Mr. Pickwick's face had settled down into an expression of blank amazement and perplexity, quite curious to behold.
"Snodgrass! Since last Christmas!" were the first broken words that issued from the lips of the confounded gentleman.
"Since last Christmas," replied Wardle; "that's plain enough, and very bad spectacles we must have worn, not to have discovered it before."
"I don't understand it," said Mr. Pickwick, ruminating; "I really cannot understand it."
"It's easy enough to understand," replied the choleric old gentleman. "If you had been a younger man, you would have been in the secret long ago; and besides," added Wardle after a moment's hesitation, "the truth is, that, knowing nothing of this matter, I have rather pressed Emily for four or five months past, to receive favourably (if she could; I would never attempt to force a girl's inclinations) the addresses of a young gentleman down in our neighbourhood. I have no doubt that, girl-like, to enhance her own value and increase the arlour of Mr. Snodgrass, she has represented this matter in very glowing colours, and that they have both arrived at the conclusion that they are a terribly persecuted pair of unfortunates, and have no resource but clandestine matrimony or charcoal. Now the question is, what's to be done?"
"What have you done?" inquired Mr. Pickwick.
"I!"
"I mean what did you do when your married daughter told you this?"
"Oh, I made a fool of myself, of course," rejoined Wardle.
"Just so," interposed Perker, who had accompanied this dialogue with sundry twitchings of his watch-chain, vindictive rubbings of his nose, and other symptoms of impatience. "That's very natural; but how?"
"I went into a great passion and frightened my mother into a fit," said Wardle.
"That was judicious," remarked Perker; "and what else?"
"I fretted and fumed all next day, and raised a great
