revenge by taking her
child from her. And thus Becky said she was a wanderer, poor,
unprotected, friendless, and wretched.

Emmy received this story, which was told at some length, as those
persons who are acquainted with her character may imagine that she
would. She quivered with indignation at the account of the conduct of
the miserable Rawdon and the unprincipled Steyne. Her eyes made notes
of admiration for every one of the sentences in which Becky described
the persecutions of her aristocratic relatives and the falling away of
her husband. (Becky did not abuse him. She spoke rather in sorrow than
in anger. She had loved him only too fondly: and was he not the father
of her boy?) And as for the separation scene from the child, while
Becky was reciting it, Emmy retired altogether behind her
pocket-handkerchief, so that the consummate little tragedian must have
been charmed to see the effect which her performance produced on her
audience.

Whilst the ladies were carrying on their conversation, Amelia's
constant escort, the Major (who, of course, did not wish to interrupt
their conference, and found himself rather tired of creaking about the
narrow stair passage of which the roof brushed the nap from his hat)
descended to the ground-floor of the house and into the great room
common to all the frequenters of the Elephant, out of which the stair
led. This apartment is always in a fume of smoke and liberally
sprinkled with beer. On a dirty table stand scores of corresponding
brass candlesticks with tallow candles for the lodgers, whose keys hang
up in rows over the candles. Emmy had passed blushing through the room
anon, where all sorts of people were collected; Tyrolese glove-sellers
and Danubian linen-merchants, with their packs; students recruiting
themselves with butterbrods and meat; idlers, playing cards or dominoes
on the sloppy, beery tables; tumblers refreshing during the cessation
of their performances--in a word, all the fumum and strepitus of a
German inn in fair time. The waiter brought the Major a mug of beer,
as a matter of course, and he took out a cigar and amused himself with
that pernicious vegetable and a newspaper until his charge should come
down to claim him.

Max and Fritz came presently downstairs, their caps on one side, their
spurs jingling, their pipes splendid with coats of arms and full-blown
tassels, and they hung up the key of No. 90 on the board and called for
the ration of bu