“Miss who?” said Mary, in great astonishment.
“Miss Arabella Allen,” said Sam.
“Goodness gracious!” said Mary, pointing 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 housemaid, 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 tryin’ 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.