My mother was going very gingerly in the dark along the passage which led to the parlour, as my uncle Toby pronounced the word wife. - 'Tis a shrill, penetrating sound of itself, and Obadiah had helped it by leaving the door a little a-jar, so that my mother heard enough of it, to imagine herself the subject of the conversation: so laying the edge 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.
[The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, Sterne, L.]
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