secret of her management was, to give them everything that they
didn't like, and nothing that they did--which was found to sweeten
their dispositions very much. She was such a bitter old lady, that
one was tempted to believe there had been some mistake in the
application of the Peruvian machinery, and that all her waters of
gladness and milk of human kindness had been pumped out dry,
instead of the mines.

The Castle of this ogress and child-queller was in a steep
bye-street at Brighton; where the soil was more than unusually
chalky, flinty, and sterile, and the houses were more than usually
brittle and thin; where the small front-gardens had the
unaccountable property of producing nothing but marigolds, whatever
was sown in them; and where snails were constantly discovered
holding on to the street doors, and other public places they were
not expected to ornament, with the tenacity of cupping-glasses. In
the winter-time the air couldn't be got out of the Castle, and in
the summer-time it couldn't be got in. There was such a continual
reverberation of wind in it, that it sounded like a great shell,
which the inhabitants were obliged to hold to their ears night and
day, whether they liked it or no. It was not, naturally, a
fresh-smelling house; and in the window of the front parlour, which
was never opened, Mrs. Pipchin kept a collection of plants in pots,
which imparted an earthy flavour of their own to the establishment.
However choice examples of their kind, too, these plants were of a
kind peculiarly adapted to the embowerment of Mrs. Pipchin. There
were half-a-dozen specimens of the cactus, writhing round bits of a
lath, like hairy serpents; another specimen shooting out broad
claws, like a green lobster; several creeping vegetables, possessed
of sticky and adhesive leaves; and one uncomfortable flower-pot
hanging to the ceiling, which appeared to have boiled over, and
tickling people underneath with its long green ends, reminded them
of spiders--in which Mrs. Pipchin's dwelling was uncommonly
prolific, though perhaps it challenged competition still more
proudly, in the season, in point of earwigs.

From Mrs. Pipchin's Paul Dombey passed to the forcing-house of Dr.
Blimber, Mrs. Blimber, Miss Blimber and Mr. Feeder, B.A., also at
Brighton, where h