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ᐸsamples n="ENG18480"ᐳ
ᐸsampleᐳᐸp n="ENG184802790"ᐳ  So she determined with all her might and strength to try and make her old father happy. She slaved, toiled, patched, and mended, sang and played backgammon, read out the newspaper, cooked dishes, for old Sedley, walked him out sedulously into Kensington Gardens or the Brompton Lanes, listened to his stories with untiring smiles and affectionate hypocrisy, or sate musing by his side and communing with her own thoughts and reminiscences, as the old man, feeble and querulous, sunned himself on the garden benches and prattled about his wrongs or his sorrows.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG184802791"ᐳ  What sad, unsatisfactory thoughts those of the widow were! The children running up and down the slopes and broad paths in the gardens, reminded her of George who was taken from her: the first George was taken from her: her selfish, guilty love, in both instances, had been rebuked and bitterly chastised. She strove to think it was right that she should be so punished. She was such a miserable wicked sinner. She was quite alone in the world.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG184802792"ᐳ  I know that the account of this kind of solitary imprisonment is insufferably tedious, unless there is some cheerful or humorous incident to enliven it,—a tender gaoler, for instance, or a waggish commandant of the fortress, or a mouse to come out and play about Latude’s beard and whiskers, or a subterranean passage under the castle, dug by Trenck with his nails and a toothpick: the historian has no such enlivening incident to relate in the narrative of Amelia’s captivity. Fancy her, if you please, during this period, very sad, but always ready to smile when spoken to; in a very mean, poor, not to say vulgar position of life; singing songs, making puddings, playing cards, mending stockings, for her old father’s benefit. So, never mind, whether she be a heroine or no; or you and I, however old, scolding, and bankrupt;—may we have in our last days a kind soft shoulder on which to lean, and a gentle hand to soothe our gouty old pillows.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG184802793"ᐳ  Old Sedley grew very fond of his daughter after his wife’s death; and Amelia had her consolation in doing her duty by the old man.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG184802794"ᐳ  But we are not going to leave these two people long in such a low and ungenteel station of life. Better days, as far as worldly prosperity went, were in store for both. Perhaps the ingenious reader has guessed who was the stout gentleman who called upon Georgy at his school in company with our old friend Major Dobbin. It was another old acquaintance returned to England, and at a time when his presence was likely to be of great comfort to his relatives there.ᐸ/pᐳ
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ᐸsampleᐳᐸp n="ENG18480894"ᐳ  There are gentlemen of very good blood and fashion in this city, who never have entered a lady’s drawing-room; so that though Rawdon Crawley’s marriage might be talked about in his county, where, of course, Mrs. Bute had spread the news, in London it was doubted, or not heeded, or not talked about at all. He lived comfortably on credit. He had a large capital of debts, which laid out judiciously, will carry a man along for many years, and on which certain men about town contrive to live a hundred times better than even men with ready money can do. Indeed who is there that walks London streets, but can point out a half-dozen of men riding by him splendidly, while he is on foot, courted by fashion, bowed into their carriages by tradesmen, denying themselves nothing, and living on who knows what? We see Jack Thriftless prancing in the park, or darting in his brougham down Pall Mall: we eat his dinners served on his miraculous plate. “How did this begin,” we say, “or where will it end?” “My dear fellow,” I heard Jack once say, “I owe money in every capital in Europe.” The end must come some day, but in the meantime Jack thrives as much as ever; people are glad enough to shake him by the hand, ignore the little dark stories that are whispered every now and then against him, and pronounce him a good-natured, jovial, reckless fellow.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18480895"ᐳ  Truth obliges us to confess that Rebecca had married a gentleman of this order. Everything was plentiful in his house but ready money, of which their ménage pretty early felt the want; and reading the Gazette one day, and coming upon the announcement of “Lieutenant G. Osborne to be Captain by purchase, vice Smith, who exchanges,” Rawdon uttered that sentiment regarding Amelia’s lover, which ended in the visit to Russell Square.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18480896"ᐳ  When Rawdon and his wife wished to communicate with Captain Dobbin at the sale, and to know particulars of the catastrophe which had befallen Rebecca’s old acquaintances, the Captain had vanished; and such information as they got was from a stray porter or broker at the auction.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18480897"ᐳ  “Look at them with their hooked beaks,” Becky said, getting into the buggy, her picture under her arm, in great glee. “They’re like vultures after a battle.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18480898"ᐳ  “Don’t know. Never was in action, my dear. Ask Martingale; he was in Spain, aide-de-camp to General Blazes.”ᐸ/pᐳ
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ᐸsampleᐳᐸp n="ENG184802907"ᐳ  The Major folded his arms round her, holding her to him as if she was a child, and kissed her head. “I will not change, dear Amelia,” he said. “I ask for no more than your love. I think I would not have it otherwise. Only let me stay near you, and see you often.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG184802908"ᐳ  “Yes, often,” Amelia said. And so William was at liberty to look and lon as the poor boy at school who has no money may sigh after the contents of the tart-woman’s tray.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG184802909"ᐳGOOD fortune now begins to smile upon Amelia. We are glad to get her out of that low sphere in which she has been creeping hitherto, and introduce her into a polite circle; not so grand and refined as that in which our other female friend, Mrs. Becky, has appeared, but still having no small pretensions to gentility and fashion. Jos’s friends were all from the three presidencies, and his new house was in the comfortable Anglo-Indian district of which Moira Place is the centre. Minto Square, Great Clive Street, Warren Street, Hastings Street, Ochterlony Place, Plassy Square, Assaye Terrace (“Gardens” was a felicitous word not applied to stucco houses with asphalte terraces in front, so early as 1827)—who does not know these respectable abodes of the retired Indian aristocracy, and the quarter which Mr. Wenham calls the Black Hole, in a word? Jos’s position in life was not grand enough to entitle him to a house in Moira Place, where none can live but retired Members of Council, and partners of Indian firms (who break after having settled a hundred thousand pounds on their wives, and retire into comparative penury to a country place and four thousand a year): he engaged a comfortable house of a second or third-rate order in Gillespie Street, purchasing the carpets, costly mirrors, and handsome and appropriate planned furniture by Seddons, from the assignees of Mr. Scape, lately admitted partner into the great Calcutta House of Fogle, Fake, and Cracksman, in which poor Scape had embarked seventy thousand pounds, the earnings of a long and honourable life, taking Fake’s place, who retired to a princely Park in Sussex, (the Fogles have been long out of the firm, and Sir Horace Fogle is about to be raised to the peerage as Baron Bandanna)—admitted, I say, partner into the great agency house of Fogle and Fake two years before it failed for a million, and plunged half the Indian public into misery and ruin.ᐸ/pᐳ
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ᐸsampleᐳᐸp n="ENG18480309"ᐳ  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.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18480310"ᐳ  “Good Heavens! Dobbin, where have you been?” Osborne said, seizing the white cashmere shawl from his friend’s arm, and huddling up Amelia in it.—“Make yourself useful, take charge of Jos here, whilst I take the ladies to the carriage.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18480311"ᐳ  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.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18480312"ᐳ  George Osborne conducted the girls home in safety: and when the door was closed upon him, 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.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18480313"ᐳ  “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.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18480314"ᐳ  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.ᐸ/pᐳ
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ᐸsampleᐳᐸp n="ENG184801031"ᐳ  George, in conversation with Amelia, was rallying the appearance of a young lady of whom his father and sisters had lately made the acquaintance, and who was an object of vast respect to the Russell Square family. She was reported to have I don’t know how many plantations in the West Indies; a deal of money in the funds; and three stars to her name in the East India stockholders’ list. She had a mansion in Surrey, and a house in Portland Place. The name of the rich West India heiress had been mentioned with applause in the Morning Post. Mrs. Haggistoun, Colonel Haggistoun’s widow, her relative, “chaperoned” her, and kept her house. She was just from school, where she had completed her education, and George and his sisters had met her at an evening party at old Hulker’s house, Devonshire Place (Hulker, Bullock, and Co. were long the correspondents of her house in the West Indies), and the girls had made the most cordial advances to her, which the heiress had received with great good humour. An orphan in her position—with her money—so interesting! the Misses Osborne said. They were full of their new friend when they returned from the Hulker ball to Miss Wirt, their companion; they had made arrangements for continually meeting, and had the carriage and drove to see her the very next day. Mrs. Haggistoun, Colonel Haggistoun’s widow, a relation of Lord Binkie, and always talking of him, struck the dear unsophisticated girls as rather haughty, and too much inclined to talk about her great relations: but Rhoda was everything they could wish—the frankest, kindest, most agreeable creature—wanting a little polish, but so good-natured. The girls Christian-named each other at once.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG184801032"ᐳ  “You should have seen her dress for court, Emmy,” Osborne cried, laughing. “She came to my sisters to show it off, before she was presented in state by my Lady Binkie, the Haggistoun’s kinswoman. She’s related to everyone, that Haggistoun. Her diamonds blazed out like Vauxhall on the night we were there. (Do you remember Vauxhall, Emmy, and Jos singing to his dearest diddle diddle darling?) Diamonds and mahogany, my dear! think what an advantageous contrast—and the white feathers in her hair—I mean in her wool. She had ear-rings like chandeliers; you might have lighted ’em up, by Jove—and a yellow satin train that streeled after her like the tail of a comet.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG184801033"ᐳ  “How old is she?” asked Emmy, to whom George was rattling away regarding this dark paragon, on the morning of their re-union—rattling away as no other man in the world surely could.ᐸ/pᐳ
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