“Well, sir,” returns the stationer, shading his communication with his hat, “it falls a little hard upon me. My domestic happiness is very great—at least, it’s as great as can be expected, I’m sure—but my little woman is rather given to jealousy. Not to put too fine a point upon it, she is very much given to jealousy. And you see, a foreign female of that genteel appearance coming into the shop, and hovering—I should be the last to make use of a strong expression if I could avoid it, but hovering, sir—in the court—you know it is—now ain’t it? I only put it to yourself, sir.”
Mr. Snagsby, having said this in a very plaintive manner, throws in a cough of general application to fill up all the blanks.
“Why, what do you mean?” asks Mr. Tulkinghorn.
“Just so, sir,” returns Mr. Snagsby; “I was sure you would feel it yourself and would excuse the reasonableness of my feelings when coupled with the known excitableness of my little woman. You see, the foreign female—which you mentioned her name just now, with quite a native sound I am sure—caught up the word Snagsby that night, being uncommon quick, and made inquiry, and got the direction and come at dinnertime. Now Guster, our young woman, is timid and has fits, and she, taking fright at the foreigner’s looks—which are fierce—and at a grinding manner that she has of speaking—which is calculated to alarm a weak mind—gave way to it, instead of bearing up against it, and tumbled down the kitchen stairs out of one into another, such fits as I do sometimes think are never gone into, or come out of, in any house but ours. Consequently there was by good fortune ample occupation for my little woman, and only me to answer the shop. When she did say that Mr. Tulkinghorn, being always denied to her by his employer (which I had no doubt at the time was a foreign mode of viewing a clerk), she would do herself the pleasure of continually calling at my place until she was let in here. Since then she has been, as I began by saying, hovering, hovering, sir”— Mr. Snagsby repeats the word with pathetic emphasis—“in the