We all know Mrs. Gamp. My late Monthly Nurse is the exact antipodes of her. Mrs. Bullwinkle is tall and dignified; her complexion is fair; her Grecian nose is innocent of all convivial colouring; her figure is not more than agreeably plump; her manners are icily composed; her dress is quiet and neat; her age cannot be more than five-and-thirty; her style of conversation, when she talks, is flowing and grammatical--upon the whole, she appears to be a woman who is much too ladylike for her station in life. When I first met Mrs. Bullwinkle on the stairs, I felt inclined to apologise for my wife's presumption in engaging her services. Though I checked this absurd impulse, I could not resist answering the new nurse's magnificent curtsy by expressing a polite hope that she would find her situation everything that she could wish, under my roof. "I am not accustomed to exact much, sir," said Mrs. Bullwinkle. "The cook seems, I am rejoiced to say, to be an intelligent and attentive person. I have been giving her some little hints on the subject of my meals. I have ventured to tell her, that I eat little and often; and I think she thoroughly understands me." I am ashamed to say I was not so sharp as the cook. I did not thoroughly understand Mrs. Bullwinkle, until it became my duty, through my wife's inability to manage our domestic business, to settle the weekly bills. I then became sensible of an alarming increase in our household expenditure. If I had given two dinner-parties in the course of the week, the bills could not have been more exorbitant: the butcher, the baker, and the grocer could not have taken me at a heavier pecuniary disadvantage. My heart sank as I thought of my miserable income. I looked up piteously from the bills to the cook for an explanation. The cook looked back at me compassionately, shook her head, and said: "Mrs. Bullwinkle." I reckoned up additional joints, additional chops, additional steaks, fillets, kidneys, gravy beef. I told off a terrible supplement to the usual family consumption of bread, flour, tea, sugar, and alcoholic liquids. I appealed to the cook again; and again the cook shook her head, and said, "Mrs. Bullwinkle." My miserable income obliges me to look after sixpences, as other men look after five-pound notes. Ruin sat immovable on the pile of weekly bills, and stared me sternly in the face. I went up into my wife's room. The new nurse was not there. The unhappy partner of my pecuniary embarrassments was reading a novel. My innocent infant was smiling in his sleep. I had taken the bills with me. Ruin followed them up-stairs, and sat spectral on one side of the bed, while I sat on the other.