Is it Mrs Perkins? What, Mr Whilks! Don’t say it’s you, Mr Whilks, and that poor creeture Mrs Whilks with not even a pincushion ready. Don’t say it’s you, Mr Whilks! And so the gentleman’s dead, sir! Ah! The more’s the pity. But it’s what we must all come to. It’s as certain as being born, except that we can’t make our calculations as exact. Ah! Poor dear! ‘Ah dear! When Gamp was summonsed to his long home, and I see him a lying in the hospital with a penny-piece on each eye, and his wooden leg under his left arm, I thought I should have fainted away. But I bore up. If it wasn’t for the nerve a little sip of liquor gives me I never could go through with what I sometimes has to do. ‘“Mrs Harris,” I says to my friend Mrs Harris at the very last case as ever I acted in, which it was but a young person, – “Mrs Harris,” I says, “leave the bottle on the chimley-piece, and don’t ask me to take none, but let me put my lips to it when I am so dispoged, and then I will do what I am engaged to do, according to the best of my ability.”
