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

audacity to ask Miss Rebecca for whom she was
knitting the green silk purse? He was quite surprised
and delighted at his own graceful familiar manner.

"For any one who wants a purse," replied Miss
Rebecca, looking at him in the most gentle winning way.
Sedley was going to make one of the most eloquent
speeches possible, and had begun-"O Miss Sharp,
how-" when some song which was performed in the
other room came to an end, and caused him to hear
his own voice so distinctly that he stopped, blushed, and
blew his nose in great agitation.

"Did you ever hear anything like your brother's
eloquence?" whispered Mr. Osborne to Amelia. "Why,
your friend has worked miracles."

"The more the better," said Miss Amelia; who, like
almost all women who are worth a pin, was a match-
maker in her heart, and would have been delighted that
Joseph should carry back a wife to India. She had, too,
in the course of this few days' constant intercourse,
warmed into a most tender friendship for Rebecca, and
discovered a million of virtues and amiable qualities in
her which she had not perceived when they were at
Chiswick together. For the affection of young ladies is
of as rapid growth as Jack's bean-stalk, and reaches up
to the sky in a night. It is no blame to them that after
marriage this Sehnsucht nach der Liebe subsides. It is
what sentimentalists, who deal in very big words, call a
yearning after the Ideal, and simply means that women
are commonly not satisfied until they have husbands
and children on whom they may centre affections, which
are spent elsewhere, as it were, in small change.

Having expended her little store of songs, or having
stayed long enough in the back drawing-room, it now
appeared proper to Miss Amelia to ask her friend to
sing. "You would not have listened to me," she said to
Mr. Osborne (though she knew she was telling a fib),
"had you heard Rebecca first."

"I give Miss Sharp warning, though," said Osborne,
"that, right or wrong, I consider Miss Amelia Sedley
the first singer in the world."

"You shall hear," said Amelia; and Joseph Sedley was
actually polite enough to carry the candles to the piano.
Osborne hinted that he should like quite as well to sit
in the dark; but Miss Sedley, laughing, declined to bear