he old woman gruffly; 'he's out o' town now.'

'That's unfortunate,' said Mr. Pickwick; 'where's his clerk? Do you
know?'

'Yes, I know where he is, but he won't thank me for telling you,'
replied the laundress.

'I have very particular business with him,' said Mr. Pickwick. 'Won't it
do in the morning?' said the woman.

'Not so well,' replied Mr. Pickwick.

'Well,' said the old woman, 'if it was anything very particular, I was
to say where he was, so I suppose there's no harm in telling. If you
just go to the Magpie and Stump, and ask at the bar for Mr. Lowten,
they'll show you in to him, and he's Mr. Perker's clerk.'

With this direction, and having been furthermore informed that the
hostelry in question was situated in a court, happy in the double
advantage of being in the vicinity of Clare Market, and closely
approximating to the back of New Inn, Mr. Pickwick and Sam descended the
rickety staircase in safety, and issued forth in quest of the Magpie and
Stump.

This favoured tavern, sacred to the evening orgies of Mr. Lowten and
his companions, was what ordinary people would designate a public-house.
That the landlord was a man of money-making turn was sufficiently
testified by the fact of a small bulkhead beneath the tap-room window,
in size and shape not unlike a sedan-chair, being underlet to a mender
of shoes: and that he was a being of a philanthropic mind was evident
from the protection he afforded to a pieman, who vended his delicacies
without fear of interruption, on the very door-step. In the lower
windows, which were decorated with curtains of a saffron hue, dangled
two or three printed cards, bearing reference to Devonshire cider and
Dantzic spruce, while a large blackboard, announcing in white letters to
an enlightened public, that there were 500,000 barrels of double stout
in the cellars of the establishment, left the mind in a state of not
unpleasing doubt and uncertainty as to the precise direction in the
bowels of the earth, in which this mighty cavern might be supposed
to extend. When we add that the weather-beaten signboard bore the
half-obliterated semblance of a magpie intently eyeing a crooked streak
of brown paint, which the neighbours had been taught from infancy to
consider as the 'stump,' we have said all that need be said of the
exterior of the edifice.

On Mr. Pickwick's presenting himself at the bar, an elderly female
emerged from behind the screen therein, and presented herself