"I am serious, Sam," said Mr. Pickwick.
"You air, air you, sir?" inquired Mr. Weller. "Wery good, sir. Then so am I."
With that Mr. Weller fixed his hat on his head with great precision and left the room. Having found his father, Sam explained to the elder Mr. Weller that Mr. Pickwick must not be left alone in the Fleet.
"Vy, they'll eat him up alive, Sammy!" exclaimed the elder Mr. Weller. "Stop there by himself, poor creetur, without nobody to take his part! It can't be done, Samivel, it can't be done!"
"O' course it can't," asserted Sam. "Well, then, I tell you wot it is. I'll trouble you for the loan of five-and-twenty pound. P'raps you may ask for it five minits artervards, p'raps I may say I von't pay, and cut up rough. You von't think o' arrestin' your own son for the money, and sendin' him off to the Fleet, will you, you unnat'ral wagabone?"
The elder Mr. Weller, having grasped the idea, laughed till he was purple.
In the course of the day Sam was duly arrested at the suit of his father, and Sam, having been formally delivered into the warden's custody, passed at once into the prison, and went straight to his master's room.
"I'm a pris'ner, sir," said Sam. "I was arrested this here wery arternoon for debt, and the man as put me in 'ull never let me out till you go yourself."
"Bless my heart and soul!" ejaculated Mr. Pickwick. "What do you mean?"
"Wot I say, sir," rejoined Sam. "If it's forty year to come, I shall be a pris'ner, and I'm very glad on it. He's a malicious, bad-disposed, vorldly-minded, windictive creetur wot's put me in, with a hard heart as there ain't no soft'nin', as the wirtuous clergyman remarked of the old gen'l'm'n with a dropsy, ven he said that upon the whole he thought he'd rather leave his property to his vife than build a chapel with it."