“My love,” said Mr. Nupkins, “you professed yourself very fond of Captain Fitz-Marshall. You have constantly asked him here, my dear, and you have lost no opportunity of introducing him elsewhere.”
“Didn’t I say so, Henrietta?” cried Mrs. Nupkins, appealing to her daughter, with the air of a much-injured female. “Didn’t I say that your papa would turn round and lay all this at my door? Didn’t I say so?” Here Mrs. Nupkins sobbed.
“Oh pa!” remonstrated Miss Nupkins. And here she sobbed too.
“Isn’t it too much, when he has brought all this disgrace and ridicule upon us, to taunt me with being the cause of it?” exclaimed Mrs. Nupkins.
“How can we ever show ourselves in society!” said Miss Nupkins.
“How can we face the Porkenhams!” cried Mrs. Nupkins.
“Or the Griggs’s!” cried Miss Nupkins.
“Or the Slummintowkens!” cried Mrs. Nupkins. “But what does your papa care! What is it to him!” At this dreadful reflection, Mrs. Nupkins wept with mental anguish, and Miss Nupkins followed on the same side.
Mrs. Nupkins’s tears continued to gush forth, with great velocity, until she had gained a little time to think the matter over: when she decided, in her own mind, that the best thing to do would be to ask Mr. Pickwick and his friends to remain until the Captain’s arrival, and then to give Mr. Pickwick the opportunity he sought. If it appeared that he had spoken truly, the Captain could be turned out of the house without noising the matter abroad, and they could easily account to the Porkenhams for his disappearance, by saying that he had been appointed, through the Court influence of his family, to the Governor-Generalship of Sierra Leone, or Saugur Point, or any other of those salubrious climates which enchant Europeans so much that when they once get there, they can hardly ever prevail upon themselves to come back again.
When Mrs. Nupkins dried up her tears, Miss Nupkins dried up hers, and Mr. Nupkins was very glad to settle the matter as Mrs. Nupkins had proposed. So Mr. Pickwick and his friends, having washed off all marks of their late encounter, were introduced to the ladies, and soon afterwards to their dinner; and Mr. Weller, whom the magistrate with his peculiar sagacity had discovered in half an hour to be one of the finest fellows alive, was consigned to the care and guardianship of Mr. Muzzle, who was specially enjoined to take him below, and make much of him.