She looked as happy as a rose-tree
in sunshine.
"I say, Dobbin," says George, "just look to the shawls and things,
there's a good fellow." And so while he paired off with Miss Sedley,
and Jos squeezed through the gate into the gardens with Rebecca at
his side, honest Dobbin contented himself by giving an arm to the
shawls, and by paying at the door for the whole party.
He walked very modestly behind them. He was not willing to spoil
sport. About Rebecca and Jos he did not care a fig. But he thought
Amelia worthy even of the brilliant George Osborne, and as he saw
that good-looking couple threading the walks to the girl's delight
and wonder, he watched her artless happiness with a sort of fatherly
pleasure. Perhaps he felt that he would have liked to have
something on his own arm besides a shawl (the people laughed at
seeing the gawky young officer carrying this female burthen); but
William Dobbin was very little addicted to selfish calculation at
all; and so long as his friend was enjoying himself, how should he
be discontented? And the truth is, that of all the delights of the
Gardens; of the hundred thousand extra lamps, which were always
lighted; the fiddlers in cocked hats, who played ravishing melodies
under the gilded cockle-shell in the midst of the gardens; the
singers, both of comic and sentimental ballads, who charmed the ears
there; the country dances, formed by bouncing cockneys and
cockneyesses, and executed amidst jumping, thumping and laughter;
the signal which announced that Madame Saqui was about to mount
skyward on a slack-rope ascending to the stars; the hermit that
always sat in the illuminated hermitage; the dark walks, so
favourable to the interviews of young lovers; the pots of stout
handed about by the people in the shabby old liveries; and the
twinkling boxes, in which the happy feasters made-believe to eat
slices of almost invisible ham--of all these things, and of the
gentle Simpson, that kind smiling idiot, who, I daresay, presided
even then over the place--Captain William Dobbin did not take the
slightest notice.
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