“Good gracious, gentlemen!” says Mr. Snagsby, coming up. “What’s this I hear!”
“Why, it’s true,” returns one of the policemen. “That’s what it is. Now move on here, come!”
“Why, good gracious, gentlemen,” says Mr. Snagsby, somewhat 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 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 beer-engine, 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?”