In Which Mr Mould Interrogates Mr Headstone

Having examined Mr Headstone by the original and efficacious method of prodding that gentleman's frame with the tip of her gig umbrella and rapping portions of his skull with its handle, Mrs Gamp pronounced the patient to be in an excellent state of health and proposed a toast to the continued equanimity of his constitution by taking up the bottle of gin from the chimney piece and putting it to her lips. Notwithstanding the receipt of a professional medical opinion, the pedagogue's friends and acquaintances were still desirous of hearing from Mr Mould, whose attendance they had been expecting for some time.

In fact, the undertaker was at that moment in the street below applying vigorous action to the door knocker, which was so constructed as to wake the street with ease, and even spread alarms of fire in Holborn, without making the smallest impression on the premises to which it was addressed. It chanced that Mr Sweedlepipe, leaning out of the window, spied the black crepe of the gentleman's hat and called down to him to let himself in and come up directly to the first floor. On entering the room, Mr Mould began by thanking the company for their confidence in his good opinion and trusted that they would in the fullness of time come into his hands in his true professional capacity, which he promised to execute with all the favours that acquaintance allowed.

Mr Mould was introduced to Mr Headstone and, having been apprised of Mrs Gamp's considered prognosis from that good lady's own lips (when they were not applied to the gin bottle), the undertaker began to question the pedagogue closely on matters of personal history in order to determine whether the gentleman's faculty of memory had been in any manner impaired by his recent misfortunes. As Mr Mould was not familiar with Mr Headstone in any particular whatsoever, this mode of questioning soon ended in a no thoroughfare, and the undertaker appealed to the company for a new theme.

It was Mr Snodgrass who suggested that a fruitful line of enquiry might be achieved by an interrogation of Mr Headstone on the progress of his great project, which, when announced at the beginning of the year in The Saracen's Head, had won the admiration of all his friends and acquaintances. On the introduction of this topic, which all supposed would be a matter of some pride and satisfaction to the pedagogue, Mr Headstone was seen to turn quite pale - indeed, much paler than his emaciated visage would normally allow - and looked for all the world as if he would soon be in need of Mr Mould's professional services. Those about him were thrown into immediate consternation, except for Mrs Gamp, who being as familiar with laying out as she was with laying in, took recourse to the gin bottle in order to bolster her spirits with a swig of the same.

In Which Mr Headstone Is Delivered Into The Care Of Mrs Gamp

Mrs Gamp's apartment in Kingstone Street, High Holborn, was not a spacious one, but it at least comprised as much accommodation as any person, not sanguine to insanity, could have looked for in a room of its dimensions. An intrusion into its interior by a visitor was inclined to make it smaller still, and the arrangement of the furniture - which included a large bedstead, a chest of drawers, and two large elbow-chairs, of ancient mahogany - did little to assist any such individual in an easy progress across the threadbare carpet; which journey was made even more hazardous by the irregular placement upon the floor of bandboxes, devoted to the reception of various miscellaneous valuables. Further decoration of the apartment was provided by a pair of bellows, a pair of pattens, a toasting-fork, a kettle, a spoon for the administration of medicine to the refractory, and lastly, Mrs Gamp's umbrella, which as something of great price and rarity, was displayed with particular ostentation.

Into this Aladdin's cave came Mr Bradley Headstone, followed closely by Mr Poll Sweedlepipe, and Mr Richard Swiveller, and Mr William Guppy, and Mr Nathaniel Winkle, and Mr Augustus Snodgrass, and a number of other gentlemen (whose names we will not trouble the reader with) many of whom were obliged to wait on the stairs as there was not enough room to accommodate them within. It being five o'clock of an afternoon, Mrs Gamp was quite naturally seated at the tea-board, having just concluded her arrangements for the reception of Mrs Betsey Prig, whose arrival the nurse had supposed the most recent knock on the door to have presaged.

The good lady's alarm - more in fear for the survival of the comestibles set out before her than for her own person - was quickly allayed by her landlord, who explained the purpose of their visit. As one devoted to the care of the sick and the infirm, Mrs Gamp lost no time in establishing the terms upon which her services could be secured. Whilst waiting for the return of a boy who was sent out to the nearest tavern for a bottle of gin for medicinal purposes, the kindly nurse took Mr Headstone by the collar of his coat, and gave him some dozen or two of hearty shakes backward and forward; that exercise being considered by herself as being highly beneficial to the performance of the nervous functions. Its effect in this instance was to render the patient so giddy and addle-headed, that he could hardly speak; which Mrs Gamp regarded as the triumph of her art.

In Which The Opinions Of Great Minds Are Sought

Having been apprised of the events surrounding Mr Headstone's prolonged absence from society, it was not unnatural that the pedagogue's friends and acquaintances, being solicitous of the state of that good gentleman's health, should be desirous of obtaining expert medical opinion on the likelihood as to whether a severe blow to the head (or, indeed, two severe blows to the head) should have any detrimental physiological effect on an individual unfortunate enough to be exposed to such a traumatic circumstance.

Expert opinion, however, always comes at a price, and money being - as it so often was in the affairs of Mr Headstone - an object, it was Mr Poll Sweedlepipe who suggested that the services of a nurse by the name of Gamp could be secured on reasonable terms, those being eighteen pence a day for working people, and three and six for gentlefolks, with the additional provision of a shilling's worth of gin and warm water to be left on the chimney piece in case it was wanted.

This suggestion was received as being both sensible and economical, and Mr Sweedlepipe observed that for the additional modest sum of half a crown the professional opinion of the distinguished Mr Mould could also be secured. This gentleman, he ventured to explain, was not in the strictest definition of the term a medical man, but rather attended on those persons whom doctors were no longer able to assist, which was to say, in short, that he was an undertaker by trade. It being the general opinion of the company that Mr Mould's standing as a man of learning should not be foresworn simply on account of the fact that his customers were inanimate, Poll Sweedlepipe was instructed to lead the way to his residence in Kingsgate Street, High Holborn, where Mrs Gamp took lodgings, next door but one to the celebrated mutton-pie shop.