The law-stationer's establishment is, in Guster's eyes, a temple of plenty and splendour.

She believes the little drawing-room upstairs, always kept, as one may say, with its hair in papers and its pinafore on, to be the most elegant apartment in Christendom.

The view it commands of Cook's Court at one end (not to mention a squint into Cursitor Street) and of Coavinses' the sheriff's officer's backyard at the other she regards as a prospect of unequalled beauty.

The portraits it displays in oil--and plenty of it too--of Mr.Snagsby looking at Mrs.Snagsby and of Mrs.
Snagsby looking at Mr.Snagsby are in her eyes as achievements of Raphael or Titian.

Guster has some recompenses for her many privations.
Mr.Snagsby refers everything not in the practical mysteries of the business to Mrs.Snagsby.She manages the money, reproaches the tax-gatherers, appoints the times and places of devotion on Sundays, licenses Mr.Snagsby's entertainments, and acknowledges no responsibility as to what she thinks fit to provide for dinner, insomuch that she is the high standard of comparison among the neighbouring wives a long way down Chancery Lane on both sides, and even out in Holborn, who in any domestic passages of arms habitually call upon their husbands to look at the difference between their (the wives') position and Mrs.Snagsby's, and their (the husbands') behaviour and Mr.Snagsby's.