‘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’.’