"His father was a Waterloo man, too," said the old gentleman, who carried the boy. Wasn't he, Georgy?" ་་ 66 you a present of the hat from his head, and "Good morning, your honor," said Clink, whose main occupation in life was to buy in reply to the "How-do, Clink?" of the knick-knacks that he might give them away colonel. "This ere young gentleman is afterward, bought the little chap a pony about the little colonel's age, sir,” continued not much bigger than a large rat, the donor the corporal. said; and on this little black Shetland pigmy young Rawdon's great father was pleased to mount the boy, and to walk by his side in the Park. It pleased him to see his old quarters, and his old fellow-guardsmen at Knightsbridge: he had begun to think of his bachelorhood with something like regret. The old troopers were glad to recognize their ancient officer, and dandle the little colonel. Colonel Crawley found dining at "He was a captain in the―th regiment," the mess with his brother-officers very said the old gentleman rather pompously. pleasant. Hang it, I ain't clever enough"Captain George Osborne, sir—perhaps for her-I know it. She won't miss me," you knew him. He died the death of a hero, he used to say: and he was right: his wife sir, fighting against the Corsican tyrant." did not miss him. 66 Rebecca was fond of her husband. She was always perfectly good-humored and kind to him. She did not even show her scorn much for him; perhaps she liked him the better for being a fool. He was her upper servant and maître d'hôtel. He went on her errands: obeyed her orders without question: drove in the carriage in the ring with her without repining; took her to the Opera-box; solaced himself at his club during the performance, and came punctually back to fetch her when due. He would have liked her to be a little fonder of the boy: but even to that he reconciled himself. "Hang it, you know she's so clever," he said, "and I'm not literary, and that, you know. For, as we have said before, it requires no great wisdom to be able to win at cards and billiards, and Rawdon made no pretensions to any other sort of skill. When the companion came, his domestic duties became very light. His wife encouraged him to dine abroad: she would let him off duty at the Opera. "Don't stay and stupefy yourself at home to-night, my dear," she would say. "Some men are coming who will only bore you. I would not ask them, but you know it's for your good, and now I have a sheep-dog, I need not be afraid to be alone." "A sheep-dog-a companion! Becky Sharp with a companion! Isn't it good fun?" thought Mrs. Crawley to herself. The notion tickled hugely her sense of humor. One Sunday morning, as Rawdon Crawley, his little son, and the pony were taking their accustomed walk in the Park, they passed by an old acquaintance of the colonel's, Corporal Clink, of the regiment, who was in conversation with a friend, an old gentleman, who held a boy in his arms about the age of little Rawdon. This other youngster had seized hold of the Waterloo medal which the corporal wore, and was examining it with delight. Yes," said Georgy. He and the little chap on the pony were looking at each other with all their might-solemnly scanning each other as children do. In a line regiment,” Clink said, with a patronizing air. Colonel Crawley blushed quite red. I knew him very well, sir," he said, "and his wife, his dear little wife, sir-how is she?" "She is my daughter, sir," said the old gentleman, putting down the boy, and taking out a card with great solemnity, which he handed to the colonel. On it was written— Mr. Sedley, Sole Agent for the Black Diamond and Anti-Cinder Coal Association, Bunker's Wharf, Thames-street, and AnnaMaria Cottages, Fulham Road West. Little Georgy went up and looked at the Shetland pony. "Should you like to have a ride?" said Rawdon minor from the saddle. "Yes," said Georgy. The colonel, who had been looking at him with some interest, took up the child and put him on the pony behind Rawdon minor. "Take hold of him Georgy," he said"take my little boy round the waist-his name is Rawdon." And both the children began to laugh. "You won't see a prettier pair, I think, this summer's day, sir," said the goodnatured corporal; and the colonel, the corporal, and old Mr. Sedley with his umbrella, walked by the side of the children. CHAPTER XXXVIII. A FAMILY IN A VERY SMALL WAY. WE must suppose little George Osborne has ridden from Knightsbridge toward Fulham, and will stop and make inquiries at that village regarding some friends whom we have left there. How is Mrs. Amelia after the storm of Waterloo? Is she living and thriving? What has come of Major Dobbin, whose cab was always hankering about her premises? and are there any news of the collector of Boggley Wollah? The facts concerning the latter are briefly these: Our worthy fat friend Joseph Sedley re him talk about millions, and agios, and discounts, and what Rothschild was doing, and Baring Brothers. He talked of such vast sums that the gentlemen of the club (the apothecary, the undertaker, the great car turned to India not long after his escape from | of the nation. It was wonderful to hear Brussels. Either his furlough was up, or he dreaded to meet any witnesses of his Waterloo flight. However it might be, he went back to his duties in Bengal, very soon after Napoleon had taken up his residence at Saint Helena, where Jos saw the ex-penter and builder, the parish clerk, who emperor. To hear Mr. Sedley talk on board was allowed to come stealthily, and Mr. ship you would have supposed that it was Clapp, our old acquaintance) respected the not the first time he and the Corsican had old gentleman. "I was better off once, met, and that the civilian had bearded the sir," he did not fail to tell every body who French general at Mount St. John. He "used the room.” My son, sir, is at this had a thousand anecdotes about the famous minute chief magistrate of Ramgunge in the battles; he knew the position of every reg- Presidency of Bengal, and touching his four iment, and the loss which each had incurred. thousand rupees per mensem. My daughter He did not deny that he had been concerned might be a colonel's lady if she liked. I in those victories-that he had been with the might draw upon my son, the first magis-" army, and carried dispatches for the Duke of trate, sir, for two thousand pound to-morrow, Wellington. And he described what the and Alexander would cash my bill, down sir, duke did and said on every conceivable mo- down on the counter, sir. But the Sedleys ment of the day of Waterloo, with such an were always a proud family." You and I, accurate knowledge of his grace's sentiments my dear reader, may drop into this condition and proceedings, that it was clear he must one day: for have not many of our friends have been by the conqueror's side through- attained it? Our luck may fail: our powers out the day; though, as a non-combatant, forsake us: our place on the boards be taken his name was not mentioned in the public by better and younger mimes-the chance documents relative to the battle. Perhaps of life roll away and leave us shattered and he actually worked himself up to believe that he had been engaged with the army; certain it is that he made a prodigious sensation for some time at Calcutta, and was called Waterloo Sedley during the whole of his subsequent stay in Bengal. The bills which Jos had given for the purchase of those unlucky horses were paid without question by him and his agents. He never was heard to allude to the bargain, and nobody knows for a certainty what became of the horses, or how he got rid of them, or of Isidor, his Belgian servant, who sold a gray horse very like the one which Jos rode at Valenciennes sometime during the autumn of 1815. Jos's London agents had orders to pay one hundred and twenty pounds yearly to his parents at Fulham. It was the chief support of the old couple; for Mr. Sedley's speculations in life subsequent to his bankruptcy did not by any means retrieve the broken old gentleman's fortune. He tried to be a wine-merchant, a coal-merchant, a commission-lottery agent, &c., &c. He sent round prospectuses to his friends whenever he took a new trade, and ordered a new brass plate for the door, and talked pompously about making his fortune still. But Fortune never came back to the feeble and stricken old man. One by one his friends dropped off, and were weary of buying dear coals and bad wine from him; and there was only his wife in all the world who fancied, when he tottered off to the city of a morning, that he was still doing any business there. At evening he crawled slowly back; and he used to go of nights to a little club at a tavern, where he disposed of the finances stranded. Then men will walk across the but we are wandering out of the domain of the story. Had Mrs. Sedley been a woman of energy, she would have exerted it after her husband's ruin, and, occupying a large house, would have taken in boarders. The broken Sedley would have acted well as the boarding-house landlady's husband; the Munoz of private life; the titular lord and master: the carver, house-steward, and humble husband of the occupier of the dingy throne. I have seen men of good brains and breeding, and of good hopes and vigor once, who feasted squires and kept hunters in their youth, meekly cutting up legs of mutton for rancorous old harridans, and pretending to preside over their dreary tables-but Mrs. Sedley, we say, had not spirit enough to bustle about for "a few select inmates to join a cheerful musical family," such as one reads of in the Times. She was content to lie on the shore where fortune had stranded her-and you could see that the career of this old couple was over. I don't think they were unhappy. Perhaps they were a little prouder in their downfall than in their prosperity. Mrs. Sedley was always a great person for her landlady, Mrs. Clapp, when she descended and passed many hours with her in the basement or ornamented kitchen. The Irish maid Betty Flanagan's bonnets and ribbons, her sauciness, her idleness, her reckless prodigality of kitchen candles, her consumption of tea and sugar, and so forth, occupied and amused the old lady almost as much as the doings of her former household, when she had Sambo, and the coachman, and a groom, and a footboy, and a housekeeper with a regiment of female domestics-her former household, about which the good lady talked a hundred times a day. And besides Betty Flanagan, Mrs. Sedley had all the maids-ofall-work in the street to superintend. She knew how each tenant of the cottages paid or owed his little rent. She stepped aside when Mrs. Rougemont the actress passed with her dubious family. She flung up her head when Mrs. Pestler, the apothecary's lady, drove by in her husband's professional one-horse chaise. She had colloquies with the green-grocer about the pennorth of turnips which Mr. Sedley loved: she kept an eye upon the milkman, and the baker's boy: and made visitations to the butcher, who sold hundreds of oxen very likely with less ado than was made about Mrs. Sedley's loin of mutton and she counted the potatoes under the joint on Sundays, on which days, dressed in her best, she went to church twice and read Blair's Sermon's in the evening. On that day, for "business" prevented him on week days from taking such pleasure, it was old Sedley's delight to take out his little grandson Georgy to the neighboring parks or Kensington Gardens, to see the soldiers, or to feed the ducks. Georgy loved the redcoats, and his grandpapa told him how his father had been a famous soldier, and introduced him to many sergeants and others with Waterloo medals on their breasts to whom the old grandfather pompously presented the child as the son of Captain Osborne of the -th, who died gloriously on the glorious eighteenth. He has been known to treat 'some of those non-commissioned gentlemen to a glass of porter, and, indeed, in their first Sunday walks was disposed to spoil little Georgy, sadly gorging the boy with apples and parliament, to the detriment of his health -until Amelia declared that George should never go out with his grandpapa, unless the latter promised solemuly, and on his honor, not to give the child any cakes, lollipops, or stall produce whatever. Between Mrs. Sedley and her daughter there was a sort of coolness about this boy, and a secret jealousy-for one evening, in George's very early days, Amelia, who had been seated at work in their little parlor scarcely remarking that the old lady had quitted the room, ran up stairs instinctively to the nursery at the cries of the child, who had been asleep until that moment-and there found Mrs. Sedley in the act of surreptitiously administering Daffy's Elixir to the infant. Amelia, the gentlest and sweetest of every-day mortals, when she found this meddling with her maternal authority, thrilled and trembled all over with anger. Her cheeks, ordinarily pale, now flushed up, until they were as red as they used to be when she was a child of twelve years old. She seized the baby out of her mother's arms, and then grasped at the bottle, leaving the old lady gaping at her, furious, and holding the guilty tea-spoon. Amelia flung the bottle crashing into the fire-place. "I will not have baby poisoned, mamma,' ," cried Emmy, rocking the infant about violently with both her arms round him, and turning with flashing eyes at her mother. "Poisoned, Amelia!" said the old lady; "this language to me?" "He shall not have any medicine but that which Mr. Pestler sends for him. He told me that Daffy's Elixir was poison." "Very good you think I'm a murderess, then," replied Mrs. Sedley. "This is the language you use to your mother. I have met with misfortunes: I have sunk low in life: I have kept my carriage, and now walk on foot: but I did not know I was a murderess before, and thank you for the news." "Mamma," said the poor girl, who was always ready for tears, "you shouldn't be hard upon me. I-I didn't mean-I mean, I did not wish to say you would do any wrong to this dear child; only-" "O, no, my love-only that I was a murderess; in which case, I had better go to the Old Bailey. Though I didn't poison you, when you were a child; but gave you the best of education, and the most expensive masters money could procure. Yes; I've nursed five children, and buried three; and the one I loved the best of all, and tended through croup, and teething, and measles, and hooping-cough, and brought up with foreign masters, regardless of expense, and with accomplishments at Minerva Housewhich I never had when I was a girl—when I was too glad to honor my father and mother, that I might live long in the land, and to be useful, and not to mope all day in my room and act the fine lady-says I'm a murderess. Ah, Mrs. Osborne! may you never nourish a viper in your bosom, that's my prayer." "Mamma, mamma!" cried the bewilder ed girl and the child in her arms set up a frantic chorus of shouts. "A murderess, indeed! Go down on your knees and pray to God to cleanse your wicked, ungrateful heart, Amelia, and may He forgive you as I do;" and Mrs. Sedley tossed out of the room, hissing out the word poison, once more, and so ending her charitable benediction. Till the termination of her natural life, this breach between Mrs. Sedley and her daughter was never thoroughly mended. The quarrel gave the elder lady numberless advantages which she did not fail to turn to account with female ingenuity and perseverance. For instance, she scarcely spoke to Amelia for many weeks afterward. She warned the domestics not to touch the child, as Mrs. Osborne might be offended. She asked her daughter to see and satisfy herself that there was no poison prepared in the little daily messes that were concocted for Georgy. When neighbors asked after the boy's health, she referred them pointedly to Mrs. Osborne. She never ventured to ask whether the baby was well or not. She would not touch the child, although he was her grandson, and own precious darling, for she was not used to children, and might kill it. And whenever Mr. Pestler came upon his healing inquisition, she received the doctor with such a sarcastic and scornful demeanor, as made the surgeon declare that not Lady Thistlewood herself, whom he had the honor of attending professionally, could give herself greater airs than old Mrs. Sedley, from whom he never took a fee. And very likely Emmy was jealous too, upon her own part, as what mother is not, of those who would manage her children for her, or become candidates for the first place in their affections? It is certain that when any body nursed the child, she was uneasy, and that she would no more allow Mrs. Clapp or the domestic to dress or tend him, than she would have let them wash her husband's miniature which hung up over her little bed; the same little bed from which the poor girl had gone to his-and to which she retired now for many long, silent, tearful, but happy years. In this room was all Amelia's heart and treasure. Here it was that she tended her boy, and watched him through the many ills of childhood, with a constant passion of love. The elder George returned in him somehow, only improved, and as if come back from heaven. In a hundred little tones, looks, and movements, the child was so like his father, that the widow's heart thrilled as she held him to it; and he would often ask the cause of her tears. It was because of his likeness to his father, she did not scruple to tell him. She talked constantly to him about this dead father, and spoke of her love for George to the innocent and wondering child; much more than she ever had done to George himself, or to any confidante of her youth. To her parents she never talked about this matter: shrinking from baring her heart to them. Little George very likely could understand no better than they; but into his ears she poured her sentimental secrets unreservedly, and into his only. The very joy of this woman was a sort of grief, or so tender, at least, that its expression was tears. Her sensibilities were so weak and tremulous, that perhaps they ought not to be talked about in a book. I was told by Dr. Pestler (now a most flourishing lady's physician, with a sumptuous dark-green carriage, a prospect of speedy knighthood, and a house in Manchester-square), that her grief at weaning the child was a sight that would have unmanned a Herod. He was very soft-hearted many years ago, and his wife was mortally jealous of Mrs. Amelia, then and long afterward. Perhaps the doctor's lady had good reason for her jealousy: most women shared it, of those who formed the small circle of Amelia's acquaintance, and were quite angry at the enthusiasm with which the other sex regarded her. For almost all men who came near her loved her; though no doubt they would be at a loss to tell you why. She was not brilliant, nor witty, nor wise overmuch, nor extraordinarily handsome. But wherever she went she touched and charmed every one of the male sex, as invariably as she awakened the scorn and incredulity of her own sisterhood. I think it was her weakness which was her principal charm-a kind of sweet submission and softness, which seemed to appeal to each man she met for his sympathy and protection. We have seen how in the regiment, though she spoke but to few of George's comrades there, all the swords of the young fellows at the mess-table would have leaped from their scabbards to fight round her and so it was in the little narrow lodging-house and circle of Fulham, she interested and pleased every body. If she had been Mrs. Mango herself, of the great house of Mango, Plantain & Co., Crutched Friars, and the magnificent proprietress of the Pineries, Fulham, who gave summer déjeunés frequented by dukes and earls, and drove about the parish with magnificent yellow liveries and bay horses, such as the royal stables at Kensington themselves could not turn out—I say, had she been Mrs. Mango herself, or her son's wife, Lady Mary Mango (daughter of the Earl of Castlemouldy, who condescended to marry the head of the firm), the tradesmen of the neighborhood could not pay her more honor than they invariably showed to the gentle young widow, when she passed by their doors, or made her humble purchases at their shops. and the favorite attendant of the Reine des Amours. She is but a poor lackadaisical Thus it was not only Mr. Pestler, the medical man, but Mr. Linton, the young assistant, who doctored the servant maids and Instances might be multiplied of this easily small tradesmen, and might be seen any day gained and unconscious popularity. Did not reading the Times in the surgery, who open- Mr. Binny, the mild and genteel curate of ly declared himself the slave of Mrs. Os- the district chapel, which the family attended, borne. He was a personable young gentle- call assiduously upon the widow, dandle the man, more welcome at Mrs. Sedley's lodg- little boy on his knee, and offer to teach him ings than his principal; and if any thing Latin, to the anger of the elderly virgin, his went wrong with Georgy, he would drop in sister, who kept house for him? "There twice or thrice in the day, to see the little is nothing in her, Beilby," the latter lady chap, and without so much as the thought would say. "When she comes to tea here of a fee. He would abstract lozenges, tam- she does not speak a word during the whole arinds, and other produce from the surgery-evening. drawers for little Georgy's benefit, and com- creature, and it is my belief has no heart at pounded draughts and mixtures for him of all. It is only her pretty face which all you miraculous sweetness, so that it was quite a gentlemen admire so. Miss Grits, who has pleasure to the child to be ailing. He and five thousand pounds and expectations bePestler, his chief, sate up two whole nights sides, has twice as much character, and is a by the boy in that momentous and awful thousand times more agreeable to my taste; week when Georgy had the measles; and and if she were good-looking I-know that when you would have thought, from the you would think her perfection." mother's terror, that there had never been Very likely Miss Binny was right to a measles in the world before. Would they great extent. It is the pretty face which have done as much for other people? Did creates sympathy in the hearts of men, those they sit up for the folks at the Pineries, wicked rogues. A woman may possess the when Ralph Plantagenet, and Gwendoline, wisdom and chastity of Minerva, and we give and Guinever Mango, had the same juvenile no heed to her, if she has a plain face. What complaint? Did they sit up for little Mary folly will not a pair of bright eyes make parClapp, the landlord's daughter, who actually donable? What dullness may not red lips caught the disease of little Georgy? Truth compels one to say, no. They slept quite undisturbed, at least as far as she was concerned-pronounced hers to be a slight case, which would almost cure itself, sent her in a draught or two, and threw in bark when the child rallied, with perfect indifference, and just for form's sake. and sweet accents render pleasant? And so, with their usual sense of justice, ladies argue that because a woman is handsome, therefore she is a fool. Oh ladies, ladies! some there are of you who are neither handsome nor wise. greatly to her wonder, the Reverend Mr. These are but trivial incidents to recount in the life of our heroine. Her tale does Again, there was the little French chev- not deal in wonders, as the gentle reader has alier opposite, who gave lessons in his native already no doubt perceived; and if a journal tongue at various schools in the neighbor- had been kept of her proceedings during the hood, and who might be heard in his apart- seven years after the birth of her son, there ment of nights playing tremulous old gavottes would be found few incidents more remarkand minuets, on a wheezy old fiddle. When-able in it than that of the measles, recorded ever this powdered and courteous old man, in the foregoing page. Yes, one day, and who never missed a Sunday at the convent chapel at Hammersmith, and who was in all respects, thoughts, conduct, and bearing, utterly unlike the bearded savages of his nation, who curse perfidious Albion, and scowl at you from over their cigars, in the Quadrant arcades at the present day, when ever the old Chevalier de Talonrouge spoke of Mistress Osborne, he would first finish his pinch of snuff, flick away the remaining On the twenty-fifth of April, and the particles of dust with a graceful wave of his eighteenth of June, the days of her marriage hand, gather up his fingers again into a and widowhood, she kept her room entirely, bunch, and, bringing them up to his mouth, consecrating them (and we do not know how blow them open with a kiss, exclaiming, many hours of solitary night-thought, her Ah, la divine créature! He vowed and little boy sleeping in his crib by her bedprotested that when Amelia walked in the side) to the memory of that departed friend. Brompton lanes flowers grew in profusion During the day she was more active. She under her feet. He called little Georgy had to teach George to read and to write, Cupid, and asked him news of Venus, his and a little to draw. She read books, in mamma; and told the astonished Betty order that she might tell him stories from Flanagan that she was one of the Graces, them. As his eyes opened, and his mind |