back parlour with an
awful crash. In answer to the cheerful inquiry from Mr. Pickwick,--"Does
Mr. Sawyer live here?" came the lugubrious and monotonously intoned
response, all on one note, of the aboriginal young person, the gal
Betsey (one of the minor characters in the original chapter, and yet,
as already remarked, a superlatively good impersonation in the
Reading)--"Yes; first-floor. It's the door straight afore you when you
get's to the top of the stairs"--with which the dirty slipshod in
black cotton stockings disappeared with the candle down the kitchen
stair-case, leaving the unfortunate arrivals to grope their way up as
they best could. Welcomed rather dejectedly by Bob on the first-floor
landing, where Mr. Pickwick put, not, as in the original work, his hat,
but, in the Reading, "his foot" in the tray of glasses, they were very
soon followed, one after another, by the remainder of the visitors.
Notably by a sentimental young gentleman with a nice sense of honour,
and, most notably of all (with a heavy footstep, very welcome indeed
whenever heard) by Jack Hopkins. Jack was at once the Hamlet and the
Yorick of the whole entertainment--all-essential to it--whose very look
(with his chin rather stiff in the stock), whose very words (short,
sharp, and decisive) had about them a drily and all-but indescribably
humorous effect. As spoken by the Novelist himself, Jack Hopkins's
every syllable told to perfection. His opening report immediately on
his arrival, of "rather a good accident" just brought into the casualty
ward--only, it was true, a man fallen out of a four-pair-of-stairs
window; but a very fair case, _very_ fair case indeed!--was of itself
a dexterous forefinger between the small ribs to begin with. Would the
patient recover? Well, no--with an air of supreme indifference--no, he
should rather say he wouldn't. But there must be a splendid operation,
though, on the morrow--magnificent sight if Slasher did it! Did he
consider Mr. Slasher a good operator? "Best alive: took a boy's leg
out of the socket last week--boy ate five apples and a gingerbread cake
exactly two minutes after it was all over;--boy said he wouldn't lie
there to be made game of; and he'd tell his mother if they didn't
begin." To hear Dickens say this in the short, sharp utterances of Jack
Hopkins, to see his manner in recounting it, stiff-necked, and with a
glance under the drooping eyelids in the direction of Mr. Pickwick's
listening face, w