Mrs. Snagsby consciously asked why.

“Why?” said Mr. Bucket.  “Because you’ll come to that if you don’t look out.  Why, at the very moment while I speak, I know what your mind’s not wholly free from respecting this young lady.  But shall I tell you who this young lady is?  Now, come, you’re what I call an intellectual woman—­with your soul too large for your body, if you come to that, and chafing it—­and you know me, and you recollect where you saw me last, and what was talked of in that circle.  Don’t you?  Yes!  Very well.  This young lady is that young lady.”

Mrs. Snagsby appeared to understand the reference better than I did at the time.

“And Toughey—­him as you call Jo—­was mixed up in the same business, and no other; and the law-writer that you know of was mixed up in the same business, and no other; and your husband, with no more knowledge of it than your great grandfather, was mixed up (by Mr. Tulkinghorn, deceased, his best customer) in the same business, and no other; and the whole bileing of people was mixed up in the same business, and no other.  And yet a married woman, possessing your attractions, shuts her eyes (and sparklers too), and goes and runs her delicate-formed head against a wall.  Why, I am ashamed of you! (I expected Mr. Woodcourt might have got it by this time.)”

Mrs. Snagsby shook her head and put her handkerchief to her eyes.

“Is that all?” said Mr. Bucket excitedly.  “No.  See what happens.  Another person mixed up in that business and no other, a person in a wretched state, comes here to-night and is seen a-speaking to your maid-servant; and between her and your maid-servant there passes a paper that I would give a hundred pound for, down.  What do you do?  You hide and you watch ’em, and you pounce upon that maid-servant—­knowing what she’s subject to and what a little thing will bring ’em on—­in that surprising manner and with that severity that, by the Lord, she goes off and keeps off, when a life may be hanging upon that girl’s words!”

He so thoroughly meant what he said now that I involuntarily clasped my hands and felt the room turning away from me.  But it stopped.  Mr. Woodcourt came in, put a paper into his hand, and went away again.

“Now, Mrs. Snagsby, the only amends you can make,” said Mr. Bucket, rapidly glancing at it, “is to let me speak a word to this young lady in private here.  And if you know of any help that you can give to that gentleman in the next kitchen there or can think of any one thing that’s likelier than another to bring the girl round, do your swiftest and best!” In an instant she was gone, and he had shut the door.  “Now my dear, you’re steady and quite sure of yourself?”

“Quite,” said I.

“Whose writing is that?”

It was my mother’s.  A pencil-writing, on a crushed and torn piece of paper, blotted with wet.  Folded roughly like a letter, and directed to me at my guardian’s.