His wife encouraged him to dine abroad: she would let him off duty at the opera.
"Don't stay and stupefy yourself at home to-night, my dear," she would say.
"Some men are coming who will only bore you.
I would not ask them, but you know it's for your good, and now I have a sheep-dog, I need not be afraid to be alone."
"A sheep-dog--a companion!
Becky Sharp with a companion!
Isn't it good fun?" thought Mrs. Crawley to herself.
The notion tickled hugely her sense of humour.
One Sunday morning, as Rawdon Crawley, his little son, and the pony were taking their accustomed walk in the park, they passed by an old acquaintance of the Colonel's, Corporal Clink, of the regiment, who was in conversation with a friend, an old gentleman, who held a boy in his arms about the age of little Rawdon.
This other youngster had seized hold of the Waterloo medal which the Corporal wore, and was examining it with delight.
"Good morning, your Honour," said Clink, in reply to the
"How do, Clink?" of the Colonel. "This ere young gentleman is about the little Colonel's age, sir," continued the corporal.
"His father was a Waterloo man, too," said the old gentleman, who carried the boy. "Wasn't he, Georgy?"
"Yes," said Georgy.
He and the little chap on the pony were looking at each other with all their might--solemnly scanning each other as children do.
"In a line regiment," Clink said with a patronizing air.
"He was a Captain in the --th regiment," said the old gentleman rather pompously.
"Captain George Osborne, sir--perhaps you knew him.
He died the death of a hero, sir, fighting against the Corsican tyrant."
Colonel Crawley blushed quite red.
"I knew him very well, sir," he said, "and his wife, his dear little wife, sir--how is she?"
"She is my daughter, sir," said the old gentleman, putting down the boy and taking out a card with great solemnity, which he handed to the Colonel.
On it written--
"Mr. Sedley, Sole Agent for the Black Diamond and Anti-Cinder Coal Association, Bunker's Wharf, Thames Street, and Anna-Maria Cottages, Fulham Road West."
Little Georgy went up and looked at the Shetland pony.
"Should you like to have a ride?" said Rawdon minor from the saddle.
"Yes," said Georgy.
The Colonel, who had been looking at him with some interest, took up the child and put him on the pony behind Rawdon minor.
"Take hold of him, Georgy," he said--"take my little boy round the waist--his name is Rawdon."
And both the children began to laugh.
"You won't see a prettier pair I think, THIS summer's day, sir," said the good-natured Corporal; and the Colonel, the Corporal, and old Mr. Sedley with his umbrella, walked by the side of the children.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
A Family in a Very Small Way
We must suppose little George Osborne has ridden from Knightsbridge towards Fulham, and will stop and make inquiries at that village regarding some friends whom we have left there.
How is Mrs. Amelia after the storm of Waterloo?
Is she living and thriving?
What has come of Major Dobbin, whose cab was always hankering about her premises?
And is there any news of the Collector of Boggley Wollah?
The facts concerning the latter are briefly these:
Our worthy fat friend Joseph Sedley returned to India not long after his escape from Brussels.
Either his furlough was up, or he dreaded to meet any witnesses of his Waterloo flight. However it might be, he went back to his duties in Bengal very soon after Napoleon had taken up his residence at St. Helena, where Jos saw the ex-Emperor.
To hear Mr. Sedley talk on board ship you would have supposed that it was not the first time he and the Corsican had met, and that the civilian had bearded the French General at Mount St. John.
He had a thousand anecdotes about the famous battles; he knew the position of every regiment and the loss which each had incurred.
He did not deny that he had been concerned in those victories--that he had been with the army and carried despatches for the Duke of Wellington.
And he described what the Duke did and said on every conceivable moment of the day of Waterloo, with such an accurate knowledge of his Grace's sentiments and proceedings that it was clear he must have been by the conqueror's side throughout the day; though, as a non-combatant, his name was not mentioned in the public documents relative to the battle.
Perhaps he actually worked himself up to believe that he had been engaged with the army; certain it is that he made a prodigious sensation for some time at Calcutta, and was called Waterloo Sedley during the whole of his subsequent stay in Bengal.
The bills which Jos had given for the purchase of those unlucky horses were paid without question by him and his agents.
He never was heard to allude to the bargain, and nobody knows for a certainty what became of the horses, or how he got rid of them, or of Isidor, his Belgian servant, who sold a grey horse, very like the one which Jos rode, at Valenciennes sometime during the autumn of 1815.
Jos's London agents had orders to pay one hundred and twenty pounds yearly to his parents at Fulham.
It was the chief support of the old couple; for Mr. Sedley's speculations in life subsequent to his bankruptcy did not by any means retrieve the broken old gentleman's fortune.