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hold at her Majesty’s drawing-room, the ambassadors’ and
high dignitaries’ carriages whisk off from a private door,
while Captain Jones’s ladies are waiting for their fly: as you
see in the Secretary of the Treasury’s antechamber, a half-
dozen of petitioners waiting patiently for their audience,
and called out one by one, when suddenly an Irish member
or some eminent personage enters the apartment, and in-
stantly walks into Mr. UnderSecretary over the heads of all
the people present: so in the conduct of a tale, the romancer
is obliged to exercise this most partial sort of justice. Al-
though all the little incidents must be heard, yet they must
be put off when the great events make their appearance; and
surely such a circumstance as that which brought Dobbin
to Brighton, viz., the ordering out of the Guards and the
line to Belgium, and the mustering of the allied armies in
that country under the command of his Grace the Duke of
Wellington—such a dignified circumstance as that, I say,
was entitled to the pas over all minor occurrences whereof
this history is composed mainly, and hence a little trifling
disarrangement and disorder was excusable and becoming.
We have only now advanced in time so far beyond Chap-
ter XXII as to have got our various characters up into their
dressing-rooms before the dinner, which took place as usual
on the day of Dobbin’s arrival.
George was too humane or too much occupied with the
tie of his neckcloth to convey at once all the news to Ame-
lia which his comrade had brought with him from London.
He came into her room, however, holding the attorney’s let-
ter in his hand, and with so solemn and important an air

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