hese latter from the inexhaustible fund of her own personal and
mostly domestic experiences. "Although the blessing of a daughter," she
observed, in one of her confiding retrospects, "was deniged me, which,
if we had had one, Gamp would certainly have drunk its little shoes
right off its feet, as with one precious boy he did, and arterwards sent
the child a errand to sell his wooden leg for any liquor it would fetch
as matches in the rough; which was truly done beyond his years, for
ev'ry individgie penny that child lost at tossing for kidney pies, and
come home arterwards quite bold, to break the news, and offering to
drown'd himself if such would be a satisfaction to his parents." At
another moment, when descanting upon all her children collectively
in one of her faithfully reported addresses to her familiar: "'My own
family,' I says, 'has fallen out of three-pair backs, and had damp
doorsteps settled on their lungs, and one was turned up smilin' in
a bedstead unbeknown. And as to husbands, there's a wooden leg gone
likeways home to its account, which in its constancy of walking into
public-'ouses, and never coming out again till fetched by force, was
quite as weak as flesh, if not weaker."

Somehow, when those who were assisting at this Reading, as the phrase
is, had related to them the manner in which Mrs. Gamp entered on her
official duties in the sick chamber, they appeared to be assisting also
at her toilette: as, for example, when "she put on a yellow nightcap
of prodigious size, in shape resembling a cabbage, having previously
divested herself of a row of bald old curls, which could scarcely
be called false they were so innocent of anything approaching to
deception." One missed sadly at this point in the later version of this
Reading what was included in her first conversation on the doormat as
to her requirements for supper enumerated after this fashion, "in tones
expressive of faintness," to the housemaid: "I think, young woman, as I
could peck a little bit of pickled salmon, with a little sprig of fennel
and a sprinkling o' white pepper. I takes new bread, my dear, with jest
a little pat o' fredge butter and a mossel o' cheese. With respect to
ale, if they draws the Brighton Tipper at any 'ouse nigh here, I
takes that ale at night, my love; not as I cares for it myself, but on
accounts of its being considered wakeful by the doctors; and whatever
you do, young woman, don't bring me more than a shilling's worth