that part of the country, and came to a shady by-place, about which
were sprinkled several little villas of quiet and secluded appearance.
Outside a stable door at the bottom of a long back lane without a
thoroughfare, a groom in undress was idling about, apparently persuading
himself that he was doing something with a spade and a wheel-barrow. We
may remark, in this place, that we have scarcely ever seen a groom near
a stable, in his lazy moments, who has not been, to a greater or less
extent, the victim of this singular delusion.
Sam thought he might as well talk to this groom as to any one else,
especially as he was very tired with walking, and there was a good large
stone just opposite the wheel-barrow; so he strolled down the lane, and,
seating himself on the stone, opened a conversation with the ease and
freedom for which he was remarkable.
'Mornin', old friend,' said Sam.
'Arternoon, you mean,' replied the groom, casting a surly look at Sam.
'You're wery right, old friend,' said Sam; 'I DO mean arternoon. How are
you?'
'Why, I don't find myself much the better for seeing of you,' replied
the ill-tempered groom.
'That's wery odd--that is,' said Sam, 'for you look so uncommon
cheerful, and seem altogether so lively, that it does vun's heart good
to see you.'
The surly groom looked surlier still at this, but not sufficiently so
to produce any effect upon Sam, who immediately inquired, with a
countenance of great anxiety, whether his master's name was not Walker.
'No, it ain't,' said the groom.
'Nor Brown, I s'pose?' said Sam.
'No, it ain't.'
'Nor Vilson?'
'No; nor that @ither,' said the groom.
'Vell,' replied Sam, 'then I'm mistaken, and he hasn't got the honour
o' my acquaintance, which I thought he had. Don't wait here out o'
compliment to me,' said Sam, as the groom wheeled in the barrow, and
prepared to shut the gate. 'Ease afore ceremony, old boy; I'll excuse
you.'
'I'd knock your head off for half-a-crown,' said the surly groom,
bolting one half of the gate.
'Couldn't afford to have it done on those terms,' rejoined Sam. 'It
'ud be worth a life's board wages at least, to you, and 'ud be cheap at
that. Make my compliments indoors. Tell 'em not to vait dinner for me,
and say they needn't mind puttin' any by, for it'll be cold afore I come
in.'
In reply to this, the groom waxing very wroth, muttered a desire to
damage somebody's person; but disappeared without carrying it into
execution, slamming the door angrily after him, and wholly unheeding
Sam's affectionate request, that he would leave him a lock of his hair
before he went.
Sam continued to sit on the large stone, meditating upon what was best
to be done, and revolving in his mind a plan for knocking at all the
doors within five miles of Bristol, taking them at a hundred and fifty
or two hundred a day, and endeavouring to find Miss Arabella by that
expedient, when accident all of a sudden threw in his way what he might
have sat there for a twelvemonth and yet not found without it.
Into the lane where he sat, there opened three or four garden gates,
belonging to as many houses, which though detached from each other, were
only separated by their gardens. As these were large and long, and well
planted with trees, the houses were not only at some distance off,
but the greater part of them were nearly concealed from view. Sam was
sitting with his eyes fixed upon the dust-heap outside the next gate to
that by which the groom had disappeared, profoundly turning over in his
mind the difficulties of his present undertaking, when the gate opened,
and a female servant came out into the lane to shake some bedside
carpets.
Sam was so very busy with his own thoughts, that it is probable he would
have taken no more notice of the young woman than just raising his
head and remarking that she had a very neat and pretty figure, if his
feelings of gallantry had not been most strongly roused by observing
that she had no one to help her, and that the carpets seemed too heavy
for her single strength. Mr. Weller was a gentleman of great gallantry
in his own way, and he no sooner remarked this circumstance than he
hastily rose from the large stone, and advanced towards her.
'My dear,' said Sam, sliding up with an air of great respect, 'you'll
spile that wery pretty figure out o' all perportion if you shake them
carpets by yourself. Let me help you.'
The young lady, who had been coyly affecting not to know that a
gentleman was so near, turned round as Sam spoke--no doubt (indeed she
said so, afterwards) to decline this offer from a perfect stranger--when
instead of speaking, she started back, and uttered a half-suppressed
scream. Sam was scarcely less staggered, for in the countenance of
the well-shaped female servant, he beheld the very features of his
valentine, the pretty housemaid from Mr. Nupkins's.
'Wy, Mary, my dear!' said Sam.
'Lauk, Mr. Weller,' said Mary, 'how you do frighten one!'
Sam made no verbal answer to this complaint, nor can we precisely say
what reply he did make. We merely know that after a short pause Mary
said, 'Lor, do adun, Mr. Weller!' and that his hat had fallen off a few
moments before--from both of which tokens we should be disposed to infer
that one kiss, or more, had passed between the parties.
'Why, how did you come here?' said Mary, when the conversation to which
this interruption had been offered, was resumed.
'O' course I came to look arter you, my darlin',' replied Mr. Weller;
for once permitting his passion to get the better of his veracity.
'And how did you know I was here?' inquired Mary. 'Who could have told
you that I took another service at Ipswich, and that they afterwards
moved all the way here? Who COULD have told you that, Mr. Weller?'
'Ah, to be sure,' said Sam, with a cunning look, 'that's the pint. Who
could ha' told me?'
'It wasn't Mr. Muzzle, was it?' inquired Mary.
'Oh, no.' replied Sam, with a solemn shake of the head, 'it warn't him.'
'It must have been the cook,' said Mary.
'O' course it must,' said Sam.
'Well, I never heard the like of that!' exclaimed Mary.
'No more did I,' said Sam. 'But Mary, my dear'--here Sam's manner grew
extremely affectionate--'Mary, my dear, I've got another affair in hand
as is wery pressin'. There's one o' my governor's friends--Mr. Winkle,
you remember him?'
'Him in the green coat?' said Mary. 'Oh, yes, I remember him.'
'Well,' said Sam, 'he's in a horrid state o' love; reg'larly comfoozled,
and done over vith it.'
'Lor!' interposed Mary.
'Yes,' said Sam; 'but that's nothin' if we could find out the young
'ooman;' and here Sam, with many digressions upon the personal beauty of
Mary, and the unspeakable tortures he had experienced since he last saw
her, gave a faithful account of Mr. Winkle's present predicament.
'Well,' said Mary, 'I never did!'
'O' course not,' said Sam, 'and nobody never did, nor never vill
neither; and here am I a-walkin' about like the wandering Jew--a
sportin' character you have perhaps heerd on Mary, my dear, as vos
alvays doin' a match agin' time, and never vent to sleep--looking arter
this here Miss Arabella Allen.'
'Miss who?' said Mary, in great astonishment.
'Miss Arabella Allen,' said Sam.
'Goodness gracious!' said Mary, pointing to the garden door which the
sulky groom had locked after him. 'Why, it's that very house; she's
been living there these six weeks. Their upper house-maid, which is
lady's-maid too, told me all about it over the wash-house palin's before
the family was out of bed, one mornin'.'
'Wot, the wery next door to you?' said Sam.
'The very next,' replied Mary.
Mr. Weller was so deeply overcome on receiving this intelligence that
he found it absolutely necessary to cling to his fair informant for
support; and divers little love passages had passed between them, before
he was sufficiently collected to return to the subject.
'Vell,' said Sam at length, 'if this don't beat cock-fightin' nothin'
never vill, as the lord mayor said, ven the chief secretary o' state
proposed his missis's health arter dinner. That wery next house! Wy,
I've got a message to her as I've been a-trying all day to deliver.'
'Ah,' said Mary, 'but you can't deliver it now, because she only walks
in the garden in the evening, and then only for a very little time; she
never goes out, without the old lady.'
Sam ruminated for a few moments, and finally hit upon the following plan
of operations; that he should return just at dusk--the time at which
Arabella invariably took her walk--and, being admitted by Mary into the
garden of the house to which she belonged, would contrive to scramble
up the wall, beneath the overhanging boughs of a large pear-tree, which
would effectually screen him from observation; would there deliver his
message, and arrange, if possible, an interview on behalf of Mr. Winkle
for the ensuing evening at the same hour. Having made this arrangement
with great despatch, he assisted Mary in the long-deferred occupation of
shaking the carpets.
It is not half as innocent a thing as it looks, that shaking little
pieces of carpet--at least, there may be no great harm in the shaking,
but the folding is a very insidious process. So long as the shaking
lasts, and the two parties are kept the carpet's length apart, it is
as innocent an amusement as can well be devised; but when the folding
begins, and the distance between them gets gradually lessened from one
half its former length to a quarter, and then to an eighth, and then to
a sixteenth, and then to a thirty-second, if the carpet be long enough,
it becomes dangerous. We do not know, to a nicety, how many pieces of
carpet were folded in this instance, but we can venture to state that
as many pieces as there were, so many times did Sam kiss the pretty
housemaid.
Mr. Weller regaled himself with moderation at the nearest tavern
until it was nearly dusk, and then returned to the lane without the
thoroughfare. Having been admitted into the garden by Mary, and having
received from that lady sundry admonitions concerning the safety of his
limbs and neck, Sam mounted into the pear-tree, to wait until Arabella
should come into sight.
He waited so long without this anxiously-expected event occurring, that
he began to think it was not going to take place at all, when he heard
light footsteps upon the gravel, and immediately afterwards beheld
Arabella walking pensively down the garden. As soon as she came nearly
below the tree, Sam began, by way of gently indicating his presence, to
make sundry diabolical noises similar to those which would probably
be natural to a person of middle age who had been afflicted with a
combination of inflammatory sore throat, croup, and whooping-cough, from
his earliest infancy.
Upon this, the young lady cast a hurried glance towards the spot whence
the dreadful sounds proceeded; and her previous alarm being not at
all diminished when she saw a man among the branches, she would most
certainly have decamped, and alarmed the house, had not fear fortunately
deprived her of the power of moving, and caused her to sink down on a
garden seat, which happened by good luck to be near at hand.
'She's a-goin' off,' soliloquised Sam in great perplexity. 'Wot a thing
it is, as these here young creeturs will go a-faintin' avay just ven
they oughtn't to. Here, young 'ooman, Miss Sawbones, Mrs. Vinkle,
don't!'
Whether it was the magic of Mr. Winkle's name, or the coolness of the
open air, or some recollection of Mr. Weller's voice, that revived
Arabella, matters not. She raised her head and languidly inquired,
'Who's that, and what do you want?'
'Hush,' said Sam, swinging himself on to the wall, and crouching there
in as small a compass as he could reduce himself to, 'only me, miss,
only me.'
'Mr. Pickwick's servant!' said Arabella earnestly.
'The wery same, miss,' replied Sam. 'Here's Mr. Vinkle reg'larly sewed
up vith desperation, miss.'
'Ah!' said Arabella, drawing nearer the wall.
'Ah, indeed,' said Sam. 'Ve thought ve should ha' been obliged to
strait-veskit him last night; he's been a-ravin' all day; and he says
if he can't see you afore to-morrow night's over, he vishes he may be
somethin' unpleasanted if he don't drownd hisself.'
'Oh, no, no, Mr. Weller!' said Arabella, clasping her hands.
'That's wot he says, miss,' replied Sam coolly. 'He's a man of his word,
and it's my opinion he'll do it, miss. He's heerd all about you from the
sawbones in barnacles.'
'From my brother!' said Arabella, having some faint recognition of Sam's
description.
'I don't rightly know which is your brother, miss,' replied Sam. 'Is it
the dirtiest vun o' the two?'
'Yes, yes, Mr. Weller,' returned Arabella, 'go on. Make haste, pray.'
'Well, miss,' said Sam, 'he's heerd all about it from him; and it's the
gov'nor's opinion that if you don't see him wery quick, the sawbones as
