The Pickwick Papers
overcome with reverence and awe, when the aforesaid bishop laid his hand
on his head, that he fainted right clean away, and was borne out of
church in the arms of the beadle.
‘This was a great event, a tremendous era, in Nathaniel Pipkin’s life,
and it was the only one that had ever occurred to ruffle the smooth
current of his quiet existence, when happening one fine afternoon, in a
fit of mental abstraction, to raise his eyes from the slate on which he
was devising some tremendous problem in compound addition for an
offending urchin to solve, they suddenly rested on the blooming
countenance of Maria Lobbs, the only daughter of old Lobbs, the great
saddler over the way. Now, the eyes of Mr. Pipkin had rested on the
pretty face of Maria Lobbs many a time and oft before, at church and
elsewhere; but the eyes of Maria Lobbs had never looked so bright, the
cheeks of Maria Lobbs had never looked so ruddy, as upon this particular
occasion. No wonder then, that Nathaniel Pipkin was unable to take his
eyes from the countenance of Miss Lobbs; no wonder that Miss Lobbs,
finding herself stared at by a young man, withdrew her head from the
window out of which she had been peeping, and shut the casement and
pulled down the blind; no wonder that Nathaniel Pipkin, immediately
thereafter, fell upon the young urchin who had previously offended, and
cuffed and knocked him about to his heart’s content. All this was very
natural, and there’s nothing at all to wonder at about it.
‘It _is_ matter of wonder, though, that anyone of Mr. Nathaniel Pipkin’s
retiring disposition, nervous temperament, and most particularly
diminutive income, should from this day forth, have dared to aspire to
the hand and heart of the only daughter of the fiery old Lobbs--of old
Lobbs, the great saddler, who could have bought up the whole village at
one stroke of his pen, and never felt the outlay--old Lobbs, who was
well known to have heaps of money, invested in the bank at the nearest
market town--who was reported to have countless and inexhaustible
treasures hoarded up in the little iron safe with the big keyhole, over
the chimney-piece in the back parlour--and who, it was well known, on
festive occasions garnished his board with a real silver teapot, cream-
ewer, and sugar-basin, which he was wont, in the pride of his heart, to
boast should be his daughter’s property when she found a man to her
mind. I repeat it, to be matter of profound astonishment and intense
wonder, that Nathaniel Pipkin should have had the temerity to cast his
eyes in this direction. But love is blind; and Nathaniel had a cast in
his eye; and perhaps these two circumstances, taken together, prevented
his seeing the matter in its proper light.
‘Now, if old Lobbs had entertained the most remote or distant idea of
the state of the affections of Nathaniel Pipkin, he would just have
razed the school-room to the ground, or exterminated its master from the
surface of the earth, or committed some other outrage and atrocity of an
equally ferocious and violent description; for he was a terrible old
fellow, was Lobbs, when his pride was injured, or his blood was up.
Swear! Such trains of oaths would come rolling and pealing over the way,
sometimes, when he was denouncing the idleness of the bony apprentice
with the thin legs, that Nathaniel Pipkin would shake in his shoes with
horror, and the hair of the pupils’ heads would stand on end with
fright.
‘Well! Day after day, when school was over, and the pupils gone, did
Nathaniel Pipkin sit himself down at the front window, and, while he
feigned to be reading a book, throw sidelong glances over the way in
search of the bright eyes of Maria Lobbs; and he hadn’t sat there many
days, before the bright eyes appeared at an upper window, apparently
deeply engaged in reading too. This was delightful, and gladdening to
the heart of Nathaniel Pipkin. It was something to sit there for hours
together, and look upon that pretty face when the eyes were cast down;
but when Maria Lobbs began to raise her eyes from her book, and dart
their rays in the direction of Nathaniel Pipkin, his delight and
admiration were perfectly boundless. At last, one day when he knew old
Lobbs was out, Nathaniel Pipkin had the temerity to kiss his hand to
Maria Lobbs; and Maria Lobbs, instead of shutting the window, and
pulling down the blind, kissed _hers _to him, and smiled. Upon which
Nathaniel Pipkin determined, that, come what might, he would develop the
state of his feelings, without further delay.
‘A prettier foot, a gayer heart, a more dimpled face, or a smarter form,
never bounded so lightly over the earth they graced, as did those of
Maria Lobbs, the old saddler’s daughter. There was a roguish twinkle in
her sparkling eyes, that would have made its way to far less susceptible
bosoms than that of Nathaniel Pipkin; and there was such a joyous sound
in her merry laugh, that the sternest misanthrope must have smiled to
hear it. Even old Lobbs himself, in the very height of his ferocity,
couldn’t resist the coaxing of his pretty daughter; and when she, and
her cousin Kate--an arch, impudent-looking, bewitching little person--
made a dead set upon the old man together, as, to say the truth, they
very often did, he could have refused them nothing, even had they asked
for a portion of the countless and inexhaustible treasures, which were
hidden from the light, in the iron safe.
‘Nathaniel Pipkin’s heart beat high within him, when he saw this
enticing little couple some hundred yards before him one summer’s
evening, in the very field in which he had many a time strolled about
till night-time, and pondered on the beauty of Maria Lobbs. But though
he had often thought then, how briskly he would walk up to Maria Lobbs
and tell her of his passion if he could only meet her, he felt, now that
she was unexpectedly before him, all the blood in his body mounting to
his face, manifestly to the great detriment of his legs, which, deprived
of their usual portion, trembled beneath him. When they stopped to
gather a hedge flower, or listen to a bird, Nathaniel Pipkin stopped
too, and pretended to be absorbed in meditation, as indeed he really
was; for he was thinking what on earth he should ever do, when they
turned back, as they inevitably must in time, and meet him face to face.
But though he was afraid to make up to them, he couldn’t bear to lose
sight of them; so when they walked faster he walked faster, when they
lingered he lingered, and when they stopped he stopped; and so they
might have gone on, until the darkness prevented them, if Kate had not
looked slyly back, and encouragingly beckoned Nathaniel to advance.
There was something in Kate’s manner that was not to be resisted, and so
Nathaniel Pipkin complied with the invitation; and after a great deal of
blushing on his part, and immoderate laughter on that of the wicked
little cousin, Nathaniel Pipkin went down on his knees on the dewy
grass, and declared his resolution to remain there for ever, unless he
were permitted to rise the accepted lover of Maria Lobbs. Upon this, the
merry laughter of Miss Lobbs rang through the calm evening air--without
seeming to disturb it, though; it had such a pleasant sound--and the
wicked little cousin laughed more immoderately than before, and
Nathaniel Pipkin blushed deeper than ever. At length, Maria Lobbs being
more strenuously urged by the love-worn little man, turned away her
head, and whispered her cousin to say, or at all events Kate did say,
that she felt much honoured by Mr. Pipkin’s addresses; that her hand and
heart were at her father’s disposal; but that nobody could be insensible
to Mr. Pipkin’s merits. As all this was said with much gravity, and as
Nathaniel Pipkin walked home with Maria Lobbs, and struggled for a kiss
at parting, he went to bed a happy man, and dreamed all night long, of
softening old Lobbs, opening the strong box, and marrying Maria.
The next day, Nathaniel Pipkin saw old Lobbs go out upon his old gray
pony, and after a great many signs at the window from the wicked little
cousin, the object and meaning of which he could by no means understand,
the bony apprentice with the thin legs came over to say that his master
wasn’t coming home all night, and that the ladies expected Mr. Pipkin to
tea, at six o’clock precisely. How the lessons were got through that
day, neither Nathaniel Pipkin nor his pupils knew any more than you do;
but they were got through somehow, and, after the boys had gone,
Nathaniel Pipkin took till full six o’clock to dress himself to his
satisfaction. Not that it took long to select the garments he should
wear, inasmuch as he had no choice about the matter; but the putting of
them on to the best advantage, and the touching of them up previously,
was a task of no inconsiderable difficulty or importance.
‘There was a very snug little party, consisting of Maria Lobbs and her
cousin Kate, and three or four romping, good-humoured, rosy-cheeked
girls. Nathaniel Pipkin had ocular demonstration of the fact, that the
rumours of old Lobbs’s treasures were not exaggerated. There were the
real solid silver teapot, cream-ewer, and sugar-basin, on the table, and
real silver spoons to stir the tea with, and real china cups to drink it
out of, and plates of the same, to hold the cakes and toast in. The only
eye-sore in the whole place was another cousin of Maria Lobbs’s, and a
brother of Kate, whom Maria Lobbs called “Henry,” and who seemed to keep
Maria Lobbs all to himself, up in one corner of the table. It’s a
delightful thing to see affection in families, but it may be carried
rather too far, and Nathaniel Pipkin could not help thinking that Maria
Lobbs must be very particularly fond of her relations, if she paid as
much attention to all of them as to this individual cousin. After tea,
too, when the wicked little cousin proposed a game at blind man’s buff,
it somehow or other happened that Nathaniel Pipkin was nearly always
blind, and whenever he laid his hand upon the male cousin, he was sure
to find that Maria Lobbs was not far off. And though the wicked little
cousin and the other girls pinched him, and pulled his hair, and pushed
chairs in his way, and all sorts of things, Maria Lobbs never seemed to
come near him at all; and once--once--Nathaniel Pipkin could have sworn
he heard the sound of a kiss, followed by a faint remonstrance from
Maria Lobbs, and a half-suppressed laugh from her female friends. All
this was odd--very odd--and there is no saying what Nathaniel Pipkin
might or might not have done, in consequence, if his thoughts had not
been suddenly directed into a new channel.
‘The circumstance which directed his thoughts into a new channel was a
loud knocking at the street door, and the person who made this loud
knocking at the street door was no other than old Lobbs himself, who had
unexpectedly returned, and was hammering away, like a coffin-maker; for
he wanted his supper. The alarming intelligence was no sooner
communicated by the bony apprentice with the thin legs, than the girls
tripped upstairs to Maria Lobbs’s bedroom, and the male cousin and
Nathaniel Pipkin were thrust into a couple of closets in the sitting-
room, for want of any better places of concealment; and when Maria Lobbs
and the wicked little cousin had stowed them away, and put the room to
rights, they opened the street door to old Lobbs, who had never left off
knocking since he first began.
‘Now it did unfortunately happen that old Lobbs being very hungry was
monstrous cross. Nathaniel Pipkin could hear him growling away like an
old mastiff with a sore throat; and whenever the unfortunate apprentice
with the thin legs came into the room, so surely did old Lobbs commence
swearing at him in a most Saracenic and ferocious manner, though