The two females took their way to the Temple. Todd had been quite right in his conjectures. The friend of Mrs. Ragg was one of the old compatriots of the laundress tribe; and that good lady herself, although, while there was no temptation to do otherwise, she had kept well the secret of her son's residence at Colonel Jeffery's, broke down like a frail and weak vessel as she was with the weight of the secret the moment she got into a gossip with an old friend. Now Mrs. Ragg had only come into that neighbourhood upon some little errand of her own, and with a positive promise of returning to the colonel's house as soon as possible. She would have kept this promise, but that amid the purlieus of Fetter-lane she encountered Martha Jones her old acquaintance. One word begot another, and at last as they walked up Fleet-street, Mrs. Ragg could not help, with many head-shakings and muttered interjectional phrases, letting Martha Jones know that she had a secret. Nay, as she passed Todd's shop, she could not help intimating that she fully believed certain persons, not a hundred miles off, who might be barbers or who might not, would some day come to a bad end in front of Newgate, in the Old Bailey. It was at this insinuation that Martha Jones lifted up her hands, and Mrs. Ragg lifted up hers in sympathy. Todd had seen this action upon the part of the ladies. To overhear what they were saying was to Todd a great object. That it in some measure concerned him he could not for a moment doubt, since the head-shaking and hand-uplifting reference that had been made to his shop by them both as they passed, could not mean anything else. And so, as we have said, he followed them cautiously, dodging behind bulky passengers, so that they should not see him by any sudden glance backwards. One corpulent old lady served him for a shield half up Fleet Street, until, indeed, she turned into a religious bookseller's shop, and left him nothing but thin passengers to interfere between him and the possibility of observation. But Mrs. Ragg and her friend Martha Jones were much too fully engaged to look behind them. In due course, they arrived opposite to the Temple; and then, after much flurrying, in consequence of real and supposed danger from the passing vehicles, they got across the way. They at once dived into the recesses of the legally-learned Temple. Todd dashed after them.
"Now, my dear Mrs. Ragg," said Martha Jones, "you must not say No. It's got a beautiful head upon it, and will do you good."
"No—no. Really."
"Like cream."
"But, really, I—I—"
"Come, come, it ain't often you is in the Temple, and I knew very well he don't miss a bottle now and then; and 'twix you and me and the pump, I think we has as much a right to that beautiful bottled ale as Mr. Juggas has, for I'd take my bible oath, he don't mean to pay for it, Mrs. Ragg."
"You don't say so?"
"Yes, I does, Mrs. Ragg. Oh, he's a bad 'un, he is. Ah, Mrs. Ragg, you don't know, nor nobody else, what takes place in his chambers of a night."
"Is it possible?"
"Yes. I often say to myself what universal profundity he must be possessed with, for he was once intended, he says, for the church, and I heard him say he'd have stuck to it like bricks, if he could have heard of any church that was intended for him."