The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

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 ajar, 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.