Vanity Fair - Page 39/573

So that Lieutenant Osborne, when coming to Russell Square on the day of

the Vauxhall party, said to the ladies, "Mrs. Sedley, Ma'am, I hope you

have room; I've asked Dobbin of ours to come and dine here, and go with

us to Vauxhall. He's almost as modest as Jos."

"Modesty! pooh," said the stout gentleman, casting a vainqueur look at

Miss Sharp.

"He is--but you are incomparably more graceful, Sedley," Osborne added,

laughing. "I met him at the Bedford, when I went to look for you; and

I told him that Miss Amelia was come home, and that we were all bent on

going out for a night's pleasuring; and that Mrs. Sedley had forgiven

his breaking the punch-bowl at the child's party. Don't you remember

the catastrophe, Ma'am, seven years ago?"

"Over Mrs. Flamingo's crimson silk gown," said good-natured Mrs.

Sedley. "What a gawky it was! And his sisters are not much more

graceful. Lady Dobbin was at Highbury last night with three of them.

Such figures! my dears."

"The Alderman's very rich, isn't he?" Osborne said archly. "Don't you

think one of the daughters would be a good spec for me, Ma'am?"

"You foolish creature! Who would take you, I should like to know, with

your yellow face?"

"Mine a yellow face? Stop till you see Dobbin. Why, he had the yellow

fever three times; twice at Nassau, and once at St. Kitts."

"Well, well; yours is quite yellow enough for us. Isn't it, Emmy?"

Mrs. Sedley said: at which speech Miss Amelia only made a smile and a

blush; and looking at Mr. George Osborne's pale interesting

countenance, and those beautiful black, curling, shining whiskers,

which the young gentleman himself regarded with no ordinary

complacency, she thought in her little heart that in His Majesty's

army, or in the wide world, there never was such a face or such a hero.

"I don't care about Captain Dobbin's complexion," she said, "or about

his awkwardness. I shall always like him, I know," her little reason

being, that he was the friend and champion of George.

"There's not a finer fellow in the service," Osborne said, "nor a

better officer, though he is not an Adonis, certainly." And he looked

towards the glass himself with much naivete; and in so doing, caught

Miss Sharp's eye fixed keenly upon him, at which he blushed a little,

and Rebecca thought in her heart, "Ah, mon beau Monsieur! I think I

have YOUR gauge"--the little artful minx!

That evening, when Amelia came tripping into the drawing-room in a

white muslin frock, prepared for conquest at Vauxhall, singing like a

lark, and as fresh as a rose--a very tall ungainly gentleman, with

large hands and feet, and large ears, set off by a closely cropped head

of black hair, and in the hideous military frogged coat and cocked hat

of those times, advanced to meet her, and made her one of the clumsiest

bows that was ever performed by a mortal.