you wish to give vent
to your feelings. I know what it is to be jilted, Sir; I have endured
that sort of thing three or four times.'

'I am much obliged to you, for your condolence on what you presume to be
my melancholy case,' said Mr. Pickwick, winding up his watch, and laying
it on the table, 'but--'

'No, no,' said Mr. Peter Magnus, 'not a word more; it's a painful
subject. I see, I see. What's the time, Mr. Pickwick?' 'Past twelve.'

'Dear me, it's time to go to bed. It will never do, sitting here. I
shall be pale to-morrow, Mr. Pickwick.'

At the bare notion of such a calamity, Mr. Peter Magnus rang the bell
for the chambermaid; and the striped bag, the red bag, the leathern
hat-box, and the brown-paper parcel, having been conveyed to his
bedroom, he retired in company with a japanned candlestick, to one side
of the house, while Mr. Pickwick, and another japanned candlestick, were
conducted through a multitude of tortuous windings, to another.

'This is your room, sir,' said the chambermaid.

'Very well,' replied Mr. Pickwick, looking round him. It was a
tolerably large double-bedded room, with a fire; upon the whole, a more
comfortable-looking apartment than Mr. Pickwick's short experience of
the accommodations of the Great White Horse had led him to expect.

'Nobody sleeps in the other bed, of course,' said Mr. Pickwick.

'Oh, no, Sir.'

'Very good. Tell my servant to bring me up some hot water at half-past
eight in the morning, and that I shall not want him any more to-night.'

'Yes, Sir,' and bidding Mr. Pickwick good-night, the chambermaid
retired, and left him alone.

Mr. Pickwick sat himself down in a chair before the fire, and fell into
a train of rambling meditations. First he thought of his friends, and
wondered when they would join him; then his mind reverted to Mrs. Martha
Bardell; and from that lady it wandered, by a natural process, to the
dingy counting-house of Dodson & Fogg. From Dodson & Fogg's it flew off
at a tangent, to the very centre of the history of the queer client; and
then it came back to the Great White Horse at Ipswich, with sufficient
clearness to convince Mr. Pickwick that he was falling asleep. So he
roused himself, and began to undress, when he recollected he had left
his watch on the table downstairs.

Now this watch was a special favourite with Mr. Pickwick, having been
carried about, beneath the shadow of his waistcoat, for a greater number
of years than we feel