'If you are, Sir, you will at once leave the room,' said the lady.
'Immediately, ma'am; this instant, ma'am,' said Mr. Pickwick,
opening the door, and dropping both his shoes with a crash in so doing.
'I trust, ma'am,' resumed Mr. Pickwick, gathering up his shoes,
and turning round to bow again--'I trust, ma'am, that my
unblemished character, and the devoted respect I entertain for your
sex, will plead as some slight excuse for this--' But before Mr.
Pickwick could conclude the sentence, the lady had thrust him
into the passage, and locked and bolted the door behind him.
Whatever grounds of self-congratulation Mr. Pickwick might
have for having escaped so quietly from his late awkward
situation, his present position was by no means enviable. He was
alone, in an open passage, in a strange house in the middle of the
night, half dressed; it was not to be supposed that he could find
his way in perfect darkness to a room which he had been wholly
unable to discover with a light, and if he made the slightest noise
in his fruitless attempts to do so, he stood every chance of being
shot at, and perhaps killed, by some wakeful traveller.
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