In the meantime, Mr Wormwood Scrubbs having repossessed himself of his gout mixture, had also returned to the corridor, where seeing a door ajar precisely as he had left his own, he at once went in, closed the door, blew out his candle, and popped into bed, where my excellent uncle was still sleeping as peacefully as a baby, and utterly unconscious of the recent migratory movements of Mrs Brown, which were destined to produce such an unlooked-for disturbance in the domestic arrangements of the two families occupying respectively numbers twenty-seven and twenty-nine.
Mr Wormwood Scrubbs, however, though now quite easy both in body and mind, was unable to sleep, and lay awake, first thinking of one thing and then of another, till he was suddenly recalled to the stern realities of life by hearing his wife's voice proceeding apparently from the adjoining room. In a state of immense perplexity, he struck out with his sound leg in the direction of the sleeping figure at his side, when having come in contact with a plump warm body corresponding to that of his amiable helpmate, he paused, and suspending all further investigation for the present, calmly awaited the issue of events. Nor had he very long to wait.
Mrs Wormwood Scrubbs was a lady of a highly nervous and excitable temperament, with whom, when once roused, it would be about as useless and dangerous an experiment to attempt to argue as with a tigress surrounded by a litter of famished cubs. She had just waked up from her first sleep, when happening to put her hand upon that part of the connubial couch where her Wormwood's head was wont to rest, she found it brought in contact with a lace nightcap, and a profusion of long curls that had escaped from beneath it.
'Why, what's this, Scrubbs? What tomfoolery's this you're after? What's this, I say?' tagging, as she spoke, at the head-dress of her supposed husband. 'Why, goodness gracious, it isn't Scrubbs after all!'--as starting up in bed, my aunt in gentle but startled accents implored her to be quiet.
'But who are you? and what are you doing in number twenty-nine?'
'Number twenty-nine! Surely this is not twenty-nine, but twenty-seven,' doubtingly returned my aunt, as the idea suddenly flashed upon her that she _might_ have mistaken the one room for the other. 'I think I can explain it all.'