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

"And the chilis?"

"By Jove, how they made you cry out!" said Joe,
caught by the ridicule of the circumstance, and
exploding in a fit of laughter which ended quite
suddenly, as usual.

"I shall take care how I let YOU choose for me
another time," said Rebecca, as they went down
again to dinner. "I didn't think men were fond of
putting poor harmless girls to pain."

"By Gad, Miss Rebecca, I wouldn't hurt you for the
world."

"No," said she, "I KNOW you wouldn't"; and then she
gave him ever so gentle a pressure with her little hand,
and drew it back quite frightened, and looked first for
one instant in his face, and then down at the carpet-
rods; and I am not prepared to say that Joe's heart did
not thump at this little involuntary, timid, gentle motion
of regard on the part of the simple girl.

It was an advance, and as such, perhaps, some ladies
of indisputable correctness and gentility will condemn the
action as immodest; but, you see, poor dear Rebecca
had all this work to do for herself. If a person is too
poor to keep a servant, though ever so elegant, he must
sweep his own rooms: if a dear girl has no dear Mamma
to settle matters with the young man, she must do it
for herself. And oh, what a mercy it is that these women
do not exercise their powers oftener! We can't resist
them, if they do. Let them show ever so little inclination,
and men go down on their knees at once: old or ugly,
it is all the same. And this I set down as a positive
truth. A woman with fair opportunities, and without an
absolute hump, may marry WHOM SHE LIKES. Only let us
be thankful that the darlings are like the beasts of the
field, and don't know their own power. They would
overcome us entirely if they did.

"Egad!" thought Joseph, entering the dining-room, "I
exactly begin to feel as I did at Dumdum with Miss
Cutler." Many sweet little appeals, half tender, half
jocular, did Miss Sharp make to him about the dishes
at dinner; for by this time she was on a footing of
considerable familiarity with the family, and as for the
girls, they loved each other like sisters. Young unmarried
girls always do, if they are in a house together for ten