nd welcome the young mistress of the house.

'Wishing you appiness and joy with all my art,' said Mrs Gamp, dropping
a curtsey as they entered the hall; 'and you, too, sir. Your lady looks
a little tired with the journey, Mr Chuzzlewit, a pretty dear!'

'She has bothered enough about it,' grumbled Mr Jonas. 'Now, show a
light, will you?'

'This way, ma'am, if you please,' said Mrs Gamp, going upstairs before
them. 'Things has been made as comfortable as they could be, but there's
many things you'll have to alter your own self when you gets time
to look about you! Ah! sweet thing! But you don't,' added Mrs Gamp,
internally, 'you don't look much like a merry one, I must say!'

It was true; she did not. The death that had gone before the bridal
seemed to have left its shade upon the house. The air was heavy and
oppressive; the rooms were dark; a deep gloom filled up every chink and
corner. Upon the hearthstone, like a creature of ill omen, sat the aged
clerk, with his eyes fixed on some withered branches in the stove. He
rose and looked at her.

'So there you are, Mr Chuff,' said Jonas carelessly, as he dusted his
boots; 'still in the land of the living, eh?'

'Still in the land of the living, sir,' retorted Mrs Gamp. 'And Mr
Chuffey may thank you for it, as many and many a time I've told him.'

Mr Jonas was not in the best of humours, for he merely said, as he
looked round, 'We don't want you any more, you know, Mrs Gamp.'

'I'm a-going immediate, sir,' returned the nurse; 'unless there's
nothink I can do for you, ma'am. Ain't there,' said Mrs Gamp, with
a look of great sweetness, and rummaging all the time in her pocket;
'ain't there nothink I can do for you, my little bird?'

'No,' said Merry, almost crying. 'You had better go away, please!'

With a leer of mingled sweetness and slyness; with one eye on the
future, one on the bride, and an arch expression in her face, partly
spiritual, partly spirituous, and wholly professional and peculiar
to her art; Mrs Gamp rummaged in her pocket again, and took from it a
printed card, whereon was an inscription copied from her signboard.

'Would you be so good, my darling dovey of a dear young married lady,'
Mrs Gamp observed, in a low voice, 'as put that somewheres where you can
keep it in your mind? I'm well beknown to many ladies, and it's my card.
Gamp is my name, and Gamp my nater. Livin' quite handy, I will make
so bold as call in now and then, and make inquiry how