The doctors who attended her, and had the gentleman whom he addressed was de- | as the baby nestled there. She was safe. termined to remain in good temper, and went on without heeding the interruption. "Do you know, sir, Mrs. Osborne's condition? Her life and her reason almost have been shaken by the blow which has fallen on her. It is very doubtful whether she will rally. There is a chance left for her however, and it is about this I came to speak to you. She will be a mother soon. Will you visit the parent's offense upon the child's head? or will you forgive the child for poor George's sake?" Our friend Dobbin was one of them. It was he who brought her back to England and to her mother's house; when Mrs. O'Dowd, receiving a peremptory summons from her colonel, had been forced to quit her patient. To see Dobbin holding the infant, and to hear Amelia's laugh of triumph as she watched him, would have done any man good who had a sense of humor. William was the godfather of the child, and exerted his ingenuity in the purchase of cups, spoons, pap-boats, and corals for this little Christian. Osborne broke out into a rhapsody of selfpraise and imprecations. By the first, excusing himself to his own conscience for his conduct; by the second, exaggerating the undutifulness of George. No father in all England could have behaved more generously to a son, who had rebelled against him wickedly. He had died without even so much as confessing he was wrong. Let him take the consequences of his undutiful- How his mother nursed him, and dressed ness and folly. As for himself Mr. Osborne, him, and lived upon him; how she drove he was a man of his word. He had sworn away all nurses, and would scarce allow any never to speak to that woman or to recog-hand but her own to touch him; how she nize her as his son's wife. "And that's what you may tell her," he concluded with an oath; "and that's what I will stick to to the last day of my life." There was no hope from that quarter then. The widow must live on her slender pittance, or on such aid as Jos could give her. "I might tell her, and she would not heed it," thought Dobbin sadly: for the poor girl's thoughts were not here at all since her catastrophe, and stupefied under the pressure of her sorrow, good and evil were alike indifferent to her. So indeed, were even friendship and kindness. She received them both uncomplainingly, and having accepted them, relapsed into her grief. considered that the greatest favor she could confer upon his godfather, Major Dobbin, was to allow the major occasionally to dandle him, need not be told here. This child was her being. Her existence was a maternal caress. She enveloped the feeble and unconscious creature with love and worship. It was her life which the babe drank in from her bosom. Of nights, and when alone, she had stealthy and intense raptures of motherly love, such as God's marvelous care has awarded to the female instinct-joys how far higher and lower than reason-blind beautiful devotions which only women's hearts know. It was William Dobbin's task to muse upon these movements of Amelia's, and to watch her heart; and if his love made him divine almost all the feelings which agitated it, alas! he could see with a fatal perspicuity that there was no place there for him. And so gently, he bore his fate, knowing it, and content to bear it. Suppose some twelve months after the above conversation took place to have passed in the life of our poor Amelia. She has spent the first portion of that time in a sorrow so profound and pitiable, that we who have been watching and describing some of the emotions of that weak and tender heart, I suppose Amelia's parent's saw through must draw back in the presence of the cruel the intentions of the major, and were not grief under which it is bleeding. Tread si- ill-disposed to encourage him; for Dobbin lently round the hapless couch of the poor visited their house daily, and stayed for prostrate soul. Shut gently the door of the hours with them, or with Amelia, or with dark chamber, wherein she suffers, as those the honest landlord, Mr. Clapp and his kind people did who nursed her through the family. He brought, on one pretext or first months of her pain, and never left her another, presents to every body, and almost until heaven had sent her consolation. A every day; and went with the landlord's day came of almost terrified delight and little girl who was rather a favorite with wonder-when the poor widowed girl press- Amelia, by the name of Major Sugarplums. ed a child upon her breast-a child, with It was this little child who commonly acted the eyes of George who was gone-a little as mistress of the ceremonies to introduce boy, as beautiful as a cherub. What a mir-him to Mrs. Osborne. She laughed one acle it was to hear its first cry! How she day when Major Sugarplums' cab drove up laughed and wept over it-how love, and to Fulham, and he descended from it, bringhope, and prayer woke again in her bosom ing out a wooden horse, a drum, a trumpet, The child was asleep. Hush," said Amelia, annoyed, perhaps, at the creaking of the major's boots; and she held out her hand; smiling because William could not take it until he had rid himself of his cargo of toys. "Go down stairs, little Mary," said he presently to the child, "I want to speak to Mrs. Osborne." She looked up rather astonished, and laid down the infant on its bed. "I am come to say good-by, Amelia," said he, taking her slender little white hand gently. Good-by? and where are you going?" she said, with a smile. and other warlike toys, for little Georgy, | must represent an expense of six hundred a who was scarcely six months old, and for year at the very least-and then there are whom the articles in question were entirely the splendid dinners, the two boys at Eton, premature. the prize governess and masters for the girls, the trip abroad, or to Eastbourne or Worthing in the autumn, the annual ball with a supper from Gunter's (who, by the way, supplies most of the first-rate dinners which J. gives, as I know very well, having been invited to one of them to fill a vacant place, when I saw at once that these repasts are very superior to the common run of entertainments for which the humbler sort of J.'s acquaintances get cards)—who, I say, with the most good-natured feelings in the world can help wondering how the Jenkinses make out matters? What is Jenkins?-we all know-Commissioner of the Tape and Sealing Wax Office, with £1200 a year for salary. Had his wife a private fortune? Pooh!--Miss Flint-one of eleven children of a small squire in Buckinghamshire. All she ever gets from her family is a turkey at Christmas, in exchange for which she has to board two or three of her sisters in the off season; and lodge and feed her brothers when they come to town. The little pink hands of the child closed How does Jenkins balance his income? I mechanically round the honest soldier's fin- say, as every friend of his must say, How is ger, and Amelia looked up in his face with it that he has not been outlawed long since: bright maternal pleasure. The cruelest and that he ever came back (as he did to the looks could not have wounded him more surprise of every body) last year from Bouthan that glance of hopeless kindness. He bent over the child and mother. He could not speak for a moment. And it was with all his strength that he could force himself to say a God bless you. "God bless you," said Amelia, and held up her face and kissed him. "Send the letters to the agents," he said; "they will forward them; for you will write to me, won't you? I shall be away a long time." I'll write to you about Georgy," she said. "Dear William, how good you have been to him and to me. Look at him! Isn't he like an angel?" "Hush! Don't wake Georgy!" she added, as William Dobbin went to the door with heavy steps. She did not hear the noise of his cab-wheels as he drove away she was looking at the child, who was laughing in his sleep. CHAPTER XXXVI. HOW TO LIVE WELL ON NOTHING A YEAR. logne ? "I" is here introduced to personify the world in general-the Mrs. Grundy of each respected reader's private circle-every one of whom can point to some families of his acquaintance who live nobody knows how. Many a glass of wine have we all of us drunk, I have very little doubt, hob-and-nobbing with the hospitable giver, and wondering how the deuce he paid for it. Some three or four years after his stay in Paris, when Rawdon Crawley and his wife were established in a very small, comfortable house in Curzon-street, Mayfair, there was scarcely one of the numerous friends whom they entertained at dinner that did not ask the above question regarding them. The novelist, it has been said before, knows I SUPPOSE there is no man in this Vanity every thing; and as I am in a situation to be Fair of ours so little observant as not to think able to tell the public how Crawley and his sometimes about the worldly affairs of his wife lived without any income, may I enacquaintances, or so extremely charitable as treat the public newspapers which are in not to wonder how his neighbor Jones, or the habit of extracting portions of the various his neighbor Smith, can make both ends periodical works now published, not to meet at the end of the year. With the ut- reprint the following exact narrative and most regard for the family for instance (for calculations-of which I ought, as the disI dine with them twice or thrice in a season), coverer (and at some expense too), to have I can not but own that the appearance of the benefit. My son-I would say, were I the Jenkinses in the Park, in the large blessed with a child-you may by deep inbarouche with the grenadier footmen, will quiry and constant intercourse with him, surprise and mystify me to my dying day: learn how a man lives comfortably on for though I know the equipage is only job- nothing a year. But it is best not to be bed, and all the Jenkins people are on board-intimate with gentlemen of this profession, wages, yet those three men and the carriage and to take the calculations at second-hand, as you do logarithms, for to work them | amateur had grown to be a consummate yourself, depend upon it, will cost you something considerable. On nothing per annum then, and during a course of some two or three years, of which we can afford to give but a very brief history, Crawley and his wife lived very happily and comfortably at Paris. It was in this period that he quitted the Guards, and sold out of the army. When we find him again, his mustaches and the title of colonel on his card are the only relics of his military profession. It has been mentioned that Rebecca, soon after her arrival in Paris, took a very smart and leading position in the society of that capital, and was welcomed at some of the most distinguished houses of the restored French nobility. The English men of fashion in Paris courted her, too, to the disgust of the ladies their wives, who could not bear the parvenue. For some months the salons of the Faubourg St. Germain, in which her place was secured, and the splendors of the new court where she was received with much distinction, delighted and perhaps a little intoxicated Mrs. Crawley, who may have been disposed during this period of elation to slight the people-honest young military men mostly-who formed her husband's chief society. But the colonel yawned sadly among the duchesses and great ladies of the court. The old women who played écarté made such a noise about a five-franc piece, that it was not worth Colonel Crawley's while to sit down at a card-table. The wit of their conversation he could not appreciate, being ignorant of their language. And what good could his wife get, he urged, by making courtesies every night to a whole circle of princesses? He left Rebecca presently to frequent these parties alone; resuming his own simple pursuits and amusements among the amiable friends of his own choice. The truth is, when we say of a gentleman that he lives elegantly on nothing a year, we use the word “nothing," to signify something unknown; meaning, simply, that we don't know how the gentleman in question defrays the expenses of his establishment. Now, our friend the colonel had a great aptitude for all games of chance; and exercising himself, as he continually did, with the cards, the dice-box, or the oue, it is natural to suppose that he attained a much greater skill in the use of these articles than men can possess who only occasionally handle them. To use a cue at billiards well is like using a pencil, or a German flute, or a small-sword-you can not master any one of these implements at first, and it is only by repeated study and perseverance, joined to a natural taste, that a man can excel in the handling of either. Now Crawley, from being only a brilliant master of billiards. Like a great general, his genius used to rise with the danger, and when the luck had been unfavorable to him for a whole game, and the bets were consequently against him, he would, with consummate skill and boldness, make some prodigious hits which would restore the battle, and come in a victor at the end, to the astonishment of every body-of every body, that is, who was a stranger to his play. Those who were accustomed to see it were cautious how they staked their money against a man of such sudden resources, and brilliant, and overpowering skill. At games of cards he was equally skillful; for though he would constantly lose money at the commencement of an evening, playing so carelessly and making such blunders, that new comers were often inclined to think meanly of his talent; yet when roused to action, and awakened to caution by repeated small losses, it was remarked that Crawley's play became quite different, and that he was pretty sure of beating his enemy thoroughly before the night was over. Indeed, very few men could say that they ever had the better of him. His successes were so repeated that no wonder the envious and the vanquished spoke sometimes with bitterness regarding them. And as the French say of the Duke of Wellington, who never suffered a defeat, that only an astonishing series of lucky accidents enabled him to be an invariable winner; yet even they allow that he cheated at Waterloo, and was enabled to win the last great trick: so it was hinted at headquarters in England, that some foul play must have taken place in order to account for the continuous successes of Colonel Crawley. At Though Frascati's and the Salon were open at that time in Paris, the mania for play was so widely spread, that the public gambling-rooms did not suffice for the general ardor, and gambling went on in private houses as much as if there had been no public means for gratifying the passion. Crawley's charming little réunions of an evening this fatal amusement commonly was practiced-much to good-natured little Mrs. Crawley's annoyance. She spoke about her husband's passion for dice with the deepest grief; she bewailed it to every body who came to her house. She besought the young fellows never, never to touch a box; and when young Green, of the rifles, lost a very considerable sum of money, Rebecca passed a whole night in tears, as the servant told the unfortunate young gentleman, and actually went on her knees to her husband to beseech him to remit the debt, and burn the acknowledgment. How could he? He had lost just as much himself to Blackstone of the hussars, and Count Pun |