Chapter 17 - Page 2

confirmation, on which momentous occasion Nathaniel Pipkin
was so overcome with reverence and awe, when the aforesaid
bishop laid his hand on his head, that he fainted right clean
away, and was borne out of church in the arms of the beadle.

'This was a great event, a tremendous era, in Nathaniel
Pipkin's life, and it was the only one that had ever occurred to
ruffle the smooth current of his quiet existence, when happening
one fine afternoon, in a fit of mental abstraction, to raise his eyes
from the slate on which he was devising some tremendous
problem in compound addition for an offending urchin to solve,
they suddenly rested on the blooming countenance of Maria
Lobbs, the only daughter of old Lobbs, the great saddler over the
way. Now, the eyes of Mr. Pipkin had rested on the pretty face
of Maria Lobbs many a time and oft before, at church and elsewhere;
but the eyes of Maria Lobbs had never looked so bright,
the cheeks of Maria Lobbs had never looked so ruddy, as upon
this particular occasion. No wonder then, that Nathaniel Pipkin
was unable to take his eyes from the countenance of Miss Lobbs;
no wonder that Miss Lobbs, finding herself stared at by a young
man, withdrew her head from the window out of which she had
been peeping, and shut the casement and pulled down the blind;
no wonder that Nathaniel Pipkin, immediately thereafter, fell
upon the young urchin who had previously offended, and cuffed
and knocked him about to his heart's content. All this was very
natural, and there's nothing at all to wonder at about it.

'It IS matter of wonder, though, that anyone of Mr. Nathaniel
Pipkin's retiring disposition, nervous temperament, and most
particularly diminutive income, should from this day forth, have
dared to aspire to the hand and heart of the only daughter of the
fiery old Lobbs--of old Lobbs, the great saddler, who could have
bought up the whole village at one stroke of his pen, and never
felt the outlay--old Lobbs, who was well known to have heaps of
money, invested in the bank at the nearest market town--who
was reported to have countless and inexhaustible treasures
hoarded up in the little iron safe with the big keyhole, over the
chimney-piece in the back parlour--and who, it was well known,
on festive occasions garnished his board with a real silver teapot,
cream-ewer, and sugar-basin, which he was wont, in the pride of
his heart, to boast should be his daughter's property when she
found a man to her mind. I repeat it, to be matter of profound
astonishment and intense wonder, that Nathaniel Pipkin should
have had the temerity to cast his eyes in this direction. But love is
blind; and Nathaniel had a cast in his eye; and perhaps these two
circumstances, taken