a single word with Mr. Crisp, except under her own eyes on the two
occasions when she had met him at tea.

By the side of many tall and bouncing young ladies in the
establishment, Rebecca Sharp looked like a child. But she had the
dismal precocity of poverty. Many a dun had she talked to, and
turned away from her father's door; many a tradesman had she coaxed
and wheedled into good-humour, and into the granting of one meal
more. She sate commonly with her father, who was very proud of her
wit, and heard the talk of many of his wild companions--often but
ill-suited for a girl to hear. But she never had been a girl, she
said; she had been a woman since she was eight years old. Oh, why
did Miss Pinkerton let such a dangerous bird into her cage?

The fact is, the old lady believed Rebecca to be the meekest
creature in the world, so admirably, on the occasions when her
father brought her to Chiswick, used Rebecca to perform the part of
the ingenue; and only a year before the arrangement by which Rebecca
had been admitted into her house, and when Rebecca was sixteen years
old, Miss Pinkerton majestically, and with a little speech, made her
a present of a doll--which was, by the way, the confiscated property
of Miss Swindle, discovered surreptitiously nursing it in school-
hours. How the father and daughter laughed as they trudged home
together after the evening party (it was on the occasion of the
speeches, when all the professors were invited) and how Miss
Pinkerton would have raged had she seen the caricature of herself
which the little mimic, Rebecca, managed to make out of her doll.
Becky used to go through dialogues with it; it formed the delight of
Newman Street, Gerrard Street, and the Artists' quarter: and the
young painters, when they came to take their gin-and-water with