"Not stay with such a respectable man?"
"A respectable man, mother! Alas, alas, how little you know of him! But what am I saying? I dare not speak! Oh, that fatal, fatal candlestick!"
"But how are you to live, and what do you mean by a fatal candlestick?"
"Forgive me—I did not mean to say that! Farewell, mother! I am going to sea."
"To see what, my dear?" said Mrs. Ragg, who was much more difficult to talk to, than even Hamlet's grave-digger. "You don't know how much I am obliged to Sweeney Todd."
"Yes, I do, and that's what drives me mad to think of. Farewell, mother, perhaps for ever! If I can, of course I will communicate with you, but now I dare not stay."
"Oh! what have you done, Tobias—what have you done?"
"Nothing—nothing! but Sweeney Todd is—"
"What—what?"
"No matter—no matter! Nothing—nothing! And yet at this last moment I am almost tempted to ask you concerning a candlestick."