aps her
husband, she said kindly.

'Which shows,' said Mrs Gamp, casting up her eyes, 'what a little way
you've travelled into this wale of life, my dear young creetur! As a
good friend of mine has frequent made remark to me, which her name,
my love, is Harris, Mrs Harris through the square and up the steps
a-turnin' round by the tobacker shop, "Oh Sairey, Sairey, little do we
know wot lays afore us!" "Mrs Harris, ma'am," I says, "not much, it's
true, but more than you suppoge. Our calcilations, ma'am," I says,
"respectin' wot the number of a family will be, comes most times within
one, and oftener than you would suppoge, exact." "Sairey," says Mrs
Harris, in a awful way, "Tell me wot is my indiwidgle number." "No, Mrs
Harris," I says to her, "ex-cuge me, if you please. My own," 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.
Therefore, ma'am," I says, "seek not to proticipate, but take 'em as
they come and as they go." Mine,' says Mrs Gamp, 'mine is all gone, my
dear young chick. And as to husbands, there's a wooden leg gone likeways
home to its account, which in its constancy of walkin' into wine vaults,
and never comin' out again 'till fetched by force, was quite as weak as
flesh, if not weaker.'

When she had delivered this oration, Mrs Gamp leaned her chin upon the
cool iron again; and looking intently at the Antwerp packet, shook her
head and groaned.

'I wouldn't,' said Mrs Gamp, 'I wouldn't be a man and have such a think
upon my mind!--but nobody as owned the name of man, could do it!'

Tom and his sister glanced at each other; and Ruth, after a moment's
hesitation, asked Mrs Gamp what troubled her so much.

'My dear,' returned that lady, dropping her voice, 'you are single,
ain't you?'

Ruth laughed blushed, and said 'Yes.'

'Worse luck,' proceeded Mrs Gamp, 'for all parties! But others is
married, and in the marriage state; and there is a dear young creetur
a-comin' down this mornin' to that very package, which is no more fit to
trust herself to sea, than nothin' is!'

She paused here to look over the deck of the packet in question, and on
the steps leading down to it, and on the gangways. Seeming to have
thus assured herself that the object of her commiseration had not yet
arrived, she raised her eyes gradually up to the top of the escape-pipe,
and indignantly apostrophised the vessel:

'Oh, drat you