Page 795 - vanity-fair

whatever they are.
Becky has often spoken in subsequent years of this sea-
son of her life, when she moved among the very greatest
circles of the London fashion. Her success excited, elated,
and then bored her. At first no occupation was more pleas-
ant than to invent and procure (the latter a work of no small
trouble and ingenuity, by the way, in a person of Mrs. Raw-
don Crawley’s very narrow means)—to procure, we say, the
prettiest new dresses and ornaments; to drive to fine dinner
parties, where she was welcomed by great people; and from
the fine dinner parties to fine assemblies, whither the same
people came with whom she had been dining, whom she
had met the night before, and would see on the morrow—
the young men faultlessly appointed, handsomely cravatted,
with the neatest glossy boots and white gloves—the elders
portly, brass-buttoned, noble-looking, polite, and prosy—
the young ladies blonde, timid, and in pink—the mothers
grand, beautiful, sumptuous, solemn, and in diamonds.
They talked in English, not in bad French, as they do in the
novels. They talked about each others’ houses, and charac-
ters, and families—just as the Joneses do about the Smiths.
Becky’s former acquaintances hated and envied her; the
poor woman herself was yawning in spirit. ‘I wish I were
out of it,’ she said to herself. ‘I would rather be a parson’s
wife and teach a Sunday school than this; or a sergeant’s
lady and ride in the regimental waggon; or, oh, how much
gayer it would be to wear spangles and trousers and dance
before a booth at a fair.’
‘You would do it very well,’ said Lord Steyne, laughing.

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