"And so this devil is still going on with her intrigues," thought
William. "I wish she were a hundred miles from here. She brings
mischief wherever she goes." And he was pursuing these forebodings and
this uncomfortable train of thought, with his head between his hands,
and the Pumpernickel Gazette of last week unread under his nose, when
somebody tapped his shoulder with a parasol, and he looked up and saw
Mrs. Amelia.
This woman had a way of tyrannizing over Major Dobbin (for the weakest
of all people will domineer over somebody), and she ordered him about,
and patted him, and made him fetch and carry just as if he was a great
Newfoundland dog. He liked, so to speak, to jump into the water if she
said "High, Dobbin!" and to trot behind her with her reticule in his
mouth. This history has been written to very little purpose if the
reader has not perceived that the Major was a spooney.
"Why did you not wait for me, sir, to escort me downstairs?" she said,
giving a little toss of her head and a most sarcastic curtsey.
"I couldn't stand up in the passage," he answered with a comical
deprecatory look; and, delighted to give her his arm and to take her
out of the horrid smoky place, he would have walked off without even so
much as remembering the waiter, had not the young fellow run after him
and stopped him on the threshold of the Elephant to make him pay for
the beer which he had not consumed. Emmy laughed: she called him a
naughty man, who wanted to run away in debt, and, in fact, made some
jokes suitable to the occasion and the small-beer. She was in high
spirits and good humour, and tripped across the market-place very
briskly. She wanted to see Jos that instant. The Major laughed at the
impetuous affection Mrs. Amelia exhibited; for, in truth, it was not
very often that she wanted her brother "that instant." They found the
civilian in his saloon on the first-floor; he had been pacing the room,
and biting his nails, and looking over the market-place towards the
Elephant a hundred times at least during the past hour whilst Emmy was
closeted with her friend in the garret and the Major was beating the
tattoo on the sloppy tables of the public room below, and he was, on
his side too, very anxious to see Mrs. Osborne.
"Well?" said he.
"The poor dear creature, how she has suffered!" Emmy said.
"God bless my soul, yes," Jos said, wagging his head, so that his
cheeks quivered like jellies.
"She may have Payne's room, who can go upstairs," Emmy continued. Payne
was a staid English maid and personal attendant upon Mrs. Osborne, to
whom the courier, as in duty bound, paid court, and whom Georgy used to
"lark" dreadfully with accounts of German robbers and ghosts. She
passed her time chiefly in grumbling, in ordering about her mistress,
and in stating her intention to return the next morning to her native
village of Clapham. "She may have Payne's room," Emmy said.