mounted by a cheerful brass group of the banquets at Mr. Osborne's house, the signal sacrifice of Iphigenia, tolled five, in a heavy to make sail for the drawing-room was given, cathedral tone, Mr. Osborne pulled the bell and they all arose and departed. Amelia at his right hand violently, and the butler hoped George would soon join them there. rushed up. "Dinner!" roared Mr. Osborne. "Mr. George isn't come in, sir," interposed the man. Damn Mr. George, sir. Am I master of the house? DINNER!" Mr. Osborne scowled. Amelia trembled. A telegraphic communication of eyes passed between the other three ladies. The obedient bell in the lower regions began ringing the announcement of the meal. The tolling over, the head of the family thrust his hands into the great tail-pockets of his great blue coat and brass buttons, and without waiting for a further announcement, strode down stairs alone, scowling over his shoulder at the four females. "What's the matter now, my dear?" asked one of the other, as they rose and tripped gingerly behind the sire. "I suppose the funds are falling," whispered Miss Wirt; and so, trembling and in silence, this hushed female company followed their dark leader. They took their places in silence. He growled out a blessing, which sounded as gruffly as a curse. The great silver dish-covers were removed. Amelia trembled in her place, for she was next the awful Osborne, and alone on her side of the table,—the gap being occasioned by the absence of George. 66 Soup?" says Mr. Osborne, clutching the ladle, fixing his eyes on her, in a sepulchral tone; and having helped her and the rest, did not speak for a while. "Take Miss Sedley's plate away," at last he said. "She can't eat the soup, no more can I. It's beastly. Take away the soup, Hicks, and to-morrow turn the cook out of the house, Maria." Having concluded his observations upon the soup, Mr. Osborne made a few curt remarks respecting the fish, also of a savage and satirical tendency, and cursed Billingsgate with an emphasis quite worthy of the place. Then he lapsed into silence, and swallowed sundry glasses of wine, looking more and more terrible, till a brisk knock at the door told of George's arrival, when every body began to rally. She began playing some of his favorite waltzes (then newly imported) at the great carved-legged, leather-cased grand piano in the drawing-room overhead. This little artifice did not bring him. He was deaf to the waltzes; they grew fainter and fainter; the discomfited performer left the huge instrument presently; and though her three friends performed some of the loudest and most brilliant new pieces of their répertoire, she did not hear a single note, but sat thinking, and boding evil. Old Osborne's scowl, terrific always, had never before looked so deadly to her. His eyes followed her out of the room, as if she had been guilty of something. When they brought her coffee, she started as though it were a cup of poison which Mr. Hicks, the butler, wished to propose to her. What mystery was there lurking? Oh, those women! They nurse and cuddle their presentiments, and make darlings of their ugliest thoughts, as they do of their deformed children. The gloom on the paternal countenance had also impressed George Osborne with anxiety. With such eyebrows, and a look so decidedly bilious, how was he to extract that money from the governor, of which George was consumedly in want? He began praising his father's wine. That was generally a successful means of cajoling the old gentleman. "We never got such Madeira in the West Indies, sir, as yours. Colonel Heavytop took off three bottles of that you sent me down, under his belt, the other day." "Did he ?" said the old gentleman. stands me in eight shillings a bottle." "It "Will you take six guineas a dozen for it, sir?" said George, with a laugh. "There's one of the greatest men in the kingdom wants some." "Does he ?" growled the senior, "Wish he may get it." "When General Daguilet was at Chatham, sir, Heavytop gave him a breakfast, and asked me for some of the wine. The general liked it just as well-wanted a pipe for the commander-in-chief. He's his royal highness's right-hand man." He could not come before. General "It is devilish fine wine," said the eyeDaguilet had kept him waiting at the Horse brows, and they looked more good-humored; Guards. Never mind soup or fish. Give and George was going to take advantage of him any thing-he didn't care what. Capi- this complacency, and bring the supply questal mutton-capital every thing." His good humor contrasted with his father's severity; and he rattled on unceasingly during dinner, to the delight of all-of one especially, who need not be mentioned. tion on the mahogany; when the father, relapsing into solemnity, though rather cordial in manner, bade him ring the bell for claret. " And we'll see if that's as good as the Madeira, George, to which his royal highness As soon as the young ladies had discussed is welcome, I'm sure. And as we are the orange and the glass of wine, which drinking it, I'll talk to you about a matter of formed the ordinary conclusion of the dismal importance." Amelia heard the caret bell ringing as 'em. Mix with the young nobility. There's she sat nervously up-stairs. She thought, somehow, it was a mysterious and presentimental bell. Of the presentiments which some people are always having, some surely must come right. 66 Why, sir, didn't you order me to marry her, and ain't I a good boy? Haven't our papas settled it ever so long?" "A pretty boy, indeed. Haven't I heard of your doings, sir, with Lord Tarquin, Captain Crawley of the Guards, the Honorable Mr. Deuceace and that set. Have a care, sir, have a care." The old gentleman pronounced these aristocratic names with the greatest gusto. Whenever he met a great man he groveled before him, and my-lorded him as only a free-born Briton can do. He came home and looked out his history in the peerage: he introduced his name into his daily conversation; he bragged about his lordship to his daughters. He fell down prostrate and basked in him as a Neapolitan beggar does in the sun. George was alarmed when he heard the names. He feared his father might have been informed of certain transactions at play. But the old moralist eased him by saying serenely, men. Well, well, young men will be young And the comfort to me is, George, that living in the best society in England, as I hope you do; as I think you do; as my means will allow you to do" "Thank you, sir," says George, making his point at once. "One can't live with these great folks for nothing; and my purse, sir, look at it ;" and he held up a little token which had been netted by Amelia, and contained the very last of Dobbin's pound notes. "You shan't want, sir. The British merchant's son shan't want, sir. My guineas are as good as theirs, George, my boy; and I don't grudge 'em. Call on Mr. Chopper as you go through the city to-morrow; he'll have something for you. I don't grudge money when I know you're in good society, because I know that good society can never go wrong. There's no pride in I was a humbly born man-but you have had advantages. Make a good use of me. many of 'em who can't spend a dollar to your guinea, my boy. And as for the pink bonnets (here from under the heavy eyebrows there came a knowing and not very pleasing leer)—why boys will be boys. Only there's one thing I order you to avoid, which, if you do not, I'll cut you off with a shilling, by Jove; and that's gambling, sir.” Oh, of course, sir," said George. 66 "But to return to the other business about Amelia: why shouldn't you marry higher than a stockbroker's daughter, George -that's what I want to know?" "It's a family business, sir," says George, cracking filberts. "You and Mr. Sedley made the match a hundred years ago." "I don't deny it; but people's positions alter, sir. I don't deny that Sedley made my fortune, or rather put me in the way of acquiring, by my own talents and genius, that proud position, which, I may say, I occupy in the tallow trade and the city of London. I've shown my gratitude to Sedley; and he's tried it of late, sir, as my check-book can show. George! I tell you in confidence I don't like the looks of Mr. Sedley's affairs. My chief clerk, Mr. Chopper, does not like the looks of 'em, and he's an old file, and knows Change as well as any man in London. Hulker and Bullock are looking shy at him. He's been dabbling on his own account, I fear. They say the Jeune Amelie was his, which was taken by the Yankee Privateer Molasses. And that's flat-unless I see Amelia's ten thousand down you don't marry her. I'll have no lame duck's daughter in my family. Pass the wine, sir-or ring for coffee." With which Mr. Osborne spread out the evening paper, and George knew from this signal that the colloquy was ended, and that his papa was about to take a nap. He hurried up stairs to Amelia in the highest spirits. What was it that made him more attentive to her on that night than he had been for a long time-more eager to amuse her, more tender, more brilliant in talk? Was it that his generous heart warmed to her at the prospect of misfortune; or that the idea of losing the dear little prize made him value it more? She lived upon the recollections of that happy evening for many days afterward, remembering his words; his looks; the song he sang; his attitude, as he leaned over her or looked at her from a distance. As it seemed to her, no night ever passed so quickly at Mr. Osborne's house before; and for once this young person was almost provoked to be angry by the premature arrival of Mr. Sambo with her shawl. George came and took a tender leave of her the next morning: and then hurried off to the city, where he visited Mr. Chopper, his father's head man, and received from that gentleman a document which he chamber warmed properly as for the recepexchanged at Hulker & Bullock's for a tion of an invalid. Messengers went off for whole pocket-full of money. As George her physician and medical man. They entered the house, old John Sedley was came, consulted, prescribed, vanished. The passing out of the banker's parlor, looking young companion of Miss Crawley, at the very dismal. But his godson was much too conclusion of their interview, came in to reelated to mark the worthy stockbroker's de- ceive their instructions, and administered pression, or the dreary eyes which the kind those antiphlogistic medicines which the emold gentleman cast upon him. Young Bul- inent men ordered. lock did not come grinning out of the parlor with him as had been his wont in former years. And as the swinging doors of Hulker, Bullock & Co. closed upon Mr. Sedley, Mr. Quill, the cashier (whose benevolent occupation it is to hand out crisp bank-notes from a drawer and dispense sovereigns out of a copper shovel), winked at Mr. Driver, the clerk at the desk on his right. Mr. Driver winked again. "No go," Mr. D. whispered. "Not at no price," Mr. Q. said. "Mr. George Osborne, sir, how will you take it?" George crammed eagerly a quantity of notes into his pockets, and paid Dobbin fifty pounds that very evening at mess. : Captain Crawley, of the Life Guards, rode up from Knightsbridge Barracks the next day his black charger pawed the straw before his invalid aunt's door. He was most affectionate in his inquiries regarding that amiable relative. There seemed to be much source of apprehension. He found Miss Crawley's maid (the discontented female) unusually sulky and despondent: he found Miss Briggs, her dame de compagnie, in tears, alone in the drawing-room. She had hastened home, hearing of her beloved friend's illness. She wished to fly to her couch, that couch which she, Briggs, had so often smoothed in the hour of sickness. She was denied admission to Miss Crawley's apartment. A stranger was administering her medicines-a stranger from the country-an odious Miss . . . . tears choked the utter That very evening Amelia wrote him the tenderest of long letters. Her heart was overflowing with tenderness, but it still fore-ance of the dame de compagnie, and she boded evil. What was the cause of Mr. Osborne's dark looks? she asked. Had any difference arisen between him and her buried her crushed affections and her poor old red nose in her pocket-handkerchief. Rawdon Crawley sent up his name by papa? Her poor papa returned so melan- the sulky femme de chambre, and Miss choly from the city, that all were alarmed Crawley's new companion, coming tripping about him at home-in fine, there were four down from the sick-room, put a little hand pages of loves and fears and hopes and fore-into his as he stepped forward eagerly to bodings. "Poor little Emmy-dear little Emmy. How fond she is of me,” George said, as he perused the missive-" and, Gad, what a headache that mixed punch has given me!" Poor little Emmy, indeed. CHAPTER IX. MISS CRAWLEY AT HOME. meet her, gave a glance of great scorn at the bewildered Briggs, and, beckoning the young guardsman out of the back drawing-room, led him down stairs into that now desolate dining-parlor, where so many a good dinner had been celebrated. Here these two talked for ten minutes, discussing, no doubt, the symptoms of the old invalid above stairs; at the end of which period the parlor-bell was rung briskly, and answered on that instant by Mr. Bowls, Miss Crawley's large confidential butler (who, indeed, happened to be at the keyhole during the most part of the interview); and the captain coming out, curling his moustachios, mounted the black charger pawing among the straw to the admiration of the little blackguard boys collected in the street. He looked in at the dining-room window, managing his horse, which curveted and capered beautifully-for one instant the young person might be seen at the window, then her figure vanished, and, doubtless, she went up-stairs again to resume the affecting duties of benevolence. ABOUT this time there drove up to an exceedingly snug and well appointed house in Park-lane a traveling chariot with a lozenge on the panels, a discontented female in a green vail and crimped curls on the rumble, and a large and confidential man on the box. It was the equipage of our friend Miss Crawley, returning from Hants. The windows of the carriage were shut: the fat spaniel, whose head and tongue ordinarily lolled out of one of them, reposed on the lap of the discontented female. When the vehicle stopped, a large round bundle of shawls was taken out of the carriage by the aid of vari- Who could this young woman be, I wonous domestics and a young lady who accom-der? That evening a little dinner for two panied the heap of cloaks. That bundle persons was laid in the dining-room-when contained Miss Crawley, who was conveyed Mrs. Firkin, the lady's maid, pushed into up-stairs forthwith, and put into a bed and her mistress's apartment, and bustled about E there during the vacancy occasioned by the | my dear Miss Briggs. I am a poor little girl departure of the new nurse-and the latter without any friends, or any harm in me. I and Miss Briggs sat down to the neat little meal. Briggs was so much choked by emotion that she could hardly take a morsel of meat. The young person carved a fowl with the utmost delicacy, and asked so distinctly for egg-sauce, that poor Briggs, before whom that delicious condiment was placed, started, made a great clattering with the ladle, and once more fell back in the most gushing hysterical state. Had you not better give Miss Briggs a glass of wine?" said the person to Mr. Bowls, the large confidential man. He did so. Briggs seized it mechanically, gasped it down convulsively, moaned a little, and began to play with the chicken on her plate. "I think we shall be able to help each other," said the person with great suavity: "and shall have no need of Mr. Bowls's kind services. Mr. Bowls, if you please, we will ring when we want you." He went down stairs, where, by the way, he vented the most horrid curses upon the unoffending footman, his subordinate. "It is a pity you take on so, Miss Briggs," the young lady said, with a cool, slightly sar castic, air. 66 My dearest friend is so ill, and wo-oo-on't see me," gurgled out Briggs in an agony of renewed grief. "She's not very ill any more. Console yourself, dear Miss Briggs. She has only overeaten herself—that is all. She is greatly better. She will soon be quite restored again. She is weak from being cupped and from medical treatment, but she will rally immediately. Pray console yourself, and take a little more wine." "But why, why won't she see me again?" Miss Briggs bleated out. "Oh, Matilda, Matilda, after three-and-twenty years' tenderness! is this the return to your poor, poor Arabella?" "Don't cry too much, poor Arabella," the other said (with ever so little of a grin); "she only won't see you, because she says you don't nurse her as well as I do. It's no pleasure to me to sit up all night. I wish you might do it instead." "Have I not tended that dear couch for years?" Arabella said, "and now-" Now she prefers somebody else. Well, sick people have these fancies, and must be humored. When she's well, I shall go." "Never, never," Arabella exclaimed, madly inhaling her salts-bottle. don't want to supplant you in Miss Crawley's good graces. She will forget me a week after I am gone: and her affection for you has been the work of years. Give me a little wine, if you please, my dear Miss Briggs, and let us be friends. I'm sure I want friends." The placable and soft-hearted Briggs speechlessly pushed out her hand at this appeal; but she felt the desertion most keenly, for all that, and bitterly, bitterly moaned the fickleness of her Matilda. At the end of half an hour, the meal over, Miss Rebecca Sharp (for such, astonishing to state, is the name of her who has been described ingeniously as the person hitherto) went up-stairs again to her patient's rooms, from which, with the most engaging politeness, she eliminated poor Firkin. "Thank you, Mrs. Firkin, that will quite do; how nicely you make it! I will ring when any thing is wanted. Thank you;" and Firkin came down stairs in a tempest of jealousy, only the more dangerous because she was forced to confine it in her own bosom. Could it be the tempest which, as she passed the landing of the first floor, blew open the drawing-room door? No; it was stealthily opened by the hand of Briggs. Briggs had been on the watch. Briggs too well heard the creaking Firkin descend the stairs, and the clink of the spoon and gruelbasin the neglected female carried. 66 66 Well, Firkin?" says she, as the other entered the apartment. Well, Jane?" "Wuss and wuss, Miss B." Firkin said, wagging her head. 66 Is she not better, then?" "She never spoke but once, and I asked her if she felt a little more easy, and she told me to hold my stupid tongue. Oh, Miss B., I never thought to have seen this day!" And the water-works again began to play. "What sort of a person is this Miss Sharp, Firkin? I little thought, while enjoying my Christmas revels in the elegant home of my firm friends, the Reverend Lionel Delamere and his amiable lady, to find a stranger had taken my place in the affections of my dearest, my still dearest Matilda!" Miss Briggs, it will be seen by her language, was of a literary and sentimental turn, and had once published a volume of poems "Trills of the Nightingale”—by subscription. "Miss B., they are all infatyated about "Never be well or never go? Miss Briggs," that young woman," Firkin replied. "Sir the other said, with the same provoking good Pitt wouldn't have let her go, but he daredn't nature. "Pooh-she will be well in a fort-refuse Miss Crawley anythink. Mrs. Bute night, when I shall go back to my little pupils at Queen's Crawley, and to their mother, who is a great deal more sick than our friend. You need not be jealous about me, at the Rectory jist as bad-never happy out of her sight. The capting quite wild about her. Mr. Crawley mortial jealous. Since Miss C. was took ill, she won't have nobody near her but Miss Sharp, I can't tell for where nor for why; and I think somethink has bewidged every body.” Rebecca passed that night in constant watching upon Miss Crawley; the next night the old lady slept so comfortably, that Rebecca had time for several hours' comfortable repose herself on the sofa, at the foot of her patroness's bed; very soon, Miss Crawley was so well that she sat up and laughed heartily at a perfect imitation of Miss Briggs and her grief, which Rebecca described to her. Briggs' weeping snuffle, and her manner of using the handkerchief, were so completely rendered, that Miss Crawley became quite cheerful, to the admiration of the doctors when they visited her, who usually found this worthy woman of the world, when the least sickness attacked her, under the most abject depression and terror of death. Captain Crawley came every day, and received bulletins from Miss Rebecca respecting his aunt's health. This improved so rapidly, that poor Briggs was allowed to see her patroness; and persons with tender hearts may imagine the smothered emotions of that sentimental female, and the affecting nature of the interview. Miss Crawley liked to have Briggs in a good deal soon. Rebecca used to mimic her to her face with the most admirable gravity, thereby rendering the imitation doubly piquante to her worthy patroness. health to the affectionate folks there, there was a lady in another part of the house, being exceedingly ill, of whom no one took any notice at all; and this was the lady of Crawley herself. The good doctor shook his head after seeing her; to which visit Sir Pitt consented, as it could be paid without a fee; and she was left fading away in her lonely chamber, with no more heed paid to her than to a weed in the park. The young ladies, too, lost much of the inestimable benefit of their governess's instruction. So affectionate a nurse was Miss Sharp, that Miss Crawley would take her medicines from no other hand. Firkin had been deposed long before her mistress's departure from the country. That faithful attendant found a gloomy consolation on returning to London, in seeing Miss Briggs suffer the same pangs of jealousy and undergo the same faithless treatment to which she herself had been subject. Captain Rawdon got an extension of leave on his aunt's illness, and remained dutifully at home. He was always in her ante-chamber. (She lay sick in the state bed-room, into which you entered by the little blue saloon.) His father was always meeting him there; or if he came down the corridor ever so quietly, his father's door was sure to open, and the hyena face of the old gentleman to glare out. What was it set one to watch the other so? A generous rivalry, no doubt, as to which should be most attentive to the dear sufferer in the state bed Rebecca used to come out and comfort both of them; or one or the other of them, rather. Both of these worthy gentlemen were most anxious to have news of the invalid from her little confidential messenger. At dinner to which meal she descended for half an hour-she kept the peace between them: after which she disappeared for the night; when Rawdon would ride over to the depôt of the 150th at Mudbury, leaving his papa to the society of Mr. Horrocks and his rum and water. She passed as weary a fortnight as ever mortal spent in Miss Crawley's sick room; but her little nerves seemed to be of iron, and she was quite unshaken by the duty and the tedium of the sick-chamber. The causes which had led to the deplorable illness of Miss Crawley, and her depart-room. ure from her brother's house in the country, were of such an unromantic nature, that they are hardly fit to be explained in this genteel and sentimental novel. For how is it possible to hint of a delicate female, living in good society, that she ate and drank too much, and that a hot supper of lobsters profusely enjoyed at the Rectory was the reason of an indisposition which Miss Crawley herself persisted was solely attributable to the dampness of the weather? The attack was so sharp that Matilda—as his Reverence expressed it was very nearly "off the hooks;" all the family was in a fever of expectation regarding the will, and Rawdon Crawley was making sure of at least forty thousand pounds before the commencement She never told until long afterward how of the London season. Mr. Crawley sent painful that duty was; how peevish a patient over a choice parcel of tracts, to prepare her was the jovial old lady; how angry; how for the change from Vanity Fair and Park sleepless; in what horrors of death; during Lane for another world; but a good doctor what long nights she lay moaning, and in alfrom Southampton being called in in time, most delirious agonies respecting that future vanquished the lobster which was so nearly world which she quite ignored when she fatal to her, and gave her sufficient strength was in good health. Picture to yourself, oh, to enable her to return to London. The fair young reader, a worldly, selfish, gracebaronet did not disguise his exceeding mortification at the turn which affairs took. While every body was attending on Miss Crawley, and messengers every hour from the Rectory were carrying news of her less, thankless, religionless old woman, writhing in pain and fear, and without her wig. Picture her to yourself, and, ere you be old, learn to love and pray! Sharp watched this graceless bedside with |