Rumour, always flying bat-like about Cook's Court and skimming in and out at everybody's windows, does say that Mrs.Snagsby is jealous and inquisitive and that Mr.Snagsby is sometimes worried out of house and home, and that if he had the spirit of a mouse he wouldn't stand it.

It is even observed that the wives who quote him to their self-willed husbands as a shining example in reality look down upon him and that nobody does so with greater superciliousness than one particular lady whose lord is more than suspected of laying his umbrella on her as an instrument of correction.

But these vague whisperings may arise from Mr.Snagsby's being in his way rather a meditative and poetical man, loving to walk in Staple Inn in the summer-time and to observe how countrified the sparrows and the leaves are, also to lounge about the Rolls Yard of a Sunday afternoon and to remark (if in good spirits) that there were old times once and that you'd find a stone coffin or two now under that chapel, he'll be bound, if you was to dig for it.

He solaces his imagination, too, by thinking of the many Chancellors and Vices, and Masters of the Rolls who are deceased; and he gets such a flavour of the country out of telling the two 'prentices how he HAS heard say that a brook "as clear as crystial" once ran right down the middle of Holborn, when Turnstile really was a turnstile, leading slap away into the meadows--gets such a flavour of the country out of this that he never wants to go there.
The day is closing in and the gas is lighted, but is not yet fully effective, for it is not quite dark.

Mr.Snagsby standing at his shop-door looking up at the clouds sees a crow who is out late skim westward over the slice of sky belonging to Cook's Court.