"William Makepeace Thackeray. Vanity fair" - читать интересную книгу автора

"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.

"Did you ever see a pair of buckskins like those at
Miss Pinkerton's?" continued he, following up his
advantage.

"Gracious heavens! Father," cried Joseph.

"There now, I have hurt his feelings. Mrs. Sedley,
my dear, I have hurt your son's feelings. I have alluded
to his buckskins. Ask Miss Sharp if I haven't? Come,
Joseph, be friends with Miss Sharp, and let us all go to
dinner."

"There's a pillau, Joseph, just as you like it, and Papa
has brought home the best turbot in Billingsgate."

"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.

If Miss Rebecca Sharp had determined in her heart
upon making the conquest of this big beau, I don't
think, ladies, we have any right to blame her; for though
the task of husband-hunting is generally, and with
becoming modesty, entrusted by young persons to their
mammas, recollect that Miss Sharp had no kind parent
to arrange these delicate matters for her, 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. What causes young people to "come out,"
but the noble ambition of matrimony? What sends them