"Well?" said he.
"The poor dear creature, how she has suffered!" Emmy said.
"God bless my soul, yes," Jos said, wagging his head, so that his cheeks quivered like jellies.
"She may have Payne's room, who can go upstairs," Emmy continued. Payne was a staid English maid and personal attendant upon Mrs. Osborne, to whom the courier, as in duty bound, paid court, and whom Georgy used to "lark" dreadfully with accounts of German robbers and ghosts. She passed her time chiefly in grumbling, in ordering about her mistress, and in stating her intention to return the next morning to her native village of Clapham. "She may have Payne's room," Emmy said.
"Why, you don't mean to say you are going to have that woman into the house?" bounced out the Major, jumping up.
"Of course we are," said Amelia in the most innocent way in the world. "Don't be angry and break the furniture, Major Dobbin. Of course we are going to have her here."
"Of course, my dear," Jos said.
"The poor creature, after all her sufferings," Emmy continued; "her horrid banker broken and run away; her husband—wicked wretch—having deserted her and taken her child away from her" (here she doubled her two little fists and held them in a most menacing attitude before her, so that the Major was charmed to see such a dauntless virago) "the poor dear thing! quite alone and absolutely forced to give lessons in singing to get her bread—and not have her here!"
"Take lessons, my dear Mrs. George," cried the Major, "but don't have her in the house. I implore you don't."
"Pooh," said Jos.