"How kind it was of your friend, to take down the shutters for you, Charley Green."
"My friend, sir?"
"Yes, your friend who declined being shaved, you know, because you told him last night that he had better go to some other shop."
"Really, sir," said Johanna, "I don't know what you mean."
"Come, come, Charley, confess that you do know some one in London, as well as you know me. Confess, now, that people are so fond of interfering in other folk's affairs, that you have been set on to watch me. I shall not be at all angry, indeed, I shall not, I assure you. Not the least; only tell me the truth. That is all I ask of you, my boy, and you will find that it is no bad thing to make a friend of Sweeney Todd."
"If I had, sir, anything to confess," replied Johanna, "except that at times I do feel that I wish I had not run away from my mother-in-law at Oxford, I should soon tell it all to you."
"And so that is all, Charley?"
"All at present, sir."
"What a good lad. What an exemplary lad. Light the shop fire, if you please, Charley. Humph! I am wrong," muttered Todd to himself; "but yet I will cut his throat before I leave to-night. It will be safer and more satisfactory to do so, and besides, he has given me some uneasiness, and I hate him for his quiet gentle ways. I hate everybody. I would cut the throats of all the world if I could. Light the fire quickly, you young hound, will you?"
Johanna trembled. She felt that anything but a blow from Todd she could put up with, but in her pocket she kept a jagged piece of flint stone, which would go through the window in a moment; and she felt that through she must throw it, if he only so much as raised his hand against her.