The Gift of the Sailor: The String of Pearls & Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street — page 284: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

CHAPTER LXXXIII. TODD TAKES A JOURNEY TO THE TEMPLE. TITLE. AS PRINTED: The Night Is Coming. The two females took their way to the Temple. Todd had been quite right in his conjectures. The friend of Mrs. Ragg was one of the old compatriots of the laundress tribe; and that good lady herself, although, while there was no temptation to do otherwise, she had kept well the secret of her son’s residence at Colonel Jeffery’s, broke down like a frail and weak vessel as she was with the weight of the secret the moment she got into a gossip with an old friend. Now Mrs. Ragg had only come into that neighbourhood upon some little errand of her own, and with a positive promise of returning to the colonel’s house as soon as possible. She would have kept this promise, but that amid the purlieus of Fetter Lane she encountered Martha Jones, her old acquaintance. One word begot another, and at last as they walked up Fleet Street, Mrs. Ragg could not help, with many head-shakings and muttered interactional phrases, letting Martha Jones know that she had a secret. Nay, as she passed Todd’s shop, she could not help intimating that she fully believed certain persons, not a hundred miles off, who might be barbers or who might not, would some day come to a bad end in front of Newgate, in the Old Bailey. It was at this insinuation that Martha Jones lifted up her hands, and Mrs. Ragg lifted up hers in sympathy. Todd had seen this action upon the part of the ladies. To overhear what they were saying was to Todd a great object. That it in some measure concemed him, he could not for a moment doubt, since the head-shaking and hand-uplifting reference that had been made to his shop by them both as they passed, could not mean anything else. And so, as we have said, he followed them cautiously, dodging behind bulky passengers, so that they should not see him by any sudden glance backwards. One corpulent old lady served him for a shield half up Fleet Street, until, indeed, she turned into a religious bookseller’s shop, and left him nothing but thin passengers to interfere between him and the possibility of observation. But Mrs. Ragg and her friend Martha Jones were much too fully engaged to look behind them. In due course, they arrived opposite to the Temple; and then, after much flurrying, in consequence of real and supposed danger from the passing vehicles, they got across the way. They at once dived into the recesses of the legally-learned Temple. Todd dashed after them. “Now, my dear Mrs. Ragg,” said Martha Jones, “you must not say No. It’s got a beautiful head upon it, and will do you good.” “No—no. Really.” “Like cream.” “But, really, I—I———” “Come, come, it ain’t often you is in the Temple, and I know very well he don’t miss a bottle now and then; and ’twix you and me and the pump, I think we has as much a right to that beautiful bottled ale as Mr. Juggas has, for I’d take my bible oath, he don’t mean to pay for it, Mrs. Ragg.” “You don’t say so?” “Yes, I does, Mrs. Ragg. Oh, he’s a bad ’un, he is. Ah, Mrs. Ragg, you don’t know, nor nobody else, what takes place in his chambers of a night.” “Ts it possible?” “Yes. I often say to myself what universal profundity he must be possessed with, for he was once intended, he says, for the church, and I heard him say he’d have stuck to it like bricks, if he could have heard of any church that was intended for him.” “Shocking!” “Yes, Mrs. Ragg. There’s profundity for you.” Did Martha Jones mean profanity? “Ah,” interposed Mrs. Ragg, “we live in a world.” “Yes, Mrs. Ragg, we does; but as you was a-saying?” “Eh?” “As you was a-saying about somebody being hung, if rights was rights, you know.” “Oh, dear, really you must not ask me. Indeed you must not.” “Well, I won’t; but here we are, in Pump Court.” Todd darted into a door-way, and watched them up the staircase of No. 6, in that highly classic locality. He slunk into the door-way, and by taking a perspective glance up the staircase, he saw them stop upon the first floor. He saw that they turned to the right. He darted up a few stairs, and just caught sight of a black door. Then there was a sharp sound, as of some small latch closing suddenly, after which all was still. Todd ascended the stairs. “Curses on them!” he muttered. “What can they mean by looking in such a manner at my shop? I thought the last time I saw that woman, Ragg, that she was cognizant of something. If now she, in her babbling, would give me any news of Tobias—Pho! he is—he must be dead.” By this time Todd had got to the top of the first flight of stairs, and stood upon the landing, close to several open doors—that is to say, outer black heavy-looking doors—and within them were smaller ones, armed with knockers. CORniclooo S CO)