Winkle's plan for finding Arabella Allen met now with a set-back. Sam Weller arrived at midnight and insisted that Winkle be waked at once. Once in his room, Sam told him Mr. Pickwick's instructions and declared he would not leave his sight till Winkle came back with him to Bath. This was awkward, but luckily, Mr. Pickwick himself, to whom Sam wrote, arrived next day and released his follower.
Mr. Pickwick approved of Winkle's determination to find the pretty Arabella, and so the next morning Sam Weller was sent on a voyage of discovery among the servants of the town. For many hours Sam searched in vain without a clue.
In the afternoon he sat in a lane running between rows of gardens in one of the suburbs, when a gate opened and a maid-servant came out to shake some carpets. Sam gallantly rose to help her, when she uttered a half-suppressed scream. It was Mary, the good-looking housemaid whom Sam had kissed at the house of Nupkins, the mayor of Ipswich, on the day of the arrest of the Pickwickians and the exposure of Jingle. She had left her place there for this new situation.
When Sam had finished his gallant speeches and Mary her blushing, he told her of Winkle's search. What was his surprise when she told him that Arabella was living the very next door. She let Sam come into the garden, and presently when Arabella came out to walk, he scrambled on to the wall and pleaded Winkle's cause.
"Ve thought ve should ha' been obliged to straitveskit him last night," he declared. "He's been a-ravin' all day; and he says if he can't see you afore to-morrow night's over, he vishes he may be somethin'-unpleasanted if he don't drownd hisself."
Arabella, in great distress at this prospect, promised she would be in the garden next evening, and Sam returned with the news to Mr. Pickwick and Winkle.
The next evening all three set out for the spot. Mary let them into the garden and, while Winkle climbed the wall to throw himself at Arabella's feet, Mr. Pickwick kept guard at the gate with a dark lantern. So far he threw its beam that a scientific gentleman who lived a few houses away, seeing the light from his window, took it for some new and wonderful freak of electricity and came out to investigate.
Before he arrived, however, Winkle had scrambled back over the wall and Arabella had run into the house. Seeing the scientific gentleman's head poked out of a garden-gate as they passed, Sam gave it a gentle tap with his fist and then, hoisting Mr. Pickwick on his back, and followed by Winkle, he ran off at full speed, leaving the scientific gentleman to go back to his room and write a long article about the wonderful light and to tell how he had received a shock of electricity which left him stunned for a quarter of an hour afterward.
The Pickwickians' stay at Bath came to an end soon after this adventure, and their leader, with Sam Weller, returned to London.