you a present of the hat from his head, and whose main occupation in life was to buy knick-knacks that he might give them away afterward, bought the little chap a pony not much bigger than a large rat, the donor 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 the mess with his brother-officers very pleasant. "Hang it, I ain't clever enough for her I know it. She won't miss me," he used to say: and he was right: his wife did not miss him.

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' hótel. 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.

"Good morning, your honor," said Clink, in reply to the "How-do, Clink?" of the colonel. "This ere young gentleman is about the little colonel's age, sir," continued the corporal.

His father was a Waterloo man, too," said the old gentleman, who carried the boy. Wasn't he, Georgy?"

"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.

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"He was a captain in the-th regiment," said the old gentleman rather pompously. 'Captain George Osborne, sir—perhaps you knew him. He died the death of a hero, sir, fighting against the Corsican tyrant."

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

turned to India not long after his escape from of the nation. It was wonderful to hear Brussels. Either his furlough was up, or him talk about millions, and agios, and dishe dreaded to meet any witnesses of his counts, and what Rothschild was doing, and Waterloo flight. However it might be, he Baring Brothers. He talked of such vast went back to his duties in Bengal, very soon sums that the gentlemen of the club (the after Napoleon had taken up his residence apothecary, the undertaker, the great carat 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 magisarmy, 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 stranded. Then men will walk across the that he had been engaged with the army; road when they meet you-or, worse still, certain it is that he made a prodigious sen-hold you out a couple of fingers and patronize sation 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.

you in a pitying way-then you will know, as soon as your back is turned, that your friend begins with a "Poor devil, what imprudences he has committed, what chances that chap has thrown away!" Well, well -a carriage and three thousand a year is not the summit of reward nor the end of God's judgment of men. If quacks prosper as often as they go to the wall-if zanies succeed and knaves arrive at fortune, and, vice versa, sharing ill-luck and prosperity for all the world like the ablest and most honest among us-I say, brother, the gifts and pleasures of Vanity Fair can not be held of any great account, and that it is probable ... but we are wandering out of the domain of the story.

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 bank- Had Mrs. Sedley been a woman of energy, ruptcy did not by any means retrieve the she would have exerted it after her husbroken old gentleman's fortune. He tried band's ruin, and, occupying a large house, to be a wine-merchant, a coal-merchant, a would have taken in boarders. The broken commission-lottery agent, &c., &c. He Sedley would have acted well as the boardsent round prospectuses to his friends when- ing-house landlady's husband; the Munoz ever he took a new trade, and ordered a new of private life; the titular lord and master: brass plate for the door, and talked pomp- the carver, house-steward, and humble husously about making his fortune still. But band of the occupier of the dingy throne. Fortune never came back to the feeble and I have seen men of good brains and breedstricken 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

ing, 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.

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.

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 I don't think they were unhappy. Per- been seated at work in their little parlor haps they were a little prouder in their scarcely remarking that the old lady had downfall than in their prosperity. Mrs. Sed- quitted the room, ran up stairs instinctively ley was always a great person for her land- to the nursery at the cries of the child, who lady, Mrs. Clapp, when she descended and had been asleep until that moment-and passed many hours with her in the basement there found Mrs. Sedley in the act of suror ornamented kitchen. The Irish maid reptitiously administering Daffy's Elixir to Betty Flanagan's bonnets and ribbons, her the infant. Amelia, the gentlest and sweetsauciness, her idleness, her reckless prodi-est of every-day mortals, when she found gality of kitchen candles, her consumption this meddling with her maternal authority, of tea and sugar, and so forth, occupied and thrilled and trembled all over with anger. amused the old lady almost as much as the Her cheeks, ordinarily pale, now flushed 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.

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.

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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."

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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—"

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 "O, no, my love-only that I was a murto feed the ducks. Georgy loved the red- deress; in which case, I had better go to the coats, and his grandpapa told him how his Old Bailey. Though I didn't poison you, father had been a famous soldier, and intro- when you were a child; but gave you the duced him to many sergeants and others with best of education, and the most expensive Waterloo medals on their breasts to whom masters money could procure. Yes; I've the old grandfather pompously presented the nursed five children, and buried three; and child as the son of Captain Osborne of the the one I loved the best of all, and tended -th, who died gloriously on the glorious through croup, and teething, and measles, eighteenth. He has been known to treat and hooping-cough, and brought up with some of those non-commissioned gentlemen foreign masters, regardless of expense, and to a glass of porter, and, indeed, in their first with accomplishments at Minerva HouseSunday walks was disposed to spoil little which I never had when I was a girl-when Georgy, sadly gorging the boy with apples I was too glad to honor my father and mothand parliament, to the detriment of his health -until Amelia declared that George should never go out with his grandpapa, unless the latter promised solemnly, and on his honor, not to give the child any cakes, lollipops, or stall produce whatever.

Between Mrs. Sedley and her daughter|

er, 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."

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Mamma, mamma!" cried the bewilder

ed girl and the child in her arms set up a | wondering child; much more than she ever frantic chorus of shouts.

and the favorite attendant of the Reine des Amours.

Instances might be multiplied of this easily gained and unconscious popularity. Did not Mr. Binny, the mild and genteel curate of the district chapel, which the family attended, call assiduously upon the widow, dandle the little boy on his knee, and offer to teach him Latin, to the anger of the elderly virgin, his sister, who kept house for him? "There is nothing in her, Beilby," the latter lady would say. "When she comes to tea here she does not speak a word during the whole evening. She is but a poor lackadaisical creature, and it is my belief has no heart at all. It is only her pretty face which all you gentlemen admire so. Miss Grits, who has five thousand pounds and expectations besides, has twice as much character, and is a thousand times more agreeable to my taste; and if she were good-looking I know that you would think her perfection."

Thus it was not only Mr. Pestler, the medical man, but Mr. Linton, the young assistant, who doctored the servant maids and small tradesmen, and might be seen any day reading the Times in the surgery, who openly declared himself the slave of Mrs. Osborne. He was a personable young gentleman, more welcome at Mrs. Sedley's lodgings than his principal; and if any thing went wrong with Georgy, he would drop in twice or thrice in the day, to see the little chap, and without so much as the thought of a fee. He would abstract lozenges, tamarinds, and other produce from the surgerydrawers for little Georgy's benefit, and compounded draughts and mixtures for him of miraculous sweetness, so that it was quite a pleasure to the child to be ailing. He and Pestler, his chief, sate up two whole nights by the boy in that momentous and awful week when Georgy had the measles; and when you would have thought, from the 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.

These are but trivial incidents to recount in the life of our heroine. Her tale does not deal in wonders, as the gentle reader has already no doubt perceived; and if a journal had been kept of her proceedings during the seven years after the birth of her son, there would be found few incidents more remark

in the foregoing page. Yes, one day, and greatly to her wonder, the Reverend Mr. Binny just mentioned, asked her to change her name of Osborne for his own; when, with deep blushes, and tears in her eyes and voice, she thanked him for his regard for 'her, expressed gratitude for his attentions to her and to her poor little boy, but said that she never, never could think of any but-but the husband whom she had lost.

Again, there was the little French chevalier opposite, who gave lessons in his native tongue at various schools in the neighborhood, and who might be heard in his apartment of nights playing tremulous old gavottes and minuets, on a wheezy old fiddle. When-able in it than that of the measles, recorded ever this powdered and courteous old man, 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, whenever 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