Vanity Fair - Page 554/573

"Angel Englanderinn!" bellowed the kneeling student with the whity-brown

ringlets and the large finger-ring, "do take compassion upon us.

Make an appointment. Dine with me and Fritz at the inn in the park. We

will have roast pheasants and porter, plum-pudding and French wine. We

shall die if you don't."

"That we will," said the young nobleman on the bed; and this colloquy

Jos overheard, though he did not comprehend it, for the reason that he

had never studied the language in which it was carried on.

"Newmero kattervang dooze, si vous plait," Jos said in his grandest

manner, when he was able to speak.

"Quater fang tooce!" said the student, starting up, and he bounced into

his own room, where he locked the door, and where Jos heard him

laughing with his comrade on the bed.

The gentleman from Bengal was standing, disconcerted by this incident,

when the door of the 92 opened of itself and Becky's little head peeped

out full of archness and mischief. She lighted on Jos. "It's you,"

she said, coming out. "How I have been waiting for you! Stop! not

yet--in one minute you shall come in." In that instant she put a

rouge-pot, a brandy bottle, and a plate of broken meat into the bed,

gave one smooth to her hair, and finally let in her visitor.

She had, by way of morning robe, a pink domino, a trifle faded and

soiled, and marked here and there with pomaturn; but her arms shone out

from the loose sleeves of the dress very white and fair, and it was

tied round her little waist so as not ill to set off the trim little

figure of the wearer. She led Jos by the hand into her garret. "Come

in," she said. "Come and talk to me. Sit yonder on the chair"; and

she gave the civilian's hand a little squeeze and laughingly placed him

upon it. As for herself, she placed herself on the bed--not on the

bottle and plate, you may be sure--on which Jos might have reposed, had

he chosen that seat; and so there she sat and talked with her old

admirer. "How little years have changed you," she said with a look of

tender interest. "I should have known you anywhere. What a comfort it

is amongst strangers to see once more the frank honest face of an old

friend!"

The frank honest face, to tell the truth, at this moment bore any

expression but one of openness and honesty: it was, on the contrary,

much perturbed and puzzled in look. Jos was surveying the queer little

apartment in which he found his old flame. One of her gowns hung over

the bed, another depending from a hook of the door; her bonnet obscured

half the looking-glass, on which, too, lay the prettiest little pair of

bronze boots; a French novel was on the table by the bedside, with a

candle, not of wax. Becky thought of popping that into the bed too,

but she only put in the little paper night-cap with which she had put

the candle out on going to sleep.