That old thing will have a sort of festival too. Beef, beer, and pudding will be served to her for that day also. Christmas falls on a Thursday. Friday is the workhouse day for coming out. Mary, remember that old Goody Twoshoes has her invitation for Friday, 26th December! Ninety is she, poor old soul? Ah! what a bonny face to catch under a mistletoe! “Yes, ninety, sir,” she says, “and my mother was a hundred, and my grandmother was a hundred and two.” Herself ninety, her mother a hundred, her grandmother a hundred and two? What a queer calculation! Ninety! Very good, granny: you were born, then, in 1772. Your mother, we will say, was twenty-seven when you were born, and was born therefore in 1745. Your grandmother was thirty-five when her daughter was born, and was born therefore in 1710. We will begin with the present granny first. My good old creature, you can’t of course remember, but that little gentleman for whom you mother was laundress in the Temple was the ingenious Mr Goldsmith, author of a “History of England,” the “Vicar of Wakefield,” and many diverting pieces. You were brought almost an infant to his chambers in Brick Court, and he gave you some sugar-candy, for the doctor was always good to children. That gentleman who well-nigh smothered you by sitting down on you as you lay in a chair asleep was the learned Mr S. Johnson, whose history of “Rasselas” you have never read, my pour soul; and whose tragedy of “Irene” I don’t believe any man in these kingdoms ever perused. That tipsy Scotch gentleman who used to come to the chambers sometimes, and at whom everybody laughed, wrote a more amusing book than any of the scholars, your Mr Burke and your Mr Johnson, and your Dr Goldsmith. Your father often took him home in a chair to his lodgings; and has done as much for Parson Sterne in Bond Street, the famous wit. Of course, my good creature, you remember the Gordon Riots, and crying No Popery before Mr Langdale’s house, the Popish distiller’s, and that bonny fire of my Lord Mansfield’s books in Bloomsbury Square? Bless us, what a heap of illuminations you have seen! For the glorious victory over the Americans at Breed’s Hill; for the peace in 1814, and the beautiful Chinese bridge in St James’s Park; for the coronation of his Majesty, whom you recollect as Prince of Wales, Goody, don’t you? Yes; and you went in a procession of laundresses to pay your respects to his good lady, the injured Queen of England, at Brandenburg House; and you remember your mother told you how she was taken to see the Scotch lords executed at the Tower. And as for your grandmother, she was born five months after the battle of Malplaquet, she was; where her poor father was killed, fighting like a bold Briton for the Queen. With the help of a “Wade’s Chronology,” I can make out ever so queer a history for you, my poor old body, and a pedigree as authentic as many in the peerage-books.