be reported to Miss Crawley before many hours
were over.

This interview ended, it became full time for Rebecca to return to her
inn, where all the party of the previous day were assembled at a
farewell breakfast. Rebecca took such a tender leave of Amelia as
became two women who loved each other as sisters; and having used her
handkerchief plentifully, and hung on her friend's neck as if they were
parting for ever, and waved the handkerchief (which was quite dry, by
the way) out of window, as the carriage drove off, she came back to the
breakfast table, and ate some prawns with a good deal of appetite,
considering her emotion; and while she was munching these delicacies,
explained to Rawdon what had occurred in her morning walk between
herself and Briggs. Her hopes were very high: she made her husband
share them. She generally succeeded in making her husband share all
her opinions, whether melancholy or cheerful.

"You will now, if you please, my dear, sit down at the writing-table
and pen me a pretty little letter to Miss Crawley, in which you'll say
that you are a good boy, and that sort of thing." So Rawdon sate down,
and wrote off, "Brighton, Thursday," and "My dear Aunt," with great
rapidity: but there the gallant officer's imagination failed him. He
mumbled the end of his pen, and looked up in his wife's face. She
could not help laughing at his rueful countenance, and marching up and
down the room with her hands behind her, the little woman began to
dictate a letter, which he took down.

"Before quitting the country and commencing a campaign, which very
possibly may be fatal."

"What?" said Rawdon, rather surprised, but took the humour of the
phrase, and presently wrote it down with a grin.

"Which very possibly may be fatal, I have come hither--"

"Why not say come here, Becky? Come here's grammar," the dragoon
interposed.

"I have come hither," Rebecca insisted, with a stamp of her foot, "to
say farewell to my dearest and earliest friend. I beseech you before I
go, not perhaps to return, once more to let me press the hand from
which I have received nothing but kindnesses all my life."

"Kindnesses all my life," echoed Rawdon, scratching down the words, and
quite amazed at his own facility of composition.

"I ask nothing from you but that we should part not in anger. I have
the pride of my family on some points, though not on all. I married a
painter's daughter, and am not ashamed of the u