"Yes, and after I had cut the tassels of his boots too. Boys never
forget those tips at school, nor the givers."
"I delight in Hessian boots," said Rebecca. Jos Sedley, who admired
his own legs prodigiously, and always wore this ornamental
chaussure, was extremely pleased at this remark, though he drew his
legs under his chair as it was made.
"Miss Sharp!" said George Osborne, "you who are so clever an artist,
you must make a grand historical picture of the scene of the boots.
Sedley shall be represented in buckskins, and holding one of the
injured boots in one hand; by the other he shall have hold of my
shirt-frill. Amelia shall be kneeling near him, with her little
hands up; and the picture shall have a grand allegorical title, as
the frontispieces have in the Medulla and the spelling-book."
"I shan't have time to do it here," said Rebecca. 'I'll do it when
--when I'm gone." And she dropped her voice, and looked so sad and
piteous, that everybody felt how cruel her lot was, and how sorry
they would be to part with her.
"O that you could stay longer, dear Rebecca," said Amelia.
"Why?" answered the other, still more sadly. "That I may be only
the more unhap--unwilling to lose you?" And she turned away her
head. Amelia began to give way to that natural infirmity of tears
which, we have said, was one of the defects of this silly little
thing.
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