,
always kept, as one may say, with its hair in papers and its pinafore on, to be
the most elegant apartment in Christendom. The view it commands of Cook's Court
at one end (not to mention a squint into Cursitor Street), and of Coavinses' the
sheriff's officer's back-yard at the other, she regards as a prospect of
unequalled beauty. The portraits it displays in oil - and plenty of it too - of
Mr. Snagsby looking at Mrs. Snagsby, and of Mrs. Snagsby looking at Mr. Snagsby,
are in her eyes as achievements of Raphael or Titian. Guster has some
recompenses for her many privations.
    Mr. Snagsby refers everything not in the practical mysteries of the business
to Mrs. Snagsby. She manages the money, reproaches the Tax-gatherers, appoints
the times and places of devotion on Sundays, licenses Mr. Snagsby's
entertainments, and acknowledges no responsibility as to what she thinks fit to
provide for dinner; insomuch that she is the high standard of comparison among
the neighbouring wives, a long way down Chancery Lane on both sides, and even
out in Holborn, who, in any domestic passages of arms, habitually call upon
their husbands to look at the difference between their (the wives') position and
Mrs. Snagsby's, and their (the husbands') behaviour and Mr. Snagsby's. Rumour,
always flying, bat-like, about Cook's Court, and skimming in and out at
everybody's windows, does say that Mrs. Snagsby is jealous and inquisitive; and
that Mr. Snagsby is sometimes worried out of house and home, and that if he had
the spirit of a mouse he wouldn't stand it. It is even observed, that the wives
who quote him to their self-willed husbands as a shining example, in reality
look down upon him; and that nobody does so with greater superciliousness than
one particular lady, whose lord is more than suspected of laying his umbrella on
her as an instrument of correction. But these vague whisperings may arise from
Mr. Snagsby's being, in his way, rather a meditative and poetical man; loving to
walk in Staple Inn in the summer time, and to observe how countrified the
sparrows and the leaves are; also to lounge about the Rolls Yard of a Sunday
afternoon, and to remark (if in good spirits) that there were old times once,
and that you'd find a stone coffin or two, now, under that chapel, he'll be
bound