There on his table, his sister’s letter lay
reproaching him. He took it up, ashamed rather
of his negligence regarding it, and prepared himself
for a disagreeable hour’s communing with that
crabbed-handed absent relative. . . . It may have
been an hour after the Major’s departure from
the Colonel’s house—Sir Michael was
sleeping the sleep of the just; Glorvina had arranged
her black ringlets in the innumerable little bits
of paper, in which it was her habit to confine them;
Lady O’Dowd, too, had gone to her bed in the
nuptial chamber, on the ground-floor, and had tucked
her musquito curtains round her fair form, when the
guard at the gates of the Commanding-Officer’s
compound beheld Major Dobbin, in the moonlight, rushing
towards the house with a swift step and a very agitated
countenance, and he passed the sentinel and went up
to the windows of the Colonel’s bedchamber.
“O’Dowd—Colonel!” said
Dobbin and kept up a great shouting.
“Heavens, Meejor!” said Glorvina of the
curl-papers, putting out her head too, from her window.
“What is it, Dob, me boy?” said the Colonel,
expecting there was a fire in the station, or that
the route had come from headquarters.
“I—I must have leave of absence.
I must go to England—on the most urgent
private affairs,” Dobbin said.
“Good heavens, what has happened!” thought
Glorvina, trembling with all the papillotes.
“I want to be off—now—to-night,”
Dobbin continued; and the Colonel getting up, came
out to parley with him.
In the postscript of Miss Dobbin’s cross-letter,
the Major had just come upon a paragraph, to the following
effect:—“I drove yesterday to see
your old acquaintance, Mrs. Osborne. The
wretched place they live at, since they were bankrupts,
you know—Mr. S., to judge from a brass
plate on the door of his hut (it is little better)
is a coal-merchant. The little boy, your godson,
is certainly a fine child, though forward, and inclined
to be saucy and self-willed. But we have taken
notice of him as you wish it, and have introduced
him to his aunt, Miss O., who was rather pleased with
him. Perhaps his grandpapa, not the bankrupt
one, who is almost doting, but Mr. Osborne, of Russell
Square, may be induced to relent towards the child
of your friend, his erring and self-willed
son. And Amelia will not be ill-disposed
to give him up. The widow is consoled, and
is about to marry a reverend gentleman, the Rev. Mr.
Binny, one of the curates of Brompton. A poor
match. But Mrs. O. is getting old, and I saw
a great deal of grey in her hair—she was
in very good spirits: and your little godson
overate himself at our house. Mamma sends her
love with that of your affectionate, Ann Dobbin.”
A Round-about Chapter between London and Hampshire
