of her
finger across her two lips--holding in her breath, and bending her head
a little downwards, with a twist of her neck--(not towards the door, but
from it, by which means her ear was brought to the chink)--she listened
with all her powers:--the listening slave, with the Goddess of Silence
at his back, could not have given a finer thought for an intaglio.

In this attitude I am determined to let her stand for five minutes:
till I bring up the affairs of the kitchen (as Rapin does those of the
church) to the same period.

Chapter 3.VI.

Though in one sense, our family was certainly a simple machine, as it
consisted of a few wheels; yet there was thus much to be said for it,
that these wheels were set in motion by so many different springs, and
acted one upon the other from such a variety of strange principles and
impulses--that though it was a simple machine, it had all the honour and
advantages of a complex one,--and a number of as odd movements within
it, as ever were beheld in the inside of a Dutch silk-mill.

Amongst these there was one, I am going to speak of, in which, perhaps,
it was not altogether so singular, as in many others; and it was
this, that whatever motion, debate, harangue, dialogue, project, or
dissertation, was going forwards in the parlour, there was generally
another at the same time, and upon the same subject, running parallel
along with it in the kitchen.

Now to bring this about, whenever an extraordinary message, or letter,
was delivered in the parlour--or a discourse suspended till a servant
went out--or the lines of discontent were observed to hang upon the
brows of my father or mother--or, in short, when any thing was supposed
to be upon the tapis worth knowing or listening to, 'twas the rule to
leave the door, not absolutely shut, but somewhat a-jar--as it stands
just now,--which, under covert of the bad hinge, (and that possibly
might be one of the many reasons why it was never mended,) it was not
difficult to manage; by which means, in all these cases, a passage was
generally left, not indeed as wide as the Dardanelles, but wide enough,
for all that, to carry on as much of this windward trade, as was
sufficient to save my father the trouble of governing his house;--my
mother at this moment stands profiting by it.--Obadiah did the same
thing, as soon as he had left the letter upon the table which brought
the news of my brother's death, so that before my father had well got
o