We must suppose little George Osborne has ridden from Knightsbridgetowards Fulham, and will stop and make inquiries at that villageregarding some friends whom we have left there. How is Mrs. Ameliaafter the storm of Waterloo? Is she living and thriving? What has comeof Major Dobbin, whose cab was always hankering about her premises? Andis there any news of the Collector of Boggley Wollah? The factsconcerning the latter are briefly these:

Our worthy fat friend Joseph Sedley returned to India not long afterhis escape from Brussels. Either his furlough was up, or he dreaded tomeet any witnesses of his Waterloo flight. However it might be, hewent back to his duties in Bengal very soon after Napoleon had taken uphis residence at St. Helena, where Jos saw the ex-Emperor. To hear Mr.Sedley talk on board ship you would have supposed that it was not thefirst time he and the Corsican had met, and that the civilian hadbearded the French General at Mount St. John. He had a thousandanecdotes about the famous battles; he knew the position of everyregiment and the loss which each had incurred. He did not deny that hehad been concerned in those victories--that he had been with the armyand carried despatches for the Duke of Wellington. And he describedwhat the Duke did and said on every conceivable moment of the day ofWaterloo, with such an accurate knowledge of his Grace's sentiments andproceedings that it was clear he must have been by the conqueror's sidethroughout the day; though, as a non-combatant, his name was notmentioned in the public documents relative to the battle. Perhaps heactually worked himself up to believe that he had been engaged with thearmy; certain it is that he made a prodigious sensation for some timeat Calcutta, and was called Waterloo Sedley during the whole of hissubsequent stay in Bengal.

The bills which Jos had given for the purchase of those unlucky horseswere paid without question by him and his agents. He never was heardto allude to the bargain, and nobody knows for a certainty what becameof the horses, or how he got rid of them, or of Isidor, his Belgianservant, who sold a grey horse, very like the one which Jos rode, atValenciennes sometime during the autumn of 1815.

Jos's London agents had orders to pay one hundred and twenty poundsyearly to his parents at Fulham. It was the chief support of the oldcouple; for Mr. Sedley's speculations in life subsequent to hisbankruptcy did not by any means retrieve the broken old gentleman'sfortune. He tried to be a wine-merchant, a coal-merchant, a commissionlottery agent, &c., &c. He sent round prospectuses to his friendswhenever he took a new trade, and ordered a new brass plate for thedoor, and talked pompously about making his fortune still. But Fortunenever came back to the feeble and stricken old man. One by one hisfriends dropped off, and were weary of buying dear coals and bad winefrom him; and there was only his wife in all the world who fancied,when he tottered off to the City of a morning, that he was still doingany business there. At evening he crawled slowly back; and he used togo of nights to a little club at a tavern, where he disposed of thefinances of the nation. It was wonderful to hear him talk aboutmillions, and agios, and discounts, and what Rothschild was doing, andBaring Brothers. He talked of such vast sums that the gentlemen of theclub (the apothecary, the undertaker, the great carpenter and builder,the parish clerk, who was allowed to come stealthily, and Mr. Clapp,our old acquaintance,) respected the old gentleman. "I was better offonce, sir," he did not fail to tell everybody who "used the room." "Myson, sir, is at this minute chief magistrate of Ramgunge in thePresidency of Bengal, and touching his four thousand rupees per mensem.My daughter might be a Colonel's lady if she liked. I might draw uponmy son, the first magistrate, sir, for two thousand pounds to-morrow,and Alexander would cash my bill, down sir, down on the counter, sir.But the Sedleys were always a proud family." You and I, my dear reader,may drop into this condition one day: for have not many of our friendsattained it? Our luck may fail: our powers forsake us: our place onthe boards be taken by better and younger mimes--the chance of liferoll away and leave us shattered and stranded. Then men will walkacross the road when they meet you--or, worse still, hold you out acouple of fingers and patronize you in a pitying way--then you willknow, as soon as your back is turned, that your friend begins with a"Poor devil, what imprudences he has committed, what chances that chaphas thrown away!" Well, well--a carriage and three thousand a year isnot the summit of the reward nor the end of God's judgment of men. Ifquacks prosper as often as they go to the wall--if zanies succeed andknaves arrive at fortune, and, vice versa, sharing ill luck andprosperity for all the world like the ablest and most honest amongstus--I say, brother, the gifts and pleasures of Vanity Fair cannot beheld of any great account, and that it is probable . . . but we arewandering out of the domain of the story.

Had Mrs. Sedley been a woman of energy, she would have exerted it afterher husband's ruin and, occupying a large house, would have taken inboarders. The broken Sedley would have acted well as theboarding-house landlady's husband; the Munoz of private life; thetitular lord and master: the carver, house-steward, and humble husbandof the occupier of the dingy throne. I have seen men of good brainsand breeding, and of good hopes and vigour once, who feasted squiresand kept hunters in their youth, meekly cutting up legs of mutton forrancorous old harridans and pretending to preside over their drearytables--but Mrs. Sedley, we say, had not spirit enough to bustle aboutfor "a few select inmates to join a cheerful musical family," such asone reads of in the Times. She was content to lie on the shore wherefortune had stranded her--and you could see that the career of this oldcouple was over.

I don't think they were unhappy. Perhaps they were a little prouder intheir downfall than in their prosperity. Mrs. Sedley was always a greatperson for her landlady, Mrs. Clapp, when she descended and passed manyhours with her in the basement or ornamented kitchen. The Irish maidBetty Flanagan's bonnets and ribbons, her sauciness, her idleness, herreckless prodigality of kitchen candles, her consumption of tea andsugar, and so forth occupied and amused the old lady almost as much asthe doings of her former household, when she had Sambo and thecoachman, and a groom, and a footboy, and a housekeeper with a regimentof female domestics--her former household, about which the good ladytalked a hundred times a day. And besides Betty Flanagan, Mrs. Sedleyhad all the maids-of-all-work in the street to superintend. She knewhow each tenant of the cottages paid or owed his little rent. Shestepped aside when Mrs. Rougemont the actress passed with her dubiousfamily. She flung up her head when Mrs. Pestler, the apothecary'slady, drove by in her husband's professional one-horse chaise. She hadcolloquies with the greengrocer about the pennorth of turnips which Mr.Sedley loved; she kept an eye upon the milkman and the baker's boy; andmade visitations to the butcher, who sold hundreds of oxen very likelywith less ado than was made about Mrs. Sedley's loin of mutton: andshe counted the potatoes under the joint on Sundays, on which days,dressed in her best, she went to church twice and read Blair's Sermonsin the evening.

On that day, for "business" prevented him on weekdays from taking sucha pleasure, it was old Sedley's delight to take out his little grandsonGeorgy to the neighbouring parks or Kensington Gardens, to see thesoldiers or to feed the ducks. Georgy loved the redcoats, and hisgrandpapa told him how his father had been a famous soldier, andintroduced him to many sergeants and others with Waterloo medals ontheir breasts, to whom the old grandfather pompously presented thechild as the son of Captain Osborne of the --th, who died gloriously onthe glorious eighteenth. He has been known to treat some of thesenon-commissioned gentlemen to a glass of porter, and, indeed, in theirfirst Sunday walks was disposed to spoil little Georgy, sadly gorgingthe boy with apples and parliament, to the detriment of hishealth--until Amelia declared that George should never go out with hisgrandpapa unless the latter promised solemnly, and on his honour, notto give the child any cakes, lollipops, or stall produce whatever.

Between Mrs. Sedley and her daughter there was a sort of coolness aboutthis boy, and a secret jealousy--for one evening in George's very earlydays, Amelia, who had been seated at work in their little parlourscarcely remarking that the old lady had quitted the room, ran upstairsinstinctively to the nursery at the cries of the child, who had beenasleep until that moment--and there found Mrs. Sedley in the act ofsurreptitiously administering Daffy's Elixir to the infant. Amelia,the gentlest and sweetest of everyday mortals, when she found thismeddling with her maternal authority, thrilled and trembled all overwith anger. Her cheeks, ordinarily pale, now flushed up, until theywere as red as they used to be when she was a child of twelve yearsold. She seized the baby out of her mother's arms and then grasped atthe bottle, leaving the old lady gaping at her, furious, and holdingthe guilty tea-spoon.

Amelia flung the bottle crashing into the fire-place. "I will NOT havebaby poisoned, Mamma," cried Emmy, rocking the infant about violentlywith both her arms round him and turning with flashing eyes at hermother.

"Poisoned, Amelia!" said the old lady; "this language to me?"

"He shall not have any medicine but that which Mr. Pestler sends for hin. He told me that Daffy's Elixir was poison."

"Very good: you think I'm a murderess then," replied Mrs. Sedley."This is the language you use to your mother. I have met withmisfortunes: I have sunk low in life: I have kept my carriage, andnow walk on foot: but I did not know I was a murderess before, andthank you for the NEWS."

"Mamma," said the poor girl, who was always ready for tears--"youshouldn't be hard upon me. I--I didn't mean--I mean, I did not wish tosay you would to any wrong to this dear child, only--"

"Oh, no, my love,--only that I was a murderess; in which case I hadbetter go to the Old Bailey. Though I didn't poison YOU, when you werea child, but gave you the best of education and the most expensivemasters money could procure. Yes; I've nursed five children and buriedthree; and the one I loved the best of all, and tended through croup,and teething, and measles, and hooping-cough, and brought up withforeign masters, regardless of expense, and with accomplishments atMinerva House--which I never had when I was a girl--when I was too gladto honour my father and mother, that I might live long in the land, andto be useful, and not to mope all day in my room and act the finelady--says I'm a murderess. Ah, Mrs. Osborne! may YOU never nourish aviper in your bosom, that's MY prayer."

"Mamma, Mamma!" cried the bewildered girl; and the child in her armsset up a frantic chorus of shouts. "A murderess, indeed! Go down onyour knees and pray to God to cleanse your wicked ungrateful heart,Amelia, and may He forgive you as I do." And Mrs. Sedley tossed out ofthe room, hissing out the word poison once more, and so ending hercharitable benediction.

Till the termination of her natural life, this breach between Mrs.Sedley and her daughter was never thoroughly mended. The quarrel gavethe elder lady numberless advantages which she did not fail to turn toaccount with female ingenuity and perseverance. For instance, shescarcely spoke to Amelia for many weeks afterwards. She warned thedomestics not to touch the child, as Mrs. Osborne might be offended.She asked her daughter to see and satisfy herself that there was nopoison prepared in the little daily messes that were concocted forGeorgy. When neighbours asked after the boy's health, she referred thempointedly to Mrs. Osborne. SHE never ventured to ask whether the babywas well or not. SHE would not touch the child although he was hergrandson, and own precious darling, for she was not USED to children,and might kill it. And whenever Mr. Pestler came upon his healinginquisition, she received the doctor with such a sarcastic and scornfuldemeanour, as made the surgeon declare that not Lady Thistlewoodherself, whom he had the honour of attending professionally, could giveherself greater airs than old Mrs. Sedley, from whom he never took afee. And very likely Emmy was jealous too, upon her own part, as whatmother is not, of those who would manage her children for her, orbecome candidates for the first place in their affections. It iscertain that when anybody nursed the child, she was uneasy, and thatshe would no more allow Mrs. Clapp or the domestic to dress or tend himthan she would have let them wash her husband's miniature which hung upover her little bed--the same little bed from which the poor girl hadgone to his; and to which she retired now for many long, silent,tearful, but happy years.

In this room was all Amelia's heart and treasure. Here it was that shetended her boy and watched him through the many ills of childhood, witha constant passion of love. The elder George returned in him somehow,only improved, and as if come back from heaven. In a hundred littletones, looks, and movements, the child was so like his father that thewidow's heart thrilled as she held him to it; and he would often askthe cause of her tears. It was because of his likeness to his father,she did not scruple to tell him. She talked constantly to him aboutthis dead father, and spoke of her love for George to the innocent andwondering child; much more than she ever had done to George himself, orto any confidante of her youth. To her parents she never talked aboutthis matter, shrinking from baring her heart to them. Little Georgevery likely could understand no better than they, but into his ears shepoured her sentimental secrets unreservedly, and into his only. Thevery joy of this woman was a sort of grief, or so tender, at least,that its expression was tears. Her sensibilities were so weak andtremulous that perhaps they ought not to be talked about in a book. Iwas told by Dr. Pestler (now a most flourishing lady's physician, witha sumptuous dark green carriage, a prospect of speedy knighthood, and ahouse in Manchester Square) that her grief at weaning the child was asight that would have unmanned a Herod. He was very soft-hearted manyyears ago, and his wife was mortally jealous of Mrs. Amelia, then andlong afterwards.

Perhaps the doctor's lady had good reason for her jealousy: most womenshared it, of those who formed the small circle of Amelia'sacquaintance, and were quite angry at the enthusiasm with which theother sex regarded her. For almost all men who came near her lovedher; though no doubt they would be at a loss to tell you why. She wasnot brilliant, nor witty, nor wise over much, nor extraordinarilyhandsome. But wherever she went she touched and charmed every one ofthe male sex, as invariably as she awakened the scorn and incredulityof her own sisterhood. I think it was her weakness which was herprincipal charm--a kind of sweet submission and softness, which seemedto appeal to each man she met for his sympathy and protection. We haveseen how in the regiment, though she spoke but to few of George'scomrades there, all the swords of the young fellows at the mess-tablewould have leapt from their scabbards to fight round her; and so it wasin the little narrow lodging-house and circle at Fulham, she interestedand pleased everybody. If she had been Mrs. Mango herself, of thegreat house of Mango, Plantain, and Co., Crutched Friars, and themagnificent proprietress of the Pineries, Fulham, who gave summerdejeuners frequented by Dukes and Earls, and drove about the parishwith magnificent yellow liveries and bay horses, such as the royalstables at Kensington themselves could not turn out--I say had she beenMrs. Mango herself, or her son's wife, Lady Mary Mango (daughter of theEarl of Castlemouldy, who condescended to marry the head of the firm),the tradesmen of the neighbourhood could not pay her more honour thanthey invariably showed to the gentle young widow, when she passed bytheir doors, or made her humble purchases at their shops.

Thus it was not only Mr. Pestler, the medical man, but Mr. Linton theyoung assistant, who doctored the servant maids and small tradesmen,and might be seen any day reading the Times in the surgery, who openlydeclared himself the slave of Mrs. Osborne. He was a personable younggentleman, more welcome at Mrs. Sedley's lodgings than his principal;and if anything went wrong with Georgy, he would drop in twice orthrice in the day to see the little chap, and without so much as thethought of a fee. He would abstract lozenges, tamarinds, and otherproduce from the surgery-drawers for little Georgy's benefit, andcompounded draughts and mixtures for him of miraculous sweetness, sothat it was quite a pleasure to the child to be ailing. He andPestler, his chief, sat up two whole nights by the boy in thatmomentous and awful week when Georgy had the measles; and when youwould have thought, from the mother's terror, that there had never beenmeasles in the world before. Would they have done as much for otherpeople? Did they sit up for the folks at the Pineries, when RalphPlantagenet, and Gwendoline, and Guinever Mango had the same juvenilecomplaint? Did they sit up for little Mary Clapp, the landlord'sdaughter, who actually caught the disease of little Georgy? Truthcompels one to say, no. They slept quite undisturbed, at least as faras she was concerned--pronounced hers to be a slight case, which wouldalmost cure itself, sent her in a draught or two, and threw in barkwhen the child rallied, with perfect indifference, and just for form'ssake.

Again, there was the little French chevalier opposite, who gave lessonsin his native tongue at various schools in the neighbourhood, and whomight be heard in his apartment of nights playing tremulous oldgavottes and minuets on a wheezy old fiddle. Whenever this powdered andcourteous old man, who never missed a Sunday at the convent chapel atHammersmith, and who was in all respects, thoughts, conduct, andbearing utterly unlike the bearded savages of his nation, who curseperfidious Albion, and scowl at you from over their cigars, in theQuadrant arcades at the present day--whenever the old Chevalier deTalonrouge spoke of Mistress Osborne, he would first finish his pinchof snuff, flick away the remaining particles of dust with a gracefulwave of his hand, gather up his fingers again into a bunch, and,bringing them up to his mouth, blow them open with a kiss, exclaiming,Ah! la divine creature! He vowed and protested that when Amelia walkedin the Brompton Lanes flowers grew in profusion under her feet. Hecalled little Georgy Cupid, and asked him news of Venus, his mamma; andtold the astonished Betty Flanagan that she was one of the Graces, andthe favourite attendant of the Reine des Amours.

Instances might be multiplied of this easily gained and unconsciouspopularity. Did not Mr. Binny, the mild and genteel curate of thedistrict chapel, which the family attended, call assiduously upon thewidow, dandle the little boy on his knee, and offer to teach him Latin,to the anger of the elderly virgin, his sister, who kept house for him?"There is nothing in her, Beilby," the latter lady would say. "Whenshe comes to tea here she does not speak a word during the wholeevening. She is but a poor lackadaisical creature, and it is my beliefhas no heart at all. It is only her pretty face which all yougentlemen admire so. Miss Grits, who has five thousand pounds, andexpectations besides, has twice as much character, and is a thousandtimes more agreeable to my taste; and if she were good-looking I knowthat you would think her perfection."

Very likely Miss Binny was right to a great extent. It IS the prettyface which creates sympathy in the hearts of men, those wicked rogues.A woman may possess the wisdom and chastity of Minerva, and we give noheed to her, if she has a plain face. What folly will not a pair ofbright eyes make pardonable? What dulness may not red lips and sweetaccents render pleasant? And so, with their usual sense of justice,ladies argue that because a woman is handsome, therefore she is a fool.O ladies, ladies! there are some of you who are neither handsome norwise.

These are but trivial incidents to recount in the life of our heroine.Her tale does not deal in wonders, as the gentle reader has already nodoubt perceived; and if a journal had been kept of her proceedingsduring the seven years after the birth of her son, there would be foundfew incidents more remarkable in it than that of the measles, recordedin the foregoing page. Yes, one day, and greatly to her wonder, theReverend Mr. Binny, just mentioned, asked her to change her name ofOsborne for his own; when, with deep blushes and tears in her eyes andvoice, she thanked him for his regard for her, expressed gratitude forhis attentions to her and to her poor little boy, but said that shenever, never could think of any but--but the husband whom she had lost.

On the twenty-fifth of April, and the eighteenth of June, the days ofmarriage and widowhood, she kept her room entirely, consecrating them(and we do not know how many hours of solitary night-thought, herlittle boy sleeping in his crib by her bedside) to the memory of thatdeparted friend. During the day she was more active. She had to teachGeorge to read and to write and a little to draw. She read books, inorder that she might tell him stories from them. As his eyes openedand his mind expanded under the influence of the outward nature roundabout him, she taught the child, to the best of her humble power, toacknowledge the Maker of all, and every night and every morning he andshe--(in that awful and touching communion which I think must bring athrill to the heart of every man who witnesses or who remembersit)--the mother and the little boy--prayed to Our Father together, themother pleading with all her gentle heart, the child lisping after heras she spoke. And each time they prayed to God to bless dear Papa, asif he were alive and in the room with them. To wash and dress thisyoung gentleman--to take him for a run of the mornings, beforebreakfast, and the retreat of grandpapa for "business"--to make for himthe most wonderful and ingenious dresses, for which end the thriftywidow cut up and altered every available little bit of finery which shepossessed out of her wardrobe during her marriage--for Mrs. Osborneherself (greatly to her mother's vexation, who preferred fine clothes,especially since her misfortunes) always wore a black gown and a strawbonnet with a black ribbon--occupied her many hours of the day. Othersshe had to spare, at the service of her mother and her old father. Shehad taken the pains to learn, and used to play cribbage with thisgentleman on the nights when he did not go to his club. She sang forhim when he was so minded, and it was a good sign, for he invariablyfell into a comfortable sleep during the music. She wrote out hisnumerous memorials, letters, prospectuses, and projects. It was in herhandwriting that most of the old gentleman's former acquaintances wereinformed that he had become an agent for the Black Diamond andAnti-Cinder Coal Company and could supply his friends and the publicwith the best coals at --s. per chaldron. All he did was to sign thecirculars with his flourish and signature, and direct them in a shaky,clerklike hand. One of these papers was sent to Major Dobbin,--Regt.,care of Messrs. Cox and Greenwood; but the Major being in Madras atthe time, had no particular call for coals. He knew, though, the handwhich had written the prospectus. Good God! what would he not havegiven to hold it in his own! A second prospectus came out, informingthe Major that J. Sedley and Company, having established agencies atOporto, Bordeaux, and St. Mary's, were enabled to offer to theirfriends and the public generally the finest and most celebrated growthsof ports, sherries, and claret wines at reasonable prices and underextraordinary advantages. Acting upon this hint, Dobbin furiouslycanvassed the governor, the commander-in-chief, the judges, theregiments, and everybody whom he knew in the Presidency, and sent hometo Sedley and Co. orders for wine which perfectly astonished Mr.Sedley and Mr. Clapp, who was the Co. in the business. But no moreorders came after that first burst of good fortune, on which poor oldSedley was about to build a house in the City, a regiment of clerks, adock to himself, and correspondents all over the world. The oldgentleman's former taste in wine had gone: the curses of the mess-roomassailed Major Dobbin for the vile drinks he had been the means ofintroducing there; and he bought back a great quantity of the wine andsold it at public outcry, at an enormous loss to himself. As for Jos,who was by this time promoted to a seat at the Revenue Board atCalcutta, he was wild with rage when the post brought him out a bundleof these Bacchanalian prospectuses, with a private note from hisfather, telling Jos that his senior counted upon him in thisenterprise, and had consigned a quantity of select wines to him, as perinvoice, drawing bills upon him for the amount of the same. Jos, whowould no more have it supposed that his father, Jos Sedley's father, ofthe Board of Revenue, was a wine merchant asking for orders, than thathe was Jack Ketch, refused the bills with scorn, wrote backcontumeliously to the old gentleman, bidding him to mind his ownaffairs; and the protested paper coming back, Sedley and Co. had totake it up, with the profits which they had made out of the Madrasventure, and with a little portion of Emmy's savings.

Besides her pension of fifty pounds a year, there had been five hundredpounds, as her husband's executor stated, left in the agent's hands atthe time of Osborne's demise, which sum, as George's guardian, Dobbinproposed to put out at 8 per cent in an Indian house of agency. Mr.Sedley, who thought the Major had some roguish intentions of his ownabout the money, was strongly against this plan; and he went to theagents to protest personally against the employment of the money inquestion, when he learned, to his surprise, that there had been no suchsum in their hands, that all the late Captain's assets did not amountto a hundred pounds, and that the five hundred pounds in question mustbe a separate sum, of which Major Dobbin knew the particulars. Morethan ever convinced that there was some roguery, old Sedley pursued theMajor. As his daughter's nearest friend, he demanded with a high handa statement of the late Captain's accounts. Dobbin's stammering,blushing, and awkwardness added to the other's convictions that he hada rogue to deal with, and in a majestic tone he told that officer apiece of his mind, as he called it, simply stating his belief that theMajor was unlawfully detaining his late son-in-law's money.

Dobbin at this lost all patience, and if his accuser had not been soold and so broken, a quarrel might have ensued between them at theSlaughters' Coffee-house, in a box of which place of entertainment thegentlemen had their colloquy. "Come upstairs, sir," lisped out theMajor. "I insist on your coming up the stairs, and I will show whichis the injured party, poor George or I"; and, dragging the oldgentleman up to his bedroom, he produced from his desk Osborne'saccounts, and a bundle of IOU's which the latter had given, who, to dohim justice, was always ready to give an IOU. "He paid his bills inEngland," Dobbin added, "but he had not a hundred pounds in the worldwhen he fell. I and one or two of his brother officers made up thelittle sum, which was all that we could spare, and you dare tell usthat we are trying to cheat the widow and the orphan." Sedley was verycontrite and humbled, though the fact is that William Dobbin had told agreat falsehood to the old gentleman; having himself given everyshilling of the money, having buried his friend, and paid all the feesand charges incident upon the calamity and removal of poor Amelia.

About these expenses old Osborne had never given himself any trouble tothink, nor any other relative of Amelia, nor Amelia herself, indeed.She trusted to Major Dobbin as an accountant, took his somewhatconfused calculations for granted, and never once suspected how muchshe was in his debt.

Twice or thrice in the year, according to her promise, she wrote himletters to Madras, letters all about little Georgy. How he treasuredthese papers! Whenever Amelia wrote he answered, and not until then.But he sent over endless remembrances of himself to his godson and toher. He ordered and sent a box of scarfs and a grand ivory set ofchess-men from China. The pawns were little green and white men, withreal swords and shields; the knights were on horseback, the castleswere on the backs of elephants. "Mrs. Mango's own set at the Pinerieswas not so fine," Mr. Pestler remarked. These chess-men were thedelight of Georgy's life, who printed his first letter inacknowledgement of this gift of his godpapa. He sent over preservesand pickles, which latter the young gentleman tried surreptitiously inthe sideboard and half-killed himself with eating. He thought it was ajudgement upon him for stealing, they were so hot. Emmy wrote acomical little account of this mishap to the Major: it pleased him tothink that her spirits were rallying and that she could be merrysometimes now. He sent over a pair of shawls, a white one for her anda black one with palm-leaves for her mother, and a pair of red scarfs,as winter wrappers, for old Mr. Sedley and George. The shawls wereworth fifty guineas apiece at the very least, as Mrs. Sedley knew. Shewore hers in state at church at Brompton, and was congratulated by herfemale friends upon the splendid acquisition. Emmy's, too, becameprettily her modest black gown. "What a pity it is she won't think ofhim!" Mrs. Sedley remarked to Mrs. Clapp and to all her friends ofBrompton. "Jos never sent us such presents, I am sure, and grudges useverything. It is evident that the Major is over head and ears in lovewith her; and yet, whenever I so much as hint it, she turns red andbegins to cry and goes and sits upstairs with her miniature. I'm sickof that miniature. I wish we had never seen those odious purse-proudOsbornes."

Amidst such humble scenes and associates George's early youth waspassed, and the boy grew up delicate, sensitive, imperious,woman-bred--domineering the gentle mother whom he loved with passionateaffection. He ruled all the rest of the little world round about him.As he grew, the elders were amazed at his haughty manner and hisconstant likeness to his father. He asked questions about everything,as inquiring youth will do. The profundity of his remarks andinterrogatories astonished his old grandfather, who perfectly bored theclub at the tavern with stories about the little lad's learning andgenius. He suffered his grandmother with a good-humouredindifference. The small circle round about him believed that the equalof the boy did not exist upon the earth. Georgy inherited his father'spride, and perhaps thought they were not wrong.

When he grew to be about six years old, Dobbin began to write to himvery much. The Major wanted to hear that Georgy was going to a schooland hoped he would acquit himself with credit there: or would he havea good tutor at home? It was time that he should begin to learn; andhis godfather and guardian hinted that he hoped to be allowed to defraythe charges of the boy's education, which would fall heavily upon hismother's straitened income. The Major, in a word, was always thinkingabout Amelia and her little boy, and by orders to his agents kept thelatter provided with picture-books, paint-boxes, desks, and allconceivable implements of amusement and instruction. Three days beforeGeorge's sixth birthday a gentleman in a gig, accompanied by a servant,drove up to Mr. Sedley's house and asked to see Master George Osborne:it was Mr. Woolsey, military tailor, of Conduit Street, who came at theMajor's order to measure the young gentleman for a suit of clothes. Hehad had the honour of making for the Captain, the young gentleman'sfather. Sometimes, too, and by the Major's desire no doubt, hissisters, the Misses Dobbin, would call in the family carriage to takeAmelia and the little boy to drive if they were so inclined. Thepatronage and kindness of these ladies was very uncomfortable toAmelia, but she bore it meekly enough, for her nature was to yield;and, besides, the carriage and its splendours gave little Georgyimmense pleasure. The ladies begged occasionally that the child mightpass a day with them, and he was always glad to go to that finegarden-house at Denmark Hill, where they lived, and where there weresuch fine grapes in the hot-houses and peaches on the walls.

One day they kindly came over to Amelia with news which they were SUREwould delight her--something VERY interesting about their dear William.

"What was it: was he coming home?" she asked with pleasure beaming inher eyes.

"Oh, no--not the least--but they had very good reason to believe thatdear William was about to be married--and to a relation of a very dearfriend of Amelia's--to Miss Glorvina O'Dowd, Sir Michael O'Dowd'ssister, who had gone out to join Lady O'Dowd at Madras--a verybeautiful and accomplished girl, everybody said."

Amelia said "Oh!" Amelia was very VERY happy indeed. But she supposedGlorvina could not be like her old acquaintance, who was mostkind--but--but she was very happy indeed. And by some impulse of whichI cannot explain the meaning, she took George in her arms and kissedhim with an extraordinary tenderness. Her eyes were quite moist whenshe put the child down; and she scarcely spoke a word during the wholeof the drive--though she was so very happy indeed.