The String of Pearls (1850), p. 491

with which to attract the attention of the cook. He looked up, and saw her dimly.
"Are you busy?" she said.
"Yes, madam, as busy as the nine o'clock batch usually makes me. Do you not hear the oven?"
"I do—'tis well."
"Ah, madam," said the dissembling cook, "it will be well, indeed, if you keep your word with me, and set me to-night at freedom."
"Do you doubt it?"
"I have no particular reason to doubt it, further than that the unfortunate are always inclined to doubt too good news. That is all, madam."
"If you doubt, you will be agreeably disappointed, for I shall keep my word with you. You have done for me much better than I ever expected, and I will be grateful to you now that you are going. I have said that you shall not go without means, and you shall have a purse of twenty guineas to help you on your way wherever you wish."
"How kind you are, madam! Ah, I shall be able now to forgive you for all that I have suffered in this place—and, after all, it has been a refuge from want."
"It has. No one can be better pleased than I am to find you view things so reasonably. Send up the nine o'clock batch; and then wait patiently until I come to you."
"I will."
"Till then, good-night!"
Mrs. Lovett left the grating; and as she went up to the shop, she muttered to herself—
"They will, when they find him here, suspect he is an accomplice. Well, let them hang him, for all I care. What can it matter to me?"

CHAPTER CXII.
MRS. LOVETT FINDS THAT IT IS EASIER TO PLAN THAN TO EXECUTE.

It wants five minutes to nine, and Mrs. Lovett's shop is filling with persons anxious to devour or to carry away one or more of the nine o'clock batch of savoury, delightful, gushing gravy pies.
Many of Mrs. Lovett's customers paid her in advance for the pies, in order that they might be quite sure of getting their orders fulfilled when the first batch should make its gracious appearance from the depths below.
"Well, Jiggs," said one of the legal fraternity to another, "how are you to-day, old fellow? What do you bring it in?"
"Oh! I aint very blooming. The fact is, the count and I, and a few others, made a night of it last evening; and somehow or another I don't think whiskey-
and-water, half-and-half, and tripe, go well together."
"I should wonder if they did."
"And so I've come for a pie just to settle my stomach; you see I'm rather delicate."
"Ah! you are just like me, young man, there," said an elderly personage; "I have a delicate stomach, and the slightest thing disagrees with me. A mere idea will make me quite ill."
"Will it, really?"
"Yes; and my wife, she—"
"Oh, bother your wife! It's only five minutes to nine, don't you see? What a crowd there is, to be sure. Mrs. Lovett, you charmer, I hope you have ordered enough pies to be made to-night? You see what a lot of customers you have."