ly recalled to recollection. Immediately upon Mrs. Gamp's awaking
at the close of her night watch, we were told that Mrs. Prig relieved
punctually, but that she relieved in an ill temper. "The best among us
have their failings, and it must be conceded of Mrs. Prig," observed the
Reader with a hardly endurable gravity of explanation, "that if there
were a blemish in the goodness of her disposition, it was a habit she
had of not bestowing all its sharp and acid properties upon her patients
(as a thoroughly amiable woman would have done), but of keeping
a considerable remainder for the service of her friends." Looking
offensively at Mrs. Gamp, and winking her eye, as Mrs. Prig does
immediately upon her entrance, it is felt by the former to be necessary
that Betsey should at once be made sensible of her exact station in
society; wherefore Mrs. Gamp prefaced a remonstrance with--

"Mrs. Harris, Betsey------"

"Bother Mrs. Harris!"

Then it was that the Reader added:--

"Mrs. Gamp looked at Betsey with amazement, incredulity, and
indignation. Mrs. Prig, winking her eye tighter, folded her arms and
uttered these tremendous words:--

"'I don't believe there's no sich a person!'

"With these expressions, she snapped her fingers, once, twice, thrice,
each time nearer to Mrs. Gamp, and then turned away as one who felt
that there was now a gulf between them that nothing could ever bridge
across."

The most comic of all the Readings closed thus abruptly with a roar.

BOOTS AT THE HOLLY TREE INN.

Even the immortal Boots at the White Hart, Borough, who was first
revealed to us in a coarse striped waistcoat with black calico sleeves
and blue glass buttons, drab breeches and gaiters, and who answered to
the name of Sam, would not, we are certain, have disdained to have been
put in friendly relations with Cobbs, as one in every way worthy of
his companionship. The Boots at the Holly Tree Inn, though more lightly
sketched, was quite as much of an original creation in his way as that
other Christmas friend of ours, the warm-hearted and loquacious Cheap
Jack, Doctor Marigold. And each of those worthies, it should be added,
had really about him an equal claim to be regarded, as an original
creation, as written, or as impersonated by the Author. As a character
orally portrayed, Cobbs was fully on a par with Doctor Marigold.
Directly the Reader opened his lips, whether as the Boots or as the
Cheap Jack, the Novelist seemed to