Penny Blood Serial Fiction — page 288: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE FEMALE GAMESTERS 271 size of that in the back kitchen, was spread for at least four and twenty guests. A number of black-handled knives and forks, pewter pots, metal salt-cellars, pepper-casters, and mustard-pots were spread upon a dirty cloth, and at an immense fire a horrid-looking old woman, evidently half- tipsy and who took quantities of snuff in the filthiest manner possible, was superintending the culinary process. A leg of mutton and a leg of pork, roasting in front of the grate, were both basted with the gravy that dripped from each and which united in a large yellow pie-dish set to catch it. Upon the fire, another leg of pork and another leg of mutton were boiling in an enormous cauldron, together with a piece of beef, and divers saucepans contained proportionate quantities of vegetables. It may be thought that these masses of provisions were immense, considering that the table was laid but for two dozen guests, but when it is stated that each one of those guests would anon be pre- pared to attack the provender with the utmost voracity, and to eat as long as the physical capacity would allow, it will be seen that the preparations were by no means on too large a scale. We must add that this supper was given sratuitously to all the frequenters of the house, who might drop in between the hours of nine in the evening and one in the morning to take their chance at the gaming-table. The supper, thus provided without cost to the devourers, was a great allurement for the establishment, but the profits of the gaming-table were ample enough to permit this spread to be given nightly. All the upper part of the house remained unoccupied, except by the two sisters and the old cook; no lodgers were received, the great aim being to keep the real nature of the place as secret as possible. ‘The elder sister, who was the mistress of the establishment, had kept it for years. She had amassed several thousand pounds, and in one of the northern suburbs of London there is a row of some ten or a dozen small cottages, built by means of that money upon freehold land, and all this infamous woman’s property. It was to the den which we have been describing that Madge Somers paid,a visit after leaving Solomon Patch’s house in Agar Town; and she was evidently as well known at the former as at the latter place, for on entering the back kitchen, nods of recognition passed between herself Gomicdoo cS (C(O)