Vanity Fair - Page 23/573

"I'm better, now," said the girl, with the sweetest smile possible,

taking good-natured Mrs. Sedley's extended hand and kissing it

respectfully. "How kind you all are to me! All," she added, with a

laugh, "except you, Mr. Joseph."

"Me!" said Joseph, meditating an instant departure "Gracious Heavens!

Good Gad! Miss Sharp!' "Yes; how could you be so cruel as to make me eat that horrid

pepper-dish at dinner, the first day I ever saw you? You are not so

good to me as dear Amelia."

"He doesn't know you so well," cried Amelia.

"I defy anybody not to be good to you, my dear," said her mother.

"The curry was capital; indeed it was," said Joe, quite gravely.

"Perhaps there was NOT enough citron juice in it--no, there was NOT."

"And the chilis?"

"By Jove, how they made you cry out!" said Joe, caught by the ridicule

of the circumstance, and exploding in a fit of laughter which ended

quite suddenly, as usual.

"I shall take care how I let YOU choose for me another time," said

Rebecca, as they went down again to dinner. "I didn't think men were

fond of putting poor harmless girls to pain."

"By Gad, Miss Rebecca, I wouldn't hurt you for the world."

"No," said she, "I KNOW you wouldn't"; and then she gave him ever so

gentle a pressure with her little hand, and drew it back quite

frightened, and looked first for one instant in his face, and then down

at the carpet-rods; and I am not prepared to say that Joe's heart did

not thump at this little involuntary, timid, gentle motion of regard on

the part of the simple girl.

It was an advance, and as such, perhaps, some ladies of indisputable

correctness and gentility will condemn the action as immodest; but, you

see, poor dear Rebecca had all this work to do for herself. If a

person is too poor to keep a servant, though ever so elegant, he must

sweep his own rooms: if a dear girl has no dear Mamma to settle matters

with the young man, she must do it for herself. And oh, what a mercy

it is that these women do not exercise their powers oftener! We can't

resist them, if they do. Let them show ever so little inclination, and

men go down on their knees at once: old or ugly, it is all the same.

And this I set down as a positive truth. A woman with fair

opportunities, and without an absolute hump, may marry WHOM SHE LIKES.

Only let us be thankful that the darlings are like the beasts of the

field, and don't know their own power. They would overcome us entirely

if they did.

"Egad!" thought Joseph, entering the dining-room, "I exactly begin to

feel as I did at Dumdum with Miss Cutler." Many sweet little appeals,

half tender, half jocular, did Miss Sharp make to him about the dishes

at dinner; for by this time she was on a footing of considerable

familiarity with the family, and as for the girls, they loved each

other like sisters. Young unmarried girls always do, if they are in a

house together for ten days.