LER FAMILY, AND THE
UNTIMELY DOWNFALL OF Mr. STIGGINS

Considering it a matter of delicacy to abstain from introducing either
Bob Sawyer or Ben Allen to the young couple, until they were fully
prepared to expect them, and wishing to spare Arabella's feelings as
much as possible, Mr. Pickwick proposed that he and Sam should alight in
the neighbourhood of the George and Vulture, and that the two young men
should for the present take up their quarters elsewhere. To this they
very readily agreed, and the proposition was accordingly acted upon;
Mr. Ben Allen and Mr. Bob Sawyer betaking themselves to a sequestered
pot-shop on the remotest confines of the Borough, behind the bar door of
which their names had in other days very often appeared at the head of
long and complex calculations worked in white chalk.

'Dear me, Mr. Weller,' said the pretty housemaid, meeting Sam at the
door.

'Dear ME I vish it vos, my dear,' replied Sam, dropping behind, to let
his master get out of hearing. 'Wot a sweet-lookin' creetur you are,
Mary!'

'Lot, Mr. Weller, what nonsense you do talk!' said Mary. 'Oh! don't, Mr.
Weller.'

'Don't what, my dear?' said Sam.

'Why, that,' replied the pretty housemaid. 'Lor, do get along with you.'
Thus admonishing him, the pretty housemaid pushed Sam against the wall,
declaring that he had tumbled her cap, and put her hair quite out of
curl.

'And prevented what I was going to say, besides,' added Mary. 'There's
a letter been waiting here for you four days; you hadn't gone away, half
an hour, when it came; and more than that, it's got "immediate," on the
outside.'

'Vere is it, my love?' inquired Sam.

'I took care of it, for you, or I dare say it would have been lost
long before this,' replied Mary. 'There, take it; it's more than you
deserve.'

With these words, after many pretty little coquettish doubts and fears,
and wishes that she might not have lost it, Mary produced the letter
from behind the nicest little muslin tucker possible, and handed it to
Sam, who thereupon kissed it with much gallantry and devotion.

'My goodness me!' said Mary, adjusting the tucker, and feigning
unconsciousness, 'you seem to have grown very fond of it all at once.'

To this Mr. Weller only replied by a wink, the intense meaning of which
no description could convey the faintest idea of; and, sitting himself
down beside Mary on a window-seat, opened the letter and glanced at the
contents.

'Hollo!' exclaim