“I’m coming, my dear, I’m coming; only this balance-spring is a job that I cannot well leave,” replied Nicholas, continuing his vocation in the shop, with a magnifying glass attached to his eye.

“Coming! yes, and Christmas is coming, Mr Forster.—­Well, the dinner’s going, I can tell you.”

Nicholas, who did not want appetite, and who was conscious that if the mutton returned to the cupboard there would be some difficulty made in reproducing it, laid down the watch and came into the back parlour.

“Well, my dear, here I am; sorry to have kept you waiting so long, but business must be attended to.  Dear me! why, the mutton is really quite cold,” continued Nicholas, thrusting a large piece into his mouth, quite forgetting that he had already dined twice off the identical joint.  “That’s a fine watch of Mr Tobin’s; but I think that my improvement upon the duplex when I have finished it—­”

“When you have finished it, indeed!” retorted the lady; “why, when did you ever finish anything, Mr Forster?  Finish, indeed!”

“Well, my dear,” replied the husband, with an absent air—­“I do mean to finish it, when—­you are dead!”

“When I am dead!” screamed the lady, in a rage—­“when I am dead!” continued she, placing her arms akimbo, as she started from the chair.  “I can tell you, Mr Forster, that I’ll live long enough to plague you.  It’s not the first time that you’ve said so; but depend upon it, I’ll dance upon your grave yet, Mr Forster.”

“I did not exactly mean to say that; not exactly that, my dear,” replied Nicholas, confused.  “The fact is that I was not exactly aware of what I was saying—­I had not precisely the—­”

“Precisely the fiddle-stick, Mr Forster! you did mean it, and you do mean it, and this is all the return that I am to expect for my kindness and anxiety for your welfare—­slaving and toiling all day as I do; but you’re incorrigible, Mr Forster:  look at you, helping yourself out of your snuff-box instead of the salt-cellar.  What man in his senses would eat a cold shoulder of mutton with tobacco?”

“Dear me, so I have,” replied Forster, removing the snuff taken from the box, which, as usual, lay open before him, not into the box again, but into the salt-cellar.

“And who’s to eat that salt now, you nasty beast?”

“I am not a beast, Mrs Forster,” replied her husband, whose choler was roused; “I made a mistake; I do not perceive—­now I recollect it, did you send Betty with the ‘day and night glass’ to Captain Simkins?”

“Yes, I did, Mr Forster; if I did not look after your business, I should like to know what would become of us; and I can tell you, Mr Forster, that if you do not contrive to get more business, there will soon be nothing to eat; seventeen and sixpence is all that I have received this last week; and how rent and fire, meat and drink, are to be paid for with that, you must explain, for I can’t.”