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 I bring up the affairs of the kitchen (as _Rapin_ does those of
the church) to the same period.