One day as the young gentlemen were assembled in the
study at the Rev. Mr. Veal’s, and the domestic
chaplain to the Right Honourable the Earl of Bareacres
was spouting away as usual, a smart carriage drove
up to the door decorated with the statue of Athene,
and two gentlemen stepped out. The young Masters
Bangles rushed to the window with a vague notion that
their father might have arrived from Bombay.
The great hulking scholar of three-and-twenty, who
was crying secretly over a passage of Eutropius, flattened
his neglected nose against the panes and looked at
the drag, as the laquais de place sprang from the
box and let out the persons in the carriage.
“It’s a fat one and a thin one,”
Mr. Bluck said as a thundering knock came to the door.
Everybody was interested, from the domestic chaplain
himself, who hoped he saw the fathers of some future
pupils, down to Master Georgy, glad of any pretext
for laying his book down.
The boy in the shabby livery with the faded copper
buttons, who always thrust himself into the tight
coat to open the door, came into the study and said,
“Two gentlemen want to see Master Osborne.”
The professor had had a trifling altercation in the
morning with that young gentleman, owing to a difference
about the introduction of crackers in school-time;
but his face resumed its habitual expression of bland
courtesy as he said, “Master Osborne, I give
you full permission to go and see your carriage friends—to
whom I beg you to convey the respectful compliments
of myself and Mrs. Veal.”
Georgy went into the reception-room and saw two strangers,
whom he looked at with his head up, in his usual haughty
manner. One was fat, with mustachios, and the
other was lean and long, in a blue frock-coat, with
a brown face and a grizzled head.
“My God, how like he is!” said the long
gentleman with a start. “Can you guess
who we are, George?”
The boy’s face flushed up, as it did usually
when he was moved, and his eyes brightened.
“I don’t know the other,” he said,
“but I should think you must be Major Dobbin.”
Indeed it was our old friend. His voice trembled
with pleasure as he greeted the boy, and taking both
the other’s hands in his own, drew the lad to
him.
“Your mother has talked to you about me—has
she?” he said.
“That she has,” Georgy answered, “hundreds
and hundreds of times.”
Eothen
It was one of the many causes for personal pride with
which old Osborne chose to recreate himself that Sedley,
his ancient rival, enemy, and benefactor, was in his
last days so utterly defeated and humiliated as to
be forced to accept pecuniary obligations at the hands
of the man who had most injured and insulted him.
The successful man of the world cursed the old pauper
and relieved him from time to time. As he furnished
George with money for his mother, he gave the boy
