to you?' said Sam.

'The very next,' replied Mary.

Mr. Weller was so deeply overcome on receiving this intelligence that
he found it absolutely necessary to cling to his fair informant for
support; and divers little love passages had passed between them, before
he was sufficiently collected to return to the subject.

'Vell,' said Sam at length, 'if this don't beat cock-fightin' nothin'
never vill, as the lord mayor said, ven the chief secretary o' state
proposed his missis's health arter dinner. That wery next house! Wy,
I've got a message to her as I've been a-trying all day to deliver.'

'Ah,' said Mary, 'but you can't deliver it now, because she only walks
in the garden in the evening, and then only for a very little time; she
never goes out, without the old lady.'

Sam ruminated for a few moments, and finally hit upon the following plan
of operations; that he should return just at dusk--the time at which
Arabella invariably took her walk--and, being admitted by Mary into the
garden of the house to which she belonged, would contrive to scramble
up the wall, beneath the overhanging boughs of a large pear-tree, which
would effectually screen him from observation; would there deliver his
message, and arrange, if possible, an interview on behalf of Mr. Winkle
for the ensuing evening at the same hour. Having made this arrangement
with great despatch, he assisted Mary in the long-deferred occupation of
shaking the carpets.

It is not half as innocent a thing as it looks, that shaking little
pieces of carpet--at least, there may be no great harm in the shaking,
but the folding is a very insidious process. So long as the shaking
lasts, and the two parties are kept the carpet's length apart, it is
as innocent an amusement as can well be devised; but when the folding
begins, and the distance between them gets gradually lessened from one
half its former length to a quarter, and then to an eighth, and then to
a sixteenth, and then to a thirty-second, if the carpet be long enough,
it becomes dangerous. We do not know, to a nicety, how many pieces of
carpet were folded in this instance, but we can venture to state that
as many pieces as there were, so many times did Sam kiss the pretty
housemaid.

Mr. Weller regaled himself with moderation at the nearest tavern
until it was nearly dusk, and then returned to the lane without the
thoroughfare. Having been admitted into the garden by Mary, and having
received from that lady