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'
He nodded, as she seemed to expect an answer in the affirmative.
'Then stand up against them! She's awful clever, and none but a
clever one durst say a word to her. HE'S a clever one--oh, he's a
clever one!--and he gives it her when he has a mind to't, he does!'

'Your husband does?'

'Does? It makes me shake from head to foot, to hear him give it
her. My husband, Jeremiah Flintwinch, can conquer even your
mother. What can he be but a clever one to do that!'

His shuffling footstep coming towards them caused her to retreat to
the other end of the room. Though a tall, hard-favoured, sinewy
old woman, who in her youth might have enlisted in the Foot Guards
without much fear of discovery, she collapsed before the little
keen-eyed crab-like old man.

'Now, Affery,' said he, 'now, woman, what are you doing? Can't you
find Master Arthur something or another to pick at?'

Master Arthur repeated his recent refusal to pick at anything.

'Very well, then,' said the old man; 'make his bed. Stir
yourself.' His neck was so twisted that the knotted ends of his
white cravat usually dangled under one ear; his natural acerbity
and energy, always contending with a second nature of habitual
repression, gave his features a swollen and suffused look; and
altogether, he had a weird appearance of having hanged himself at
one time or other, and of having gone about ever since, halter and
all, exactly as some timely hand had cut him down.

'You'll have bitter words together to-morrow, Arthur; you and your
mother,' said Jeremiah. 'Your having given up the business on your
father's death--which she suspects, though we have left it to you
to tell her--won't go off smoothly.'

'I have given up everything in life for the business, and the time
came for me to give up that.'

'Good!' cried Jeremiah, evidently meaning Bad. 'Very good! only
don't expect me to stand between your mother and you, Arthur. I
stood between your mother and your father, fending off this, and
fending off that, and getting crushed and pounded betwixt em; and
I've done with such work.'

'You will never be asked to begin it again for me, Jeremiah.'

' Good. I'm glad to hear it; because I should have had to decline
it, if I had been. That's enough--as your mother says--and more
than enough of such matters on a Sabbath night. Affery, woman,
have you found what you want yet?'

She had been collecting sheets and blankets from a press, and
hastened to gather them up, and to reply, 'Yes, Jeremiah.' Arthur
Clennam helped her by carrying the load himself, wished the old man
good night, and went up-stairs with her to the top of the house.

They mounted up and up, through the musty smell of an old close
house, little used, to a large garret bed-room. Meagre and spare,
like all the other rooms, it was even uglier and grimmer than the
rest, by being the place of banishment for the worn-out furniture.
Its movables were ugly old chairs with worn-out seats, and ugly old
chairs without any seats; a threadbare patternless carpet, a maimed

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