CHAPTER LII. INVOLVING A SERIOUS CHANGE IN THE WELLER FAMILY, AND THE UNTIMELY DOWNFALL OF MR. STIGGINS
Considering it a matter of delicacy to abstain from introducing either Bob Sawyer or Ben Allen to the young couple, until they were fully prepared to expect them, and wishing to spare Arabella’s feelings as much as possible, Mr. Pickwick proposed that he and Sam should alight in the neighbourhood of the George and Vulture, and that the two young men should for the present take up their quarters elsewhere. To this they very readily agreed, and the proposition was accordingly acted upon; Mr. Ben Allen and Mr. Bob Sawyer betaking themselves to a sequestered pot-shop on the remotest confines of the Borough, behind the bar door of which their names had in other days very often appeared at the head of long and complex calculations worked in white chalk.
‘Dear me, Mr. Weller,’ said the pretty housemaid, meeting Sam at the door.
‘Dear me I vish it vos, my dear,’ replied Sam, dropping behind, to let his master get out of hearing. ‘Wot a sweet-lookin’ creetur you are, Mary!’
‘Lor’, Mr. Weller, what nonsense you do talk!’ said Mary. ‘Oh! don’t, Mr. Weller.’
‘Don’t what, my dear?’ said Sam.
‘Why, that,’ replied the pretty housemaid. ‘Lor, do get along with you.’ Thus admonishing him, the pretty housemaid pushed Sam against the wall, declaring that he had tumbled her cap, and put her hair quite out of curl.
‘And prevented what I was going to say, besides,’ added Mary. ‘There’s a letter been waiting here for you four days; you hadn’t gone away, half an hour, when it came; and more than that, it’s got “immediate,” on the outside.’
‘Vere is it, my love?’ inquired Sam.
‘I took care of it, for you, or I dare say it would have been lost long before this,’ replied Mary. ‘There, take it; it’s more than you deserve.’