CHAPTER 7

The Child of the Marshalsea


The baby whose first draught of air had been tinctured with Doctor
Haggage's brandy, was handed down among the generations of
collegians, like the tradition of their common parent. In the
earlier stages of her existence, she was handed down in a literal
and prosaic sense; it being almost a part of the entrance footing
of every new collegian to nurse the child who had been born in the
college.

'By rights,' remarked the turnkey when she was first shown to him,
'I ought to be her godfather.'

The debtor irresolutely thought of it for a minute, and said,
'Perhaps you wouldn't object to really being her godfather?'

'Oh! _I_ don't object,' replied the turnkey, 'if you don't.'

Thus it came to pass that she was christened one Sunday afternoon,
when the turnkey, being relieved, was off the lock; and that the
turnkey went up to the font of Saint George's Church, and promised
and vowed and renounced on her behalf, as he himself related when
he came back, 'like a good 'un.'

This invested the turnkey with a new proprietary share in the
child, over and above his former official one. When she began to