‘How did you come in our garden?’ faltered the housemaid.
‘Call the lady of the house, and I’ll tell her everything,’ said Mr. Pickwick, exerting his lungs to the utmost pitch. ‘Call her—only be quiet, and call her, and you shall hear everything.’
It might have been Mr. Pickwick’s appearance, or it might have been his manner, or it might have been the temptation—irresistible to a female mind—of hearing something at present enveloped in mystery, that reduced the more reasonable portion of the establishment (some four individuals) to a state of comparative quiet. By them it was proposed, as a test of Mr. Pickwick’s sincerity, that he should immediately submit to personal restraint; and that gentleman having consented to hold a conference with Miss Tomkins, from the interior of a closet in which the day boarders hung their bonnets and sandwich-bags, he at once stepped into it, of his own accord, and was securely locked in. This revived the others; and Miss Tomkins having been brought to, and brought down, the conference began.
‘What did you do in my garden, man?’ said Miss Tomkins, in a faint voice.
‘I came to warn you that one of your young ladies was going to elope to-night,’ replied Mr. Pickwick, from the interior of the closet.
‘Elope!’ exclaimed Miss Tomkins, the three teachers, the thirty boarders, and the five servants. ‘Who with?’
Your friend, Mr. Charles Fitz-Marshall.’
‘My friend! I don’t know any such person.’
‘Well, Mr. Jingle, then.’
‘I never heard the name in my life.’