absent relative..... It may have been an hour after Sir the Major's departure from the Colonel's house 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 head-quarters. "I England bin said. I must have leave of absence. I must go to "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. Binney, one of the curates of Brompton. A poor match. But Mrs. O. is getting old, and I saw a great deal of gray 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 XIX. 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. was impossible sometimes to resist this artless little creature's hospitalities, so kindly were they pressed, It 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 about to Pitt's bed-room, 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' room, by the way, who was sent up-stairs to sleep with the maid.) "I knew I should bring you," she said, with pleasure beaming in her glance. Indeed, she was really and 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 down stairs 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 brotherin-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 upon making, and serving to him at dinner a most abominable pie. Besides the salmi, which was made of Lord Steyne's Vanity Fair. II. 19 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, though. Well, Rebecca listened to him, 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 harrangues 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 |