Ярмарка тщеславия / Vanity Fair

“Are they not beautiful, Rebecca?”

“O heavenly!” said Miss Sharp, and her eyes went from the carpet straight to the chandelier.

“I can’t make you such handsome presents, Joseph,” continued his sister, “but while I was at school, I have embroidered for you a very beautiful pair of braces.”

“Good Gad! Amelia,” cried the brother, in serious alarm.

“For heaven’s sake see if my buggy’s at the door. I CAN’T wait. I must go.”

At this minute the father of the family walked in. “What’s the matter, Emmy?”

says he.

“Joseph wants me to see if his – his buggy is at the door. What is a buggy, Papa?”

“It is a one-horse palanquin,” said the old gentleman.

Joseph at this burst out into a wild fit of laughter; in which, encountering the eye of Miss Sharp, he stopped all of a sudden, as if he had been shot.

“This young lady is your friend? Miss Sharp, I am very happy to see you. Have you and Emmy been quarrelling already with Joseph, that he wants to be off?”

“I promised Bonamy of our service, sir,” said Joseph, “to dine with him.

“O fie! didn’t you tell your mother you would dine here?”

“But in this dress it’s impossible.”

“Look at him, isn’t he handsome enough to dine anywhere, Miss Sharp?”

On which, of course, Miss Sharp looked at her friend, and they both set off in a fit of laughter, highly agreeable to the old gentleman.

“Come, come, sir, walk downstairs with Miss Sharp, and I will follow with these two young women,” said the father, and he took an arm of wife and daughter and walked merrily off.

I don’t think, ladies, we have any right to blame Miss Rebecca Sharp; for though the task of husband hunting is generally entrusted by young persons to their mammas, remember that Miss Sharp had no kind parent and that if she did not get a husband for herself, there was no one else in the wide world who would take the trouble off her hands. She had a vivid imagination: and after she had asked Amelia whether her brother was very rich, she had built for herself a most magnificent castle in the air, of which she was mistress, with a husband somewhere in the background.

Joseph Sedley was twelve years older than his sister Amelia. He was in the East India Company’s Civil Service as a collector. He had lived for about eight years of his life, quite alone, at this charming place. Luckily, at this time he caught a liver complaint, for the cure of which he returned to Europe.