He never lost a chance. In the same spirit, when the blushing Arabella came to tell of her marriage, "can you forgive my imprudence?" He returned "no verbal response"--not he--"but _took off his spectacles in great haste_, and seizing both the young lady's hands in his, kissed her a great many times--perhaps a greater number of times than was absolutely necessary." Observe the artfulness of all this--the deliberation--taking off the spectacles so that they should not be in the way--seizing her hands--and then setting to work! Oh, he knew more of "this sort of thing" than he had credit for. He had never proposed--true--but he had been near it a precious sight more than he said. Miss Witherfield is a rather mysterious personage, yet we take an interest in her and speculate on her history. She lived some twenty miles from Ipswich--no doubt at a family place of her own. She had come in to stay at the White Horse for the night and the morning. She was, no doubt, a person of property--otherwise Mr. Magnus would not have been so eager, and he must have been a fortune hunter, for he confided to Mr. Pickwick, that he had been jilted "three or four times." What a quaint notion by the way that of his: "I think an Inn is a good sort of place to propose to a single woman in, Mr. Pickwick. She is more likely to feel the loneliness of her situation in travelling, perhaps than she would be, at home." We find here some of the always amusing bits of confusion that recur in the book. Here might be a Calverley question, "When was it, and where was it, that the Pickwickians had _two_ dinners in the one day?" Answer: At the Great White Horse on this very visit. When Mr. Nupkins retired to lunch, after his interview with Miss Witherfield, the Pickwickians sat down to their dinner "quietly," and were in the midst of that meal, when Grummer arrived to arrest them. They were taken to Nupkins', and there dined with him. This dinner would have brought them to five o'clock:--we are told of candles--so that it was dark--yet this was the month of May, when it would been light enough till eight o'clock. Mrs. Nupkins' dress, on coming in from lunch, is worth noting. "A blue gauze turban and a light brown wig." Again, it was to Mr. Pickwick's watch, that we owe the diverting and farcical incident of the double bedded bedroom--and indeed we have here all the licensed improbabilities of a Farce. To forget his watch on a hotel table was the last thing a staid man of business would do. How could he be made to forget it? "By winding it up," said the author. "Winding up his watch, and _laying it on the table_." This was of course in the _Fob_ days, when the watch had to be drawn from the deep pocket; not as now when it is secured with a "guard chain." Naturally, he might in an abstracted moment have so laid it down.