black shadow, over half of a mouldy old sampler,
which her defunct ladyship had worked, no doubt, and
over two little family pictures of young lads, one in a
college gown, and the other in a red jacket like a soldier.
When she went to sleep, Rebecca chose that one to
dream about.

At four o'clock, on such a roseate summer's morning
as even made Great Gaunt Street look cheerful, the
faithful Tinker, having wakened her bedfellow, and bid her
prepare for departure, unbarred and unbolted the great
hall door (the clanging and clapping whereof startled
the sleeping echoes in the street), and taking her way
into Oxford Street, summoned a coach from a stand
there.  It is needless to particularize the number of the
vehicle, or to state that the driver was stationed thus
early in the neighbourhood of Swallow Street, in hopes
that some young buck, reeling homeward from the tavern,
might need the aid of his vehicle, and pay him with
the generosity of intoxication.

It is likewise needless to say that the driver, if he had
any such hopes as those.above stated, was grossly
disappointed; and that the worthy Baronet whom he drove
to the City did not give him one single penny more than
his fare.  It was in vain that Jehu appealed and stormed;
that he flung down Miss Sharp's bandboxes in the gutter
at the 'Necks, and swore he would take the law of his
fare.

"You'd better not," said one of the ostlers; "it's Sir
Pitt Crawley."

"So it is, Joe," cried the Baronet, approvingly; "and
I'd like to see the man can do me."

"So should oi," said Joe, grinning sulkily, and
mounting the Baronet's baggage on the roof of the coach.

"Keep the box for me, Leader," exclaims the Member
of Parliament to the coachman; who replied, "Yes,
Sir Pitt," with a touch of his hat, and rage in his soul
(for he had promised the box to a young gentleman
from Cambridge, who would have given a crown to a
certainty), and Miss Sharp was accommodated with a
back seat inside the carriage, which might be said to be
carrying her into the wide world.

How the young man from Cambridge sulkily put his
five great-coats in front; but was reconciled when little
Miss Sharp was made to quit the carriage, and mount
up beside him--when he covered her up in one of his
Benjamins, and became perfectly good-humoured--how
the asthmatic gentleman, the prim lady, who declared
upon her sacred honour she had never travelled in a
public carriage before (there is always such a lady in a
coach--Alas! was; for the coaches, where are they?),
and the fat widow with the brandy-bottle, took their
places inside--how the porter asked them all for money,
and got sixpence from the gentleman and five greasy
halfpence from the fat widow--and how the carriage
at length drove away--now threading the dark lanes of
Aldersgate, anon clattering by the Blue Cupola of St.
Paul's, jingling rapidly by the strangers' entry of Fleet-
Market, which, with Exeter 'Change, has now departed
to the world of shadows--how they passed the White
Bear in Piccadilly, and saw the dew rising up from the
market-gardens of Knightsbridge--how Turnhamgreen,
Brentwood, Bagshot, were passed--need not be told here.
But the writer of these pages, who has pursued in former
days, and in the same bright weather, the same remarkable
journey, cannot but think of it with a sweet and
tender regret.  Where is the road now, and its merry
incidents of life? Is there no Chelsea or Greenwich for
the old honest pimple-nosed coachmen?  I wonder where
are they, those good fellows? Is old Weller alive or dead?
and the waiters, yea, and the inns at which they waited,
and the cold rounds of beef inside, and the stunted ostler,
with his blue nose and clinking pail, where is he, and
where is his generation?  To those great geniuses now in
petticoats, who shall write novels for the beloved reader's
children, these men and things will be as much legend
and history as Nineveh, or Coeur de Lion, or Jack
Sheppard.  For them stage-coaches will have become romances
--a team of four bays as fabulous as Bucephalus or Black
Bess.  Ah, how their coats shone, as the stable-men pulled
their clothes off, and away they went--ah, how their
tails shook, as with smoking sides at the stage's end
they demurely walked away into the inn-yard.  Alas!  we
shall never hear the horn sing at midnight, or see the
pike-gates fly open any more.  Whither, however, is the
light four-inside Trafalgar coach carrying us? Let us be
set down at Queen's Crawley without further divagation,
and see how Miss Rebecca Sharp speeds there.




CHAPTER VIII



Miss Rebecca Sharp to Miss Amelia Sedley,
Russell Square, London.
(Free.--Pitt Crawley.)

MY DEAREST, SWEETEST AMELIA,

With what mingled joy and sorrow do I take up the
pen to write to my dearest friend!  Oh, what a change
between to-day and yesterday! Now I am friendless and
alone; yesterday I was at home, in the sweet company
of a sister, whom I shall ever, ever cherish!

I will not tell you in what tears and sadness I passed
the fatal night in which I separated from you.  YOU went
on Tuesday to joy and happiness, with your mother and
YOUR DEVOTED YOUNG SOLDIER by your side; and I thought
of you all night, dancing at the Perkins's, the prettiest,
I am sure, of all the young ladies at the Ball.  I was
brought by the groom in the old carriage to Sir Pitt
Crawley's town house, where, after John the groom had
behaved most rudely and insolently to me (alas! 'twas
safe to insult poverty and misfortune!), I was given over
to Sir P.'s care, and made to pass the night in an old
gloomy bed, and by the side of a horrid gloomy old
charwoman, who keeps the house.  I did not sleep one
single wink the whole night.

Sir Pitt is not what we silly girls, when we used to
read Cecilia at Chiswick, imagined a baronet must have
been.  Anything, indeed, less like Lord Orville cannot be
imagined.  Fancy an old, stumpy, short, vulgar, and very
dirty man, in old clothes and shabby old gaiters, who
smokes a horrid pipe, and cooks his own horrid supper
in a saucepan.  He speaks with a country accent, and
swore a great deal at the old charwoman, at the hackney
coachman who drove us to the inn where the coach went
from, and on which I made the journey OUTSIDE FOR THE
GREATER PART OF THE WAY.

I was awakened at daybreak by the charwoman, and
having arrived at the inn, was at first placed inside the
coach.  But, when we got to a place called Leakington,
where the rain began to fall very heavily--will you
believe it?--I was forced to come outside; for Sir Pitt is a
proprietor of the coach, and as a passenger came at
Mudbury, who wanted an inside place, I was obliged to
go outside in the rain, where, however, a young
gentleman from Cambridge College sheltered me very
kindly in one of his several great coats.

This gentleman and the guard seemed to know Sir
Pitt very well, and laughed at him a great deal.  They
both agreed in calling him an old screw; which means a
very stingy, avaricious person.  He never gives any money
to anybody, they said (and this meanness I hate); and
the young gentleman made me remark that we drove
very slow for the last two stages on the road, because
Sir Pitt was on the box, and because he is proprietor
of the horses for this part of the journey.  "But won't I
flog 'em on to Squashmore, when I take the ribbons?"
s