The String of Pearls (1850), p. 310

God made both these creatures! It was Todd who broke the silence. A gathering flush was upon the face of the boy, and he could not speak.
"What do you want?" said Todd.

He rattled his chair as he spoke, as though he would have said, "It is not to be shaved." The boy was too much engaged with his own thoughts to pay much attention to Todd's pantomime. He evidently, though, wished to say something, which he could not command breath to give utterance to. Like the "Amen" of Macbeth, something he would fain have uttered, seemed to stick in his throat.
"What is it?" again demanded Todd, eagerly.
This roused the boy. The boy, do we say. Ah, our readers have already recognised in that boy the beautiful and enthusiastic Johanna Oakley.
"There is a bill in your window—"
"A what?"
Todd had forgotten the announcement regarding the youth he wanted, with a taste for piety.
"A bill. You want a boy, sir."
"Oh," said Todd, as the object of the visit at once thus became clear and apparent to him. "Oh, that's it."
"Yes, sir."
Todd held up his hand to his eyes, as though he were shading them from sunlight, as he gazed upon Johanna, and then, in an abrupt tone of voice, he said—
"You won't do."
"Thank you, sir."
She moved towards the door. Her hand touched the handle. It was not fast. The door opened. Another moment, and she would have been gone.
"Stop!" cried Todd.
She returned at once.
"You don't look like a lad in want of a situation. Your clothes are good—your whole appearance is that of a young gentleman. What do you mean by coming here to ask to be an errand boy in a barber's shop? I don't understand it. You had different expectations."
"Yes, sir. But Mrs. Green—"
"Mrs. who?"
"Green, sir, my mother-in-law, don't use me well, and I would rather go to sea, or seek my living in any way, than go back again to her; and if I were to come into your service, all I would ask would be, that you did not let her know where I was."
"Humph! Your mother-in law, you say?"
"Yes, sir. I have been far happier since I ran away from her, than I have been for a long time past."
"Ah, you ran away? Where lives she?"
"At Oxford. I came to London in the waggon, and at every step the lazy horses took, I felt a degree of pleasure that I was placing a greater distance between me and oppression."
"Your own name ?"
"Charley Green. It was all very well as long as my father lived; but when he was no more, my mother-in-law began her ill-usage of me. I bore it as long as I could, and then I ran away. If you can take me, sir, I hope you will."
"Go along with you. You won't suit me at all. I wonder at your impudence in coming."
"No harm done, sir. I will try my fortune elsewhere."
Todd began sharpening a razor, as the boy went to the door again.
"Shall I take him ?" he said to himself. "I do want some one for the short time I shall be here. Humph! An orphan—stranger in London. No one to
care for him. The very thing for me. No prying friends—nowhere to run, the