Page:The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club.djvu/232

174 174 POSTHUMOUS PAPERS OF

the cheeks of Maria Lo1»bs had never looked so ruddy, as upjn this particular occasion. No wonder then, that Nathaniel Pipkin was unable to take his eyes from the countenance of Miss Lobbs ; no wonder that Miss Lobbs, finding- herself stared at by a young man, withdrew her head from the window out of which she had been peeping, and shut the casement and pulled down the blind ; no wonder that Nathaniel Pipkin, immediately thereafter, fell upon the young urchin who had previously offended, and cuffed and knocked him to his heart's content. All this was very natural, and there's nothing at all to wonder at about it.

" It is matter of wonder, though, that any one of Mr. Nathaniel Pipkin's retiring disposition, nervous temperament, and most particularly diminutive income, should from this day forth, have dared to aspire to the hand and heart of the only daughter of the fiery old Lobbs — of old Lobbs the great saddler, who could have bought up the whole village at one stroke of his pen, and never felt the outlay — old Lobbs, who was well known to have heaps of money, invested in the bank at the nearest market town — who was reported to have countless and inexhaustible treasures, hoarded up in the little iron safe with the big key-hole, over the chimney-piece in the back parlour — and who, it was well known, on festive occasions garnished his board with a real silver tea-pot, cream ewer, and sugar-basin, which he was wont, in the pride of his heart, to boast should be his daughter's property when she found a man to her mind. I repeat it, to be matter of profound astonishment and intense wonder, that Nathaniel Pipkin should have had the temerity to cast his eyes in this direction. But love is blind, and Nathaniel had a cast in his eye : and perhaps these two circumstances, taken together, prevented his seeing the matter, in its proper light.

" Now, if old Lobbs had entertained the most remote or distant idea of the state of the affections of Nathaniel Pipkin, he would just have razed the school-room to the ground, or exterminated its master from the surface of the earth, or committed some other outrage and atrocity of an equally ferocious and violent description ; for he was a terrible old fellow, that Lobbs, when his pride was injured, or his blood was up. Swear I Such trains of oaths would come rolling and pealing over the way, sometimes, when he was denouncing the idleness of the bony apprentice with the thin legs, that Nathaniel Pipkin would shake in his shoes with horror, and the hair of the pupils' heads would stand on end with fright.

" Well, day after day, when school was over, and the pupils gone, did Nathaniel Pipkin sit himself down at the front window, and while he feigned to be reading a book, throw sidelong glances over the way in search of the bright eyes of Maria Lobbs ; and he hadn't sat there many days, before the bright eyes appeared at an upper window, apparently deeply engaged in reading too. This was delightful, and, gladdening to the heart of Nathaniel Pipkin. It was something to sit there for hours together, and look upon that pretty face when the eyes were cast down ; but when Maria Lobbs began to raise her eyes from her book, and dart their rays in the direction of Nathaniel Pipkin, his delight and admiration were perfectly boundless. At last, one day