promptly backed away, “I was at this door last night betwixt ten and eleven o'clock, in conversation with the young man who lodges here.”
“Indeed?” returns the policeman. “You will find the young man next door then. Now move on here, some of you.”
“Not hurt, I hope?” says Mr. Snagsby.
“Hurt? No. What's to hurt him!”
Mr. Snagsby, wholly unable to answer this, or any other question, in his troubled mind, repairs to the Sol's Arms, and finds Mr. Weevle languishing over tea and toast; with a considerable expression on him of exhausted excitement, and exhausted tobacco-smoke.
“And Mr. Guppy likewise!” quoth Mr., Snagsby. “Dear, dear, dear! What a Fate there seems in all this! And my lit―”
Mr. Snagsby's power of speech deserts him in the formation of the words “my little woman.” For, to see that injured female walk into the Sol's Arms at that hour of the morning and stand before the beerengine, with her eyes fixed upon him like an accusing spirit, strikes him dumb.
“My dear,” says Mr. Snagsby, when his tongue is loosened, “will you take anything? A little—not to put too fine a point upon it—drop of shrub?”
“No,” says Mrs. Snagsby.
“My love, you know these two gentlemen?”
<Yes!” says Mrs. Snagsby; and in a rigid manner acknowledges their presence, still fixing Mr. Snagsby with her eye. The devoted Mr. Snagsby cannot bear this treatment. He takes Mrs. Snagsby by the hand, and leads her aside to an adjacent cask.
“My little woman, why do you look at me in that way? Pray don't do it.”
“I can't help my looks,” says Mrs. Snagsby, “and if I could I wouldn't.”
Mr. Snagsby, with his cough of meekness, rejoins,—"Wouldn't you really, my dear? and meditates. Then coughs his cough of trouble, and says, “This is a dreadful mystery, my love!” still fearfully disconcerted by Mrs. Snagsby's eye.
“It is,” returns Mrs. Snagsby, shaking her head, “a dreadful mystery.”
“My little woman,” urges Mr. Snagsby, in a piteous manner, “don't, for goodness sake, speak to me with that bitter expression, and look at me in that searching way! I beg and entreat of you not to do it. Good lord, you don't suppose that I would go spontaneously combusting any person, my dear?”
“I can't say,” returns Mrs. Snagsby.
On a hasty review of his unfortunate position, Mr. Snagsby “can't say,” either. He is not prepared positively to deny that he may have had something to do with it. He has had something—he don't know what—to do with so much in this connexion that is mysterious, that it is possible he may even be implicated, without knowing it, in the present transaction. He faintly wipes his forehead with his handkerchief, and gasps.
“My life,” says the unhappy stationer, “would you have any objections to mention why, being in general so delicately circumspect in your conduct, you come into a Wine Vaults before breakfast?”
