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76 disrespectfully—a witch, and Paul and the cat her two familiars, as they all sat by the fire together. It would have been quite in keeping with the appearance of the party if they had all sprung up the chimney in a high wind one night, and never been heard of any more.

This, however, never came to pass. The cat, and Paul, and Mrs. Pipchin, were constantly to be found in their usual places after dark; and Paul, eschewing the companionship of Master Bitherstone, went on studying Mrs. Pipchin, and the cat, and the fire, night after night, as if they were a book of necromancy, in three volumes.

Mrs. Wickam put her own construction on Paul’s eccentricities; and being confirmed in her low spirits by a perplexed view of chimneys from the room where she was accustomed to sit, and by the noise of the wind, and by the general dulness (gashliness was Mrs Wickam’s strong expression) of her present life, deduced the most dismal reflections from the foregoing premises. It was a part of Mrs. Pipchin’s policy to prevent her own "young hussy"—that was Mrs. Pipchin’s generic name for female servant—from communicating with Mrs. Wickam: to which end she devoted much of her time to concealing herself behind doors, and springing out on that devoted maiden, whenever she made an approach towards Mrs. Wickam’s apartment. But Berry was free to hold what converse she could in that quarter, consistently with the discharge of the multifarious duties at which she toiled incessantly from morning to night; and to Berry Mrs. Wickam unburdened her mind.

"What a pretty fellow he is when he’s asleep!" said Berry, stopping to look at Paul in bed, one night when she took up Mrs Wickam’s supper.

"Ah!" sighed Mrs. Wickam. "He need be."

"Why, he’s not ugly when he’s awake," observed Berry.

"No, Ma’am. Oh, no. No more was my Uncle’s Betsey Jane," said Mrs. Wickam.

Berry looked as if she would like to trace the connexion of ideas between Paul Dombey and Mrs. Wickam’s Uncle’s Betsey Jane.

"My uncle’s wife," Mrs Wickam went on to say, "died just like his mama. My uncle’s child made people’s blood run cold, some times, she did!"

"How?" asked Berry.

"I wouldn’t have sat up all night alone with Betsey Jane!" said Mrs. Wickam, "not if you’d have put Wickam into business next morning for himself. I couldn’t have done it, Miss Berry."

Miss Berry naturally asked why not? But Mrs. Wickam, agreeably to the usage of some ladies in her condition, pursued her own branch of the subject, without any compunction.

"Betsey Jane," said Mrs Wickam, "was as sweet a child as I could wish to see. I couldn’t wish to see a sweeter. Everything that a child could have in the way of illnesses, Betsey Jane had come through. The cramps was as common to her," said Mrs Wickam, "as biles is to yourself, Miss Berry." Miss Berry involuntarily wrinkled her nose.

"But Betsey Jane," said Mrs Wickam, lowering her voice, and looking round the room, and towards Paul in bed, "had been minded, in her cradle, by her departed mother. I couldn’t say how, nor I couldn’t say when, nor I couldn’t say whether the dear child knew it or not, but Betsey Jane had been watched by her mother, Miss Berry! You may say