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.