, I do NOT,' replied Mr. Weller doggedly.

'Try, Sam,' said Mr. Pickwick.

'Vell, sir,' rejoined Sam, after a short pause, 'I think I see your
drift; and if I do see your drift, it's my 'pinion that you're a-comin'
it a great deal too strong, as the mail-coachman said to the snowstorm,
ven it overtook him.'

'I see you comprehend me, Sam,' said Mr. Pickwick. 'Independently of my
wish that you should not be idling about a place like this, for years
to come, I feel that for a debtor in the Fleet to be attended by his
manservant is a monstrous absurdity. Sam,' said Mr. Pickwick, 'for a
time you must leave me.'

'Oh, for a time, eh, sir?' rejoined Mr. Weller rather sarcastically.

'Yes, for the time that I remain here,' said Mr. Pickwick. 'Your wages I
shall continue to pay. Any one of my three friends will be happy to
take you, were it only out of respect to me. And if I ever do leave this
place, Sam,' added Mr. Pickwick, with assumed cheerfulness--'if I do, I
pledge you my word that you shall return to me instantly.'

'Now I'll tell you wot it is, Sir,' said Mr. Weller, in a grave and
solemn voice. 'This here sort o' thing won't do at all, so don't let's
hear no more about it.' 'I am serious, and resolved, Sam,' said Mr.
Pickwick.

'You air, air you, sir?' inquired Mr. Weller firmly. 'Wery good, Sir;
then so am I.'

Thus speaking, Mr. Weller fixed his hat on his head with great
precision, and abruptly left the room.

'Sam!' cried Mr. Pickwick, calling after him, 'Sam! Here!'

But the long gallery ceased to re-echo the sound of footsteps. Sam
Weller was gone.

CHAPTER XLIII. SHOWING HOW Mr. SAMUEL WELLER GOT INTO DIFFICULTIES

In a lofty room, ill-lighted and worse ventilated, situated in Portugal
Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, there sit nearly the whole year round,
one, two, three, or four gentlemen in wigs, as the case may be, with
little writing-desks before them, constructed after the fashion of those
used by the judges of the land, barring the French polish. There is
a box of barristers on their right hand; there is an enclosure of
insolvent debtors on their left; and there is an inclined plane of
most especially dirty faces in their front. These gentlemen are the
Commissioners of the Insolvent Court, and the place in which they sit,
is the Insolvent Court itself.

It is, and has been, time out of mind, the remarkable fate of this court
to be, somehow or other, held and understood, by the general