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Though he was scarcely eleven years of age, Master George wore straps, and the most beautiful little boots, like a man. He had gilt spurs and a gold-headed whip and a fine pin in his neckerchief, and the neatest little kid gloves which could be bought. His mother had given him a couple of neckcloths, and carefully made some little shirts for him; but when her Samuel came to see the widow, they were replaced by much finer linen. He had little jewelled buttons in the lawn shirt fronts. Her humble presents had been put aside–I believe Miss Osborne had given them to the coachman’s boy.

Amelia tried to think she was pleased at the change. Indeed, she was happy and charmed to see the boy looking so beautiful. She had a little black profile of him done for a shilling, which was hung over her bed. One day the boy came galloping down on his accustomed visit to her, and with great eagerness pulled a red morocco case out of his coat pocket.

“I bought it with my own money, mamma,” he said. “I thought you’d like it.”

Amelia opened the case, and giving a little cry of delighted affection, seized him and embraced him a hundred times. It was a miniature of himself, very prettily done by an artist who had just executed his portrait for his grandfather. Georgie, who had plenty of money, bethought him to ask the painter how much a copy of the portrait would cost, saying that he would pay for it out of his own money, and that he wanted to give it to his mother. The pleased painter executed it for a small price, and old Osborne himself, when he heard of the incident, growled out his satisfaction, and gave the boy twice as many sovereigns as he paid for the miniature.

At his new home Master George ruled like a lord, and charmed his old grandfather by his ways. “Look at him,” the old man would say, nudging his neighbour with a delighted purple face, “did you ever see such a chap? Lord, Lord! he’ll be ordering a dressing-case next, and razors to shave with; I’m blessed if he won’t.”

The antics of the lad did not, however, delight Mr. Osborne’s friends so much as they pleased the old gentleman. It gave Mr. Justice Coffin no pleasure to hear Georgie cut into the conversation and spoil his stories. Mr. Sergeant Toffy’s lady felt no particular gratitude when he tilted a glass of port wine over her yellow satin, and laughed at the disaster; nor was she better pleased, although old Osborne was highly delighted, when Georgie “whopped” her third boy, a young gentleman a year older than Georgie, and by chance home for the holidays. George’s grandfather gave the boy a couple of sovereigns for that feat, and promised to reward him further for every boy above his own size and age whom he whopped in a similar manner. It is difficult to say what good the old man saw in these combats; he had a vague notion that quarrelling made boys hardy, and that tyranny was a useful accomplishment for them to learn. Flushed with praise and victory over Master Toffy, George wished naturally to pursue his conquests further, and one day as he was strutting about in new clothes, near St. Paneras, and a young baker’s boy made sarcastic comments upon his appearance, the youthful patrician pulled off his dandy jacket with great spirit, and giving it in charge to the friend who accompanied him (Master Todd, of Great Coram Street, Russell Square, son of the junior partner of the house of Osborne & Co.), tried to whop the little baker. But the chances of war were unfavourable this time, and the little baker whopped Georgie, who came home with a rueful black eye and all his fine shirt frill dabbled with the claret drawn from his own little nose. He told his grandfather that he had been in combat with a giant; and frightened his poor mother at Brampton with long, and by no means authentic, accounts of the battle.