er
his right shoulder; 'over that way--down there. But, hush, here's Bob.
Not a word, my dear friend, not a word.'

Short as this conversation was, it roused in Mr. Winkle the highest
degree of excitement and anxiety. The suspected prior attachment rankled
in his heart. Could he be the object of it? Could it be for him that the
fair Arabella had looked scornfully on the sprightly Bob Sawyer, or had
he a successful rival? He determined to see her, cost what it might;
but here an insurmountable objection presented itself, for whether the
explanatory 'over that way,' and 'down there,' of Mr. Ben Allen, meant
three miles off, or thirty, or three hundred, he could in no wise guess.

But he had no opportunity of pondering over his love just then, for Bob
Sawyer's return was the immediate precursor of the arrival of a meat-pie
from the baker's, of which that gentleman insisted on his staying to
partake. The cloth was laid by an occasional charwoman, who officiated
in the capacity of Mr. Bob Sawyer's housekeeper; and a third knife and
fork having been borrowed from the mother of the boy in the gray livery
(for Mr. Sawyer's domestic arrangements were as yet conducted on a
limited scale), they sat down to dinner; the beer being served up, as
Mr. Sawyer remarked, 'in its native pewter.'

After dinner, Mr. Bob Sawyer ordered in the largest mortar in the shop,
and proceeded to brew a reeking jorum of rum-punch therein, stirring up
and amalgamating the materials with a pestle in a very creditable and
apothecary-like manner. Mr. Sawyer, being a bachelor, had only one
tumbler in the house, which was assigned to Mr. Winkle as a compliment
to the visitor, Mr. Ben Allen being accommodated with a funnel with a
cork in the narrow end, and Bob Sawyer contented himself with one of
those wide-lipped crystal vessels inscribed with a variety of cabalistic
characters, in which chemists are wont to measure out their liquid drugs
in compounding prescriptions. These preliminaries adjusted, the punch
was tasted, and pronounced excellent; and it having been arranged that
Bob Sawyer and Ben Allen should be considered at liberty to fill twice
to Mr. Winkle's once, they started fair, with great satisfaction and
good-fellowship.

There was no singing, because Mr. Bob Sawyer said it wouldn't look
professional; but to make amends for this deprivation there was so much
talking and laughing that it might have been heard, and very likely was,
at the end of