"Lor', gentlemen, how them stairs do try me!" said the good lady, panting in the doorway and patting her ample breast; "they're that steep and that narrer, as to squeeze the breath out of me."
"You'll stick halfway up some day!" said Cass, chuckling, "then we shall have to send for a carpenter to saw you out!"
Mrs. Basket laughed, in nowise offended, and announced that she had come to clear away supper, which she did with much clatter and hard breathing. Once or twice she glanced at the doctor's gloomy face, and blew a sigh with considerable noise. She knew of her lodger's bad fortune, and pitied him profoundly; but not daring to speak, she resumed her work with a mournful wag of the buttercup cap. Ignoring this by-play, which invited conversation, the young men resumed the subject of Moxton. Mrs. Basket, dying to join in, at once espied an opportunity of doing so. The mere mention of the name was enough to set her off.
"Lor', gentlemen, you do turn me cold to my bones. Moxton! Why, the name makes me shiver," and Mrs. Basket shivered duly to prove the truth of her words.
Usually the lodgers did not encourage their landlady to talk, as her tongue, once set wagging, was difficult to stop. But on this occasion her speech was so significant of mystery that Ellis wheeled round his chair to face her, and the reporter on the sofa, with true journalistic instinct, was at once on the alert for news. Mrs. Basket, pleased with these tokens of interest, improved upon her speech.
"He has a wife!" said she, and closed her eyes with another shiver.
"Is that a remarkable circumstance?" asked Cass, drily.
"P'r'aps not, sir," replied Mrs. Basket, with great dignity. "But what that pore young thing suffers the butcher and the baker do know."
"'Eaven only knows what he do do, doctor. Nobody's ever seen her save the telegraph boy as called after dark, to be met with a carving-knife."
"A carving-knife! This is interesting. Who had the carving-knife, Mrs. Basket?"
"Mrs. Moxton, of course. She is young and pretty, I do assure you, gentlemen, yet she came on the child with a knife in her 'and like Lady Macbeth in the play."
Mrs. Basket wagged her head and the buttercups responded. "She told the boy as she thought he was robbers, and came out with the wepping to protect the silver. But it looks like loonatics to me."