In reply to this, the groom waxing very wroth, muttered a desire to

damage somebody's person; but disappeared without carrying it into

execution, slamming the door angrily after him, and wholly unheeding

Sam's affectionate request, that he would leave him a lock of his hair

before he went.

Sam continued to sit on the large stone, meditating upon what was

best to be done, and revolving in his mind a plan for knocking at all

the doors within five miles of Bristol, taking them at a hundred and

fifty or two hundred a day, and endeavouring to find Miss Arabella by

that expedient, when accident all of a sudden threw in his way what

he might have sat there for a twelvemonth and yet not found without

it.

Into the lane where he sat, there opened three or four garden gates,

belonging to as many houses, which though detached from each

other, were only separated by their gardens. As these were large and

long, and well planted with trees, the houses were not only at some

distance off, but the greater part of them were nearly concealed from

view. Sam was sitting with his eyes fixed upon the dust-heap outside

the next gate to that by which the groom had disappeared, profoundly

turning over in his mind the difficulties of his present undertaking,

when the gate opened, and a female servant came out into the lane to

shake some bedside carpets.

Sam was so very busy with his own thoughts, that it is probable he

would have taken no more notice of the young woman than just

raising his head and remarking that she had a very neat and pretty

figure, if his feelings of gallantry had not been most strongly roused by

observing that she had no one to help her, and that the carpets

seemed too heavy for her single strength. Mr Weller was a gentleman

of great gallantry in his own way, and he no sooner remarked this

circumstance than he hastily rose from the large stone, and advanced

towards her. 'My dear,' said Sam, sliding up with an air of great

respect, 'you'll spile that wery pretty figure out o' all perportion if you

shake them carpets by yourself. Let me help you.'

The young lady, who had been coyly affecting not to know that a

gentleman was so near, turned round as Sam spoke - no doubt

(

indeed she said so, afterwards) to decline this offer from a perfect

stranger - when instead of speaking, she started back, and uttered a

half-suppressed scream. Sam was scarcely less staggered, for in the

countenance of the well-shaped female servant, he beheld the very

features of his valentine, the pretty housemaid from Mr Nupkins's.

'Wy, Mary, my dear!' said Sam.

'Lauk, Mr Weller,' said Mary, 'how you do frighten one!'

The Pickwick Papers