“Vell, sir,” rejoined Sam, after a pause, “I think I see your drift, and it’s my ‘pinion that you’re a-comin’ it a great deal too strong, as the mail-coachman said to the snowstorm ven it overtook him.”

“For the time that I remain here,” said Mr. Pickwick, “you must leave me, Sam.”

“Now, I tell you vot it is,” said Mr. Weller, in a grave and solemn voice.  “This here sort o’ thing won’t do at all, so don’t let’s hear no more about it.”

“I am serious, Sam,” said Mr. Pickwick.

“You air, air you, sir?” inquired Mr. Weller.  “Wery good, sir.  Then so am I.”

With that Mr. Weller fixed his hat on his head with great precision and left the room.  Having found his father, Sam explained to the elder Mr. Weller that Mr. Pickwick must not be left alone in the Fleet.

“Vy, they’ll eat him up alive, Sammy!” exclaimed the elder Mr. Weller.  “Stop there by himself, poor creetur, without nobody to take his part!  It can’t be done, Samivel, it can’t be done!”

“O’ course it can’t,” asserted Sam.  “Well, then, I tell you wot it is.  I’ll trouble you for the loan of five-and-twenty pound.  P’raps you may ask for it five minits artervards, p’raps I may say I von’t pay, and cut up rough.  You von’t think o’ arrestin’ your own son for the money, and sendin’ him off to the Fleet, will you, you unnat’ral wagabone?”

The elder Mr. Weller, having grasped the idea, laughed till he was purple.

In the course of the day Sam was duly arrested at the suit of his father, and Sam, having been formally delivered into the warden’s custody, passed at once into the prison, and went straight to his master’s room.

“I’m a pris’ner, sir,” said Sam.  “I was arrested this here wery arternoon for debt, and the man as put me in ’ull never let me out till you go yourself.”

“Bless my heart and soul!” ejaculated Mr. Pickwick.  “What do you mean?”

“Wot I say, sir,” rejoined Sam.  “If it’s forty year to come, I shall be a pris’ner, and I’m very glad on it.  He’s a malicious, bad-disposed, vorldly-minded, windictive creetur wot’s put me in, with a hard heart as there ain’t no soft’nin’, as the wirtuous clergyman remarked of the old gen’l’m’n with a dropsy, ven he said that upon the whole he thought he’d rather leave his property to his vife than build a chapel with it.”

In vain Mr. Pickwick remonstrated.

“I takes my determination on principle, sir,” remarked Sam, “and you takes yours on the same ground; vich puts me in mind o’ the man as killed hisself on principle.”

IV.—­Mr. Pickwick Leaves the Fleet

Those enterprising lawyers, Messrs. Dodson and Fogg, having obtained no money from Mr. Pickwick, proceeded in July to arrest Mrs. Bardell, who, as a matter of form, had given them a cognovit for the amount of their costs.

Mr. Pickwick was taking his evening walk in the grounds of the Fleet when Mrs. Bardell was brought in, and Sam Weller, seeing the lady, took off his hat in mock reverence.  Mr. Pickwick turned indignantly away.