"Why, goodness gracious!" cried the beadle's wife, "it's my wretch of a husband after all!"
The beadle had just strength to assume a sitting posture, and then he cried—"Murder!—murder!—murder!" until Mr. Crotchet, seizing a cushion from a pew, held it up before his mouth, to the imminent danger of choking him, and said—
"Hold your row! If you wants to be murdered, can't you get it done quietly, without alarming of all the parish? If you has got anything to say, say it; and if you has got nothink, keep it to yourself, stupid."
"Todd!" gasped the beadle, the moment the pew-cushion was withdrawn from his mouth. "Todd—Sweeney Todd!"
"What?" cried Crotchet.
"Here!—he has been here, and I'm a dead man—no, I'm a beadle. Oh, murder! murder!"
"Don't begin that again. Be quiet, will you? If you have got anything to say about Todd, say it, for I'm the very man of all the world as wants to hear it. Speak up, and don't wink."
"Oh, I've seen him. He's been here. I came to dust the bellowses, you see, after my wife had thrown the pulpit at my head, for asking her to come with me."
"Oh, he's a-raving gentlemen," said the wife. "As I'm a sinner, it was the bellowses as I throwed at his stupid head, and not the pulpit as never was."
"Go on," said Crotchet. "Confound the pulpit and the bellows too. It's about Todd I want to hear. Drive on, will you?"