Page:The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club.djvu/295

231 ifE PICKWICK CLUB. 231

ill triivelling, perliitps, than she would he at home. What do you think, Mr. Pickwick ? "

" I think it very probable," replied that gentleman.

♦' I beg: your pardon, Mr. Pickwick," said Mr. Peter Magnus, "but I am naturally rather curious ; what may you have come down here for?"

" On a far less pleasant errand, Sir," replied Mr. Pickwick, the colour mounting- to his face at the recollection — " I have come down here, Sir, to expose the treachery and falsehood of an individual, upon whose truth and honour I placed implicit reliance."

" Dear me," said Mr. Peter Magnus, " that's very unpleasant. It is a lady, I presume ? Eh ? ah ! Sly, Mr. Pickwick, sly. Well, Mr. Pickwick, Sir, I wouldn't probe your feelings for the world. Painful subjects, these, Sir, very painful. Don't mind me, Mr. Pickwick, if 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."

" 1 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 lying 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, x shall be pale to-morrow, Mr, Pickwick."

At the bare notion of such a calamity, Mr. Peter Magnus rang the bell for the chamber-maid ; and the striped bag, the red bag, the leather hat-box, and the brown-paper parcel, having been conveyed to his bed- room, 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 chamber-maid.

" 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 chamber- maid 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 and Fogg. From Dodson and Fogg's it flew off at a tangent, to the very centre of the.