water!" she cried. Mr. Sedley burst out laughing (he was a coarse
man, from the Stock Exchange, where they love all sorts of practical
jokes). "They are real Indian, I assure you," said he. "Sambo,
give Miss Sharp some water."

The paternal laugh was echoed by Joseph, who thought the joke
capital. The ladies only smiled a little. They thought poor
Rebecca suffered too much. She would have liked to choke old
Sedley, but she swallowed her mortification as well as she had the
abominable curry before it, and as soon as she could speak, said,
with a comical, good-humoured air, "I ought to have remembered the
pepper which the Princess of Persia puts in the cream-tarts in the
Arabian Nights. Do you put cayenne into your cream-tarts in India,
sir?"

Old Sedley began to laugh, and thought Rebecca was a good-humoured
girl. Joseph simply said, "Cream-tarts, Miss? Our cream is very bad
in Bengal. We generally use goats' milk; and, 'gad, do you know,
I've got to prefer it!"

"You won't like EVERYTHING from India now, Miss Sharp," said the old
gentleman; but when the ladies had retired after dinner, the wily
old fellow said to his son, "Have a care, Joe; that girl is setting
her cap at you."

"Pooh! nonsense!" said Joe, highly flattered. "I recollect, sir,
there was a girl at Dumdum, a daughter of Cutler of the Artillery,
and afterwards married to Lance, the surgeon, who made a dead set at
me in the year '4--at me and Mulligatawney, whom I mentioned to you
before dinner--a devilish good fellow Mulligatawney--he's a