‘Stay, Mr. Winkle, stay!’ said Serjeant Buzfuz, ‘will your Lordship have the goodness to ask him, what this one instance of suspicious behaviour towards females on the part of this gentleman, who is old enough to be his father, was?’
‘You hear what the learned counsel says, Sir,’ observed the judge, turning to the miserable and agonised Mr. Winkle. ‘Describe the occasion to which you refer.’
‘My Lord,’ said Mr. Winkle, trembling with anxiety, ‘I—I’d rather not.’
‘Perhaps so,’ said the little judge; ‘but you must.’
Amid the profound silence of the whole court, Mr. Winkle faltered out, that the trifling circumstance of suspicion was Mr. Pickwick’s being found in a lady’s sleeping-apartment at midnight; which had terminated, he believed, in the breaking off of the projected marriage of th
