He was informed that somebody was visible inside.

"Gentleman's wife, mayhap," he said.

His friends indulged in their privilege of thinking what they liked, and there was the usual silence of tongues in the shop.

He furnished them sound and motion for their amusement, and now and then a scrap of conversation; and the sedater spirits dwelling in his immediate neighbourhood were accustomed to step in and see him work up to supper-time, instead of resorting to the more turbid and costly excitement of the public-house.
Crickledon looked up from the measurement of a thumb-line.

In the doorway stood a bearded gentleman, who announced himself with the startling exclamation, "Here's a pretty pickle!" and bustled to make way for a man well known to them as Ned Crummins, the upholsterer's man, on whose back hung an article of furniture, the condition of which, with a condensed brevity of humour worthy of literary admiration, he displayed by mutely turning himself about as he entered.
"Smashed!" was the general outcry.
"I ran slap into him," said the gentleman.