My mother was going very gingerly in the dark along the passage which led to the parlour, as my uncle Toby pronounced the word wife.--'Tis a shrill penetrating sound of itself, and Obadiah had helped it by leaving the door a little a-jar, so that my mother heard enough of it to imagine herself the subject of the conversation; so laying the edge of her finger across her two lips--holding in her breath, and bending her head a little downwards, with a twist of her neck--(not towards the door, but from it, by which means her ear was brought to the chink)--she listened with all her powers:--the listening slave, with the Goddess of Silence at his back, could not have given a finer thought for an intaglio.

In this attitude I am determined to let her stand for five minutes: till Ibring up the affairs of the kitchen (as Rapin does those of the church) to the same period.