where it was glimmering away, like a gigantic lighthouse in a

particularly small piece of water.

'Bless my soul!' thought Mr Pickwick, 'what a dreadful thing!'

Hem!' said the lady; and in went Mr Pickwick's head with automaton-

like rapidity.

'I never met with anything so awful as this,' thought poor Mr Pickwick,

the cold perspiration starting in drops upon his nightcap. 'Never. This

is fearful.'

It was quite impossible to resist the urgent desire to see what was

going forward. So out went Mr Pickwick's head again. The prospect

was worse than before. The middle-aged lady had finished arranging

her hair; had carefully enveloped it in a muslin nightcap with a small

plaited border; and was gazing pensively on the fire.

This matter is growing alarming,' reasoned Mr Pickwick with himself.

I can't allow things to go on in this way. By the self- possession of

that lady, it is clear to me that I must have come into the wrong room.

If I call out she'll alarm the house; but if I remain here the

consequences will be still more frightful.' Mr Pickwick, it is quite

unnecessary to say, was one of the most modest and delicate-minded

of mortals. The very idea of exhibiting his nightcap to a lady

overpowered him, but he had tied those confounded strings in a knot,

and, do what he would, he couldn't get it off. The disclosure must be

made. There was only one other way of doing it. He shrunk behind the

curtains, and called out very loudly -

Ha-hum!'

That the lady started at this unexpected sound was evident, by her

falling up against the rushlight shade; that she persuaded herself it

must have been the effect of imagination was equally clear, for when

Mr Pickwick, under the impression that she had fainted away stone-

dead with fright, ventured to peep out again, she was gazing pensively

on the fire as before.

Most extraordinary female this,' thought Mr Pickwick, popping in

again. 'Ha-hum!'

These last sounds, so like those in which, as legends inform us, the

ferocious giant Blunderbore was in the habit of expressing his opinion

that it was time to lay the cloth, were too distinctly audible to be again

mistaken for the workings of fancy.

Gracious Heaven!' said the middle-aged lady, 'what's that?'

The Pickwick Papers