passed all her money across the table, without a word, to her mother,
and returned to her room to cry her eyes out. She had a great access of
sensibility too that day, when obliged to go and countermand the
clothes, the darling clothes on which she had set her heart for
Christmas Day, and the cut and fashion of which she had arranged in
many conversations with a small milliner, her friend.

Hardest of all, she had to break the matter to Georgy, who made a loud
outcry. Everybody had new clothes at Christmas. The others would
laugh at him. He would have new clothes. She had promised them to
him. The poor widow had only kisses to give him. She darned the old
suit in tears. She cast about among her little ornaments to see if she
could sell anything to procure the desired novelties. There was her
India shawl that Dobbin had sent her. She remembered in former days
going with her mother to a fine India shop on Ludgate Hill, where the
ladies had all sorts of dealings and bargains in these articles. Her
cheeks flushed and her eyes shone with pleasure as she thought of this
resource, and she kissed away George to school in the morning, smiling
brightly after him. The boy felt that there was good news in her look.

Packing up her shawl in a handkerchief (another of the gifts of the
good Major), she hid them under her cloak and walked flushed and eager
all the way to Ludgate Hill, tripping along by the park wall and
running over the crossings, so that many a man turned as she hurried by
him and looked after her rosy pretty face. She calculated how she
should spend the proceeds of her shawl--how, besides the clothes, she
would buy the books that he longed for, and pay his half-year's
schooling; and how she would buy a cloak for her father instead of that
old great-coat which he wore. She was not mistaken as to the value of
the Major's gift. It was a very fine and beautiful web, and the
merchant made a very good bargain when he gave her twenty guineas for
her shawl.

She ran on amazed and flurried with her riches to Darton's shop, in St.
Paul's Churchyard, and there purchased the Parents' Assistant and the
Sandford and Merton Georgy longed for, and got into the coach there
with her parcel, and went home exulting. And she pleased herself by
writing in the fly-leaf in her neatest little hand, "George Osborne, A
Christmas gift from his affectionate mother." The books are extant to
this day, with the fair delicate super