 to obey, with as good a grace as he could assume, but
with a very considerable show of reluctance nevertheless. He even went so far as
to essay sundry ineffectual hints regarding the expediency of stretching himself
on the gravel for that night; but finding Mr. Pickwick obstinately deaf to any
such suggestions, finally withdrew.
    There is no disguising the fact that Mr. Pickwick felt very low-spirited and
uncomfortable; not for lack of society, for the prison was very full, and a
bottle of wine would at once have purchased the utmost good-fellowship of a few
choice spirits, without any more formal ceremony of introduction; but he was
alone in the coarse vulgar crowd, and felt the depression of spirit and sinking
of heart, naturally consequent on the reflection that he was cooped and caged
up, without a prospect of liberation. As to the idea of releasing himself by
ministering to the sharpness of Dodson and Fogg, it never for an instant entered
his thoughts.
    In this frame of mind he turned again into the coffee-room gallery, and
walked slowly to and fro. The place was intolerably dirty, and the smell of
tobacco-smoke perfectly suffocating. There was a perpetual slamming and banging
of doors as the people went in and out; and the noise of their voices and
footsteps echoed and re-echoed through the passages constantly. A young woman,
with a child in her arms, who seemed scarcely able to crawl, from emaciation and
misery, was walking up and down the passage in conversation with her husband,
who had no other place to see her in. As they passed Mr. Pickwick, he could hear
the female sob; and once she burst into such a passion of grief, that she was
compelled to lean against the wall for support, while the man took the child in
his arms, and tried to soothe her.
    Mr. Pickwick's heart was really too full to bear it, and he went up stairs
to bed.
    Now, although the warden's room was a very uncomfortable one (being, in
every point of decoration and convenience, several hundred degrees inferior to
the common infirmary of a county gaol), it had at present the merit of being
wholly deserted save by Mr. Pickwick himself. So, he sat down at the foot of his
little iron bedstead, and began to wonder how much a year the warden made out of
the dirty room. Having satisfied himself, by mathematical calculation, that the
apartment was about equal in annual value to the freehold of a small street in
the suburbs of London, he took
