Perhaps, too, Joseph Sedley would overhear the compliment--Rebecca spoke loud enough--and he did hear, and (thinking in his heart that he was a very fine man) the praise thrilled through every fibre of his big body, and made it tingle with pleasure.
Then, however, came a recoil.
"Is the girl making fun of me?" he thought, and straightway he bounced towards the bell, and was for retreating, as we have seen, when his father's jokes and his mother's entreaties caused him to pause and stay where he was.
He conducted the young lady down to dinner in a dubious and agitated frame of mind.
"Does she really think I am handsome?" thought he, "or is she only making game of me?"
We have talked of Joseph Sedley being as vain as a girl.
Heaven help us! the girls have only to turn the tables, and say of one of their own sex,
"She is as vain as a man," and they will have perfect reason.
The bearded creatures are quite as eager for praise, quite as finikin over their toilettes, quite as proud of their personal advantages, quite as conscious of their powers of fascination, as any coquette in the world.
Downstairs, then, they went, Joseph very red and blushing, Rebecca very modest, and holding her green eyes downwards.
She was dressed in white, with bare shoulders as white as snow--the picture of youth, unprotected innocence, and humble virgin simplicity.
"I must be very quiet," thought Rebecca, "and very much interested about India."
Now we have heard how Mrs. Sedley had prepared a fine curry for her son, just as he liked it, and in the course of dinner a portion of this dish was offered to Rebecca.
"What is it?" said she, turning an appealing look to Mr. Joseph.
"Capital," said he.
His mouth was full of it: his face quite red with the delightful exercise of gobbling.
"Mother, it's as good as my own curries in India."
"Oh, I must try some, if it is an Indian dish," said Miss Rebecca.
"I am sure everything must be good that comes from there."
"Give Miss Sharp some curry, my dear," said Mr. Sedley, laughing.
Rebecca had never tasted the dish before.
"Do you find it as good as everything else from India?" said Mr. Sedley.
"Oh, excellent!" said Rebecca, who was suffering tortures with the cayenne pepper.
"Try a chili with it, Miss Sharp," said Joseph, really interested.
"A chili," said Rebecca, gasping.
"Oh yes!"
She thought a chili was something cool, as its name imported, and was served with some.
"How fresh and green they look," she said, and put one into her mouth.
It was hotter than the curry; flesh and blood could bear it no longer.
She laid down her fork.
"Water, for Heaven's sake, water!" she cried.
Mr. Sedley burst out laughing (he was a coarse man, from the Stock Exchange, where they love all sorts of practical jokes).
"They are real Indian, I assure you," said he.
"Sambo, give Miss Sharp some water."
The paternal laugh was echoed by Joseph, who thought the joke capital.
The ladies only smiled a little.
They thought poor Rebecca suffered too much.
She would have liked to choke old Sedley, but she swallowed her mortification as well as she had the abominable curry before it, and as soon as she could speak, said, with a comical, good-humoured air,
"I ought to have remembered the pepper which the Princess of Persia puts in the cream- tarts in the Arabian Nights.
Do you put cayenne into your cream-tarts in India, sir?"
Old Sedley began to laugh, and thought Rebecca was a good-humoured girl.
Joseph simply said,
"Cream- 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,