While Mrs Snagsby, drawing her breath, looks hard at Mr Snagsby, as who should say, “You hear this Apostle!” and while Mr Chadband glows with humility and train oil, Mrs Chadband pays the money. It is Mr Chadband’s habit — it is the head and front of his pretensions indeed — to keep this sort of debtor and creditor account in the smallest items, and to post it publicly on the most trivial occasions.

“My friends,” says Chadband, “eightpence is not much; it might justly have been one and fourpence; it might justly have been half a-crown. O let us be joyful, joyful! O let us be joyful!”

With which remark, which appears from its sound to be an extract in verse, Mr Chadband stalks to the table, and, before taking a chair, lifts up his admonitory hand.

“My friends,” says he, “what is this which we now behold as being spread before us? Refreshment. Do we need refreshment then, my friends? We do. And why do we need refreshment, my friends? Because we are but mortal, because we are but sinful, because we are but of the earth, because we are not of the air. Can we fly, my friends? We cannot. Why can we not fly, my friends?”

Mr Snagsby, presuming on the success of his last point, ventures to observe in a cheerful and rather knowing tone, “No wings.” But, is immediately frowned down by Mrs Snagsby.

“I say, my friends,” pursues Mr Chadband, utterly rejecting and obliterating Mr Snagsby’s suggestion, “why can we not fly? Is it because we are calculated to walk? It is. Could we walk, my friends, without strength? We could not. What should we do without strength, my friends? Our legs would refuse to bear us, our knees would double up, our ankles would turn over, and we should come to the ground. Then from whence, my friends, in a human point of view, do we derive the strength that is necessary to our limbs? Is it,” says Chadband, glancing over the table, “from bread in various forms, from butter which is churned from the milk which is yielded unto us by the cow, from the eggs which are laid by the fowl, from ham, from tongue, from sausage, and from such like? It is. Then let us partake of the good things which are set before us!”

The persecutors denied that there was any particular gift in Mr Chadband’s piling verbose flights of stairs, one upon another, after this fashion. But this can only be received as a proof of their determination to persecute, since it must be within everybody’s experience, that the Chadband style of oratory is widely received and much admired.

Mr Chadband, however, having concluded for the present, sits down at Mrs Snagsby’s table, and lays about him prodigiously. The conversion of nutriment of any sort into oil of the quality already mentioned, appears to be a process so inseparable from the constitution of this exemplary vessel, that in beginning to eat and drink, he may be described as always becoming a kind of considerable Oil Mills, or other large factory for the production of that article on a wholesale scale. On the present evening of the long vacation, in Cook’s Court, Cursitor Street, he does such a powerful stroke of business, that the warehouse appears to be quite full when the works cease.

At this period of the entertainment, Guster, who has never recovered her first failure, but has neglected no possible or impossible means of bringing the establishment and herself into contempt — among which may be briefly enumerated her unexpectedly performing clashing military music on Mr Chadband’s head with plates, and afterwards crowning that gentleman with muffins — at this period of the entertainment, Guster whispers Mr Snagsby that he is wanted.

“And being wanted in the — not to put too fine a point upon it — in the shop!” says Mr Snagsby, rising, “perhaps this good company will excuse me for half a minute.”

Mr Snagsby descends, and finds the two ’prentices intently contemplating a police constable, who holds a ragged boy by the arm.

“Why, bless my heart,” says Mr Snagsby, “what’s the matter!”