Vanity Fair - Page 17/573

"This young lady is your friend? Miss Sharp, I am very happy to see

you. Have you and Emmy been quarrelling already with Joseph, that he

wants to be off?"

"I promised Bonamy of our service, sir," said Joseph, "to dine with

him."

"O fie! didn't you tell your mother you would dine here?"

"But in this dress it's impossible."

"Look at him, isn't he handsome enough to dine anywhere, Miss Sharp?"

On which, of course, Miss Sharp looked at her friend, and they both set

off in a fit of laughter, highly agreeable to the old gentleman.

"Did you ever see a pair of buckskins like those at Miss Pinkerton's?"

continued he, following up his advantage.

"Gracious heavens! Father," cried Joseph.

"There now, I have hurt his feelings. Mrs. Sedley, my dear, I have

hurt your son's feelings. I have alluded to his buckskins. Ask Miss

Sharp if I haven't? Come, Joseph, be friends with Miss Sharp, and let

us all go to dinner."

"There's a pillau, Joseph, just as you like it, and Papa has brought

home the best turbot in Billingsgate."

"Come, come, sir, walk downstairs with Miss Sharp, and I will follow

with these two young women," said the father, and he took an arm of

wife and daughter and walked merrily off.

If Miss Rebecca Sharp had determined in her heart upon making the

conquest of this big beau, I don't think, ladies, we have any right to

blame her; for though the task of husband-hunting is generally, and

with becoming modesty, entrusted by young persons to their mammas,

recollect that Miss Sharp had no kind parent to arrange these delicate

matters for her, and that if she did not get a husband for herself,

there was no one else in the wide world who would take the trouble off

her hands. What causes young people to "come out," but the noble

ambition of matrimony? What sends them trooping to watering-places?

What keeps them dancing till five o'clock in the morning through a

whole mortal season? What causes them to labour at pianoforte sonatas,

and to learn four songs from a fashionable master at a guinea a lesson,

and to play the harp if they have handsome arms and neat elbows, and to

wear Lincoln Green toxophilite hats and feathers, but that they may

bring down some "desirable" young man with those killing bows and

arrows of theirs? What causes respectable parents to take up their

carpets, set their houses topsy-turvy, and spend a fifth of their

year's income in ball suppers and iced champagne? Is it sheer love of

their species, and an unadulterated wish to see young people happy and

dancing? Psha! they want to marry their daughters; and, as honest Mrs.

Sedley has, in the depths of her kind heart, already arranged a score

of little schemes for the settlement of her Amelia, so also had our

beloved but unprotected Rebecca determined to do her very best to

secure the husband, who was even more necessary for her than for her

friend. She had a vivid imagination; she had, besides, read the Arabian

Nights and Guthrie's Geography; and it is a fact that while she was

dressing for dinner, and after she had asked Amelia whether her brother

was very rich, she had built for herself a most magnificent castle in

the air, of which she was mistress, with a husband somewhere in the

background (she had not seen him as yet, and his figure would not

therefore be very distinct); she had arrayed herself in an infinity of

shawls, turbans, and diamond necklaces, and had mounted upon an

elephant to the sound of the march in Bluebeard, in order to pay a

visit of ceremony to the Grand Mogul. Charming Alnaschar visions! it is

the happy privilege of youth to construct you, and many a fanciful

young creature besides Rebecca Sharp has indulged in these delightful

day-dreams ere now!