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Chapter: How to Live Well on Nothing a Year

I suppose there is no man in this Vanity Fair of ours so little
observant as not to think sometimes about the worldly affairs of his
acquaintances, or so extremely charitable as not to wonder how his
neighbour Jones, or his neighbour Smith, can make both ends meet at the
end of the year.  With the utmost regard for the family, for instance
(for I dine with them twice or thrice in the season), I cannot but own
that the appearance of the Jenkinses in the park, in the large barouche
with the grenadier-footmen, will surprise and mystify me to my dying
day:  for though I know the equipage is only jobbed, and all the
Jenkins people are on board wages, yet those three men and the carriage
must represent an expense of six hundred a year at the very least--and
then there are the splendid dinners, the two boys at Eton, 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 pounds a year for a 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.  How does Jenkins balance his income? I say, as
every friend of his must say, How is it that he has not been outlawed
long since, and that he ever came back (as he did to the surprise of
everybody) last year from Boulogne?

"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, May Fair, 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
everything, and as I am in a situation to be able to tell the public
how Crawley and his wife lived without any income, may I entreat the
public newspapers which are in the habit of extracting portions of the
various periodical works now published not to reprint the following
exact narrative and calculations--of which I ought, as the discoverer
(and at some expense, too), to have the benefit? My son, I would say,
were I blessed with a child--you may by deep inquiry and constant
intercourse with him learn how a man lives comfortably on nothing a
year.  But it is best not to be intimate with gentlemen of this
profession and to take the calculations at second hand, as you do
logarithms, for to work them 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 mustachios 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 splendours 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 ecarte 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 curtsies every night to a whole circle of
Princesses? He left Rebecca presently to frequent these parties alone,
resuming his own simple pursuits and amusements amongst 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 cue, 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 cannot 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 amateur, had grown to be a
consummate master of billiards.  Like a great General, his genius used
to rise with the danger, and when the luck had been unfavourable 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 everybody--of everybody, 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 skilful; for though he would
constantly lose money at the commencement of an evening, playing so
carelessly and making such blunders, that newcomers 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.

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 ardour, and gambling went on in private
houses as much as if there had been no public means for gratifying the
passion.  At Crawley's charming little reunions of an evening this
fatal amusement commonly was practised--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 everybody 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 acknowledgement.
How could he? He had lost just as much himself to Blackstone of the
Hussars, and Count Punter of the Hanoverian Cavalry.  Green might have
any decent time; but pay?--of course he must pay; to talk of burning
IOU's was child's play.

Other officers, chiefly young--for the young fellows gathered round
Mrs. Crawley--came from her parties with long faces, having dropped
more or less money at her fatal card-tables.  Her house began to have
an unfortunate reputation.  The old hands warned the less experienced
of their danger.  Colonel O'Dowd, of the --th regiment, one of those
occupying in Paris, warned Lieutenant Spooney of that corps.  A loud
and violent fracas took place between the infantry Colonel and his
lady, who were dining at the Cafe de Paris, and Colonel and Mrs.
Crawley; who were also taking their meal there. The ladies engaged on
both sides.  Mrs. O'Dowd snapped her fingers in Mrs. Crawley's face and
called her husband "no betther than a black-leg." Colonel Crawley
challenged Colonel O'Dowd, C.B.  The Commander-in-Chief hearing of the
dispute sent for Colonel Crawley, who was getting ready the same
pistols "which he shot Captain Marker," and had such a conversation
with him that no duel took place.  If Rebecca had not gone on her knees
to General Tufto, Crawley would have been sent back to England; and he
did not play, except with civilians, for some weeks after.

But, in spite of Rawdon's undoubted skill and constant successes, it
became evident to Rebecca, considering these things, that their
position was but a precarious one, and that, even although they paid
scarcely anybody, their little capital would end one day by dwindling
into zero.  "Gambling," she would say, "dear, is good to help your
income, but not as an income itself.  Some day people may be tired of
play, and then where are we?" Rawdon acquiesced in the justice of her
opinion; and in truth he had remarked that after a few nights of his
little suppers, &c., gentlemen were tired of play with him, and, in
spite of Rebecca's charms, did not present themselves very eagerly.

Easy and pleasant as their life at Paris was, it was after all only an
idle dalliance and amiable trifling; and Rebecca saw that she must push
Rawdon's fortune in their own country.  She must get him a place or
appointment at home or in the colonies, and she determined to make a
move upon England as soon as the way could be cleared for her.  As a
first step she had made Crawley sell out of the Guards and go on
half-pay.  His function as aide-de-camp to General Tufto had ceased
previously. Rebecca laughed in all companies at that officer, at his
toupee (which he mounted on coming to Paris), at his waistband, at his
false teeth, at his pretensions to be a lady-killer above all, and his
absurd vanity in fancying every woman whom he came near was in love
with him.  It was to Mrs. Brent, the beetle-browed wife of Mr.
Commissary Brent, to whom the general transferred his attentions
now--his bouquets, his dinners at the restaurateurs', his opera-boxes,
and his knick-knacks.  Poor Mrs. Tufto was no more happy than before,
and had still to pass long evenings alone with her daughters, knowing
that her General was gone off scented and curled to stand behind Mrs.
Brent's chair at the play.  Becky had a dozen admirers in his place, to
be sure, and could cut her rival to pieces with her wit.  But, as we
have said, she was growing tired of this idle social life:
opera-boxes and restaurateur dinners palled upon her:  nosegays could
not be laid by as a provision for future years:  and she could not live
upon knick-knacks, laced handkerchiefs, and kid gloves.  She felt the
frivolity of pleasure and longed for more substantial benefits.

At this juncture news arrived which was spread among the many creditors
of the Colonel at Paris, and which caused them great satisfaction.
Miss Crawley, the rich aunt from whom he expected his immense
inheritance, was dying; the Colonel must haste to her bedside.  Mrs.
Crawley and her child would remain behind until he came to reclaim
them.  He departed for Calais, and having reached that place in safety,
it might have been supposed that he went to Dover; but instead he took
the diligence to Dunkirk, and thence travelled to Brussels, for which
place he had a former predilection. The fact is, he owed more money at
London than at Paris; and he preferred the quiet little Belgian city to
either of the more noisy capitals.

Her aunt was dead.  Mrs. Crawley ordered the most intense mourning for
herself and little Rawdon.  The Colonel was busy arranging the affairs
of the inheritance.  They could take the premier now, instead of the
little entresol of the hotel which they occupied. Mrs. Crawley and the
landlord had a consultation about the new hangings, an amicable wrangle
about the carpets, and a final adjustment of everything except the
bill.  She went off in one of his carriages; her French bonne with her;
the child by her side; the admirable landlord and landlady smiling
farewell to her from the gate.  General Tufto was furious when he heard
she was gone, and Mrs. Brent furious with him for being furious;
Lieutenant Spooney was cut to the heart; and the landlord got ready his
best apartments previous to the return of the fascinating little woman
and her husband.  He _serred_ the trunks which she left in his charge
with the greatest care.  They had been especially recommended to him by
Madame Crawley.  They were not, however, found to be particularly
valuable when opened some time after.

But before she went to join her husband in the Belgic capital, Mrs.
Crawley made an expedition into England, leaving behind her her little
son upon the continent, under the care of her French maid.

The parting between Rebecca and the little Rawdon did not cause either
party much pain.  She had not, to say truth, seen much of the young
gentleman since his birth. After the amiable fashion of French mothers,
she had placed him out at nurse in a village in the neighbourhood of
Paris, where little Rawdon passed the first months of his life, not
unhappily, with a numerous family of foster-brothers in wooden shoes.
His father would ride over many a time to see him here, and the elder
Rawdon's paternal heart glowed to see him rosy and dirty, shouting
lustily, and happy in the making of mud-pies under the superintendence
of the gardener's wife, his nurse.

Rebecca did not care much to go and see the son and heir.  Once he
spoiled a new dove-coloured pelisse of hers.  He preferred his nurse's
caresses to his mamma's, and when finally he quitted that jolly nurse
and almost parent, he cried loudly for hours.  He was only consoled by
his mother's promise that he should return to his nurse the next day;
indeed the nurse herself, who probably would have been pained at the
parting too, was told that the child would immediately be restored to
her, and for some time awaited quite anxiously his return.

In fact, our friends may be said to have been among the first of that
brood of hardy English adventurers who have subsequently invaded the
Continent and swindled in all the capitals of Europe. The respect in
those happy days of 1817-18 was very great for the wealth and honour of
Britons.  They had not then learned, as I am told, to haggle for
bargains with the pertinacity which now distinguishes them.  The great
cities of Europe had not been as yet open to the enterprise of our
rascals. And whereas there is now hardly a town of France or Italy in
which you shall not see some noble countryman of our own, with that
happy swagger and insolence of demeanour which we carry everywhere,
swindling inn-landlords, passing fictitious cheques upon credulous
bankers, robbing coach-makers of their carriages, goldsmiths of their
trinkets, easy travellers of their money at cards, even public
libraries of their books--thirty years ago you needed but to be a Milor
Anglais, travelling in a private carriage, and credit was at your hand
wherever you chose to seek it, and gentlemen, instead of cheating, were
cheated.  It was not for some weeks after the Crawleys' departure that
the landlord of the hotel which they occupied during their residence at
Paris found out the losses which he had sustained:  not until Madame
Marabou, the milliner, made repeated visits with her little bill for
articles supplied to Madame Crawley; not until Monsieur Didelot from
Boule d'Or in the Palais Royal had asked half a dozen times whether
cette charmante Miladi who had bought watches and bracelets of him was
de retour. It is a fact that even the poor gardener's wife, who had
nursed madame's child, was never paid after the first six months for
that supply of the milk of human kindness with which she had furnished
the lusty and healthy little Rawdon.  No, not even the nurse was
paid--the Crawleys were in too great a hurry to remember their trifling
debt to her.  As for the landlord of the hotel, his curses against the
English nation were violent for the rest of his natural life.  He asked
all travellers whether they knew a certain Colonel Lor Crawley--avec sa
femme une petite dame, tres spirituelle.  "Ah, Monsieur!" he would
add--"ils m'ont affreusement vole." It was melancholy to hear his
accents as he spoke of that catastrophe.

Rebecca's object in her journey to London was to effect a kind of
compromise with her husband's numerous creditors, and by offering them
a dividend of ninepence or a shilling in the pound, to secure a return
for him into his own country.  It does not become us to trace the steps
which she took in the conduct of this most difficult negotiation; but,
having shown them to their satisfaction that the sum which she was
empowered to offer was all her husband's available capital, and having
convinced them that Colonel Crawley would prefer a perpetual retirement
on the Continent to a residence in this country with his debts
unsettled; having proved to them that there was no possibility of money
accruing to him from other quarters, and no earthly chance of their
getting a larger dividend than that which she was empowered to offer,
she brought the Colonel's creditors unanimously to accept her
proposals, and purchased with fifteen hundred pounds of ready money
more than ten times that amount of debts.

Mrs. Crawley employed no lawyer in the transaction. The matter was so
simple, to have or to leave, as she justly observed, that she made the
lawyers of the creditors themselves do the business.  And Mr. Lewis
representing Mr. Davids, of Red Lion Square, and Mr. Moss acting for
Mr. Manasseh of Cursitor Street (chief creditors of the Colonel's),
complimented his lady upon the brilliant way in which she did business,
and declared that there was no professional man who could beat her.

Rebecca received their congratulations with perfect modesty; ordered a
bottle of sherry and a bread cake to the little dingy lodgings where
she dwelt, while conducting the business, to treat the enemy's lawyers:
shook hands with them at parting, in excellent good humour, and
returned straightway to the Continent, to rejoin her husband and son
and acquaint the former with the glad news of his entire liberation.
As for the latter, he had been considerably neglected during his
mother's absence by Mademoiselle Genevieve, her French maid; for that
young woman, contracting an attachment for a soldier in the garrison of
Calais, forgot her charge in the society of this militaire, and little
Rawdon very narrowly escaped drowning on Calais sands at this period,
where the absent Genevieve had left and lost him.

And so, Colonel and Mrs. Crawley came to London: and it is at their
house in Curzon Street, May Fair, that they really showed the skill
which must be possessed by those who would live on the resources above
named.

The Subject Continued

In the first place, and as a matter of the greatest necessity, we are
bound to describe how a house may be got for nothing a year. These
mansions are to be had either unfurnished, where, if you have credit
with Messrs.  Gillows or Bantings, you can get them splendidly montees
and decorated entirely according to your own fancy; or they are to be
let furnished, a less troublesome and complicated arrangement to most
parties.  It was so that Crawley and his wife preferred to hire their
house.

Before Mr. Bowls came to preside over Miss Crawley's house and cellar
in Park Lane, that lady had had for a butler a Mr. Raggles, who was
born on the family estate of Queen's Crawley, and indeed was a younger
son of a gardener there.  By good conduct, a handsome person and
calves, and a grave demeanour, Raggles rose from the knife-board to the
footboard of the carriage; from the footboard to the butler's pantry.
When he had been a certain number of years at the head of Miss
Crawley's establishment, where he had had good wages, fat perquisites,
and plenty of opportunities of saving, he announced that he was about
to contract a matrimonial alliance with a late cook of Miss Crawley's,
who had subsisted in an honourable manner by the exercise of a mangle,
and the keeping of a small greengrocer's shop in the neighbourhood.
The truth is, that the ceremony had been clandestinely performed some
years back; although the news of Mr. Raggles' marriage was first
brought to Miss Crawley by a little boy and girl of seven and eight
years of age, whose continual presence in the kitchen had attracted the
attention of Miss Briggs.

Mr. Raggles then retired and personally undertook the superintendence
of the small shop and the greens.  He added milk and cream, eggs and
country-fed pork to his stores, contenting himself whilst other retired
butlers were vending spirits in public houses, by dealing in the
simplest country produce.  And having a good connection amongst the
butlers in the neighbourhood, and a snug back parlour where he and Mrs.
Raggles received them, his milk, cream, and eggs got to be adopted by
many of the fraternity, and his profits increased every year.  Year
after year he quietly and modestly amassed money, and when at length
that snug and complete bachelor's residence at No. 201, Curzon Street,
May Fair, lately the residence of the Honourable Frederick Deuceace,
gone abroad, with its rich and appropriate furniture by the first
makers, was brought to the hammer, who should go in and purchase the
lease and furniture of the house but Charles Raggles? A part of the
money he borrowed, it is true, and at rather a high interest, from a
brother butler, but the chief part he paid down, and it was with no
small pride that Mrs. Raggles found herself sleeping in a bed of carved
mahogany, with silk curtains, with a prodigious cheval glass opposite
to her, and a wardrobe which would contain her, and Raggles, and all
the family.

Of course, they did not intend to occupy permanently an apartment so
splendid.  It was in order to let the house again that Raggles
purchased it.  As soon as a tenant was found, he subsided into the
greengrocer's shop once more; but a happy thing it was for him to walk
out of that tenement and into Curzon Street, and there survey his
house--his own house--with geraniums in the window and a carved bronze
knocker.  The footman occasionally lounging at the area railing,
treated him with respect; the cook took her green stuff at his house
and called him Mr. Landlord, and there was not one thing the tenants
did, or one dish which they had for dinner, that Raggles might not know
of, if he liked.

He was a good man; good and happy.  The house brought him in so
handsome a yearly income that he was determined to send his children to
good schools, and accordingly, regardless of expense, Charles was sent
to boarding at Dr. Swishtail's, Sugar-cane Lodge, and little Matilda to
Miss Peckover's, Laurentinum House, Clapham.

Raggles loved and adored the Crawley family as the author of all his
prosperity in life.  He had a silhouette of his mistress in his back
shop, and a drawing of the Porter's Lodge at Queen's Crawley, done by
that spinster herself in India ink--and the only addition he made to
the decorations of the Curzon Street House was a print of Queen's
Crawley in Hampshire, the seat of Sir Walpole Crawley, Baronet, who was
represented in a gilded car drawn by six white horses, and passing by a
lake covered with swans, and barges containing ladies in hoops, and
musicians with flags and periwigs.  Indeed Raggles thought there was no
such palace in all the world, and no such august family.

As luck would have it, Raggles' house in Curzon Street was to let when
Rawdon and his wife returned to London. The Colonel knew it and its
owner quite well; the latter's connection with the Crawley family had
been kept up constantly, for Raggles helped Mr. Bowls whenever Miss
Crawley received friends.  And the old man not only let his house to
the Colonel but officiated as his butler whenever he had company; Mrs.
Raggles operating in the kitchen below and sending up dinners of which
old Miss Crawley herself might have approved.  This was the way, then,
Crawley got his house for nothing; for though Raggles had to pay taxes
and rates, and the interest of the mortgage to the brother butler; and
the insurance of his life; and the charges for his children at school;
and the value of the meat and drink which his own family--and for a
time that of Colonel Crawley too--consumed; and though the poor wretch
was utterly ruined by the transaction, his children being flung on the
streets, and himself driven into the Fleet Prison:  yet somebody must
pay even for gentlemen who live for nothing a year--and so it was this
unlucky Raggles was made the representative of Colonel Crawley's
defective capital.

I wonder how many families are driven to roguery and to ruin by great
practitioners in Crawley's way?--how many great noblemen rob their petty
tradesmen, condescend to swindle their poor retainers out of wretched
little sums and cheat for a few shillings? When we read that a noble
nobleman has left for the Continent, or that another noble nobleman has
an execution in his house--and that one or other owes six or seven
millions, the defeat seems glorious even, and we respect the victim in
the vastness of his ruin.  But who pities a poor barber who can't get
his money for powdering the footmen's heads; or a poor carpenter who
has ruined himself by fixing up ornaments and pavilions for my lady's
dejeuner; or the poor devil of a tailor whom the steward patronizes,
and who has pledged all he is worth, and more, to get the liveries
ready, which my lord has done him the honour to bespeak? When the great
house tumbles down, these miserable wretches fall under it unnoticed:
as they say in the old legends, before a man goes to the devil himself,
he sends plenty of other souls thither.

Rawdon and his wife generously gave their patronage to all such of Miss
Crawley's tradesmen and purveyors as chose to serve them.  Some were
willing enough, especially the poor ones.  It was wonderful to see the
pertinacity with which the washerwoman from Tooting brought the cart
every Saturday, and her bills week after week. Mr. Raggles himself had
to supply the greengroceries.  The bill for servants' porter at the
Fortune of War public house is a curiosity in the chronicles of beer.
Every servant also was owed the greater part of his wages, and thus
kept up perforce an interest in the house. Nobody in fact was paid.
Not the blacksmith who opened the lock; nor the glazier who mended the
pane; nor the jobber who let the carriage; nor the groom who drove it;
nor the butcher who provided the leg of mutton; nor the coals which
roasted it; nor the cook who basted it; nor the servants who ate it:
and this I am given to understand is not unfrequently the way in which
people live elegantly on nothing a year.

In a little town such things cannot be done without remark.  We know
there the quantity of milk our neighbour takes and espy the joint or
the fowls which are going in for his dinner.  So, probably, 200 and 202
in Curzon Street might know what was going on in the house between
them, the servants communicating through the area-railings; but Crawley
and his wife and his friends did not know 200 and 202. When you came to
201 there was a hearty welcome, a kind smile, a good dinner, and a
jolly shake of the hand from the host and hostess there, just for all
the world as if they had been undisputed masters of three or four
thousand a year--and so they were, not in money, but in produce and
labour--if they did not pay for the mutton, they had it:  if they did
not give bullion in exchange for their wine, how should we know? Never
was better claret at any man's table than at honest Rawdon's; dinners
more gay and neatly served.   His drawing-rooms were the prettiest,
little, modest salons conceivable: they were decorated with the
greatest taste, and a thousand knick-knacks from Paris, by Rebecca:
and when she sat at her piano trilling songs with a lightsome heart,
the stranger voted himself in a little paradise of domestic comfort and
agreed that, if the husband was rather stupid, the wife was charming,
and the dinners the pleasantest in the world.

Rebecca's wit, cleverness, and flippancy made her speedily the vogue in
London among a certain class.  You saw demure chariots at her door, out
of which stepped very great people.  You beheld her carriage in the
park, surrounded by dandies of note.  The little box in the third tier
of the opera was crowded with heads constantly changing; but it must be
confessed that the ladies held aloof from her, and that their doors
were shut to our little adventurer.

With regard to the world of female fashion and its customs, the present
writer of course can only speak at second hand.  A man can no more
penetrate or understand those mysteries than he can know what the
ladies talk about when they go upstairs after dinner.  It is only by
inquiry and perseverance that one sometimes gets hints of those
secrets; and by a similar diligence every person who treads the Pall
Mall pavement and frequents the clubs of this metropolis knows, either
through his own experience or through some acquaintance with whom he
plays at billiards or shares the joint, something about the genteel
world of London, and how, as there are men (such as Rawdon Crawley,
whose position we mentioned before) who cut a good figure to the eyes
of the ignorant world and to the apprentices in the park, who behold
them consorting with the most notorious dandies there, so there are
ladies, who may be called men's women, being welcomed entirely by all
the gentlemen and cut or slighted by all their wives.  Mrs. Firebrace
is of this sort; the lady with the beautiful fair ringlets whom you see
every day in Hyde Park, surrounded by the greatest and most famous
dandies of this empire.  Mrs. Rockwood is another, whose parties are
announced laboriously in the fashionable newspapers and with whom you
see that all sorts of ambassadors and great noblemen dine; and many
more might be mentioned had they to do with the history at present in
hand.  But while simple folks who are out of the world, or country
people with a taste for the genteel, behold these ladies in their
seeming glory in public places, or envy them from afar off, persons who
are better instructed could inform them that these envied ladies have
no more chance of establishing themselves in "society," than the
benighted squire's wife in Somersetshire who reads of their doings in
the Morning Post. Men living about London are aware of these awful
truths. You hear how pitilessly many ladies of seeming rank and wealth
are excluded from this "society." The frantic efforts which they make
to enter this circle, the meannesses to which they submit, the insults
which they undergo, are matters of wonder to those who take human or
womankind for a study; and the pursuit of fashion under difficulties
would be a fine theme for any very great person who had the wit, the
leisure, and the knowledge of the English language necessary for the
compiling of such a history.

Now the few female acquaintances whom Mrs. Crawley had known abroad not
only declined to visit her when she came to this side of the Channel,
but cut her severely when they met in public places.  It was curious to
see how the great ladies forgot her, and no doubt not altogether a
pleasant study to Rebecca.  When Lady Bareacres met her in the
waiting-room at the opera, she gathered her daughters about her as if
they would be contaminated by a touch of Becky, and retreating a step
or two, placed herself in front of them, and stared at her little
enemy. To stare Becky out of countenance required a severer glance than
even the frigid old Bareacres could shoot out of her dismal eyes.  When
Lady de la Mole, who had ridden a score of times by Becky's side at
Brussels, met Mrs. Crawley's open carriage in Hyde Park, her Ladyship
was quite blind, and could not in the least recognize her former
friend.  Even Mrs. Blenkinsop, the banker's wife, cut her at church.
Becky went regularly to church now; it was edifying to see her enter
there with Rawdon by her side, carrying a couple of large gilt
prayer-books, and afterwards going through the ceremony with the
gravest resignation.

Rawdon at first felt very acutely the slights which were passed upon
his wife, and was inclined to be gloomy and savage.  He talked of
calling out the husbands or brothers of every one of the insolent women
who did not pay a proper respect to his wife; and it was only by the
strongest commands and entreaties on her part that he was brought into
keeping a decent behaviour.  "You can't shoot me into society," she
said good-naturedly.  "Remember, my dear, that I was but a governess,
and you, you poor silly old man, have the worst reputation for debt,
and dice, and all sorts of wickedness.  We shall get quite as many
friends as we want by and by, and in the meanwhile you must be a good
boy and obey your schoolmistress in everything she tells you to do.
When we heard that your aunt had left almost everything to Pitt and his
wife, do you remember what a rage you were in? You would have told all
Paris, if I had not made you keep your temper, and where would you have
been now?--in prison at Ste.  Pelagie for debt, and not established in
London in a handsome house, with every comfort about you--you were in
such a fury you were ready to murder your brother, you wicked Cain you,
and what good would have come of remaining angry? All the rage in the
world won't get us your aunt's money; and it is much better that we
should be friends with your brother's family than enemies, as those
foolish Butes are.  When your father dies, Queen's Crawley will be a
pleasant house for you and me to pass the winter in.  If we are ruined,
you can carve and take charge of the stable, and I can be a governess
to Lady Jane's children.  Ruined! fiddlede-dee!  I will get you a good
place before that; or Pitt and his little boy will die, and we will be
Sir Rawdon and my lady.  While there is life, there is hope, my dear,
and I intend to make a man of you yet.  Who sold your horses for you?
Who paid your debts for you?" Rawdon was obliged to confess that he
owed all these benefits to his wife, and to trust himself to her
guidance for the future.

Indeed, when Miss Crawley quitted the world, and that money for which
all her relatives had been fighting so eagerly was finally left to
Pitt, Bute Crawley, who found that only five thousand pounds had been
left to him instead of the twenty upon which he calculated, was in such
a fury at his disappointment that he vented it in savage abuse upon his
nephew; and the quarrel always rankling between them ended in an utter
breach of intercourse.  Rawdon Crawley's conduct, on the other hand,
who got but a hundred pounds, was such as to astonish his brother and
delight his sister-in-law, who was disposed to look kindly upon all the
members of her husband's family.  He wrote to his brother a very frank,
manly, good-humoured letter from Paris.  He was aware, he said, that by
his own marriage he had forfeited his aunt's favour; and though he did
not disguise his disappointment that she should have been so entirely
relentless towards him, he was glad that the money was still kept in
their branch of the family, and heartily congratulated his brother on
his good fortune.  He sent his affectionate remembrances to his sister,
and hoped to have her good-will for Mrs. Rawdon; and the letter
concluded with a postscript to Pitt in the latter lady's own
handwriting.  She, too, begged to join in her husband's
congratulations.  She should ever remember Mr. Crawley's kindness to
her in early days when she was a friendless orphan, the instructress of
his little sisters, in whose welfare she still took the tenderest
interest.  She wished him every happiness in his married life, and,
asking his permission to offer her remembrances to Lady Jane (of whose
goodness all the world informed her), she hoped that one day she might
be allowed to present her little boy to his uncle and aunt, and begged
to bespeak for him their good-will and protection.

Pitt Crawley received this communication very graciously--more
graciously than Miss Crawley had received some of Rebecca's previous
compositions in Rawdon's handwriting; and as for Lady Jane, she was so
charmed with the letter that she expected her husband would instantly
divide his aunt's legacy into two equal portions and send off one-half
to his brother at Paris.

To her Ladyship's surprise, however, Pitt declined to accommodate his
brother with a cheque for thirty thousand pounds.  But he made Rawdon a
handsome offer of his hand whenever the latter should come to England
and choose to take it; and, thanking Mrs. Crawley for her good opinion
of himself and Lady Jane, he graciously pronounced his willingness to
take any opportunity to serve her little boy.

Thus an almost reconciliation was brought about between the brothers.
When Rebecca came to town Pitt and his wife were not in London.  Many a
time she drove by the old door in Park Lane to see whether they had
taken possession of Miss Crawley's house there. But the new family did
not make its appearance; it was only through Raggles that she heard of
their movements--how Miss Crawley's domestics had been dismissed with
decent gratuities, and how Mr. Pitt had only once made his appearance
in London, when he stopped for a few days at the house, did business
with his lawyers there, and sold off all Miss Crawley's French novels
to a bookseller out of Bond Street.  Becky had reasons of her own which
caused her to long for the arrival of her new relation. "When Lady Jane
comes," thought she, "she shall be my sponsor in London society; and as
for the women! bah! the women will ask me when they find the men want
to see me."

An article as necessary to a lady in this position as her brougham or
her bouquet is her companion.  I have always admired the way in which
the tender creatures, who cannot exist without sympathy, hire an
exceedingly plain friend of their own sex from whom they are almost
inseparable.  The sight of that inevitable woman in her faded gown
seated behind her dear friend in the opera-box, or occupying the back
seat of the barouche, is always a wholesome and moral one to me, as
jolly a reminder as that of the Death's-head which figured in the
repasts of Egyptian bon-vivants, a strange sardonic memorial of Vanity
Fair.  What? even battered, brazen, beautiful, conscienceless,
heartless, Mrs. Firebrace, whose father died of her shame:  even
lovely, daring Mrs. Mantrap, who will ride at any fence which any man
in England will take, and who drives her greys in the park, while her
mother keeps a huckster's stall in Bath still--even those who are so
bold, one might fancy they could face anything, dare not face the world
without a female friend.  They must have somebody to cling to, the
affectionate creatures!  And you will hardly see them in any public
place without a shabby companion in a dyed silk, sitting somewhere in
the shade close behind them.

"Rawdon," said Becky, very late one night, as a party of gentlemen were
seated round her crackling drawing-room fire (for the men came to her
house to finish the night; and she had ice and coffee for them, the
best in London):  "I must have a sheep-dog."

"A what?" said Rawdon, looking up from an ecarte table.

"A sheep-dog!" said young Lord Southdown.  "My dear Mrs. Crawley, what
a fancy!  Why not have a Danish dog? I know of one as big as a
camel-leopard, by Jove. It would almost pull your brougham.  Or a
Persian greyhound, eh? (I propose, if you please); or a little pug that
would go into one of Lord Steyne's snuff-boxes? There's a man at
Bayswater got one with such a nose that you might--I mark the king and
play--that you might hang your hat on it."

"I mark the trick," Rawdon gravely said.  He attended to his game
commonly and didn't much meddle with the conversation, except when it
was about horses and betting.

"What CAN you want with a shepherd's dog?" the lively little Southdown
continued.

"I mean a MORAL shepherd's dog," said Becky, laughing and looking up at
Lord Steyne.

"What the devil's that?" said his Lordship.

"A dog to keep the wolves off me," Rebecca continued. "A companion."

"Dear little innocent lamb, you want one," said the marquis; and his
jaw thrust out, and he began to grin hideously, his little eyes leering
towards Rebecca.

The great Lord of Steyne was standing by the fire sipping coffee. The
fire crackled and blazed pleasantly. There was a score of candles
sparkling round the mantel piece, in all sorts of quaint sconces, of
gilt and bronze and porcelain.  They lighted up Rebecca's figure to
admiration, as she sat on a sofa covered with a pattern of gaudy
flowers.  She was in a pink dress that looked as fresh as a rose; her
dazzling white arms and shoulders were half-covered with a thin hazy
scarf through which they sparkled; her hair hung in curls round her
neck; one of her little feet peeped out from the fresh crisp folds of
the silk:  the prettiest little foot in the prettiest little sandal in
the finest silk stocking in the world.

The candles lighted up Lord Steyne's shining bald head, which was
fringed with red hair.  He had thick bushy eyebrows, with little
twinkling bloodshot eyes, surrounded by a thousand wrinkles.  His jaw
was underhung, and when he laughed, two white buck-teeth protruded
themselves and glistened savagely in the midst of the grin. He had been
dining with royal personages, and wore his garter and ribbon.  A short
man was his Lordship, broad-chested and bow-legged, but proud of the
fineness of his foot and ankle, and always caressing his garter-knee.

"And so the shepherd is not enough," said he, "to defend his lambkin?"

"The shepherd is too fond of playing at cards and going to his clubs,"
answered Becky, laughing.

"'Gad, what a debauched Corydon!" said my lord--"what a mouth for a
pipe!"

"I take your three to two," here said Rawdon, at the card-table.

"Hark at Meliboeus," snarled the noble marquis; "he's pastorally
occupied too:  he's shearing a Southdown. What an innocent mutton, hey?
Damme, what a snowy fleece!"

Rebecca's eyes shot out gleams of scornful humour. "My lord," she said,
"you are a knight of the Order." He had the collar round his neck,
indeed--a gift of the restored princes of Spain.

Lord Steyne in early life had been notorious for his daring and his
success at play.  He had sat up two days and two nights with Mr. Fox at
hazard.  He had won money of the most august personages of the realm:
he had won his marquisate, it was said, at the gaming-table; but he did
not like an allusion to those bygone fredaines.  Rebecca saw the scowl
gathering over his heavy brow.

She rose up from her sofa and went and took his coffee cup out of his
hand with a little curtsey.  "Yes," she said, "I must get a watchdog.
But he won't bark at YOU." And, going into the other drawing-room, she
sat down to the piano and began to sing little French songs in such a
charming, thrilling voice that the mollified nobleman speedily followed
her into that chamber, and might be seen nodding his head and bowing
time over her.

Rawdon and his friend meanwhile played ecarte until they had enough.
The Colonel won; but, say that he won ever so much and often, nights
like these, which occurred many times in the week--his wife having all
the talk and all the admiration, and he sitting silent without the
circle, not comprehending a word of the jokes, the allusions, the
mystical language within--must have been rather wearisome to the
ex-dragoon.

"How is Mrs. Crawley's husband?" Lord Steyne used to say to him by way
of a good day when they met; and indeed that was now his avocation in
life.  He was Colonel Crawley no more.  He was Mrs. Crawley's husband.

About the little Rawdon, if nothing has been said all this while, it is
because he is hidden upstairs in a garret somewhere, or has crawled
below into the kitchen for companionship.  His mother scarcely ever
took notice of him.  He passed the days with his French bonne as long
as that domestic remained in Mr. Crawley's family, and when the
Frenchwoman went away, the little fellow, howling in the loneliness of
the night, had compassion taken on him by a housemaid, who took him out
of his solitary nursery into her bed in the garret hard by and
comforted him.

Rebecca, my Lord Steyne, and one or two more were in the drawing-room
taking tea after the opera, when this shouting was heard overhead.
"It's my cherub crying for his nurse," she said.  She did not offer to
move to go and see the child.  "Don't agitate your feelings by going to
look for him," said Lord Steyne sardonically. "Bah!" replied the other,
with a sort of blush, "he'll cry himself to sleep"; and they fell to
talking about the opera.

Rawdon had stolen off though, to look after his son and heir; and came
back to the company when he found that honest Dolly was consoling the
child.  The Colonel's dressing-room was in those upper regions.  He
used to see the boy there in private.  They had interviews together
every morning when he shaved; Rawdon minor sitting on a box by his
father's side and watching the operation with never-ceasing pleasure.
He and the sire were great friends. The father would bring him
sweetmeats from the dessert and hide them in a certain old epaulet box,
where the child went to seek them, and laughed with joy on discovering
the treasure; laughed, but not too loud:  for mamma was below asleep
and must not be disturbed.  She did not go to rest till very late and
seldom rose till after noon.

Rawdon bought the boy plenty of picture-books and crammed his nursery
with toys.  Its walls were covered with pictures pasted up by the
father's own hand and purchased by him for ready money.  When he was
off duty with Mrs. Rawdon in the park, he would sit up here, passing
hours with the boy; who rode on his chest, who pulled his great
mustachios as if they were driving-reins, and spent days with him in
indefatigable gambols.  The room was a low room, and once, when the
child was not five years old, his father, who was tossing him wildly up
in his arms, hit the poor little chap's skull so violently against the
ceiling that he almost dropped the child, so terrified was he at the
disaster.

Rawdon minor had made up his face for a tremendous howl--the severity
of the blow indeed authorized that indulgence; but just as he was going
to begin, the father interposed.

"For God's sake, Rawdy, don't wake Mamma," he cried.  And the child,
looking in a very hard and piteous way at his father, bit his lips,
clenched his hands, and didn't cry a bit.  Rawdon told that story at
the clubs, at the mess, to everybody in town.  "By Gad, sir," he
explained to the public in general, "what a good plucked one that boy
of mine is--what a trump he is!  I half-sent his head through the
ceiling, by Gad, and he wouldn't cry for fear of disturbing his mother."

Sometimes--once or twice in a week--that lady visited the upper regions
in which the child lived.  She came like a vivified figure out of the
Magasin des Modes--blandly smiling in the most beautiful new clothes
and little gloves and boots.  Wonderful scarfs, laces, and jewels
glittered about her.  She had always a new bonnet on, and flowers
bloomed perpetually in it, or else magnificent curling ostrich
feathers, soft and snowy as camellias.  She nodded twice or thrice
patronizingly to the little boy, who looked up from his dinner or from
the pictures of soldiers he was painting.  When she left the room, an
odour of rose, or some other magical fragrance, lingered about the
nursery. She was an unearthly being in his eyes, superior to his
father--to all the world:  to be worshipped and admired at a distance.
To drive with that lady in the carriage was an awful rite:  he sat up
in the back seat and did not dare to speak:  he gazed with all his eyes
at the beautifully dressed Princess opposite to him.  Gentlemen on
splendid prancing horses came up and smiled and talked with her. How
her eyes beamed upon all of them!  Her hand used to quiver and wave
gracefully as they passed.  When he went out with her he had his new
red dress on.  His old brown holland was good enough when he stayed at
home. Sometimes, when she was away, and Dolly his maid was making his
bed, he came into his mother's room.  It was as the abode of a fairy to
him--a mystic chamber of splendour and delights.  There in the wardrobe
hung those wonderful robes--pink and blue and many-tinted.  There was
the jewel-case, silver-clasped, and the wondrous bronze hand on the
dressing-table, glistening all over with a hundred rings.  There was
the cheval-glass, that miracle of art, in which he could just see his
own wondering head and the reflection of Dolly (queerly distorted, and
as if up in the ceiling), plumping and patting the pillows of the bed.
Oh, thou poor lonely little benighted boy! Mother is the name for God
in the lips and hearts of little children; and here was one who was
worshipping a stone!

Now Rawdon Crawley, rascal as the Colonel was, had certain manly
tendencies of affection in his heart and could love a child and a woman
still.  For Rawdon minor he had a great secret tenderness then, which
did not escape Rebecca, though she did not talk about it to her
husband.  It did not annoy her:  she was too good-natured. It only
increased her scorn for him.  He felt somehow ashamed of this paternal
softness and hid it from his wife--only indulging in it when alone with
the boy.

He used to take him out of mornings when they would go to the stables
together and to the park.  Little Lord Southdown, the best-natured of
men, who would make 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 afterwards, bought the little chap a pony not much bigger than a
large rat, the donor said, and on this little black Shetland pygmy
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 mess and 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-humoured
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 maitre d'hotel.  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 humour.

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 Honour," 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.

"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 written--

"Mr. Sedley, Sole Agent for the Black Diamond and Anti-Cinder Coal
Association, Bunker's Wharf, Thames Street, and Anna-Maria 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 good-natured Corporal; and the Colonel, the Corporal, and old Mr.
Sedley with his umbrella, walked by the side of the children.

A Family in a Very Small Way

We must suppose little George Osborne has ridden from Knightsbridge
towards 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
is there any news of the Collector of Boggley Wollah? The facts
concerning the latter are briefly these:

Our worthy fat friend Joseph Sedley returned to India not long after
his escape from Brussels.  Either his furlough was up, or he dreaded to
meet any witnesses of his Waterloo flight.  However it might be, he
went back to his duties in Bengal very soon after Napoleon had taken up
his residence at St.  Helena, where Jos saw the ex-Emperor. To hear Mr.
Sedley talk on board ship you would have supposed that it was not the
first time he and the Corsican had met, and that the civilian had
bearded the French General at Mount St.  John.  He had a thousand
anecdotes about the famous battles; he knew the position of every
regiment and the loss which each had incurred.  He did not deny that he
had been concerned in those victories--that he had been with the army
and carried despatches for the Duke of Wellington. And he described
what the Duke did and said on every conceivable moment of the day of
Waterloo, with such an accurate knowledge of his Grace's sentiments and
proceedings that it was clear he must have been by the conqueror's side
throughout the day; though, as a non-combatant, his name was not
mentioned in the public documents relative to the battle.  Perhaps he
actually worked himself up to believe that he had been engaged with the
army; certain it is that he made a prodigious sensation 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 grey horse, very like the one which Jos rode, at
Valenciennes sometime during the autumn of 1815.

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
bankruptcy did not by any means retrieve the broken old gentleman's
fortune.  He tried to be a wine-merchant, a coal-merchant, a commission
lottery agent, &c., &c.  He sent round prospectuses to his friends
whenever he took a new trade, and ordered a new brass plate for the
door, and talked pompously about making his fortune still.  But Fortune
never came back to the feeble and stricken 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 of the nation. It was wonderful to hear him talk about
millions, and agios, and discounts, and what Rothschild was doing, and
Baring Brothers.  He talked of such vast sums that the gentlemen of the
club (the apothecary, the undertaker, the great carpenter and builder,
the parish clerk, who was allowed to come stealthily, and Mr. Clapp,
our old acquaintance,) respected the old gentleman.  "I was better off
once, sir," he did not fail to tell everybody who "used the room." "My
son, sir, is at this minute chief magistrate of Ramgunge in the
Presidency of Bengal, and touching his four thousand rupees per mensem.
My daughter might be a Colonel's lady if she liked.  I might draw upon
my son, the first magistrate, sir, for two thousand pounds to-morrow,
and Alexander would cash my bill, down sir, down on the counter, sir.
But the Sedleys were always a proud family." You and I, my dear reader,
may drop into this condition one day: for have not many of our friends
attained it? Our luck may fail: our powers forsake us:  our place on
the boards be taken by better and younger mimes--the chance of life
roll away and leave us shattered and stranded.  Then men will walk
across the road when they meet you--or, worse still, hold you out a
couple of fingers and patronize 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 the 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 amongst
us--I say, brother, the gifts and pleasures of Vanity Fair cannot be
held of any great account, and that it is probable . . . but we are
wandering out of the domain of the story.

Had Mrs. Sedley been a woman of energy, she would have exerted it after
her husband's ruin and, occupying a large house, would have taken in
boarders.  The broken Sedley would have acted well as the
boarding-house landlady's husband; the Munoz of private life; the
titular lord and master:  the carver, house-steward, and humble husband
of the occupier of the dingy throne.  I have seen men of good brains
and breeding, and of good hopes and vigour 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.

I don't think they were unhappy.  Perhaps they were a little prouder in
their downfall than in their prosperity. Mrs. Sedley was always a great
person for her landlady, Mrs. Clapp, when she descended and passed many
hours with her in the basement or ornamented kitchen. The Irish maid
Betty Flanagan's bonnets and ribbons, her sauciness, her idleness, her
reckless prodigality of kitchen candles, her consumption of tea and
sugar, and so forth occupied and amused the old lady almost as much as
the 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-of-all-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 greengrocer 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 Sermons
in the evening.

On that day, for "business" prevented him on weekdays from taking such
a pleasure, it was old Sedley's delight to take out his little grandson
Georgy to the neighbouring parks or Kensington Gardens, to see the
soldiers or to feed the ducks.  Georgy loved the redcoats, and his
grandpapa told him how his father had been a famous soldier, and
introduced him to many sergeants and others with Waterloo medals on
their breasts, to whom the old grandfather pompously presented the
child as the son of Captain Osborne of the --th, who died gloriously on
the glorious eighteenth.  He has been known to treat some of these
non-commissioned gentlemen to a glass of porter, and, indeed, in their
first Sunday walks was disposed to spoil little Georgy, sadly gorging
the boy with apples and 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 honour, not
to give the child any cakes, lollipops, or stall produce whatever.

Between Mrs. Sedley and her daughter 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 been seated at work in their little parlour
scarcely remarking that the old lady had quitted the room, ran upstairs
instinctively to the nursery at the cries of the child, who had been
asleep until that moment--and there found Mrs. Sedley in the act of
surreptitiously administering Daffy's Elixir to the infant.  Amelia,
the gentlest and sweetest of everyday mortals, when she found this
meddling with her maternal authority, thrilled and trembled all over
with anger.  Her cheeks, ordinarily pale, now flushed 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.

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.

"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."

"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--"

"Oh, no, my love,--only that I was a murderess; in which case I had
better go to the Old Bailey.  Though I didn't poison YOU, when you were
a child, but gave you the best of education and the most expensive
masters money could procure.  Yes; I've nursed five children and buried
three; and the one I loved the best of all, and tended through croup,
and teething, and measles, and hooping-cough, and brought up with
foreign masters, regardless of expense, and with accomplishments at
Minerva House--which I never had when I was a girl--when I was too glad
to honour my father and mother, 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."

"Mamma, Mamma!" cried the bewildered girl; and the child in her arms
set up a frantic chorus of shouts. "A murderess, indeed!  Go down on
your knees and pray to God to cleanse your wicked ungrateful heart,
Amelia, and may He forgive you as I do." And Mrs. Sedley tossed out of
the room, hissing out the word poison once more, and so ending her
charitable benediction.

Till the termination of her natural life, this breach between Mrs.
Sedley and her daughter was never thoroughly mended.  The quarrel gave
the elder lady numberless advantages which she did not fail to turn to
account with female ingenuity and perseverance.  For instance, she
scarcely spoke to Amelia for many weeks afterwards. She warned the
domestics not to touch the child, as Mrs. Osborne might be offended.
She asked her daughter to see and satisfy herself that there was no
poison prepared in the little daily messes that were concocted for
Georgy. When neighbours asked after the boy's health, she referred them
pointedly to Mrs. Osborne.  SHE never ventured to ask whether the baby
was well or not.  SHE would not touch the child although he was her
grandson, and own precious darling, for she was not USED to children,
and might kill it.  And whenever Mr. Pestler came upon his healing
inquisition, she received the doctor with such a sarcastic and scornful
demeanour, as made the surgeon declare that not Lady Thistlewood
herself, whom he had the honour of attending professionally, could give
herself greater airs than old Mrs. Sedley, from whom he never took a
fee.  And very likely Emmy was jealous too, upon her own part, as what
mother is not, of those who would manage her children for her, or
become candidates for the first place in their affections.  It is
certain that when anybody nursed the child, she was uneasy, and that
she would no more allow Mrs. Clapp or the domestic to dress or tend him
than she would have let them wash her husband's miniature which hung up
over her little bed--the same little bed from which the poor girl had
gone to his; and to which she retired now for many long, silent,
tearful, but happy years.

In this room was all Amelia's heart and treasure.  Here it was that she
tended her boy and watched him through the many ills of childhood, with
a constant passion of love.  The elder George returned in him somehow,
only improved, and as if come back from heaven.  In a hundred little
tones, looks, and movements, the child was so like his father that the
widow's heart thrilled as she held him to it; and he would often ask
the cause of her tears.  It was because of his likeness to his father,
she did not scruple to tell him.  She talked constantly to him about
this dead father, and spoke of her love for George to the innocent and
wondering child; much more than she ever had done to George himself, or
to any confidante of her youth.  To her parents she never talked about
this matter, shrinking from baring her heart to them.  Little George
very likely could understand no better than they, but into his ears she
poured her sentimental secrets unreservedly, and into his only.  The
very joy of this woman was a sort of grief, or so tender, at least,
that its expression was tears.  Her sensibilities were so weak and
tremulous that perhaps they ought not to be talked about in a book. I
was told by Dr. Pestler (now a most flourishing lady's physician, with
a sumptuous dark green carriage, a prospect of speedy knighthood, and a
house in Manchester Square) that her grief at weaning the child was a
sight that would have unmanned a Herod.  He was very soft-hearted many
years ago, and his wife was mortally jealous of Mrs. Amelia, then and
long afterwards.

Perhaps the doctor's lady had good reason for her jealousy:  most women
shared it, of those who formed the small circle of Amelia's
acquaintance, and were quite angry at the enthusiasm with which the
other sex regarded her.  For almost all men who came near her loved
her; though no doubt they would be at a loss to tell you why.  She was
not brilliant, nor witty, nor wise over much, nor extraordinarily
handsome.  But wherever she went she touched and charmed every one of
the male sex, as invariably as she awakened the scorn and incredulity
of her own sisterhood.  I think it was her weakness which was her
principal charm--a kind of sweet submission and softness, which seemed
to appeal to each man she met for his sympathy and protection.  We have
seen how in the regiment, though she spoke but to few of George's
comrades there, all the swords of the young fellows at the mess-table
would have leapt from their scabbards to fight round her; and so it was
in the little narrow lodging-house and circle at Fulham, she interested
and pleased everybody.  If she had been Mrs. Mango herself, of the
great house of Mango, Plantain, and Co., Crutched Friars, and the
magnificent proprietress of the Pineries, Fulham, who gave summer
dejeuners frequented by Dukes and Earls, and drove about the parish
with magnificent yellow liveries and bay horses, such as the royal
stables at Kensington themselves could not turn out--I say had she been
Mrs. Mango herself, or her son's wife, Lady Mary Mango (daughter of the
Earl of Castlemouldy, who condescended to marry the head of the firm),
the tradesmen of the neighbourhood could not pay her more honour than
they invariably showed to the gentle young widow, when she passed by
their doors, or made her humble purchases at their shops.

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 anything 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 surgery-drawers 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, sat 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
measles in the world before. Would they have done as much for other
people? Did they sit up for the folks at the Pineries, when Ralph
Plantagenet, and Gwendoline, and Guinever Mango had the same juvenile
complaint? Did they sit up for little Mary Clapp, the landlord's
daughter, who actually 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.

Again, there was the little French chevalier opposite, who gave lessons
in his native tongue at various schools in the neighbourhood, and who
might be heard in his apartment of nights playing tremulous old
gavottes and minuets on a wheezy old fiddle. Whenever 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 particles of dust with a graceful
wave of his hand, gather up his fingers again into a bunch, and,
bringing them up to his mouth, blow them open with a kiss, exclaiming,
Ah! la divine creature!  He vowed and protested that when Amelia walked
in the Brompton Lanes flowers grew in profusion under her feet.  He
called little Georgy Cupid, and asked him news of Venus, his mamma; and
told the astonished Betty Flanagan that she was one of the Graces, and
the favourite 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."

Very likely Miss Binny was right to a great extent.  It IS the pretty
face which creates sympathy in the hearts of men, those wicked rogues.
A woman may possess the wisdom and chastity of Minerva, and we give no
heed to her, if she has a plain face.  What folly will not a pair of
bright eyes make pardonable? What dulness may not red lips 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.
O ladies, ladies! there are some 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 remarkable in it than that of the measles, recorded
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.

On the twenty-fifth of April, and the eighteenth of June, the days of
marriage and widowhood, she kept her room entirely, consecrating them
(and we do not know how many hours of solitary night-thought, her
little boy sleeping in his crib by her bedside) to the memory of that
departed friend.  During the day she was more active. She had to teach
George to read and to write and a little to draw.  She read books, in
order that she might tell him stories from them.  As his eyes opened
and his mind expanded under the influence of the outward nature round
about him, she taught the child, to the best of her humble power, to
acknowledge the Maker of all, and every night and every morning he and
she--(in that awful and touching communion which I think must bring a
thrill to the heart of every man who witnesses or who remembers
it)--the mother and the little boy--prayed to Our Father together, the
mother pleading with all her gentle heart, the child lisping after her
as she spoke.  And each time they prayed to God to bless dear Papa, as
if he were alive and in the room with them.  To wash and dress this
young gentleman--to take him for a run of the mornings, before
breakfast, and the retreat of grandpapa for "business"--to make for him
the most wonderful and ingenious dresses, for which end the thrifty
widow cut up and altered every available little bit of finery which she
possessed out of her wardrobe during her marriage--for Mrs. Osborne
herself (greatly to her mother's vexation, who preferred fine clothes,
especially since her misfortunes) always wore a black gown and a straw
bonnet with a black ribbon--occupied her many hours of the day.  Others
she had to spare, at the service of her mother and her old father.  She
had taken the pains to learn, and used to play cribbage with this
gentleman on the nights when he did not go to his club.  She sang for
him when he was so minded, and it was a good sign, for he invariably
fell into a comfortable sleep during the music.  She wrote out his
numerous memorials, letters, prospectuses, and projects.  It was in her
handwriting that most of the old gentleman's former acquaintances were
informed that he had become an agent for the Black Diamond and
Anti-Cinder Coal Company and could supply his friends and the public
with the best coals at --s. per chaldron.  All he did was to sign the
circulars with his flourish and signature, and direct them in a shaky,
clerklike hand.  One of these papers was sent to Major Dobbin,--Regt.,
care of Messrs.  Cox and Greenwood; but the Major being in Madras at
the time, had no particular call for coals.  He knew, though, the hand
which had written the prospectus.  Good God! what would he not have
given to hold it in his own!  A second prospectus came out, informing
the Major that J.  Sedley and Company, having established agencies at
Oporto, Bordeaux, and St.  Mary's, were enabled to offer to their
friends and the public generally the finest and most celebrated growths
of ports, sherries, and claret wines at reasonable prices and under
extraordinary advantages. Acting upon this hint, Dobbin furiously
canvassed the governor, the commander-in-chief, the judges, the
regiments, and everybody whom he knew in the Presidency, and sent home
to Sedley and Co.  orders for wine which perfectly astonished Mr.
Sedley and Mr. Clapp, who was the Co.  in the business.  But no more
orders came after that first burst of good fortune, on which poor old
Sedley was about to build a house in the City, a regiment of clerks, a
dock to himself, and correspondents all over the world.  The old
gentleman's former taste in wine had gone:  the curses of the mess-room
assailed Major Dobbin for the vile drinks he had been the means of
introducing there; and he bought back a great quantity of the wine and
sold it at public outcry, at an enormous loss to himself. As for Jos,
who was by this time promoted to a seat at the Revenue Board at
Calcutta, he was wild with rage when the post brought him out a bundle
of these Bacchanalian prospectuses, with a private note from his
father, telling Jos that his senior counted upon him in this
enterprise, and had consigned a quantity of select wines to him, as per
invoice, drawing bills upon him for the amount of the same.  Jos, who
would no more have it supposed that his father, Jos Sedley's father, of
the Board of Revenue, was a wine merchant asking for orders, than that
he was Jack Ketch, refused the bills with scorn, wrote back
contumeliously to the old gentleman, bidding him to mind his own
affairs; and the protested paper coming back, Sedley and Co.  had to
take it up, with the profits which they had made out of the Madras
venture, and with a little portion of Emmy's savings.

Besides her pension of fifty pounds a year, there had been five hundred
pounds, as her husband's executor stated, left in the agent's hands at
the time of Osborne's demise, which sum, as George's guardian, Dobbin
proposed to put out at 8 per cent in an Indian house of agency.  Mr.
Sedley, who thought the Major had some roguish intentions of his own
about the money, was strongly against this plan; and he went to the
agents to protest personally against the employment of the money in
question, when he learned, to his surprise, that there had been no such
sum in their hands, that all the late Captain's assets did not amount
to a hundred pounds, and that the five hundred pounds in question must
be a separate sum, of which Major Dobbin knew the particulars. More
than ever convinced that there was some roguery, old Sedley pursued the
Major.  As his daughter's nearest friend, he demanded with a high hand
a statement of the late Captain's accounts.  Dobbin's stammering,
blushing, and awkwardness added to the other's convictions that he had
a rogue to deal with, and in a majestic tone he told that officer a
piece of his mind, as he called it, simply stating his belief that the
Major was unlawfully detaining his late son-in-law's money.

Dobbin at this lost all patience, and if his accuser had not been so
old and so broken, a quarrel might have ensued between them at the
Slaughters' Coffee-house, in a box of which place of entertainment the
gentlemen had their colloquy.  "Come upstairs, sir," lisped out the
Major.  "I insist on your coming up the stairs, and I will show which
is the injured party, poor George or I"; and, dragging the old
gentleman up to his bedroom, he produced from his desk Osborne's
accounts, and a bundle of IOU's which the latter had given, who, to do
him justice, was always ready to give an IOU.  "He paid his bills in
England," Dobbin added, "but he had not a hundred pounds in the world
when he fell.  I and one or two of his brother officers made up the
little sum, which was all that we could spare, and you dare tell us
that we are trying to cheat the widow and the orphan." Sedley was very
contrite and humbled, though the fact is that William Dobbin had told a
great falsehood to the old gentleman; having himself given every
shilling of the money, having buried his friend, and paid all the fees
and charges incident upon the calamity and removal of poor Amelia.

About these expenses old Osborne had never given himself any trouble to
think, nor any other relative of Amelia, nor Amelia herself, indeed.
She trusted to Major Dobbin as an accountant, took his somewhat
confused calculations for granted, and never once suspected how much
she was in his debt.

Twice or thrice in the year, according to her promise, she wrote him
letters to Madras, letters all about little Georgy.  How he treasured
these papers!  Whenever Amelia wrote he answered, and not until then.
But he sent over endless remembrances of himself to his godson and to
her.  He ordered and sent a box of scarfs and a grand ivory set of
chess-men from China.  The pawns were little green and white men, with
real swords and shields; the knights were on horseback, the castles
were on the backs of elephants.  "Mrs. Mango's own set at the Pineries
was not so fine," Mr. Pestler remarked.  These chess-men were the
delight of Georgy's life, who printed his first letter in
acknowledgement of this gift of his godpapa.  He sent over preserves
and pickles, which latter the young gentleman tried surreptitiously in
the sideboard and half-killed himself with eating.  He thought it was a
judgement upon him for stealing, they were so hot.  Emmy wrote a
comical little account of this mishap to the Major:  it pleased him to
think that her spirits were rallying and that she could be merry
sometimes now.  He sent over a pair of shawls, a white one for her and
a black one with palm-leaves for her mother, and a pair of red scarfs,
as winter wrappers, for old Mr. Sedley and George. The shawls were
worth fifty guineas apiece at the very least, as Mrs. Sedley knew.  She
wore hers in state at church at Brompton, and was congratulated by her
female friends upon the splendid acquisition.  Emmy's, too, became
prettily her modest black gown.  "What a pity it is she won't think of
him!" Mrs. Sedley remarked to Mrs. Clapp and to all her friends of
Brompton.  "Jos never sent us such presents, I am sure, and grudges us
everything.  It is evident that the Major is over head and ears in love
with her; and yet, whenever I so much as hint it, she turns red and
begins to cry and goes and sits upstairs with her miniature.  I'm sick
of that miniature.  I wish we had never seen those odious purse-proud
Osbornes."

Amidst such humble scenes and associates George's early youth was
passed, and the boy grew up delicate, sensitive, imperious,
woman-bred--domineering the gentle mother whom he loved with passionate
affection.  He ruled all the rest of the little world round about him.
As he grew, the elders were amazed at his haughty manner and his
constant likeness to his father.  He asked questions about everything,
as inquiring youth will do.  The profundity of his remarks and
interrogatories astonished his old grandfather, who perfectly bored the
club at the tavern with stories about the little lad's learning and
genius.  He suffered his grandmother with a good-humoured
indifference.  The small circle round about him believed that the equal
of the boy did not exist upon the earth.  Georgy inherited his father's
pride, and perhaps thought they were not wrong.

When he grew to be about six years old, Dobbin began to write to him
very much.  The Major wanted to hear that Georgy was going to a school
and hoped he would acquit himself with credit there:  or would he have
a good tutor at home? It was time that he should begin to learn; and
his godfather and guardian hinted that he hoped to be allowed to defray
the charges of the boy's education, which would fall heavily upon his
mother's straitened income.  The Major, in a word, was always thinking
about Amelia and her little boy, and by orders to his agents kept the
latter provided with picture-books, paint-boxes, desks, and all
conceivable implements of amusement and instruction.  Three days before
George's sixth birthday a gentleman in a gig, accompanied by a servant,
drove up to Mr. Sedley's house and asked to see Master George Osborne:
it was Mr. Woolsey, military tailor, of Conduit Street, who came at the
Major's order to measure the young gentleman for a suit of clothes.  He
had had the honour of making for the Captain, the young gentleman's
father. Sometimes, too, and by the Major's desire no doubt, his
sisters, the Misses Dobbin, would call in the family carriage to take
Amelia and the little boy to drive if they were so inclined.  The
patronage and kindness of these ladies was very uncomfortable to
Amelia, but she bore it meekly enough, for her nature was to yield;
and, besides, the carriage and its splendours gave little Georgy
immense pleasure. The ladies begged occasionally that the child might
pass a day with them, and he was always glad to go to that fine
garden-house at Denmark Hill, where they lived, and where there were
such fine grapes in the hot-houses and peaches on the walls.

One day they kindly came over to Amelia with news which they were SURE
would delight her--something VERY interesting about their dear William.

"What was it:  was he coming home?" she asked with pleasure beaming in
her eyes.

"Oh, no--not the least--but they had very good reason to believe that
dear William was about to be married--and to a relation of a very dear
friend of Amelia's--to Miss Glorvina O'Dowd, Sir Michael O'Dowd's
sister, who had gone out to join Lady O'Dowd at Madras--a very
beautiful and accomplished girl, everybody said."

Amelia said "Oh!" Amelia was very VERY happy indeed. But she supposed
Glorvina could not be like her old acquaintance, who was most
kind--but--but she was very happy indeed.  And by some impulse of which
I cannot explain the meaning, she took George in her arms and kissed
him with an extraordinary tenderness.  Her eyes were quite moist when
she put the child down; and she scarcely spoke a word during the whole
of the drive--though she was so very happy indeed.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Thackeray starts this section with an essay on how people live on nothing. He then talks about Rawdon and Rebecca, who are settled in Mayfair, entertain all the time, yet have no money, except what Rawdon makes by gambling. The story reverts to the time in Paris when Rawdon has gambled with other soldiers. Colonel O'Dowd has warned Spooney about gambling with Rawdon, at which Becky and Peggy O'Dowd have quarreled. Only Rebecca's intervention with General Tufto has prevented Rawdon's being returned to England. Rebecca makes Crawley sell out of the Guards so they can return to England to pursue his fortune. Becky spreads the news that Rawdon will inherit from his dying aunt; she orders mourning for herself and little Rawdon. She then skips out on her hotel bill, goes to England, and arranges with her husband's creditors to settle for a percentage of what is owed. Becky then goes back to the Continent, rejoins her son and husband; and the three return to London. They hire a house from Mr. Raggles, formerly Miss Crawley's butler. This business arrangement is Raggles' downfall, for he is not able to collect the rent and ends up in Fleet Prison because he can't pay his debts. Here Thackeray moralizes on how the gentry rob the servants. Rawdon and Rebecca patronize all Miss Crawley's former tradesmen and pay nobody. When Pitt inherits Miss Crawley's fortune, Becky insists Rawdon congratulate him and ingratiate himself into his brother's good graces. Rebecca determines that Lady Jane shall sponsor her in London society. Rebecca secures a woman for her "house-dog" and companion. She neglects little Rawdon but hires a French maid to take care of him. The boy becomes a great favorite with his father, who brings him toys and plays with him. Rawdon takes the boy to see his old trooper friends. One Sunday morning Rawdon and the boy meet Georgy Osborne, who is walking with his grandfather, Mr. Sedley. Georgy and little Rawdon become friends. The reader is now brought up to date on Amelia, Dobbin, and Jos. After leaving Brussels, Jos has returned to India, where, because of his many tales, he has earned the name of "Waterloo Sedley." Amelia has continued to pine for George and has devoted all her time and thought to little George whom she sees as an improved edition of his father. When Mrs. Sedley has attempted to give Georgy some medicine, Amelia has objected and the two women have quarreled. Mr. Sedley has suspected Dobbin of trickery over the money that has been supposedly left at George's death. Actually the money has come from Dobbin's own pocket because of his love for Amelia. Amelia has accepted whatever Dobbin has told her and has not known how much she owes him. Dobbin is always sending gifts for her and Georgy. Dobbin's sisters have told Amelia that Dobbin is to marry Glorvina O'Dowd. Amelia has protested her happiness about it, but tears have clouded her eyes. Mrs. Sedley knows that Dobbin loves Amelia, but Amelia won't talk of it.