e of a third party; I
know not whether she hoped that should her cousin
succeed in carrying off the rich merchant's daughter, he
would give Miss Wirt a portion of the wealth which she
had enabled him to win--all that is certain is that Mr.
Osborne got some hint of the transaction, came back from
the City abruptly, and entered the drawing-room with his
bamboo cane; found the painter, the pupil, and the
companion all looking exceedingly pale there; turned the
former out of doors with menaces that he would break
every bone in his skin, and half an hour afterwards
dismissed Miss Wirt likewise, kicking her trunks down the
stairs, trampling on her bandboxes, and shaking his fist at
her hackney coach as it bore her away.

Jane Osborne kept her bedroom for many days.  She was
not allowed to have a companion afterwards.  Her father
swore to her that she should not have a shilling of his
money if she made any match without his concurrence;
and as he wanted a woman to keep his house, he did not
choose that she should marry, so that she was obliged to
give up all projects with which Cupid had any share.
During her papa's life, then, she resigned herself to the
manner of existence here described, and was content to be
an old maid.  Her sister, meanwhile, was having children
with finer names every year and the intercourse between
the two grew fainter continually.  "Jane and I do not move
in the same sphere of life," Mrs. Bullock said.  "I regard her
as a sister, of course"--which means--what does it mean
when a lady says that she regards Jane as a sister?

It has been described how the Misses Dobbin lived with
their father at a fine villa at Denmark Hill, where there
were beautiful graperies and peach-trees which delighted
little Georgy Osborne.  The Misses Dobbin, who drove often
to Brompton to see our dear Amelia, came sometimes to
Russell Square too, to pay a visit to their old acquaintance
Miss Osborne.  I believe it was in consequence of the
commands of their brother the Major in India (for whom
their papa had a prodigious respect), that they paid
attention to Mrs. George; for the Major, the godfather and
guardian of Amelia's little boy, still hoped that the child's
grandfather might be induced to relent towards him and
acknowledge him for the sake of his son.  The Misses
Dobbin kept Miss Osborne acquainted with the state of
Amelia's affairs; how she was living with her father and
mother; how poor they were; how they wondered what
men, and such men as their brother and dear Captain
Osborne, could find in such an insignificant little chit; how
she was still, as heretofore, a namby-pamby milk-and-
water affected creature--but how the boy was really the
noblest little boy ever seen--for the hearts of all women
warm towards young children, and the sourest spinster is
kind to them.

One day, after great entreaties on the part of the Misses
Dobbin, Amelia allowed little George to go and pass a day
with them at Denmark Hill--a part of which day she spent
herself in writing to the Major in India.  She congratulated
him on the happy news which his sisters had just
conveyed to her.  She prayed for his prosperity and that of
the bride he had chosen.  She thanked him for a thousand
thousand kind offices and proofs of stead fast friendship to
her in her affliction.  She told him the last news about little
Georgy, and how he was gone to spend that very day with
his sisters in the country.  She underlined the letter a great
deal, and she signed herself affectionately his friend,
Amelia Osborne.  She forgot to send any message of
kindness to Lady O'Dowd, as her wont was--and did not
mention Glorvina by name, and only in italics, as the
Major's BRIDE, for whom she begged blessings.  But the
news of the marriage removed the reserve which she had
kept up towards him.  She was glad to be able to own and
feel how warmly and gratefully she regarded him--and as
for the idea of being jealous of Glorvina (Glorvina, indeed!),
Amelia would have scouted it, if an angel from heaven had
hinted it to her.  That night, when Georgy came back in the
pony-carriage in which he rejoiced, and in which he was
driven by Sir Wm.  Dobbin's old coachman, he had round
his neck a fine gold chain and watch.  He said an old lady,
not pretty, had given it him, who cried and kissed him a
great deal.  But he didn't like her.  He liked grapes very
much.  And he only liked his mamma.  Amelia shrank and
started; the timid soul felt a presentiment of terror when
she heard that the relations of the child's father had seen
him.

Miss Osborne came back to give her father his dinner.  He
had made a good speculation in the City, and was rather in
a good humour that day, and chanced to remark the
agitation under which she laboured.  "What's the matter,
Miss Osborne?" he deigned to say.

The woman burst into tears.  "Oh, sir," she said, "I've seen
little George.  He is as beautiful as an angel--and so like
him!" The old man opposite to her did not say a word, but
flushed up and began to tremble in every limb.




CHAPIER XLIII

In Which the Reader Has to Double the Cape

The astonished reader must be called upon to transport
himself ten thousand miles to the military station of
Bundlegunge, in the Madras division of our Indian empire,
where our gallant old friends of the --th regiment are
quartered under the command of the brave Colonel,
Sir Michael O'Dowd.  Time has dealt kindly with that
stout officer, as it does ordinarily with men who have
good stomachs and good tempers and are not perplexed
over much by fatigue of the brain.  The Colonel plays a
good knife and fork at tiffin and resumes those weapons
with great success at dinner.  He smokes his hookah after
both meals and puffs as quietly while his wife scolds
him as he did under the fire of the French at Waterloo.  Age
and heat have not diminished the activity or the eloquence
of the descendant of the Malonys and the Molloys.  Her
Ladyship, our old acquaintance, is as much at home at
Madras as at Brussels in the cantonment as under the
tents.  On the march you saw her at the head of the
regiment seated on a royal elephant, a noble sight.
Mounted on that beast, she has been into action with tigers
in the jungle, she has been received by native princes, who
have welcomed her and Glorvina into the recesses of their
zenanas and offered her shawls and jewels which it went
to her heart to refuse.  The sentries of all arms salute her
wherever she makes her appearance, and she touches her
hat gravely to their salutation.  Lady O'Dowd is one of the
greatest ladies in the Presidency of Madras--her quarrel
with Lady Smith, wife of Sir Minos Smith the puisne judge,
is still remembered by some at Madras, when the Colonel's
lady snapped her fingers in the Judge's lady's face and said
SHE'D never walk behind ever a beggarly civilian.  Even
now, though it is five-and-twenty years ago, people
remember Lady O'Dowd performing a jig at Government
House, where she danced down two Aides-de-Camp, a
Major of Madras cavalry, and two gentlemen of the Civil
Service; and, persuaded by Major Dobbin, C.B., second in
command of the --th, to retire to the supper-room, lassata
nondum satiata recessit.

Peggy O'Dowd is indeed the same as ever, kind in act and
thought; impetuous in temper; eager to command; a tyrant
over her Michael; a dragon amongst all the ladies of the
regiment; a mother to all the young men, whom she tends
in their sickness, defends in all their scrapes, and with
whom Lady Peggy is immensely popular.  But the
Subalterns' and Captains' ladies (the Major is unmarried)
cabal against her a good deal.  They say that Glorvina gives
herself airs and that Peggy herself is ill tolerably
domineering.  She interfered with a little congregation
which Mrs. Kirk had got up and laughed the young men
away from her sermons, stating that a soldier's wife had no
business to be a parson--that Mrs. Kirk would be much
better mending her husband's clothes; and, if the regiment
wanted sermons, that she had the finest in the world, those
of her uncle, the Dean.  She abruptly put a termination to a
flirtation which Lieutenant Stubble of the regiment had
commenced with the Surgeon's wife, threatening to come
down upon Stubble for the money which he had borrowed
from her (for the young fellow was still of an extravagant
turn) unless he broke off at once and went to the Cape on
sick leave.  On the other hand, she housed and sheltered
Mrs. Posky, who fled from her bungalow one night,
pursued by her infuriate husband, wielding his second
brandy bottle, and actually carried Posky through the
delirium tremens and broke him of the habit of drinking,
which had grown upon that officer, as all evil habits will
grow upon men.  In a word, in adversity she was the best
of comforters, in good fortune the most troublesome of
friends, having a perfectly good opinion of herself always
and an indomitable resolution to have her own way.

Among other points, she had made up her mind that
Glorvina should marry our old friend Dobbin.  Mrs. O'Dowd
knew the Major's expectations and appreciated his good
qualities and the high character which he enjoyed in his
profession.  Glorvina, a very handsome, fresh-coloured,
black-haired, blue-eyed young lady, who could ride a
horse, or play a sonata with any girl out of the County
Cork, seemed to be the very person destined to insure
Dobbin's happiness--much more than that poor good little
weak-spur'ted Amelia, about whom he used to take on so.--
"Look at Glorvina enter a room," Mrs. O'Dowd would say,
"and compare her with that poor Mrs. Osborne, who
couldn't say boo to a goose.  She'd be worthy of you, Major--
you're a quiet man yourself, and want some one to talk for
ye.  And though she does not come of such good blood as
the Malonys or Molloys, let me tell ye, she's of an ancient
family that any nobleman might be proud to marry into."

But before she had come to such a resolution and determined to
subjugate Major Dobbin by her endearments, it must be owned
that Glorvina had practised them a good deal elsewhere.  She had
had a season in Dublin, and who knows how many in Cork,
Killarney, and Mallow? She had flirted with all the marriageable
officers whom the depots of her country afforded, and all the
bachelor squires who seemed eligible.  She had been
engaged to be married a half-score times in Ireland,
besides the clergyman at Bath who used her so ill.  She had
flirted all the way to Madras with the Captain and chief
mate of the Ramchunder East Indiaman, and had a season
at the Presidency with her brother and Mrs. O'Dowd, who
was staying there, while the Major of the regiment was in
command at the station.  Everybody admired her there;
everybody danced with her; but no one proposed who was
worth the marrying--one or two exceedingly young
subalterns sighed after her, and a beardless civilian or two,
but she rejected these as beneath her pretensions--and
other and younger virgins than Glorvina were married
before her.  There are women, and handsome women too,
who have this fortune in life.  They fall in love with the
utmost generosity; they ride and walk with half the
Army-list, though they draw near to forty, and yet the
Misses O'Grady are the Misses O'Grady still:  Glorvina
persisted that but for Lady O'Dowd's unlucky quarrel with
the Judge's lady, she would have made a good match at
Madras, where old Mr. Chutney, who was at the head of
the civil service (and who afterwards married Miss Dolby,
a young lady only thirteen years of age who had just
arrived from school in Europe), was just at the point of
proposing to her.

Well, although Lady O'Dowd and Glorvina quarrelled a
great number of times every day, and upon almost every
conceivable subject--indeed, if Mick O'Dowd had not
possessed the temper of an angel two such women
constantly about his ears would have driven him out of his
senses--yet they agreed between themselves on this point,
that Glorvina should marry Major Dobbin, and were
determined that the Major should have no rest until the
arrangement was brought about.  Undismayed by forty or
fifty previous defeats, Glorvina laid siege to him.  She sang
Irish melodies at him unceasingly.  She asked him so
frequently and pathetically, Will ye come to the bower?
that it is a wonder how any man of feeling could have
resisted the invitation.  She was never tired of inquiring, if
Sorrow had his young days faded, and was ready to listen
and weep like Desdemona at the stories of his dangers and
his campaigns.  It has been
said that our honest and dear old friend used to perform
on the flute in private; Glorvina insisted upon having duets
with him, and Lady O'Dowd would rise and artlessly quit
the room when the young couple were so engaged.
Glorvina forced the Major to ride with her of mornings.  The
whole cantonment saw them set out and return.  She was
constantly writing notes over to him at his house,
borrowing his books, and scoring with her great
pencil-marks such passages of sentiment or humour as
awakened her sympathy.  She borrowed his horses, his
servants, his spoons, and palanquin--no wonder that public
rumour assigned her to him, and that the Major's sisters in
England should fancy they were about to have a sister-in-
law.

Dobbin, who was thus vigorously besieged, was in the
meanwhile in a state of the most odious tranquillity.  He
used to laugh when the young fellows of the regiment
joked him about Glorvina's manifest attentions to him.
"Bah!" said he, "she is only keeping her hand in--she
practises upon me as she does upon Mrs. Tozer's piano,
because it's the most handy instrument in the station.  I am
much too battered and old for such a fine young lady as
Glorvina." And so he went on riding with her, and copying
music and verses into her albums, and playing at chess
with her very submissively; for it is with these simple
amusements that some officers in India are accustomed to
while away their leisure moments, while others of a less
domestic turn hunt hogs, and shoot snipes, or gamble and
smoke cheroots, and betake themselves to brandy-and-
water.  As for Sir Michael O'Dowd, though his lady and her
sister both urged him to call upon the Major to explain
himself and not keep on torturing a poor innocent girl in
that shameful way, the old soldier refused point-blank to
have anything to do with the conspiracy.  "Faith, the Major's
big enough to choose for himself," Sir Michael said; "he'll
ask ye when he wants ye"; or else he would turn the
matter off jocularly, declaring that "Dobbin was too young
to keep house, and had written home to ask lave of his
mamma." Nay, he went farther, and in private
communications with his Major would caution and rally
him, crying, "Mind your oi, Dob, my boy, them girls is bent
on mischief--me Lady has just got a box of gowns from Europe, and there's a pink satin for Glorvina, which will finish ye, Dob, if it's in the power of woman or satin to move ye."

But the truth is, neither beauty nor fashion could conquer
him.  Our honest friend had but one idea of a woman in his
head, and that one did not in the least resemble Miss
Glorvina O'Dowd in pink satin.  A gentle little woman in black,
with large eyes and brown hair, seldom speaking, save when
spoken to, and then in a voice not the least resembling
Miss Glorvina's--a soft young mother tending an infant
and beckoning the Major up with a smile to look at him--a
rosy-cheeked lass coming singing into the room in Russell
Square or hanging on George Osborne's arm, happy and
loving--there was but this image that filled our honest
Major's mind, by day and by night, and reigned over it
always.  Very likely Amelia was not like the portrait the
Major had formed of her:  there was a figure in a book of
fashions which his sisters had in England, and with which
William had made away privately, pasting it into the lid
of his desk, and fancying he saw some resemblance to
Mrs. Osborne in the print, whereas I have seen it, and
can vouch that it is but the picture of a high-waisted
gown with an impossible doll's face simpering over it--
and, perhaps, Mr. Dobbin's sentimental Amelia was no
more like the real one than this absurd little print which
he cherished.  But what man in love, of us, is better
informed?--or is he much happier when he sees and owns his
delusion? Dobbin was under this spell.  He did not bother
his friends and the public much about his feelings, or
indeed lose his natural rest or appetite on account
of them.  His head has grizzled since we saw him last, and
a line or two of silver may be seen in the soft brown hair
likewise.  But his feelings are not in the least changed or
oldened, and his love remains as fresh as a man's
recollections of boyhood are.

We have said how the two Misses Dobbin and Amelia, the
Major's correspondents in Europe, wrote him letters from
England, Mrs. Osborne congratulating him with great candour
and cordiality upon his approaching nuptials with Miss O'Dowd.
"Your sister has just kindly visited me," Amelia wrote
in her letter, "and informed me of an INTERESTING EVENT,
upon which I beg to offer my MOST SINCERE CONGRATULATIONS.
I hope the young lady to whom I hear you are to
be UNITED will in every respect prove worthy of one who
is himself all kindness and goodness.  The poor widow has
only her prayers to offer and her cordial cordial wishes
for YOUR PROSPERITY!  Georgy sends his love to HIS DEAR GODPAPA
and hopes that you will not forget him.  I tell
him that you are about to form OTHER TIES, with one who
I am sure merits ALL YOUR AFFECTION, but that, although
such ties must of course be the strongest and most
sacred, and supersede ALL OTHERS, yet that I am sure the
widow and the child whom you have ever protected and
loved will always HAVE A CORNER IN YOUR HEART" The letter,
which has been before alluded to, went on in this
strain, protesting throughout as to the extreme satisfaction
of the writer.

This letter, .which arrived by the very same ship which
brought out Lady O'Dowd's box of millinery from London
(and which you may be sure Dobbin opened before any
one of the other packets which the mail brought him),
put the receiver into such a state of mind that Glorvina,
and her pink satin, and everything belonging to her became
perfectly odious to him.  The Major cursed the talk
of women, and the sex in general.  Everything annoyed
him that day--the parade was insufferably hot and
wearisome.  Good heavens! was a man of intellect to waste
his life, day after day, inspecting cross-belts and putting
fools through their manoeuvres? The senseless chatter
of the young men at mess was more than ever jarring.
What cared he, a man on the high road to forty, to
know how many snipes Lieutenant Smith had shot, or
what were the performances of Ensign Brown's mare? The
jokes about the table filled him with shame.  He was too
old to listen to the banter of the assistant surgeon and
the slang of the youngsters, at which old O'Dowd, with
his bald head and red face, laughed quite easily.  The
old man had listened to those jokes any time these
thirty years--Dobbin himself had been fifteen years hearing
them.  And after the boisterous dulness of the mess-table,
the quarrels and scandal of the ladies of the regiment!
It was unbearable, shameful.  "O Amelia, Amelia,"
he thought, "you to whom I have been so faithful--
you reproach me!  It is because you cannot feel for me
that I drag on this wearisome life.  And you reward me
after years of devotion by giving me your blessing upon
my marriage, forsooth, with this flaunting Irish girl!"
Sick and sorry felt poor William; more than ever
wretched and lonely.  He would like to have done with
life and its vanity altogether--so bootless and unsatisfactory
the struggle, so cheerless and dreary the prospect
seemed to him.  He lay all that night sleepless, and
yearning to go home.  Amelia's letter had fallen as a
blank upon him.  No fidelity, no constant truth and passion,
could move her into warmth.  She would not see
that he loved her.  Tossing in his bed, he spoke out to her.
"Good God, Amelia!" he said, "don't you know that I
only love you in the world--you, who are a stone to me
--you, whom I tended through months and months of
illness and grief, and who bade me farewell with a smile
on your face, and forgot me before the door shut between
us!" The native servants lying outside his verandas beheld
with wonder the Major, so cold and quiet ordinarily,
at present so passionately moved and cast down.  Would
she have pitied him had she seen him? He read over and
over all the letters which he ever had from her--letters
of business relative to the little property which he had
made her believe her husband had left to her--brief notes
of invitation--every scrap of writing that she had ever
sent to him--how cold, how kind, how hopeless, how
selfish they were!

Had there been some kind gentle soul near at hand who
could read and appreciate this silent generous heart, who
knows but that the reign of Amelia might have been over,
and that friend William's love might have flowed into a
kinder channel? But there was only Glorvina of the jetty
ringlets with whom his intercourse was familiar, and this
dashing young woman was not bent upon loving the
Major, but rather on making the Major admire HER--a
most vain and hopeless task, too, at least considering
the means that the poor girl possessed to carry
it out.  She curled her hair and showed her shoulders
at him, as much as to say, did ye ever see such jet
ringlets and such a complexion? She grinned at him so
that he might see that every tooth in her head was
sound--and he never heeded all these charms.  Very soon
after the arrival of the box of millinery, and perhaps indeed
in honour of it, Lady O'Dowd and the ladies of
the King's Regiment gave a ball to the Company's
Regiments and the civilians at the station.  Glorvina
sported the killing pink frock, and the Major, who attended
the party and walked very ruefully up and down
the rooms, never so much as perceived the pink garment.
Glorvina danced past him in a fury with all the young
subalterns of the station, and the Major was not in the
least jealous of her performance, or angry because Captain
Bangles of the Cavalry handed her to supper.  It was
not jealousy, or frocks, or shoulders that could move him,
and Glorvina had nothing more.

So these two were each exemplifying the Vanity of this
life, and each longing for what he or she could not get.
Glorvina cried with rage at the failure.  She had set her
mind on the Major "more than on any of the others,"
she owned, sobbing.  "He'll break my heart, he will,
Peggy," she would whimper to her sister-in-law when
they were good friends; "sure every one of me frocks
must be taken in--it's such a skeleton I'm growing."
Fat or thin, laughing or melancholy, on horseback or the
music-stool, it was all the same to the Major.  And the
Colonel, puffing his pipe and listening to these complaints,
would suggest that Glory should have some black frocks
out in the next box from London, and told a mysterious
story of a lady in Ireland who died of grief for the loss of
her husband before she got ere a one.

While the Major was going on in this tantalizing way,
not proposing, and declining to fall in love, there came
another ship from Europe bringing letters on board, and
amongst them some more for the heartless man.  These
were home letters bearing an earlier postmark than that
of the former packets, and as Major Dobbin recognized
among his the handwriting of his sister, who always
crossed and recrossed her letters to her brother--gathered
together all the possible bad news which she could
collect, abused him and read him lectures with sisterly
frankness, and always left him miserable for the day after
"dearest William" had achieved the perusal of one of her
epistles--the truth must be told that dearest William did
not hurry himself to break the seal of Miss Dobbin's
letter, but waited for a particularly favourable day and
mood for doing so.  A fortnight before, moreover, he
had written to scold her for telling those absurd stories
to Mrs. Osborne, and had despatched a letter in reply
to that lady, undeceiving her with respect to the reports
concerning him and assuring her that "he had no sort of
present intention of altering his condition."

Two or three nights after the arrival of the second
package of letters, the Major had passed the evening
pretty cheerfully at Lady O'Dowd's house, where Glorvina
thought that he listened with rather more attention
than usual to the Meeting of the Wathers, the Minsthrel
Boy, and one or two other specimens of song with which
she favoured him (the truth is, he was no more listening
to Glorvina than to the howling of the jackals in the
moonlight outside, and the delusion was hers as usual),
and having played his game at chess with her (cribbage
with the surgeon was Lady O'Dowd's favourite evening
pastime), Major Dobbin took leave of the Colonel's family
at his usual hour and retired to his own house.

There on his table, his sister's letter lay reproaching
him.  He took it up, ashamed rather of his negligence
regarding it, and prepared himself for a disagreeable hour's
communing with that crabbed-handed absent relative.
.  .  .  It may have been an hour after the Major's departure
from the Colonel's house--Sir Michael was sleeping
the sleep of the just; Glorvina had arranged her
black ringlets in the innumerable little bits of paper, in
which it was her habit to confine them; Lady O'Dowd,
too, had gone to her bed in the nuptial chamber, on the
ground-floor, and had tucked her musquito curtains
round her fair form, when the guard at the gates of the
Commanding-Officer's compound beheld Major Dobbin,
in the moonlight, rushing towards the house with a swift
step and a very agitated countenance, and he passed the
sentinel and went up to the windows of the Colonel's
bedchamber.

"O'Dowd--Colonel!" said Dobbin and kept up a great
shouting.

"Heavens, Meejor!" said Glorvina of the curl-papers,
putting out her head too, from her window.

"What is it, Dob, me boy?" said the Colonel, expecting
there was a fire in the station, or that the route had
come from headquarters.

"I--I must have leave of absence.  I must go to England
--on the most urgent private affairs," Dobbin said.

"Good heavens, what has happened!" thought Glorvina,
trembling with all the papillotes.

"I want to be off--now--to-night," Dobbin continued;
and the Colonel getting up, came out to parley with him.

In the postscript of Miss Dobbin's cross-letter, the
Major had just come upon a paragraph, to the following
effect:--"I drove yesterday to see your old ACQUAINTANCE,
Mrs. Osborne.  The wretched place they live at, since
they were bankrupts, you know--Mr. S., to judge from
a BRASS PLATE on the door of his hut (it is little better)
is a coal-merchant.  The little boy, your godson, is
certainly a fine child, though forward, and inclined to be
saucy and self-willed.  But we have taken notice of him
as you wish it, and have introduced him to his aunt,
Miss O., who was rather pleased with him.  Perhaps his
grandpapa, not the bankrupt one, who is almost doting,
but Mr. Osborne, of Russell Square, may be induced to
relent towards the child of your friend, HIS ERRING AND
SELF-WILLED SON.  And Amelia will not be ill-disposed to
give him up.  The widow is CONSOLED, and is about to
marry a reverend gentleman, the Rev.  Mr. Binny, one
of the curates of Brompton.  A poor match.  But Mrs. O.
is getting old, and I saw a great deal of grey in her hair--
she was in very good spirits:  and your little godson overate
himself at our house.  Mamma sends her love with
that of your affectionate, Ann Dobbin."




CHAPTER XLIV


A Round-about Chapter between London and
Hampshire

Our old friends the Crawleys' family house, in Great
Gaunt Street, still bore over its front the hatchment which
had been placed there as a token of mourning for Sir
Pitt Crawley's demise, yet this heraldic emblem was in
itself a very splendid and gaudy piece of furniture, and
all the rest of the mansion became more brilliant than it
had ever been during the late baronet's reign.  The black
outer-coating of the bricks was removed, and they
appeared with a cheerful, blushing face streaked with white:
the old bronze lions of the knocker were gilt handsomely,
the railings painted, and the dismallest house in Great
Gaunt Street became the smartest in the whole quarter,
before the green leaves in Hampshire had replaced those
yellowing ones which were on the trees in Queen's Crawley
Avenue when old Sir Pitt Crawley passed under them
for the last time.

A little woman, with a carriage to correspond, was
perpetually seen about this mansion; an elderly spinster,
accompanied by a little boy, also might be remarked
coming thither daily.  It was Miss Briggs and little Rawdon,
whose business it was to see to the inward renovation
of Sir Pitt's house, to superintend the female band
engaged in stitching the blinds and hangings, to poke
and rummage in the drawers and cupboards crammed
with the dirty relics and congregated trumperies of a
couple of generations of Lady Crawleys, and to take
inventories of the china, the glass, and other properties
in the closets and store-rooms.

Mrs. Rawdon Crawley was general-in-chief over these
arrangements, with full orders from Sir Pitt to sell, barter,
confiscate, or purchase furniture, and she enjoyed herself
not a little in an occupation which gave full scope to her
taste and ingenuity.  The renovation of the house was
determined upon when Sir Pitt came to town in November
to see his lawyers, and when he passed nearly a week in
Curzon Street, under the roof of his affectionate brother
and sister.

He had put up at an hotel at first, but, Becky, as soon
as she heard of the Baronet's arrival, went off alone to
greet him, and returned in an hour to Curzon Street
with Sir Pitt in the carriage by her side.  It was impossible
sometimes to resist this artless little creature's hospitalities,
so kindly were they pressed, so frankly and amiably
offered.  Becky seized Pitt's hand in a transport of
gratitude when he agreed to come.  "Thank you," she
said, squeezing it and looking into the Baronet's eyes,
who blushed a good deal; "how happy this will make
Rawdon!" She bustled up to Pitt's bedroom, leading
on the servants, who were carrying his trunks thither.  She
came in herself laughing, with a coal-scuttle out of
her own room.

A fire was blazing already in Sir Pitt's apartment (it
was Miss Briggs's room, by the way, who was sent
upstairs to sleep with the maid).  "I knew I should bring
you," she said with pleasure beaming in her glance.  Indeed,
she was really sincerely happy at having him for a guest.

Becky made Rawdon dine out once or twice on business,
while Pitt stayed with them, and the Baronet passed
the happy evening alone with her and Briggs.  She went
downstairs to the kitchen and actually cooked little
dishes for him.  "Isn't it a good salmi?" she said; "I
made it for you.  I can make you better dishes than that,
and will when you come to see me."

"Everything you do, you do well," said the Baronet
gallantly.  "The salmi is excellent indeed."

"A poor man's wife," Rebecca replied gaily, "must
make herself useful, you know"; on which her brother-
in-law vowed that "she was fit to be the wife of an
Emperor, and that to be skilful in domestic duties was
surely one of the most charming of woman's qualities."
And Sir Pitt thought, with something like mortification,
of Lady Jane at home, and of a certain pie which she had
insisted on making, and serving to him at dinner--a
most abominable pie.

Besides the salmi, which was made of Lord Steyne's
pheasants from his lordship's cottage of Stillbrook, Becky
gave her brother-in-law a bottle of white wine, some
that Rawdon had brought with him from France, and had
picked up for nothing, the little story-teller said; whereas
the liquor was, in truth, some White Hermitage from
the Marquis of Steyne's famous cellars, which brought fire
into the Baronet's pallid cheeks and a glow into his feeble
frame.

Then when he had drunk up the bottle of petit vin
blanc, she gave him her hand, and took him up to the
drawing-room, and made him snug on the sofa by the
fire, and let him talk as she listened with the tenderest
kindly interest, sitting by him, and hemming a shirt
for her dear little boy.  Whenever Mrs. Rawdon wished
to be particularly humble and virtuous, this little shirt
used to come out of her work-box.  It had got to be too
small for Rawdon long before it was finished.

Well, Rebecca listened to Pitt, she talked to him, she
sang to him, she coaxed him, and cuddled him, so that
he found himself more and more glad every day to get
back from the lawyer's at Gray's Inn, to the blazing fire
in Curzon Street--a gladness in which the men of law
likewise participated, for Pitt's harangues were of the
longest--and so that when he went away he felt quite a
pang at departing.  How pretty she looked kissing her
hand to him from the carriage and waving her handkerchief
when he had taken his place in the mail!  She put
the handkerchief to her eyes once.  He pulled his
sealskin cap over his, as the coach drove away, and,
sinking back, he thought to himself how she respected
him and how he deserved it, and how Rawdon was a foolish
dull fellow who didn't half-appreciate his wife; and
how mum and stupid his own wife was compared to that
brilliant little Becky.  Becky had hinted every one of these
things herself, perhaps, but so delicately and gently that
you hardly knew when or where.  And, before they
parted, it was agreed that the house in London should be
redecorated for the next season, and that the brothers'
families should meet again in the country at Christmas.

"I wish you could have got a little money out of
him," Rawdon said to his wife moodily when the Baronet
was gone.  "I should like to give something to old Raggles,
hanged if I shouldn't.  It ain't right, you know, that the
old fellow should be kept out of all his money.  It may be
inconvenient, and he might let to somebody else besides
us, you know."

"Tell him," said Becky, "that as soon as Sir Pitt's
affairs are settled, everybody will be paid, and give him a
little something on account.  Here's a cheque that Pitt
left for the boy," and she took from her bag and gave
her husband a paper which his brother had handed over
to her, on behalf of the little son and heir of the younger
branch of the Crawleys.

The truth is, she had tried personally the ground on
which her husband expressed a wish that she should
venture--tried it ever so delicately, and found it unsafe.
Even at a hint about embarrassments, Sir Pitt Crawley was
off and alarmed.  And he began a long speech, explaining
how straitened he himself was in money matters; how
the tenants would not pay; how his father's affairs, and
the expenses attendant upon the demise of the old
gentleman, had involved him; how he wanted to pay off
incumbrances; and how the bankers and agents were
overdrawn; and Pitt Crawley ended by making a
compromise with his sister-in-law and giving her a very
small sum for the benefit of her little boy.

Pitt knew how poor his brother and his brother's family
must be.  It could not have escaped the notice of such a
cool and experienced old diplomatist that Rawdon's family
had nothing to live upon, and that houses and carriages
are not to be kept for nothing.  He knew very well that
he was the proprietor or appropriator of the money,
which, according to all proper calculation, ought to have fallen to his younger brother, and he had, we may be sure, some
secret pangs of remorse within him, which warned
him that he ought to perform some act of justice,
or, let us say, compensation, towards these disappointed
relations.  A just, decent man, not without brains,
who said his prayers, and knew his catechism, and
did his duty outwardly through life, he could not be
otherwise than aware that something was due to his
brother at his hands, and that morally he was Rawdon's
debtor.

But, as one reads in the columns of the Times newspaper
every now and then, queer announcements from
the Chancellor of the Exchequer, acknowledging the receipt
of 50 pounds from A.  B., or 10 pounds from W.  T., as
conscience-money, on account of taxes due by the said
A.  B.  or W.  T., which payments the penitents beg the
Right Honourable gentleman to acknowledge through the
medium of the public press--so is the Chancellor no
doubt, and the reader likewise, always perfectly sure that
the above-named A.  B.  and W.  T.  are only paying a
very small instalment of what they really owe, and that
the man who sends up a twenty-pound note has very
likely hundreds or thousands more for which he ought
to account.  Such, at least, are my feelings, when I see
A.  B.  or W.  T.'s insufficient acts of repentance.  And I
have no doubt that Pitt Crawley's contrition, or kindness
if you will, towards his younger brother, by whom
he had so much profited, was only a very small dividend
upon the capital sum in which he was indebted to Rawdon.
Not everybody is willing to pay even so much.  To part
with money is a sacrifice beyond almost all men endowed
with a sense of order.  There is scarcely any man alive
who does not think himself meritorious for giving
his neighbour five pounds.  Thriftless gives, not from a
beneficent pleasure in giving, but from a lazy delight in
spending.  He would not deny himself one enjoyment; not
his opera-stall, not his horse, not his dinner, not even
the pleasure of giving Lazarus the five pounds.  Thrifty,
who is good, wise, just, and owes no man a penny, turns
from a beggar, haggles with a hackney-coachman, or
denies a poor relation, and I doubt which is the most
selfish of the two.  Money has only a different value in
the eyes of each.

So, in a word, Pitt Crawley thought he would do something
for his brother, and then thought that he would think
about it some other time.

And with regard to Becky, she was not a woman who
expected too much from the generosity of her
neighbours, and so was quite content with all that Pitt Crawley
had done for her.  She was acknowledged by the head
of the family.  If Pitt would not give her anything, he
would get something for her some day.  If she got no
money from her brother-in-law, she got what was as good
as money--credit.  Raggles was made rather easy in his
mind by the spectacle of the union between the brothers,
by a small payment on the spot, and by the promise of a
much larger sum speedily to be assigned to him.  And
Rebecca told Miss Briggs, whose Christmas dividend
upon the little sum lent by her Becky paid with an air of
candid joy, and as if her exchequer was brimming over
with gold--Rebecca, we say, told Miss Briggs, in strict
confidence that she had conferred with Sir Pitt, who was
famous as a financier, on Briggs's special behalf, as to
the most profitable investment of Miss B.'s remaining
capital; that Sir Pitt, after much consideration, had
thought of a most safe and advantageous way in which
Briggs could lay out her money; that, being especially
interested in her as an attached friend of the late Miss
Crawley, and of the whole family, and that long before
he left town, he had recommended that she should be
ready with the money at a moment's notice, so as to
purchase at the most favourable opportunity the shares
which Sir Pitt had in his eye.  Poor Miss Briggs was very
grateful for this mark of Sir Pitt's attention--it came so
unsolicited, she said, for she never should have thought of
removing the money from the funds--and the delicacy
enhanced the kindness of the office; and she promised to
see her man of business immediately and be ready with
her little cash at the proper hour.

And this worthy woman was so grateful for the
kindness of Rebecca in the matter, and for that of her
generous benefactor, the Colonel, that she went out and
spent a great part of her half-year's dividend in the
purchase of a black velvet coat for little Rawdon, who, by
the way, was grown almost too big for black velvet now,
and was of a size and age befitting him for the assumption
of the virile jacket and pantaloons.

He was a fine open-faced boy, with blue eyes and
waving flaxen hair, sturdy in limb, but generous and soft in
heart, fondly attaching himself to all who were good to
him--to the pony--to Lord Southdown, who gave him
the horse (he used to blush and glow all over when he
saw that kind young nobleman)--to the groom who had
charge of the pony--to Molly, the cook, who crammed
him with ghost stories at night, and with good things from
the dinner--to Briggs, whom he plagued and laughed at
--and to his father especially, whose attachment
towards the lad was curious too to witness.  Here, as he
grew to be about eight years old, his attachments may
be said to have ended.  The beautiful mother-vision