's--but then in earnest, on their
approaching the house of mourning, her voice, in the Reading, became
recognisable. A voice snuffy, husky, unctuous, the voice of a fat old
woman, one so fat that she is described in the book as having had a
difficulty in looking over herself--a voice, as we read elsewhere in the
novel, having borne upon the breeze about it a peculiar fragrance,
"as if a passing fairy had hiccoughed, and had previously been to a
wine-vaults."

"'And so the gentleman's dead, sir! Ah! the more's the pity!'--(_She
didn't even know his name_.)--'But it's as certain as being born, except
that we can't make our calc'lations as exact. Ah, dear!'"

Simply to hear those words uttered by the Reader--especially the
interjected words above italicised--was to have a relish of anticipation
at once for all that followed. Mrs. Gamp's pathetic allusion,
immediately afterwards, to her recollection of the time "when Gamp
was summonsed to his long home," and when she "see him a-laying in the
hospital with a penny-piece on each eye, and his wooden leg under his
left arm," not only confirmed the delighted impression of the hearers
as to their having her there before them in her identity, but was the
signal for the roars of laughter that, rising and falling in volume all
through the Reading, terminated only some time after its completion.

Immediately after came the first introduction by her of the name of Mrs.
Harris. "At this point," observed the narrator, "she was fain to stop
for breath. And," he went on directly to remark, with a combination of
candour and seriousness that were in themselves irresistibly ludicrous,
"advantage may be taken of the circumstance to state that a fearful
mystery surrounded this lady of the name of Harris, whom no one in the
circle of Mrs. Gamp's acquaintance had ever seen; neither did any human
being know her place of residence--the prevalent opinion being that she
was a phantom of Mrs. Gamp's brain, created for the purpose of holding
complimentary dialogues with her on all manner of subjects." Eminently
seasonable, as a preliminary flourish in this way, is the tribute paid
by her to Mrs. Gamp's abstemiousness, on the understanding that is,
that the latter's one golden rule of life, is complied with--"'Leave the
bottle on the chimbley-piece, and don't ast me to take none, but let me
put my lips to it when I am so dispoged, and then, Mrs. Harris, I says,
I will do what I am engaged to, accordi