Vanity Fair - Page 20/573

"A chili," said Rebecca, gasping. "Oh yes!" She thought a chili was

something cool, as its name imported, and was served with some. "How

fresh and green they look," she said, and put one into her mouth. It

was hotter than the curry; flesh and blood could bear it no longer.

She laid down her fork. "Water, for Heaven's sake, water!" she cried.

Mr. Sedley burst out laughing (he was a coarse man, from the Stock

Exchange, where they love all sorts of practical jokes). "They are

real Indian, I assure you," said he. "Sambo, give Miss Sharp some

water."

The paternal laugh was echoed by Joseph, who thought the joke capital.

The ladies only smiled a little. They thought poor Rebecca suffered

too much. She would have liked to choke old Sedley, but she swallowed

her mortification as well as she had the abominable curry before it,

and as soon as she could speak, said, with a comical, good-humoured

air, "I ought to have remembered the pepper which the Princess of

Persia puts in the cream-tarts in the Arabian Nights. Do you put

cayenne into your cream-tarts in India, sir?"

Old Sedley began to laugh, and thought Rebecca was a good-humoured

girl. Joseph simply said, "Cream-tarts, Miss? Our cream is very bad in

Bengal. We generally use goats' milk; and, 'gad, do you know, I've got

to prefer it!"

"You won't like EVERYTHING from India now, Miss Sharp," said the old

gentleman; but when the ladies had retired after dinner, the wily old

fellow said to his son, "Have a care, Joe; that girl is setting her cap

at you."

"Pooh! nonsense!" said Joe, highly flattered. "I recollect, sir, there

was a girl at Dumdum, a daughter of Cutler of the Artillery, and

afterwards married to Lance, the surgeon, who made a dead set at me in

the year '4--at me and Mulligatawney, whom I mentioned to you before

dinner--a devilish good fellow Mulligatawney--he's a magistrate at

Budgebudge, and sure to be in council in five years. Well, sir, the

Artillery gave a ball, and Quintin, of the King's 14th, said to me,

'Sedley,' said he, 'I bet you thirteen to ten that Sophy Cutler hooks

either you or Mulligatawney before the rains.' 'Done,' says I; and

egad, sir--this claret's very good. Adamson's or Carbonell's?"

A slight snore was the only reply: the honest stockbroker was asleep,

and so the rest of Joseph's story was lost for that day. But he was

always exceedingly communicative in a man's party, and has told this

delightful tale many scores of times to his apothecary, Dr. Gollop,

when he came to inquire about the liver and the blue-pill.

Being an invalid, Joseph Sedley contented himself with a bottle of

claret besides his Madeira at dinner, and he managed a couple of plates

full of strawberries and cream, and twenty-four little rout cakes that

were lying neglected in a plate near him, and certainly (for novelists

have the privilege of knowing everything) he thought a great deal about

the girl upstairs. "A nice, gay, merry young creature," thought he to

himself. "How she looked at me when I picked up her handkerchief at

dinner! She dropped it twice. Who's that singing in the drawing-room?

'Gad! shall I go up and see?"