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vehemence, and exclaimed, with energy, 'if it hadn't been for this, I
should ha' forgot all about it, till it was too late!'
The particular picture on which Sam Weller's eyes were fixed, as he
said this, was a highly-coloured representation of a couple of human
hearts skewered together with an arrow, cooking before a cheerful fire,
while a male and female cannibal in modern attire, the gentleman
being clad in a blue coat and white trousers, and the lady in a deep
red pelisse with a parasol of the same, were approaching the meal
with hungry eyes, up a serpentine gravel path leading thereunto. A
decidedly indelicate young gentleman, in a pair of wings and nothing
else, was depicted as superintending the cooking; a representation of
the spire of the church in Langham Place, London, appeared in the
distance; and the whole formed a 'valentine,' of which, as a written
inscription in the window testified, there was a large assortment
within, which the shopkeeper pledged himself to dispose of, to his
countrymen generally, at the reduced rate of one-and-sixpence each.
'
I should ha' forgot it; I should certainly ha' forgot it!' said Sam; so
saying, he at once stepped into the stationer's shop, and requested to
be served with a sheet of the best gilt-edged letter- paper, and a hard-
nibbed pen which could be warranted not to splutter. These articles
having been promptly supplied, he walked on direct towards
Leadenhall Market at a good round pace, very different from his recent
lingering one. Looking round him, he there beheld a signboard on
which the painter's art had delineated something remotely resembling
a cerulean elephant with an aquiline nose in lieu of trunk. Rightly
conjecturing that this was the Blue Boar himself, he stepped into the
house, and inquired concerning his parent.
'
He won't be here this three-quarters of an hour or more,' said the
young lady who superintended the domestic arrangements of the Blue
Boar.
'Wery good, my dear,' replied Sam. 'Let me have nine- penn'oth o'
brandy-and-water luke, and the inkstand, will you, miss?'
The brandy-and-water luke, and the inkstand, having been carried
into the little parlour, and the young lady having carefully flattened
down the coals to prevent their blazing, and carried away the poker to
preclude the possibility of the fire being stirred, without the full privity
and concurrence of the Blue Boar being first had and obtained, Sam
Weller sat himself down in a box near the stove, and pulled out the
sheet of gilt-edged letter-paper, and the hard-nibbed pen. Then
looking carefully at the pen to see that there were no hairs in it, and
dusting down the table, so that there might be no crumbs of bread
under the paper, Sam tucked up the cuffs of his coat, squared his
elbows, and composed himself to write.
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