"Do you suppose a man of my habits call live on his pay and a hundred a
year?" George cried out in great anger. "You must be a fool to talk
so, Dobbin. How the deuce am I to keep up my position in the world
upon such a pitiful pittance? I can't change my habits. I must have
my comforts. I wasn't brought up on porridge, like MacWhirter, or on
potatoes, like old O'Dowd. Do you expect my wife to take in soldiers'
washing, or ride after the regiment in a baggage waggon?"
"Well, well," said Dobbin, still good-naturedly, "we'll get her a
better conveyance. But try and remember that you are only a dethroned
prince now, George, my boy; and be quiet whilst the tempest lasts. It
won't be for long. Let your name be mentioned in the Gazette, and I'll
engage the old father relents towards you:"
"Mentioned in the Gazette!" George answered. "And in what part of it?
Among the killed and wounded returns, and at the top of the list, very
likely."
"Psha! It will be time enough to cry out when we are hurt," Dobbin
said. "And if anything happens, you know, George, I have got a little,
and I am not a marrying man, and I shall not forget my godson in my
will," he added, with a smile. Whereupon the dispute ended--as many
scores of such conversations between Osborne and his friend had
concluded previously--by the former declaring there was no possibility
of being angry with Dobbin long, and forgiving him very generously
after abusing him without cause.
"I say, Becky," cried Rawdon Crawley out of his dressing-room, to his
lady, who was attiring herself for dinner in her own chamber.
"What?" said Becky's shrill voice. She was looking over her shoulder
in the glass. She had put on the neatest and freshest white frock
imaginable, and with bare shoulders and a little necklace, and a light
blue sash, she looked the image of youthful innocence and girlish
happiness.
"I say, what'll Mrs. O. do, when O. goes out with the regiment?"
Crawley said coming into the room, performing a duet on his head with
two huge hair-brushes, and looking out from under his hair with
admiration on his pretty little wife.
"I suppose she'll cry her eyes out," Becky answered. "She has been
whimpering half a dozen times, at the very notion of it, already to me."
"YOU don't care, I suppose?" Rawdon said, half angry at his wife's want
of feeling.
"You wretch! don't you know that I intend to go with you," Becky
replied. "Besides, you're different. You go as General Tufto's
aide-de-camp. We don't belong to the line," Mrs. Crawley said,
throwing up her head with an air that so enchanted her husband that he
stooped down and kissed it.