r for good
or bad, and, with Amelia to help him, he was as ready to drink as many
cups of tea as Doctor Johnson.

Amelia seeing this propensity, laughingly encouraged it and looked
exceedingly roguish as she administered to him cup after cup. It is
true she did not know that the Major had had no dinner and that the
cloth was laid for him at the Slaughters', and a plate laid thereon to
mark that the table was retained, in that very box in which the Major
and George had sat many a time carousing, when she was a child just
come home from Miss Pinkerton's school.

The first thing Mrs. Osborne showed the Major was Georgy's miniature,
for which she ran upstairs on her arrival at home. It was not half
handsome enough of course for the boy, but wasn't it noble of him to
think of bringing it to his mother? Whilst her papa was awake she did
not talk much about Georgy. To hear about Mr. Osborne and Russell
Square was not agreeable to the old man, who very likely was
unconscious that he had been living for some months past mainly on the
bounty of his richer rival, and lost his temper if allusion was made to
the other.

Dobbin told him all, and a little more perhaps than all, that had
happened on board the Ramchunder, and exaggerated Jos's benevolent
dispositions towards his father and resolution to make him comfortable
in his old days. The truth is that during the voyage the Major had
impressed this duty most strongly upon his fellow-passenger and
extorted promises from him that he would take charge of his sister and
her child. He soothed Jos's irritation with regard to the bills which
the old gentleman had drawn upon him, gave a laughing account of his
own sufferings on the same score and of the famous consignment of wine
with which the old man had favoured him, and brought Mr. Jos, who was
by no means an ill-natured person when well-pleased and moderately
flattered, to a very good state of feeling regarding his relatives in
Europe.

And in fine I am ashamed to say that the Major stretched the truth so
far as to tell old Mr. Sedley that it was mainly a desire to see his
parent which brought Jos once more to Europe.

At his accustomed hour Mr. Sedley began to doze in his chair, and then
it was Amelia's opportunity to commence her conversation, which she did
with great eagerness--it related exclusively to Georgy. She did not
talk at all about her own sufferings at breaking from him, for indeed,
this worthy woman, though