meeting with Amelia was present to
the constant man's mind as he walked towards her house. The arch and
the Achilles statue were up since he had last been in Piccadilly; a
hundred changes had occurred which his eye and mind vaguely noted. He
began to tremble as he walked up the lane from Brompton, that
well-remembered lane leading to the street where she lived. Was she
going to be married or not? If he were to meet her with the little
boy--Good God, what should he do? He saw a woman coming to him with a
child of five years old--was that she? He began to shake at the mere
possibility. When he came up to the row of houses, at last, where she
lived, and to the gate, he caught hold of it and paused. He might have
heard the thumping of his own heart. "May God Almighty bless her,
whatever has happened," he thought to himself. "Psha! she may be gone
from here," he said and went in through the gate.

The window of the parlour which she used to occupy was open, and there
were no inmates in the room. The Major thought he recognized the
piano, though, with the picture over it, as it used to be in former
days, and his perturbations were renewed. Mr. Clapp's brass plate was
still on the door, at the knocker of which Dobbin performed a summons.

A buxom-looking lass of sixteen, with bright eyes and purple cheeks,
came to answer the knock and looked hard at the Major as he leant back
against the little porch.

He was as pale as a ghost and could hardly falter out the words--"Does
Mrs. Osborne live here?"

She looked him hard in the face for a moment--and then turning white
too--said, "Lord bless me--it's Major Dobbin." She held out both her
hands shaking--"Don't you remember me?" she said. "I used to call you
Major Sugarplums." On which, and I believe it was for the first time
that he ever so conducted himself in his life, the Major took the girl
in his arms and kissed her. She began to laugh and cry hysterically,
and calling out "Ma, Pa!" with all her voice, brought up those worthy
people, who had already been surveying the Major from the casement of
the ornamental kitchen, and were astonished to find their daughter in
the little passage in the embrace of a great tall man in a blue
frock-coat and white duck trousers.

"I'm an old friend," he said--not without blushing though. "Don't you
remember me, Mrs. Clapp, and those good cakes you used to make for tea?
Don't you recollect me, Clapp? I'm George's godfather, and j