"Who was Mrs. Chickenstalker?" I asked sternly.
"She kept a shop. In The Haunted Man."
"Whom did Mr. Wopsle marry?"
"Nobody. But hadn't you better see about your watch?"
"Not yet. How many glasses of punch did Mr. Pickwick drink on One Tree Hill?"
"Depends on how you count them. I make it eight."
"Correct. Look here—have you thought about the bagman's story—the first one? He says it is eighty years since the events he relates took place, and that would carry it back to 1747. And yet the traveller damns his straps and whiskers. Why, if he'd worn strapped trousers and whiskers in those days he'd have had a mob after him."
"Yes, and he wouldn't have been driving a gig on Marlborough downs. He'd have been riding with pistols in his holsters, wrapped in a horseman's cloak and wearing a plain bobwig. I've thought of that too."
"I see you have. But there's another—"
"Let me. Can you account for this? Martin Chuzzlewit left Mr. Pecksniff's house in the late autumn—say the last of November to be on the safe side. He stays five weeks in London and then goes to America—say another five weeks. Then, after a week in Major Pawkins' boarding-house, he goes to a place which is identified as the original site of Cairo, Illinois—say another week. This would land him there at the end of February, when everything is frozen stiff. But they travelled down the river in a heat that blistered everything it touched."