mmunicate with Captain Dobbin at
the sale, and to know particulars of the catastrophe which had befallen
Rebecca's old acquaintances, the Captain had vanished; and such
information as they got was from a stray porter or broker at the
auction.

"Look at them with their hooked beaks," Becky said, getting into the
buggy, her picture under her arm, in great glee. "They're like
vultures after a battle."

"Don't know. Never was in action, my dear. Ask Martingale; he was in
Spain, aide-de-camp to General Blazes."

"He was a very kind old man, Mr. Sedley," Rebecca said; "I'm really
sorry he's gone wrong."

"O stockbrokers--bankrupts--used to it, you know," Rawdon replied,
cutting a fly off the horse's ear.

"I wish we could have afforded some of the plate, Rawdon," the wife
continued sentimentally. "Five-and-twenty guineas was monstrously dear
for that little piano. We chose it at Broadwood's for Amelia, when she
came from school. It only cost five-and-thirty then."

"What-d'-ye-call'em--'Osborne,' will cry off now, I suppose, since the
family is smashed. How cut up your pretty little friend will be; hey,
Becky?"

"I daresay she'll recover it," Becky said with a smile--and they drove
on and talked about something else.

CHAPTER XVIII

Who Played on the Piano Captain Dobbin Bought

Our surprised story now finds itself for a moment among very famous
events and personages, and hanging on to the skirts of history. When
the eagles of Napoleon Bonaparte, the Corsican upstart, were flying
from Provence, where they had perched after a brief sojourn in Elba,
and from steeple to steeple until they reached the towers of Notre
Dame, I wonder whether the Imperial birds had any eye for a little
corner of the parish of Bloomsbury, London, which you might have
thought so quiet, that even the whirring and flapping of those mighty
wings would pass unobserved there?

"Napoleon has landed at Cannes." Such news might create a panic at
Vienna, and cause Russia to drop his cards, and take Prussia into a
corner, and Talleyrand and Metternich to wag their heads together,
while Prince Hardenberg, and even the present Marquis of Londonderry,
were puzzled; but how was this intelligence to affect a young lady in
Russell Square, before whose door the watchman sang the hours when she
was asleep: who, if she strolled in the square, was guarded there by
the railings and the beadle: who, if she walked ever so short a
distance to buy