 third parties into
whose hands they might fall. Let me read the first: - Garraway's, twelve
o'clock. Dear Mrs. B. - Chops and Tomata sauce. Yours, PICKWICK. Gentlemen, what
does this mean? Chops and Tomata sauce. Yours, Pickwick! Chops! Gracious
heavens! and Tomata sauce! Gentlemen, is the happiness of a sensitive and
confiding female to be trifled away, by such shallow artifices as these? The
next has no date whatever, which is in itself suspicious. Dear Mrs. B., I shall
not be at home till to-morrow. Slow coach. And then follows this very remarkable
expression. Don't trouble yourself about the warming-pan. The warming pan! Why,
gentlemen, who does trouble himself about a warming-pan? When was the peace of
mind of man or woman broken or disturbed by a warming-pan, which is in itself a
harmless, a useful, and I will add, gentlemen, a comforting article of domestic
furniture? Why is Mrs. Bardell so earnestly entreated not to agitate herself
about this warming-pan, unless (as is no doubt the case) it is a mere cover for
hidden fire - a mere substitute for some endearing word or promise, agreeably to
a preconcerted system of correspondence, artfully contrived by Pickwick with a
view to his contemplated desertion, and which I am not in a condition to
explain? And what does this allusion to the slow coach mean? For aught I know,
it may be a reference to Pickwick himself, who has most unquestionably been a
criminally slow coach during the whole of this transaction, but whose speed will
now be very unexpectedly accelerated, and whose wheels, gentlemen, as he will
find to his cost, will very soon be greased by you!«
    Mr. Serjeant Buzfuz paused in this place, to see whether the jury smiled at
his joke; but as nobody took it but the green-grocer, whose sensitiveness on the
subject was very probably occasioned by his having subjected a chaise-cart to
the process in question on that identical morning, the learned serjeant
considered it advisable to undergo a slight relapse into the dismals before he
concluded.
    »But enough of this, gentlemen,« said Mr. Serjeant Buzfuz, »it is difficult
to smile with an aching heart; it is ill jesting when our deepest sympathies are
awakened. My client's hopes and prospects are ruined, and it is no figure of
speech to say that her occupation is gone indeed. The bill is down - but there
is no tenant
