1846, Fleet Street London

Tobias was finishing setting tables for Mrs. Lovett; he'd been apprenticed by her after the mysterious disappearance of his previous master, Signor Adolfo Pirelli, and has been working and lodging here for about a month now.

He carefully placed clothes onto each table, limping around each of them. He was a very quiet boy, he had a great fear of upsetting Mrs. Lovett, doing any of the work she'd put him to wrong, even though it seemed she never once got angry at him.