The String of Pearls (1850), p. 351

"This will do."
She was in the street in another minute. It took a minute to get out of a hackney-coach. It was like watching the moment to spring from a boat to the shore in a heavy surf. And yet, oh much villified old hackney-coach! how much superior wert thou to thy bastard son, the present odious rattling, bumping, angular, bone-dislocating, horrid cab! The driver received about double his fare, and a cab-man of the present day would have gathered a mob by his
vociferations, and blackguarded you into a shop, if you had treated him in such a way. Nothing less than three times what he's entitled to ever lights up the smallest spark of civility in the soul of a modern cab-driver, but the old hackney-coachman was always content with double; so upon this occasion Mrs. Lovett got a "thank ye, mum;" and a long straw that had taken an affection for the skirt of her dress was arrested by jarvey and restored to the coach again.
Mrs. Lovett walked to all appearance composedly up Fleet-street. Alas! in this world who can trust to appearances? She had time, before reaching the shop of Sweeney Todd, to arrange slightly what she should say to that worthy. Of course, he could know nothing of her visit to the City—of her interview with Mr. Brown, and she need not blurt that out too soon. She would argue with him a little, and then she would be down upon him with the knowledge of his knavery and treachery. She reached the shop. No wonder she paused there a moment or two to draw breath. You would have done the same; and after all, Mrs. Lovett was mortal. But she did not hesitate for long. The threshold was crossed—the handle of the door was in her hand—it was turned, and she stood in Todd's shop. Todd was looking at something
in a bottle, which he was holding up to the light; and Mrs. Lovett saw, too, that a pretty genteel-looking lad was poking about the fire, as if to rouse it.
"Ah, Mrs. Lovett!" said Todd, "how do you do? Some more of that fine grease for the hair, I suppose, madam?" Todd winked towards the lad (our dear friend Johanna), as though he would have said—"Don't appear to know me too well before this boy. Be careful, if you please."
"I have something to say to you, Mr. Todd."
"Oh, certainly, madam. Pray walk in—this way, if you please, madam—to my humble bachelor-parlour, madam. It is not fit exactly to ask a lady into; but we poor miserable single men, you know, madam, can only do the best we can. Ha! ha! This way."
"No."
"Eh? Not come in?"
"No. I have something to say to you, Mr. Todd; but I will say it here."
And now Mrs. Lovett gave a sidelong glance at the seeming boy, as muh s to say—
"You can easily send him away if you don't want him to listen to our discourse."
Todd saw the glance; and the diabolical look that he sent to Mrs. Lovett in return would indeed have appalled any one of less nerve than she was possessed of. But she had come to that place wound up firmly to a resolution, and she would not shrink. Todd had no resource.
"Charley," he said, "you can go and take a little turn—here is a penny to spend; get yourself something in the market. But be sure you are back within half an hour, for we shall have some customers, no doubt."
"Yes, sir."
Johanna did not exactly know whether to think that Mrs. Lovett came in anger or friendship; but, at all events, she felt that it would be hazardous to remain after so marked a dismissal from Todd, although she would gladly have heard what the subject of the conversation between those two was to be.
Neither Mrs. Lovett nor Todd now spoke until Johanna had fairly gone and closed the door after her. Then Todd, as he folded his arms, and looked Mrs. Lovett fully in the face, said—