ght chosen young ladies, to
be quite startling from their extreme correctness. Mr Pitt in a
nightcap and bedgown, and without his boots, represented the poet
Cowper with perfect exactness; and Mary Queen of Scots in a dark wig,
white shirt-collar, and male attire, was such a complete image of Lord
Byron that the young ladies quite screamed when they saw it. Miss
Monflathers, however, rebuked this enthusiasm, and took occasion to
reprove Mrs Jarley for not keeping her collection more select:
observing that His Lordship had held certain opinions quite
incompatible with wax-work honours, and adding something about a Dean
and Chapter, which Mrs Jarley did not understand.

Although her duties were sufficiently laborious, Nell found in the lady
of the caravan a very kind and considerate person, who had not only a
peculiar relish for being comfortable herself, but for making everybody
about her comfortable also; which latter taste, it may be remarked, is,
even in persons who live in much finer places than caravans, a far more
rare and uncommon one than the first, and is not by any means its
necessary consequence. As her popularity procured her various little
fees from the visitors on which her patroness never demanded any toll,
and as her grandfather too was well-treated and useful, she had no
cause of anxiety in connexion with the wax-work, beyond that which
sprung from her recollection of Quilp, and her fears that he might
return and one day suddenly encounter them.

Quilp indeed was a perpetual night-mare to the child, who was
constantly haunted by a vision of his ugly face and stunted figure.
She slept, for their better security, in the room where the wax-work
figures were, and she never retired to this place at night but she
tortured herself--she could not help it--with imagining a resemblance,
in some one or other of their death-like faces, to the dwarf, and this
fancy would sometimes so gain upon her that she would almost believe he
had removed the figure and stood within the clothes. Then there were
so many of them with their great glassy eyes--and, as they stood one
behind the other all about her bed, they looked so like living
creatures, and yet so unlike in their grim stillness and silence, that
she had a kind of terror of them for their own sakes, and would often
lie watching their dusky figures until she was obliged to rise and
light a candle, or go and sit at the open window and feel a
companionship in the