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

tarts, Miss? Our cream is very bad in Bengal. We
generally use goats' milk; and, 'gad, do you know, I've got
to prefer it!"

"You won't like EVERYTHING from India now, Miss
Sharp," said the old gentleman; but when the ladies had
retired after dinner, the wily old fellow said to his son,
"Have a care, Joe; that girl is setting her cap at you."

"Pooh! nonsense!" said Joe, highly flattered. "I recollect,
sir, there was a girl at Dumdum, a daughter of
Cutler of the Artillery, and afterwards married to Lance,
the surgeon, who made a dead set at me in the year
'4-at me and Mulligatawney, whom I mentioned to you
before dinner-a devilish good fellow Mulligatawney-
he's a magistrate at Budgebudge, and sure to be in
council in five years. Well, sir, the Artillery gave a ball,
and Quintin, of the King's 14th, said to me, 'Sedley,' said
he, 'I bet you thirteen to ten that Sophy Cutler hooks
either you or Mulligatawney before the rains.' 'Done,'
says I; and egad, sir-this claret's very good. Adamson's
or Carbonell's?"

A slight snore was the only reply: the honest stockbroker
was asleep, and so the rest of Joseph's story was lost
for that day. But he was always exceedingly
communicative in a man's party, and has told this
delightful tale many scores of times to his apothecary,
Dr. Gollop, when he came to inquire about the liver and
the blue-pill.

Being an invalid, Joseph Sedley contented himself with
a bottle of claret besides his Madeira at dinner, and
he managed a couple of plates full of strawberries and
cream, and twenty-four little rout cakes that were lying
neglected in a plate near him, and certainly (for
novelists have the privilege of knowing everything)
he thought a great deal about the girl upstairs. "A nice,
gay, merry young creature," thought he to himself. "How
she looked at me when I picked up her handkerchief at
dinner! She dropped it twice. Who's that singing in the
drawing-room? 'Gad! shall I go up and see?"

But his modesty came rushing upon him with
uncontrollable force. His father was asleep: his hat
was in the hall: there was a hackney-coach standing
hard by in Southampton Row. "I'll go and see the Forty
Thieves," said he, "and Miss Decamp's dance"; and he
slipped away gently on the pointed toes of his boots, and disappeared, without waking his worthy parent.