Returns to the Genteel World

Scape, ruined, honest, and broken-hearted at sixty-five years of age,
went out to Calcutta to wind up the affairs of the house. Walter Scape
was withdrawn from Eton and put into a merchant's house. Florence
Scape, Fanny Scape, and their mother faded away to Boulogne, and will
be heard of no more. To be brief, Jos stepped in and bought their
carpets and sideboards and admired himself in the mirrors which had
reflected their kind handsome faces. The Scape tradesmen, all
honourably paid, left their cards, and were eager to supply the new
household. The large men in white waistcoats who waited at Scape's
dinners, greengrocers, bank-porters, and milkmen in their private
capacity, left their addresses and ingratiated themselves with the
butler. Mr. Chummy, the chimney-purifier, who had swept the last three
families, tried to coax the butler and the boy under him, whose duty it
was to go out covered with buttons and with stripes down his trousers,
for the protection of Mrs. Amelia whenever she chose to walk abroad.

It was a modest establishment. The butler was Jos's valet also, and
never was more drunk than a butler in a small family should be who has
a proper regard for his master's wine. Emmy was supplied with a maid,
grown on Sir William Dobbin's suburban estate; a good girl, whose
kindness and humility disarmed Mrs. Osborne, who was at first terrified
at the idea of having a servant to wait upon herself, who did not in
the least know how to use one, and who always spoke to domestics with
the most reverential politeness. But this maid was very useful in the
family, in dexterously tending old Mr. Sedley, who kept almost entirely
to his own quarter of the house and never mixed in any of the gay
doings which took place there.