&c., which the reader may fill at his pleasure
through a dozen close lines of small type.

And in her commerce with the great our dear friend showed the same
frankness which distinguished her transactions with the lowly in
station. On one occasion, when out at a very fine house, Rebecca was
(perhaps rather ostentatiously) holding a conversation in the French
language with a celebrated tenor singer of that nation, while the Lady
Grizzel Macbeth looked over her shoulder scowling at the pair.

"How very well you speak French," Lady Grizzel said, who herself spoke
the tongue in an Edinburgh accent most remarkable to hear.

"I ought to know it," Becky modestly said, casting down her eyes. "I
taught it in a school, and my mother was a Frenchwoman."

Lady Grizzel was won by her humility and was mollified towards the
little woman. She deplored the fatal levelling tendencies of the age,
which admitted persons of all classes into the society of their
superiors, but her ladyship owned that this one at least was well
behaved and never forgot her place in life. She was a very good woman:
good to the poor; stupid, blameless, unsuspicious. It is not her
ladyship's fault that she fancies herself better than you and me. The
skirts of her ancestors' garments have been kissed for centuries; it is
a thousand years, they say, since the tartans of the head of the family
were embraced by the defunct Duncan's lords and councillors, when the
great ancestor of the House became King of Scotland.

Lady Steyne, after the music scene, succumbed before Becky, and perhaps
was not disinclined to her. The younger ladies of the house of Gaunt
were also compelled into submission. Once or twice they set people at
her, but they failed. The brilliant Lady Stunnington tried a passage
of arms with her, but was routed with great slaughter by the intrepid
little Becky. When attacked sometimes, Becky had a knack of adopting a
demure ingenue air, under which she was most dangerous. She said the
wickedest things with the most simple unaffected air when in this mood,
and would take care artlessly to apologize for her blunders, so that
all the world should know that she had made them.

Mr. Wagg, the celebrated wit, and a led captain and trencher-man of my
Lord Steyne, was caused by the ladies to charge her; and the worthy
fellow, leering at his patronesses and giving them a wink, as much as
to say, "Now look out for sport," one evening began an assault