MRS. BULLWINKLE.

Ladies and gentlemen. Give me five minutes\' sympathy and attention. I have something serious to say to you.

I am a married man, with an income which is too miserably limited to be worth mentioning. About a month since, my wife advanced me one step nearer to the Court for the Relief of Insolvent Debtors, by presenting me with another child. On five previous occasions, her name had appeared in the List of British Mothers which adorns the daily Supplement of the Times newspaper. At each of these trying periods (I speak entirely of myself when I use the word "trying") she was attended by the same Monthly Nurse. On this last, and sixth, occasion, we were not so fortunate as to secure the services of our regular functionary. She was already engaged; and a new Nurse, with excellent recommendations, was, therefore, employed in her stead. When I first heard of her, and was told that her name was Mrs. Bullwinkle, I laughed. It was then the beginning of 293 the month. It is now the end of it, and I write down that once comical name with a settled gravity which nothing can disturb.

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 294 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 295 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.

"Don\'t be alarmed, love," I said, "if you hear the police in the house. Mrs. Bullwinkle has a large family, and feeds them all out of our provisions. A search shall be instituted, and slumbering Justice shall be aroused. Look at these joints, these chops, these steaks, these fillets, these kidneys, these gravy beefs!"

My wife shook her head, exactly as the cook had shaken hers; and answered, precisely as the cook had answered, "Mrs. Bullwinkle."

"But where does she hide it all?" I exclaimed.

My wife shut her eyes, and shuddered.

"John!" she said, "I have privately consulted the doctor; and the doctor says Mrs. Bullwinkle is a Cow."

"If the doctor had to pay these bills," I retorted savagely, "he would not be quite so free with his jokes."

"He is in earnest, dear. He explained to me, what I never knew before, that a Cow is an animal with many stomachs——"

"What!" I cried out, in amazement; "do you mean to tell me that all these joints, these chops, these steaks, these fillets, these kidneys, these gravy beefs—these loaves, these muffins, these mixed biscuits—these teas, these sugars, these brandies, gins, 296 sherries, and beers, have disappeared in one week, down Mrs. Bullwinkle\'s throat?"

"All, John," said my wife, sinking back on the pillow with a groan.

It was impossible to look at the bills and believe it. I questioned and cross-questioned my wife, and still elicited nothing but the one bewildering answer, "All, John." Determined—for I am a man of a logical and judicial mind—to have this extraordinary and alarming case properly investigated, I took out my pocket-book and pencil, and asked my wife if she felt strong enough to mak............