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

so clever an artist, you must make a grand historical
picture of the scene of the boots. Sedley shall be
represented in buckskins, and holding one of the
injured boots in one hand; by the other he shall have
hold of my shirt-frill. Amelia shall be kneeling near him,
with her little hands up; and the picture shall have a
grand allegorical title, as the frontispieces have in the
Medulla and the spelling-book."

"I shan't have time to do it here," said Rebecca. 'I'll
do it when-when I'm gone." And she dropped her voice,
and looked so sad and piteous, that everybody felt how
cruel her lot was, and how sorry they would be to
part with her.

"O that you could stay longer, dear Rebecca," said
Amelia.

"Why?" answered the other, still more sadly. "That
I may be only the more unhap-unwilling to lose you?"
And she turned away her head. Amelia began to give
way to that natural infirmity of tears which, we have
said, was one of the defects of this silly little thing. George
Osborne looked at the two young women with a touched
curiosity; and Joseph Sedley heaved something very like
a sigh out of his big chest, as he cast his eyes down
towards his favourite Hessian boots.

"Let us have some music, Miss Sedley-Amelia," said
George, who felt at that moment an extraordinary,
almost irresistible impulse to seize the above-mentioned
young woman in his arms, and to kiss her in the face of
the company; and she looked at him for a moment, and
if I should say that they fell in love with each other at
that single instant of time, I should perhaps be telling
an untruth, for the fact is that these two young people
had been bred up by their parents for this very purpose,
and their banns had, as it were, been read in their
respective families any time these ten years. They went
off to the piano, which was situated, as pianos usually
are, in the back drawing-room; and as it was rather dark,
Miss Amelia, in the most unaffected way in the world,
put her hand into Mr. Osborne's, who, of course, could
see the way among the chairs and ottomans a great deal
better than she could. But this arrangement left Mr.
Joseph Sedley tete-a-tete with Rebecca, at the
drawing-room table, where the latter was occupied
in knitting a green silk purse.

"There is no need to ask family secrets," said Miss