Well,' said the old woman, 'if it was anything very particular, I was to

say where he was, so I suppose there's no harm in telling. If you just

go to the Magpie and Stump, and ask at the bar for Mr Lowten, they'll

show you in to him, and he's Mr Perker's clerk.'

With this direction, and having been furthermore informed that the

hostelry in question was situated in a court, happy in the double

advantage of being in the vicinity of Clare Market, and closely

approximating to the back of New Inn, Mr Pickwick and Sam

descended the rickety staircase in safety, and issued forth in quest of

the Magpie and Stump.

This favoured tavern, sacred to the evening orgies of Mr Lowten and

his companions, was what ordinary people would designate a public-

house. That the landlord was a man of money- making turn was

sufficiently testified by the fact of a small bulkhead beneath the tap-

room window, in size and shape not unlike a sedan-chair, being

underlet to a mender of shoes: and that he was a being of a

philanthropic mind was evident from the protection he afforded to a

pieman, who vended his delicacies without fear of interruption, on the

very door-step. In the lower windows, which were decorated with

curtains of a saffron hue, dangled two or three printed cards, bearing

reference to Devonshire cider and Dantzic spruce, while a large

blackboard, announcing in white letters to an enlightened public, that

there were 500,000 barrels of double stout in the cellars of the

establishment, left the mind in a state of not unpleasing doubt and

uncertainty as to the precise direction in the bowels of the earth, in

which this mighty cavern might be supposed to extend. When we add

that the weather-beaten signboard bore the half-obliterated semblance

of a magpie intently eyeing a crooked streak of brown paint, which the

neighbours had been taught from infancy to consider as the 'stump,'

we have said all that need be said of the exterior of the edifice.

On Mr Pickwick's presenting himself at the bar, an elderly female

emerged from behind the screen therein, and presented herself before

him.

'Is Mr Lowten here, ma'am?' inquired Mr Pickwick.

'Yes, he is, Sir,' replied the landlady. 'Here, Charley, show the

gentleman in to Mr Lowten.'

'The gen'l'm'n can't go in just now,' said a shambling pot-boy, with a

red head, 'cos' Mr Lowten's a-singin' a comic song, and he'll put him

out. He'll be done directly, Sir.'

The red-headed pot-boy had scarcely finished speaking, when a most

unanimous hammering of tables, and jingling of glasses, announced

The Pickwick Papers