The Pickwick Papers - The Original Classic Edition. Dickens Charles

all due formalities, Mr. Pickwick had leisure to observe the appearance,

       and speculate upon the characters and pursuits, of the persons by whom he was surrounded--a habit in which he, in common with many other great men, delighted to indulge.

       A very old lady, in a lofty cap and faded silk gown--no less a personage than Mr. Wardle's mother--occupied the post of honour on the right-hand corner of the chimney-piece; and various certificates of her having been brought up in the way she should go when young, and of her not having departed from it when old, ornamented the walls, in the form of samplers of ancient date, worsted landscapes of equal antiquity, and crimson silk tea-kettle holders of a more modern period. The aunt, the two young ladies, and Mr. Wardle, each vying with the other in paying zealous and unremitting attentions to the old lady, crowded round her easy-chair, one holding her ear-trumpet, another an orange, and a third a smelling-bottle, while a fourth was busily engaged in patting and punching the pillows which were arranged for her support. On the opposite side sat a bald-headed old gentleman, with a good-humoured, benevolent face--the clergyman of Dingley Dell; and next him sat his wife, a stout, blooming old lady, who looked as if she were well skilled, not only in the art and mystery of manufacturing home-made cordials greatly to other people's satisfaction, but of tasting them occasionally very much to her own. A little hard-headed, Ripstone pippin-faced man, was conversing with a fat old gentle-

       man in one corner; and two or three more old gentlemen, and two or three more old ladies, sat bolt upright and motionless on their chairs, staring very hard at Mr. Pickwick and his fellow-voyagers.

       'Mr. Pickwick, mother,' said Mr. Wardle, at the very top of his voice.

       'Ah!' said the old lady, shaking her head; 'I can't hear you.'

       'Mr. Pickwick, grandma!' screamed both the young ladies together.

       'Ah!' exclaimed the old lady. 'Well, it don't much matter. He don't care for an old 'ooman like me, I dare say.'

       'I assure you, ma'am,' said Mr. Pickwick, grasping the old lady's hand, and speaking so loud that the exertion imparted a crimson hue to his benevolent countenance--'I assure you, ma'am, that nothing delights me more than to see a lady of your time of life heading so fine a family, and looking so young and well.'

       'Ah!' said the old lady, after a short pause: 'it's all very fine, I dare say; but I can't hear him.'

       'Grandma's rather put out now,' said Miss Isabella Wardle, in a low tone; 'but she'll talk to you presently.'

       Mr. Pickwick nodded his readiness to humour the infirmities of age, and entered into a general conversation with the other members of the circle.

       'Delightful situation this,' said Mr. Pickwick.

       'Delightful!' echoed Messrs. Snodgrass, Tupman, and Winkle.

       'Well, I think it is,' said Mr. Wardle.

       'There ain't a better spot o' ground in all Kent, sir,' said the hard-headed man with the pippin--face; 'there ain't indeed, sir--I'm sure

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       there ain't, Sir.' The hard-headed man looked triumphantly round, as if he had been very much contradicted by somebody, but had got the better of him at last.

       'There ain't a better spot o' ground in all Kent,' said the hard-headed man again, after a pause.

       ''Cept Mullins's Meadows,' observed the fat man solemnly. 'Mullins's Meadows!' ejaculated the other, with profound contempt.

       'Ah, Mullins's Meadows,' repeated the fat man.

       'Reg'lar good land that,' interposed another fat man.

       'And so it is, sure-ly,' said a third fat man.

       'Everybody knows that,' said the corpulent host.

       The hard-headed man looked dubiously round, but finding himself in a minority, assumed a compassionate air and said no more.

       'What are they talking about?' inquired the old lady of one of her granddaughters, in a very audible voice; for, like many deaf people, she never seemed to calculate on the possibility of other persons hearing what she said herself.

       'About the land, grandma.'

       'What about the land?--Nothing the matter, is there?'

       'No, no. Mr. Miller was saying our land was better than Mullins's Meadows.'

       'How should he know anything about it?'inquired the old lady indignantly. 'Miller's a conceited coxcomb, and you may tell him I said so.' Saying which, the old lady, quite unconscious that she had spoken above a whisper, drew herself up, and looked carving-knives at the hard-headed delinquent.

       'Come, come,' said the bustling host, with a natural anxiety to change the conversation, 'what say you to a rubber, Mr. Pickwick?'

       'I should like it of all things,' replied that gentleman; 'but pray don't make up one on my account.'

       'Oh, I assure you, mother's very fond of a rubber,' said Mr. Wardle; 'ain't you, mother?'

       The old lady, who was much less deaf on this subject than on any other, replied in the affirmative.

       'Joe, Joe!' said the gentleman; 'Joe--damn that--oh, here he is; put out the card--tables.'

       The lethargic youth contrived without any additional rousing to set out two card-tables; the one for Pope Joan, and the other for whist. The whist-players were Mr. Pickwick and the old lady, Mr. Miller and the fat gentleman. The round game comprised the rest of the company.

       The rubber was conducted with all that gravity of deportment and sedateness of demeanour which befit the pursuit entitled

       'whist'--a solemn observance, to which, as it appears to us, the title of 'game' has been very irreverently and ignominiously applied. The round-game table, on the other hand, was so boisterously merry as materially to interrupt the contemplations of Mr. Miller, who, not being quite so much absorbed as he ought to have been, contrived to commit various high crimes and misdemeanours, which excited the wrath of the fat gentleman to a very great extent, and called forth the good-humour of the old lady in a proportionate degree.

       'There!' said the criminal Miller triumphantly, as he took up the odd trick at the conclusion of a hand; 'that could not have been played better, I flatter myself; impossible to have made another trick!'

       'Miller ought to have trumped the diamond, oughtn't he, Sir?' said the old lady. Mr. Pickwick nodded assent.

       'Ought I, though?' said the unfortunate, with a doubtful appeal to his partner.

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       'You ought, Sir,' said the fat gentleman, in an awful voice.

       'Very sorry,' said the crestfallen Miller.

       'Much use that,' growled the fat gentleman.

       'Two by honours--makes us eight,' said Mr. Pickwick.

       'Another hand. 'Can you one?' inquired the old lady.

       'I can,' replied Mr. Pickwick. 'Double, single, and the rub.'

       'Never was such luck,' said Mr. Miller.

       'Never was such cards,' said the fat gentleman.

       A solemn silence; Mr. Pickwick humorous, the old lady serious, the fat gentleman captious, and Mr. Miller timorous.

       'Another double,' said the old lady, triumphantly making a memorandum of the circumstance, by placing one sixpence and a battered halfpenny under the candlestick.

       'A double, sir,' said Mr. Pickwick.

       'Quite aware of the fact, Sir,' replied the fat gentleman sharply.

       Another game, with a similar result, was followed by a revoke from the unlucky Miller; on which the fat gentleman burst into a state of high personal excitement which lasted until the conclusion of the game, when he retired into a corner, and remained perfectly mute for one hour and twenty-seven minutes; at the end of which time he emerged from his retirement, and offered Mr. Pickwick a pinch of snuff with the air of a man who had made up his mind to a Christian forgiveness of injuries sustained. The old lady's hearing decidedly improved and the unlucky Miller felt as much out of his element as a dolphin in a sentry-box.