While Mrs. Snagsby, drawing her breath, looks hard at Mr. Snagsby, as who should say, “You hear this apostle!” and while Mr. Chadband glows with humility and train oil, Mrs. Chadband pays the money. It is Mr. Chadband’s habit—it is the head and front of his pretensions indeed—to keep this sort of debtor and creditor account in the smallest items and to post it publicly on the most trivial occasions.
“My friends,” says Chadband, “eightpence is not much; it might justly have been one and fourpence; it might justly have been half a crown. O let us be joyful, joyful! O let us be joyful!”
With which remark, which appears from its sound to be an extract in verse, Mr. Chadband stalks to the table, and before taking a chair, lifts up his admonitory hand.
“My friends,” says he, “what is this whi
