
        bay mare. I wish my Papa would let me have a Pony, and I am
                                                               Your dutiful Son,
                                                          GEORGE SEDLEY OSBORNE.
        P.S. - Give my love to little Emmy. I am cutting her out a Coach in
        cardboard. Please not a seed- cake, but a plum-cake.«
 
In consequence of Dobbin's victory, his character rose prodigiously in the
estimation of all his schoolfellows, and the name of Figs, which had been a
byword of reproach, became as respectable and popular a nickname as any other in
use in the school. »After all, it's not his fault that his father's a grocer,«
George Osborne said, who, though a little chap, had a very high popularity among
the Swishtail youth; and his opinion was received with great applause. It was
voted low to sneer at Dobbin about this accident of birth. Old Figs grew to be a
name of kindness and endearment; and the sneak of an usher jeered at him no
longer.
    And Dobbin's spirit rose with his altered circumstances. He made wonderful
advances in scholastic learning. The superb Cuff himself, at whose condescension
Dobbin could only blush and wonder, helped him on with his Latin verses; coached
him in play-hours; carried him triumphantly out of the little-boy class into the
middle-sized form; and even there got a fair place for him. It was discovered,
that although dull at classical learning, at mathematics he was uncommonly
quick. To the contentment of all he passed third in algebra, and got a French
prize-book at the public Midsummer examination. You should have seen his
mother's face when Télémaque (that delicious romance) was presented to him by
the Doctor in the face of the whole school and the parents and company, with an
inscription to Gulielmo Dobbin. All the boys clapped hands in token of applause
and sympathy. His blushes, his stumbles, his awkwardness, and the number of feet
which he crushed as he went back to his place, who shall describe or calculate?
Old Dobbin, his father, who now respected him for the first time, gave him two
guineas publicly, most of which he spent in a general tuck-out for the school:
and he came back in a tail-coat after the holidays.
    Dobbin was much too modest a young fellow to suppose that this happy change
in all his circumstances arose from his own generous and manly disposition: he
chose, from some perverseness, to attribute his good fortune to the sole agency
and benevolence of little George Osborne
