"Don't." replied that functionary. "I hope you've forgot nothink? Miss 'Melia's gownds-have you got them-as the lady'smaid 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 toward 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. leave of Amelia, and counted the guineas descended from the carriage in much indigwhich good-natured Mr. Sedley had put nation. "I shall write to Mr. Sedley and into a purse for her, and as soon as she had inform him of your conduct," said she to the done wiping her eyes with her handkerchief groom. (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 canat least, I shall be among gentlefolks, and not On entering the dining-room, by the orwith vulgar city people:" and she fell to ders of the individual in gaiters, Rebecca thinking of her Russell-square friends with found that apartment not more cheerful than that very same philosophical bitterness with such rooms usually are, when genteel famiwhich, in a certain apologue, the fox is rep- lies are out of town. The faithful chambers resented as speaking of the grapes. seem, as it were, to mourn the absence of Having passed through Shiverly-square their masters. The Turkey carpet has into Great Gaunt-street, the carriage at rolled itself up, and retired sulkily under length stopped at a tall, gloomy house be- the sideboard: the pictures have hidden tween two other tall, gloomy houses, each their faces behind old sheets of brown pawith a hatchment over the middle drawing-per: the ceiling lamp is muffled up in a 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.mantel-piece: the cellaret has lurked away 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 gray eyes, and a mouth perpetually on the grin. This Sir Pitt Crawley's?" says John, from the box. "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 connection 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 dismal sack of brown holland: the windowcurtains 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 fireirons, and the empty card-racks over the behind the carpet: the chairs are turned up heads and tails along the walls and in the dark corner opposite the statue, is an oldfashioned 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 fireplace, 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?” asked Miss Sharp majestically. "He, he! I be Sir Pitt Crawley. Reklect you owe me a pint for bringing down your luggage. He, he! Ask Tinker if I baynt. 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 dispatched 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 natʼral." 66 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. 66 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. 66 "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 orphan, 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 tonight," 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 bed-room, 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 toilet appointments, while the old charmowan was saying her prayers. "I shouldn't like to sleep in this yeer bed without a good conscience, Miss," said the old woman. 66 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 every body, 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 mantel-piece 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 Gauntstreet look cheerful, the faithful Tinker, having wakened her bed-fellow, and bid her prepare for departure, unbarred and unbolted the great hall door (the clanging and clap toxication. ping whereof startled the sleeping echoes in here. But the writer of these pages, who the street), and taking her way into Oxford- hath pursued in former days, and in the street, summoned a coach from the stand same bright weather, the same remarkable there. It is needless to particularize the journey, can not but think of it with a sweet number of the vehicle, or to state that the and tender regret. What is the road now, driver was stationed thus early in the neigh- and its merry incidents of life? Is there borhood of Swallow-street, in hopes that no Chelsea or Greenwich for the old, honsome young buck, reeling homeward from est, pimple-nosed coachmen? I wonder the tavern, might need the aid of his vehi- where are they, those good fellows? Is old cle, and pay him with the generosity of in- 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, Cœur de Lion, or Jack Sheppard. For them, stage-coaches will have become romances a team of four bays as fabulous as It is likewise needless to say, that the driver, if he had any such hopes as those 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 ost- Bucephalus or Black Bess. Ah, how their lers; "it's Sir Pitt Crawley." "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 accomnodated with a back seat inside the carriage, which may be said to be carrying her into the wide world. 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 pikegates 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. PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL. How the young man from Cambridge Miss Rebecca Sharp to Miss Amelia Sedley, 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-humored-how the asthmatic gentleman, the prim lady, who declared upon her sacred honor she had never traveled 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 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 Turnham-green, Brentford, Bagshot, were passed-need not be told 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 today 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. Any thing, indeed, less like Lord Orville can not 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 wakened 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 Mudbury, 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 any body, they said (and this meanness I hate); and the young gentleman made the 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?' said the young Cantab. "And sarve 'em right, Master Jack,' said the guard. When I comprehended the meaning of this phrase, and that Master Jack intended to drive the rest of the way, and revenge himself on Sir Pitt's horses, of course I laughed too. "A carriage and four splendid horses, covered with armorial bearings, however, awaited us at Leakington, four miles from Queen's Crawley, and we made our entrance to the baronet's park in state. There is a fine avenue of a mile long leading to the house, and the woman at the lodge-gate (over the pillars of which are a serpent and a dove, the supporters of the Crawley arms), made us a number of courtesies as she flung open the old iron carved doors, which are something like those at odious Chiswick. he had a Mr. Hodson, his hind from Leakington, in the carriage with him, and they talked about distraining, and selling up, and draining, and subsoiling, and a great deal about tenants and farming-much more than I could understand. Sam Miles had beeu caught poaching, and Peter Bailey had gone to the workhouse at last. Serve him right,' said Sir Peter; him and his family has been cheating me on that farm these hundred and fifty years.' Some old tenant, I suppose, who could not pay his rent. Sir Pitt might have said 'he and hisʼfamily,' to be sure; but rich baronets do not need to be careful about grammar, as poor governesses must be. "As we passed, I remarked a beautiful church-spire rising above some old elms in the park; and before them, in the midst of a lawn, and some outhouses, an old red house with tall chimneys covered with ivy, and the windows shining in the sun. that your church, sir?' I said. Is "Yes, hang it' (said Sir Pitt, only he used, dear, a much wickeder word); 'how's Buty, Hodson? Buty's my brother Bute, my dear-my brother the parson. Buty and the Beast I call him, ha, ha!' "He was on the parson's ground, sir," replied Mr. Hodson; and Sir Pitt, in a fury, swore that if ever he caught 'em poaching on his ground, he'd transport 'em, by the Lord he would. However, he said, 'I've sold the presentation of the living, Hodson; none of that breed shall get it, I warn't ;' and Mr. Hodson said he was quite right: and I have no doubt, from this, that the two brothers are at variance-as brothers often are, and sisters too. Don't you remember the two Miss Scratchleys, at Chiswick, how they used always to fight and quarrel—and Mary Box, how she was always thumping Louisa? 66 Presently, seeing two little boys gathering sticks in the wood, Mr. Hodson jumped out of the carriage, at Sir Pitt's order, and "There's an avenue,' said Sir Pitt, a rushed upon them with his whip. 'Pitch mile long. There's six thousand pound of into 'em, Hodson,' roared the baronet; 'flog timber in them there trees. Do you call their little souls out, and bring 'em up to the that nothing?" He pronounces avenue, ev-house, the vagabonds; I'll commit 'em as enue; and nothing, nothink-so droll; and sure as my name's Pitt.' And presently |