picture on which Sam Weller's eyes were fixed, as he said
this, was a highly-coloured representation of a couple of human hearts
skewered together with an arrow, cooking before a cheerful fire, while a
male and female cannibal in modern attire, the gentleman being clad in a
blue coat and white trousers, and the lady in a deep red pelisse with
a parasol of the same, were approaching the meal with hungry eyes, up a
serpentine gravel path leading thereunto. A decidedly indelicate
young gentleman, in a pair of wings and nothing else, was depicted as
superintending the cooking; a representation of the spire of the church
in Langham Place, London, appeared in the distance; and the whole
formed a 'valentine,' of which, as a written inscription in the window
testified, there was a large assortment within, which the shopkeeper
pledged himself to dispose of, to his countrymen generally, at the
reduced rate of one-and-sixpence each.

'I should ha' forgot it; I should certainly ha' forgot it!' said Sam; so
saying, he at once stepped into the stationer's shop, and requested
to be served with a sheet of the best gilt-edged letter-paper, and a
hard-nibbed pen which could be warranted not to splutter. These articles
having been promptly supplied, he walked on direct towards Leadenhall
Market at a good round pace, very different from his recent lingering
one. Looking round him, he there beheld a signboard on which the
painter's art had delineated something remotely resembling a cerulean
elephant with an aquiline nose in lieu of trunk. Rightly conjecturing
that this was the Blue Boar himself, he stepped into the house, and
inquired concerning his parent.

'He won't be here this three-quarters of an hour or more,' said the
young lady who superintended the domestic arrangements of the Blue Boar.

'Wery good, my dear,' replied Sam. 'Let me have nine-penn'oth o'
brandy-and-water luke, and the inkstand, will you, miss?'

The brandy-and-water luke, and the inkstand, having been carried into
the little parlour, and the young lady having carefully flattened
down the coals to prevent their blazing, and carried away the poker to
preclude the possibility of the fire being stirred, without the full
privity and concurrence of the Blue Boar being first had and obtained,
Sam Weller sat himself down in a box near the stove, and pulled out the
sheet of gilt-edged letter-paper, and the hard-nibbed pen. Then looking
carefully at the pen to see that the