se precincts, Georgy broke out on
them, with his telescope up to his eye, and a loud laugh of welcome; he
danced round the couple and performed many facetious antics as he led
them up to the house. Jos wasn't up yet; Becky not visible (though she
looked at them through the blinds). Georgy ran off to see about
breakfast. Emmy, whose shawl and bonnet were off in the passage in the
hands of Mrs. Payne, now went to undo the clasp of William's cloak,
and--we will, if you please, go with George, and look after breakfast
for the Colonel. The vessel is in port. He has got the prize he has
been trying for all his life. The bird has come in at last. There it
is with its head on his shoulder, billing and cooing close up to his
heart, with soft outstretched fluttering wings. This is what he has
asked for every day and hour for eighteen years. This is what he pined
after. Here it is--the summit, the end--the last page of the third
volume. Good-bye, Colonel--God bless you, honest William!--Farewell,
dear Amelia--Grow green again, tender little parasite, round the rugged
old oak to which you cling!

Perhaps it was compunction towards the kind and simple creature, who
had been the first in life to defend her, perhaps it was a dislike to
all such sentimental scenes--but Rebecca, satisfied with her part in
the transaction, never presented herself before Colonel Dobbin and the
lady whom he married. "Particular business," she said, took her to
Bruges, whither she went, and only Georgy and his uncle were present at
the marriage ceremony. When it was over, and Georgy had rejoined his
parents, Mrs. Becky returned (just for a few days) to comfort the
solitary bachelor, Joseph Sedley. He preferred a continental life, he
said, and declined to join in housekeeping with his sister and her
husband.

Emmy was very glad in her heart to think that she had written to her
husband before she read or knew of that letter of George's. "I knew it
all along," William said; "but could I use that weapon against the poor
fellow's memory? It was that which made me suffer so when you--"

"Never speak of that day again," Emmy cried out, so contrite and humble
that William turned off the conversation by his account of Glorvina and
dear old Peggy O'Dowd, with whom he was sitting when the letter of
recall reached him. "If you hadn't sent for me," he added with a
laugh, "who knows what Glorvina's name might be now?"

At present it is Glorvina Posky (now