CHAPTER III

CONTINUATION OF THE INTRODUCTORY MEANDERINGS OF DAME GOSSIP, TOGETHER
WITH HER SUDDEN EXTINCTION

I have still time before me, according to the terms of my agreement with
the person to whom I have, I fear foolishly, entrusted the letters and
documents of a story surpassing ancient as well as modern in the
wonderment it causes, that would make the Law courts bless their hearts,
judges no less than the barristers, to have it running through them day
by day, with every particular to wrangle over, and many to serve as a
text for the pulpit. So to proceed.

It should be mentioned that the postillion Charles Dump is not
represented, and I have no conception of the reason why not, sitting
on horseback, in the portrait in the possession of the Cawthorne family.
I have not seen it, I am bound to admit. We had offended Dr. Cawthorne,
by once in an urgent case calling in another doctor, who, he would have
it, was a quack, that ought to have killed us, and we ceased to visit;
but a gentleman who was an established patient of Dr. Cawthorne's and
had frequent opportunities of judging the portrait, in the course of a
chronic malady, describes Charles Dump on his legs as a small man looking
diminished from a very much longer one by shrinkage in thickish wrinkles
from the shoulders to the shanks. His hat is enormous and very gay.
He is rather of sad countenance. An elevation of his collar behind the
ears, and pointed at the neck, gives you notions of his having dropped