Mrs Gamp's apartment was not a spacious one, but, to a contented mind,
a closet is a palace; and the first-floor front at Mr Sweedlepipe's may
have been, in the imagination of Mrs Gamp, a stately pile. If it were
not exactly that, to restless intellects, it at least comprised as much
accommodation as any person, not sanguine to insanity, could have looked
for in a room of its dimensions. For only keep the bedstead always in
your mind; and you were safe. That was the grand secret. Remembering the
bedstead, you might even stoop to look under the little round table
for anything you had dropped, without hurting yourself much against the
chest of drawers, or qualifying as a patient of Saint Bartholomew, by
falling into the fire.
Visitors were much assisted in their cautious efforts to preserve an
unflagging recollection of this piece of furniture, by its size; which
was great. It was not a turn-up bedstead, nor yet a French bedstead,
nor yet a four-post bedstead, but what is poetically called a tent; the
sacking whereof was low and bulgy, insomuch that Mrs Gamp's box would
not go under it, but stopped half-way, in a manner which, while it did
violence to the reason, likewise endangered the legs of a stranger.
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