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 ain't 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."
"Oh, there will be plenty."
"That's right. I say, don't push so; you'll be in time, I tell you; don't be pushing and driving in that sort of way—I've got ribs."
"And so have I. Last night I didn't get a pie at all, and my old woman is in a certain condition, you see, gentlemen, and won't fancy anything but one of Lovett's veal pies; so I've come all the way from Newington to get one for—"
"Hold your row, will you? and don't push."
"For to have the child marked with a pie on its—"
"Behind there, I say; don't be pushing a fellow as if it were half price at a theatre."
Each moment added some new comers to the throng, and at last any strangers who had known nothing of the attractions of Mrs. Lovett's pie-shop and had walked down Bell Yard, would have been astonished at the throng of persons there assembled—a throng that was each moment increasing in density, and becoming more and more urgent and clamorous.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine! Yes, it is nine at last. It strikes by old St. Dunstan's church clock, and in weaker strains the chronometical machine at the pie-shop echoes the sound. What excitement there is to get at the pies when they shall come! Mrs. Lovett lets down the square moveable platform that goes on pullies in the cellar; some machinery, which only requires a handle to be turned, brings up a hundred pies in a tray. These are eagerly seized by parties who have previously paid, and such a smacking of lips ensues as never was known.
Down goes the platform for the next hundred, and a gentlemanly man says—
"Let me work the handle, Mrs. Lovett, if you please; it's too much for you I'm sure."
"Sir, you are very kind, but I never allow anybody on this side of the counter but my own people, sir. I can turn the handle myself, sir, if you please, with the assistance of this girl. Keep your distance, sir, nobody wants your help."
"But my dear madam, only consider your delicacy. Really you ought not to be permitted to work away like a negro slave at a winch handle. Really you ought not."
The man who spoke thus obligingly to Mrs. Lovett, was tall and stout, and the lawyers clerks repressed the ire they otherwise would probably have given utterance to at thus finding any one quizzing their charming Mrs. Lovett.
"Sir, I tell you again that I don't want your help; keep your distance, sir, if you please."
"Now don't get angry, fair one," said the man. "You don't know but I might have made you an offer before I left the shop."
"Sir," said Mrs. Lovett, drawing herself up and striking terror into the hearts of the limbs of the law. "Sir! What do you want? Say what you want, and be served, sir, and then go. Do you want a pie, sir?"
"A pie? Oh, dear no, I don't want a pie. I would not eat one of the nasty things on any account. Pah!" Here the man spat on the floor. "Oh, dear, don't ask me to eat any of your pies."
"Shame, shame," said several of the lawyers clerks.
"Will any gentleman who thinks it a shame, be so good as to step forward and say so a little closer?"
Everybody shrunk back upon this, instead of accepting the challenge, and Mrs. Lovett soon saw that she must, despite all the legal chivalry by which she was surrounded, fight her battles herself. With a look of vehement anger, she cried—
"Beware, sir, I am not to be trifled with. If you carry your jokes too far, you will wish that you had not found your way, sir, into this shop."
"That, madam," said the tall stout man, "is not surely possible, when I have the beauty of a Mrs. Lovett to gaze upon, and render the place so exquisitely attractive; but if you will not permit me to have the pleasure of helping you up with the next batch of pies, which, after all, you may find heavier than you expect, I must leave you to do it yourself."
"So that I am not troubled any longer by you, sir, at all," said Mrs. Lovett, "I don't care how heavy the next batch of pies may happen to be, sir."
"Very good, madam."
"Upon my word," said a small boy, giving the side of his face a violent rub with the hope of finding the ghost of a whisker there, "it's really too bad."
"Ah, who's that? Let me get at him!"
"Oh, no, no, I—mean—that it's too bad of Mrs. Lovett, my dear sir. Oh, don't."
"Oh, very good; I am satisfied. Now, madam, you see that even your dear friends here, from Lincoln's Inn—Are you from the Inn, small boy?"
"Yes, sir, if you please."
"Very good. As I was saying, Mrs. Lovett, you now must of necessity perceive, that even your friends from the Inn, feel that your conduct is really too bad, madam."
Mrs. Lovett was upon this so dreadfully angry, that she disdained any reply to the tall stout man, but at once she applied herself to the windlass, which worked up the little platform, upon which a whole tray of a hundred pies was wont to come up, and began to turn it with what might be called a vengeance.
How very strange it was—surely the words of the tall stout impertinent stranger were prophetic, for never before had Mrs. Lovett found what a job it was to work that handle, as upon that night. The axle creaked, and the cords and the pullies strained and wheezed, but she was a determined woman, and she worked away at it.
"I told you so, my dear madam," said the stranger; "it is more evidently than you can do."
"Peace, sir."
"I am done; work away ma'am, only don't say afterwards that I did not offer to help you, that's all."
Indignation was swelling at the heart of M............