Having unpacked her bundle and settled things to her liking she came to the conclusion that it was time for supper and promptly rang for the maid.
“I think, young woman,” said Mrs. Gamp to the assistant chambermaid, in a tone expressive of weakness, “that I could pick a little bit of pickled salmon, with a nice little sprig of fennel, and a sprinkling of white pepper. I takes new bread, my dear, with jest a little pat of fresh butter, and a mossel of cheese. In case there should be such a thing as a cowcumber in the ’ouse, will you be so kind as bring it, for I’m rather partial to ’em, and they does a world of good in a sick-room. If they draws the Brighton Tipper here, I takes that ale at night, my love; it bein’ considered wakeful by the doctors. And whatever you do, young woman, don’t bring more than a shilling’s-worth of gin and water warm when I rings the bell a second time; for that is always my allowance, and I never takes a drop beyond!”
“A tray was brought with everything upon it, even to the cucumber; and Mrs. Gamp accordingly sat down to eat and drink in high good humour. The extent to which she availed herself of the vinegar, and supped up that refreshing fluid with the blade of her knife, can scarcely be expressed in narrative.”
This was the occasion, and the Black Bull the place, where Mrs. Gamp gave utterance to her famous piece of philosophy: “What a blessed thing it is—living in a wale—to be contented.”
Without following Mrs. Gamp through the details of her effort to help the patient to convalescence—albeit those efforts were peculiar to herself and have a unique interest on that account—we need only record that, in spite of her assurance that, “of all the trying invalieges in this walley of the shadder, that one beats ’em black and blue,” Mr. Lewsome was eventually able to be moved into the country and Mrs. Gamp was deputed to accompany him there by coach.
“Arriving at the tavern, Mrs. Gamp (who was full-dressed for the journey, in her latest suit of mourning) left her friends to entertain themselves in the yard, while she ascended to the sick-room, where her fellow-labourer, Mrs. Prig, was dressing the invalid,” who was ultimately assisted downstairs to the coach, just then on the point of starting.
“It was a troublesome matter to adjust Mrs. Gamp’s luggage to her satisfaction; for every package belonging to that lady had the inconvenient property of requiring to be put in a boot by itself, and to have no other luggage near it, on pain of actions at law for heavy damages against the proprietors of the coach. The umbrella with the circular patch was particularly hard to be got rid of, and several times thrust out its battered brass nozzle from improper crevices and chinks, to the great terror of the other passengers. Indeed, in her intense anxiety to find a haven of refuge for this chattel, Mrs. Gamp so often moved it, in the course of five minutes, that it seemed not one umbrella but fifty. At length it was lost, or said to be; and for the next five minutes she was face to face with the coachman, go wherever he might, protesting that it should be ‘made good’ though she took the question to the House of Commons.
“At last, her bundle, and her pattens, and her basket, and everything else, being disposed of, she took a friendly leave of Poll and Mr. Bailey, dropped a curtsy to John Westlock, and parted as from a cherished member of the sisterhood with Betsey Prig.
“‘Wishin’ you lots of sickness, my darling creetur,’ Mrs. Gamp observed, ‘and good places. It won’t be long, I hope, before we works together, off and on, again, Betsey: and may our next meetin’ be at a large family’s, where they all takes it reg’lar, one from another, turn and turn about, and has it businesslike.’”
And so the coach rolled out of the Bull yard with Mrs. Gamp and her charge comfortably seated within, amidst a cloud of bustle and commotion, terminating events which have left their mark for all time on the history of the famous Dickensian tavern.