On which, of course, Miss Sharp looked at her friend, and they both set off in a fit of laughter, highly agreeable to the old gentleman. "Did you ever see a pair of buckskins like those, at Miss Pinkerton's?" continued he, following up his advantage. "Look at him, isn't he handsome enough imagination; she had, besides, read the to dine any where, Miss Sharp?" "Arabian Nights" and "Guthrie's Geography," and it is a fact, that while she was dressing for dinner, and after she had asked Amelia whether her brother was very rich, she had built for herself a most magnificent castle in the air, of which she was mistress, with a husband somewhere in the background (she had not seen him as yet, and his figure would not therefore be very distinct); she had arrayed herself in an infinity of shawls, turbans, and diamond necklaces, and had mounted upon an elephant to the sound of the march in Bluebeard, in order to pay a visit of ceremony to the Grand Mogul. Charming Alnaschar visions! it is the happy privilege of youth to construct you, and many a fanciful young creature besides Rebecca Sharp, has indulged in these delightful day-dreams ere now! "Gracious heavens! Father," cried Joseph. There now, I have hurt his feelings. Mrs. Sedley, my dear, I have hurt your son's feelings. I have alluded to his buckskins. Ask Miss Sharp if I haven't? Come, Joseph, be friends with Miss Sharp, and let us all go to dinner." "There's a pillau, Joseph, just as you like it, and papa has brought home the best turbot in Billingsgate." "Come, come, sir, walk down stairs with Miss Sharp, and I will follow with these two young women," said the father, and he took an arm of wife and daughter and walked merrily off. Joseph Sedley was twelve years older than his sister Amelia. He was in the East India Company's Civil Service, and his name appeared, at the period of which we write, in the Bengal division of the East India Register, as collector of Boggley Wollah, an honorable and lucrative post, as every body knows in order to know to what higher posts Joseph rose in the service, the reader is referred to the same periodical. Boggley Wollah is situated in a fine, lonely, marshy, jungly district, famous for snipeshooting, and where not unfrequently you may flush a tiger. Ramgunge, where there is a magistrate, is only forty miles off, and there is a cavalry station about thirty miles farther; so Joseph wrote home to his parents, when he took possession of his collectorship. He had lived for about eight years of his life, quite alone, at this charming place, scarcely seeing a Christian face, except twice a year, when the detachment arrived to carry off the revenues which he had collected, to Calcutta. If Miss Rebecca Sharp had determined in her heart upon making the conquest of this big beau, I don't think, ladies, we have any right to blame her; for though the task of husband-hunting is generally, and with becoming modesty, intrusted by young persons to their mammas, recollect that Miss Sharp had no kind parent to arrange these delicate matters for her, and that if she did not get a husband for herself, there was no one else in the wide world who would take the trouble off her hands. What causes young people to "come out," but the noble ambition of matrimony? What sends them trooping to watering-places? What keeps them dancing till five o'clock in the morning through a whole mortal season? What causes them to labor at piano-forte sonatas, and to learn four songs from a fashionable master at a guinea a lesson, and to play the harp if they have handsome arms and neat elbows, and to wear Lincoln Green toxopholite hats and feathers, but that they may bring down some "desirable" young man with those killing bows and arrows of theirs? What causes respectable parents to take up their carpets, set their houses topsy-turvy, and spend a fifth of their year's income in ball suppers and iced champagne ? Is it sheer love of their species, and an unadulterated wish to see young people happy and dancing? Psha! they want to marry their daughters; and, as honest Mrs. Sedley has, in the depths of her kind heart, already arranged a score of little schemes for the settlement of her Amelia, so also had our beloved but unprotected Rebecca, deter- On returning to India, and ever after, he mined to do her very best to secure the used to talk of the pleasure of this period of husband, who was even more necessary for his existence with great enthusiasm, and her than for her friend. She had a vivid give you to understand that he and Brum B Luckily, at this time he caught a liver complaint, for the cure of which he returned to Europe, and which was the source of great comfort and amusement to him in his native country. He did not live with his family while in London, but had lodgings of his own, like a gay young bachelor. Before he went to India he was too young to partake of the delightful pleasures of a man about town, and plunged into them, on his return, with considerable assiduity. Ho drove his horses in the park; he dined at the fashionable taverns (for the Oriental Club was not as yet invented); he frequented the theaters, as the mode was in those days, or made his appearance at the opera, laboriously attired in tights and a cocked hat. mel were the leading bucks of the day. But he was as lonely here as in his jungle at Boggley Wollah. He scarcely knew a single soul in the metropolis: and were it not for his doctor, and the society of his bluepill, and his liver complaint, he must have died of loneliness. He was lazy, peevish, and a bon-vivant; the appearance of a lady frightened him beyond measure; hence it was but seldom that he joined the paternal circle in Russell-square, where there was plenty of gayety, and where the jokes of his good-natured old father frightened his amourpropre. His bulk caused Joseph much anxious thought and alarm; now and then he would make a desperate attempt to get rid of his superabundant fat; but his indolence and love of good living speedily got the better of these endeavors at reform, and he found himself again at his three meals a day. He never was well dressed; but he took the hugest pains to adorn his big person, and passed many hours daily in that occupation. His valet made a fortune out of his wardrobe his toilet-table was covered with as many pomatums and essences as ever were employed by an old beauty: he had tried, in order to give himself a waist, every girth, stay, and waistband then invented. Like most fat men, he would have his clothes made too tight, and took care they should be of the most brilliant colors and youthful cut. When dressed at length, in the afternoon, he would issue forth to take a drive with nobody in the Park; and then would come back in order to dress again and go and dine with nobody at the Piazza CoffeeHouse. He was as vain as a girl; and perhaps his extreme shyness was one of the results of his extreme vanity. If Miss Rebecca can get the better of him, and at her first entrance into life, she is a young person of no ordinary cleverness. The first move showed considerable skill. When she called Sedley a very handsome man, she knew that Amelia would tell her mother, who would probably tell Joseph, or who, at any rate, would be pleased by the compliment paid to her son. All mothers are. If you had told Sycorax that her son Caliban was as handsome as Apollo, she would have been pleased, witch as she was. Perhaps, too, Joseph Sedley would overhear the compliment-Rebecca spoke loud enough-and he did hear, and (thinking in his heart that he was a very fine man) the praise thrilled through every fibre of his big body, and made it tingle with pleasure. Then, however, came a recoil. "Is the girl making fun of me?" he thought, and straightway he bounced toward the bell, and was for retreating, as we have seen, when his father's jokes and his mother's entreaties caused him to pause and stay where he He conducted the young lady down to dinner in a dubious and agitated frame of was. mind. "Does she really think I am handsome !" thought he, "or is she only making game of me!" We have talked of Joseph Sedley being as vain as a girl. Heaven help us! the girls have only to turn the tables, and say of one of their own sex, "She is as vain as a man,” and they will have perfect reason. The bearded creatures are quite as eager for praise, quite as finikin over their toilets, quite as proud of their personal advantages, quite as conscious of their powers of fascination, as any coquette in the world. Down stairs, then, they went, Joseph very red and blushing, Rebecca very modest, and holding her green eyes downward. She was dressed in white, with bare shoulders as white as snow-the picture of youth, unprotected innocence, and humble, virgin simplicity. "I must be very quiet," thought Rebecca, "and very much interested about India." Now we have heard how Mrs. Sedley had prepared a fine curry for her son, just as he liked it, and in the course of dinner a portion of this dish was offered to Rebecca. "What is it?" said she, turning an appealing look to Mr. Joseph. 66 Capital," said he. His mouth was full of it: his face quite red with the delightful exercise of gobbling. Mother, it's as good as my own curries in India." "Oh, I must try some, if it is an Indian dish," said Miss Rebecca. "I am sure every thing must be good that comes from there." "Give Miss Sharp some curry, my dear,” said Mr. Sedley, laughing. Rebecca had never tasted the dish before. "Do you find it as good as every thing else from India?" said Mr. Sedley. "Oh, excellent!" said Rebecca, who was suffering tortures with the cayenne pepper. "Try a chili with it, Miss Sharp," said Joseph, really interested. A chili," said Rebecca, gasping. "Oh yes!" She thought a chili was something cool, as its name imported, and was served with some. How fresh and green they look," she said, and put one into her mouth. It was hotter than the curry; flesh and blood could bear it no longer. She laid down her fork. "Water, for Heaven's sake, water!" she cried. Mr. Sedley burst out laughing (he was a coarse man, from the Stock Exchange, where they love all sorts of practical jokes). They are real Indian, I assure you," said he. "Sambo, give Miss Sharp some water." 66 The paternal laugh was echoed by Joseph, who thought the joke capital. The ladies only smiled a little. They thought poor Rebecca suffered too much. She would have liked to choke old Sedley, but she swallowed her mortification as well as she had the abominable curry before it, and as soon as she could speak, said, with a comical, good-humored air— "I ought to have remembered the pepper which the Princess of Persia puts in the cream-tarts in the Arabian Nights. Do you put cayenne into your cream-tarts in India, sir?" Old Sedley began to laugh, and thought Rebecca was a good-humored girl. Joseph simply said "Cream-tarts, Miss? Our cream is very bad in Bengal. We generally use goats' milk; and, 'gad, do you know, I've got to prefer it?" "There goes Joseph," said Amelia, who was looking from the open windows of the drawing-room, while Rebecca was singing at the piano. "Miss Sharp has frightened him away," said Mrs. Sedley. "Poor Joe, why will he be so shy?" CHAPTER IV. THE GREEN SILK PURSE. “You won't like every thing from India POOR Joe's panic lasted for two or three now, Miss Sharp," said the old gentleman; days; during which he did not visit the but when the ladies had retired after dinner, house, nor during that period did Miss Rethe wily old fellow said to his son," Have a becca ever mention his name. She was all care, Joe; that girl is setting her cap at you." | respectful gratitude to Mrs. Sedley; de"Pooh! nonsense!" said Joe, highly flat-lighted beyond measure at the bazaars; and tered. "I recollect, sir, there was a girl at in a whirl of wonder at the theater, whither Dumdum, a daughter of Cutler of the Artillery, and afterward married to Lance, the surgeon, who made a dead set at me in the year '4—at me and Mulligatawney, whom I mentioned to you before dinner-a devilish good fellow Mulligatawney-he's a magistrate at Budgebudge, and sure to be in council in five years. Well, sir, the Artillery gave a ball, and Quintin, of the king's 14th, said to me, Sedley,' said he, I bet you thirteen to ten that Sophy Cutler hooks either you or Mulligatawney before the · Done,' says I; and egad, sir-this As for Mr. Sedley's jokes, Rebecca laughclaret's very good. Adamson's or Carbo-ed at them with a cordiality and persever rains.' " nell's?" A slight snore was the only reply: the honest stock-broker was asleep, and so the rest of Joseph's story was lost for that day. But he is always exceedingly communicative in a man's party, and has told this delightful tale many scores of times to his apothecary, Dr. Gollop, when he came to inquire about the liver and the blue-pill. the good-natured lady took her. One day, Amelia had a head-ache, and could not go upon some party of pleasure to which the two young people were invited nothing could induce her friend to go without her. "What! you who have shown the poor orphan what happiness and love are for the first time in her life-quit you? never! and the green eyes looked up to Heaven and filled with tears; and Mrs. Sedley could not but own that her daughter's friend had a charming, kind heart of her own. ance which not a little pleased and softened the good-natured gentleman. Nor was it with the chiefs of the family alone that Miss Sharp found favor. She interested Mrs. Blenkinsop by evincing the deepest sympathy in the raspberry-jam preserving, which operation was then going on in the housekeeper's room; she persisted in calling Sambo "Sir," and "Mr. Sambo," to the delight of that attendant; and she apologized to the lady's maid for giving her trouble in venturing to ring the bell, with such sweetness and humility, that the servants'-hall was almost as charmed with her as the drawing-room. Being an invalid, Joseph Sedley contented himself with a bottle of claret besides his Madeira at dinner, and he managed a couple of plates full of strawberries and cream, and twenty-four little rout cakes that were lying neglected in a plate near him, and certainly Once, in looking over some drawings which (for novelists have the privilege of knowing Amelia had sent from school, Rebecca sudevery thing) he thought a great deal about denly came upon one which caused her to the girl up stairs. "A nice, gay, merry burst into tears and leave the room. It was young creature," thought he to himself. on the day when Joe Sedley made his secHow she looked at me when I picked up ond appearance. her handkerchief at dinner! She dropped Amelia hastened after her friend to know it twice. Who's that singing in the drawing-the cause of this display of feeling, and the room? 'Gad! shall I go up and see?" good-natured girl came back without her companion, rather affected too. "You know, her father was our drawing-master, mamma, at Chiswick, and used to do all the best parts of our drawings." 66 But his modesty came rushing upon him with uncontrollable force. His father was asleep his hat was in the hall: there was a hackney-coach stand hard by in Southampton Row. "I'll go and see the Forty My love! I'm sure I always heard Miss Thieves," said he, "and Miss Decamp's Pinkerton say that he did not touch them dance;" and he slipped away gently on the-he only mounted them." pointed toes of his boots, and disappeared, without waking his worthy parent. "It was called mounting, mamma. Rebecca remembers the drawing, and her fa ther working at it, and the thought of it came upon her rather suddenly—and so, you know, she "The poor child is all heart," said Mrs. Sedley. "I wish she could stay with us another week," said Amelia. 66 "She's devilish like Miss Cutler that I used to meet at Dumdum, only fairer. She's married now to Lance, the Artillery surgeon. Do you know, ma'am, that once Quintin, of the 14th, bet me "O Joseph, we know that story," said Amelia, laughing. "Never mind about telling that; but persuade mamma to write to Sir Something Crawley." "Had he a son in the King's Light Dragoons in India ?" "Well, will you write to him for leave of absence for poor dear Rebecca ?-here she comes, her eyes red with weeping." "I'm better, now," said the girl, with the sweetest smile possible, taking good-natured Mrs. Sedley's extended hand and kissing it respectfully. "How kind you all are to me! All," she added, with a laugh, “except you, Mr. Joseph." "Me!" said Joseph, meditating an instant departure. "Gracious heavens! Good Gad! Miss Sharp!" "Yes; how could you be so cruel as to make me eat that horrid pepper-dish at dinner, the first day I ever saw you? You are not so good to me as dear Amelia." "He doesn't know you so well," cried Amelia. "I defy any body not to be good to you, my dear," said her mother. "The curry was capital; indeed it was," said Joe, quite gravely. "Perhaps there was not enough citron juice in it; no, there was not." "And the chilis ?" "By Jove, how they made you cry out!" said Joe, caught by the ridicule of the circumstance, and exploding in a fit of laughter which ended quite suddenly, as usual. "I shall take care how I let you choose for me another time," said Rebecca, as they went down again to dinner. "I didn't think men were fond of putting poor harmless girls to pain." 66 "By Gad, Miss Rebecca, I wouldn't hurt you for the world." "No," said she, "I know you wouldn't;" and then she gave him ever so gentle a pressure with her little hand, and drew it back quit frightened, and looked first for one instant in his face, and then down at the carpet-rods; and I am not prepared to say that Joe's heart did not thump at this little involuntary, timid, gentle motion of regard on the part of the simple girl. It was an advance, and as such, perhaps, some ladies of indisputable correctness and gentility will condemn the action as immod est; but, you see, poor dear Rebecca had all this work to do for herself. If a person is too poor to keep a servant, though ever so elegant, he must sweep his own rooms: if a dear girl has no dear mamma to settle matters with the young man, she must do it for herself. And oh, what a mercy it is that these women do not exercise their powers oftener! We can't resist them, if they do. Let them show ever so little inclination, and men go down on their knees at once: old or ugly, it is all the same. And this I set down as a positive truth. A woman with fair opportunities, and without an absolute hump, may marry WHOM SHE LIKES. Only let us be thankful that the darlings are like the beasts of the field, and don't know their own power. They would overcome us entirely if they did. "Egad!" thought Joseph, entering the dining-room, "I exactly begin to feel as I did at Dumdum with Miss Cutler." Many sweet little appeals, half tender, half jocular, did Miss Sharp make to him about the dishes at dinner; for by this time she was on a footing of considerable familiarity with the family, and as for the girls, they loved each other like sisters. Young unmarried girls always do, if they are in a house together for ten days. As if bent upon advancing Rebecca's plans in every way-what must Amelia do, but remind her brother of a promise made last Easter holydays-"When I was a girl at school," said she, laughing-a promise that he, Joseph, would take her to Vauxhall. "Now," she said, "that Rebecca is with us, will be the very time." "O, delightful!" said Rebecca, going to clap her hands: but she recollected herself, and paused, like a modest creature, as she was. "To-night is not the night," said Joe. "Well, to-morrow." "To-morrow your papa and I dine out," said Mrs. Sedley. "You don't suppose that I'm going, Mrs. Sed. ?" said her husband, "and that a woman of your years and size is to catch cold, in such an abominable damp place?" The children must have some one with them," cried Mrs. Sedley. "Let Joe go," said his father, laughing. "He's big enough." At which speech even Mr. Sambo at the sideboard burst out laughing, and poor fat Joe felt inclined to become a parricide almost. "Undo his stays!" continued the pitiless old gentleman. "Fling some water in his face, Miss Sharp, or carry him up stairs: the dear creature's fainting. Poor victim! carry him up; he's as light as a feather!" "If I stand this, sir, I'm d- !" roared Joseph. "Order Mr. Jo's elephant, Sambo!" cried the father. "Send to Exeter 'Change, his son, Sambo;" but seeing Joe ready almost to cry with him yet. Here is Emmy's little friend with vexation, the old joker stopped his making love to him as hard as she can; that's laughter, and said, holding out his hand to quite clear; and if she does not catch him "It's all fair on the Stock Exchange, some other will. That man is destined to Jos-and, Sambo, never mind the elephant, be a prey to woman, as I am to go on but give me and Mr. Jos a glass of cham-'Change every day. It's a mercy he did not pagne. Boney himself hasn't got such in his cellar, my boy!" A goblet of champagne restored Joseph's equanimity, and before the bottle was emptied, of which as an invalid he took twothirds, he had agreed to take the young ladies to Vauxhall. bring us over a black daughter-in-law, my dear. But, mark my words, the first woman who fishes for him, hooks him.” "She shall go off to-morrow, the little artful creature," said Mrs. Sedley, with great energy. 66 Why not she as well as another, Mrs. Sedley? The girl's a white face at any rate. I don't care who marries him. Let Joe please himself." And presently the voices of the two speakers were hushed, or were replaced by the gentle but unromantic music of the nose; and save when the church bells tolled the hour and the watchman called it, all was silent at the house of John Sedley, Esquire, of Russell-square, and the Stock Exchange. "The girls must have a gentleman apiece," said the old gentleman. "Jos will be sure to leave Emmy in the crowd, he will be so taken up with Miss Sharp here. Send to 26, and ask George Osborne if he'll come." At this, I don't know in the least for what reason, Mrs. Sedley looked at her husband and laughed. Mr. Sedley's eyes twinkled in a manner indescribably roguish; and he looked at Amelia, and Amelia, hanging down her head, blushed as only young ladies of seventeen know how to blush, and as Miss When morning came, the good-natured Rebecca Sharp never blushed in her life- Mrs. Sedley no longer thought of executing at least not since she was eight years old, her threats with regard to Miss Sharp; for and when she was caught stealing jam out though nothing is more keen, nor more comof a cupboard by her godmother. "Amelia mon, nor more justifiable, than maternal had better write a note," said her father; jealousy, yet she could not bring herself to "and let George Osborne see what a beau- suppose that the little, humble, grateful, tiful hand-writing we have brought back gentle governess, would dare to look up to from Miss Pinkerton's. Do you remember such a magnificent personage as the collecwhen you wrote to him to come on Twelfth-tor of Boggley Wollah. The petition, too, night, Emmy, and spelt twelfth without the f!" for an extension of the young lady's leave of absence had already been dispatched, and it would be difficult to find a pretext for abruptly dismissing her. That was years ago,” said Amelia. "It seems like yesterday, don't it, John?" said Mrs. Sedley to her husband; and that And as if all things conspired in favor of night, in a conversation which took place in the gentle Rebecca, the very elements (ala front room in the second-floor, in a sort of though she was not inclined at first to actent, hung round with chintz of a rich fan- knowledge their action in her behalf) intertastic India pattern, and doublé with calico posed to aid her. For on the evening apof a tender rose-color; in the interior of pointed for the Vauxhall party, George Oswhich species of marquee was a feather-borne having come to dinner, and the elders bed, on which were two pillows, on which were two round red faces, one in a laced night-cap, and one in a simple cotton one, ending in a tassel: in a curtain lecture, I say, Mrs. Sedley took her husband to task for his cruel conduct to poor Joe. "It was quite wicked of you, Mr. Sedley," said she, "to torment the poor boy so. 66 of the house having departed, according to invitation, to dine with Alderman Balls, at Highbury Barn, there came on such a thunder-storm as only happens on Vauxhall nights, and as obliged the young people, perforce, to remain at home. Mr. Osborne did not seem in the least disappointed at this occurrence. He and Joseph Sedley drank a fitting quantity of port-wine, tête-à-tête, in My dear," said the cotton-tassel in de- the dining-room, during the drinking of fense of his conduct, "Jos is a great deal which Sedley told a number of his best Invainer than you ever were in your life, and dian stories; for he was extremely talkative that's saying a good deal. Though, some in man's society, and afterward Miss Amethirty years ago, in the year seventeen hun- lia Sedley did the honors of the drawingdred and eighty-what was it? perhaps you room; and these four young persons passed had a right to be vain. I don't say no. But such a comfortable evening together, that I've no patience with Jos and his dandified they declared they were rather glad of the modesty. It is out-Josephing Joseph, my thunder-storm than otherwise, which had dear, and all the while the boy is only think-caused them to put off their visit to Vauxing of himself, and what a fiue fellow he is. hall. I doubt, Ma'am, we shall have some trouble Osborne was Sedley's godson, and had |