About this story
A landlady reads 'chops and tomato sauce' as a proposal, and a jury prices your supper at seven hundred and fifty pounds; refusing to pay, you enter the Fleet, where the chubbs and key are minted iron spent on doors and Sam Weller makes himself at home. Fifty-seven chapters carry a rainy inn yard to a kettle at Dulwich.
How it opens
Rain glazed the White Hart yard, where coaches crowded beneath smoking lamps and dripping galleries.
Boots thudded on cobbles while ostlers shouted through the steam rising from tired horses.
Boots, sir? I clean them, find their owners, and sometimes improve both.
Mr WardleMy sister has been carried off by that strolling scoundrel, and I mean to stop the wedding.
Choose
Have you seen a lady arrive with a thin gentleman?
Which guest came in most anxious not to be noticed?