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 no

doubt perceived; and if a journal had been kept of her proceedings

during the seven years after the birth of her son, there would be found

few incidents more remarkable in it than that of the measles, recorded

in the foregoing page. Yes, one day, and greatly to her wonder, the

Reverend Mr. Binny, just mentioned, asked her to change her name of

Osborne for his own; when, with deep blushes and tears in her eyes and

voice, she thanked him for his regard for her, expressed gratitude for

his attentions to her and to her poor little boy, but said that she

never, 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 of

marriage and widowhood, she kept her room entirely, consecrating them

(and we do not know how many hours of solitary night-thought, her

little boy sleeping in his crib by her bedside) to the memory of that

departed friend. During the day she was more active. She had to teach

George to read and to write and a little to draw. She read books, in

order that she might tell him stories from them. As his eyes opened

and his mind expanded under the influence of the outward nature round

about him, she taught the child, to the best of her humble power, to

acknowledge the Maker of all, and every night and every morning he and

she--(in that awful and touching communion which I think must bring a

thrill to the heart of every man who witnesses or who remembers

it)--the mother and the little boy--prayed to Our Father together, the

mother pleading with all her gentle heart, the child lisping after her

as she spoke. And each time they prayed to God to bless dear Papa, as

if he were alive and in the room with them. To wash and dress this

young gentleman--to take him for a run of the mornings, before

breakfast, and the retreat of grandpapa for "business"--to make for him

the most wonderful and ingenious dresses, for which end the thrifty

widow cut up and altered every available little bit of finery which she

possessed out of her wardrobe during her marriage--for Mrs. Osborne

herself (greatly to her mother's vexation, who preferred fine clothes,

especially since her misfortunes) always wore a black gown and a straw

bonnet with a black ribbon--occupied her many hours of the day. Others

she had to spare, at the service of her mother and her old father. She

had taken the pains to learn, and used to play cribbage with this

gentleman on the nights when he did not go to his club. She sang for

him when he was so minded, and it was a good sign, for he invariably

fell into a comfortable sleep during the music. She wrote out his

numerous memorials, letters, prospectuses, and projects. It was in her

handwriting that most of the old gentleman's former acquaintances were

informed that he had become an agent for the Black Diamond and

Anti-Cinder Coal Company and could supply his friends and the public

with the best coals at --s. per chaldron. All he did was to sign the

circulars 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 at

the time, had no particular call for coals. He knew, though, the hand

which had written the prospectus. Good God! what would he not have

given to hold it in his own! A second prospectus came out, informing

the Major that J. Sedley and Company, having established agencies at

Oporto, Bordeaux, and St. Mary's, were enabled to offer to their

friends and the public generally the finest and most celebrated growths

of ports, sherries, and claret wines at reasonable prices and under

extraordinary advantages. Acting upon this hint, Dobbin furiously

canvassed the governor, the commander-in-chief, the judges, the

regiments, and everybody whom he knew in the Presidency, and sent home

to Sedley and Co. orders for wine which perfectly astonished Mr.

Sedley and Mr. Clapp, who was the Co. in the business. But no more

orders came after that first burst of good fortune, on which poor old

Sedley was about to build a house in the City, a regiment of clerks, a

dock to himself, and correspondents all over the world. The old

gentleman's former taste in wine had gone: the curses of the mess-room

assailed Major Dobbin for the vile drinks he had been the means of

introducing there; and he bought back a great quantity of the wine and

sold 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 at

Calcutta, he was wild with rage when the post brought him out a bundle

of these Bacchanalian prospectuses, with a private note from his

father, telling Jos that his senior counted upon him in this

enterprise, and had consigned a quantity of select wines to him, as per

invoice, drawing bills upon him for the amount of the same. Jos, who

would no more have it supposed that his father, Jos Sedley's father, of

the Board of Revenue, was a wine merchant asking for orders, than that

he was Jack Ketch, refused the bills with scorn, wrote back

contumeliously to the old gentleman, bidding him to mind his own

affairs; and the protested paper coming back, Sedley and Co. had to

take it up, with the profits which they had made out of the Madras

venture, and with a little portion of Emmy's savings.




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