Mistress Affery dreamed that the figure of her lord here began walking

up and down the room, as if to cool his spleen, and that she ran away;

but that, as he did not issue forth when she had stood listening and

trembling in the shadowy hall a little time, she crept up-stairs again,

impelled as before by ghosts and curiosity, and once more cowered

outside the door. 'Please to light the candle, Flintwinch,' Mrs Clennam was saying,

apparently wishing to draw him back into their usual tone. 'It is nearly

time for tea. Little Dorrit is coming, and will find me in the dark.'

Mr Flintwinch lighted the candle briskly, and said as he put it down

upon the table: 'What are you going to do with Little Dorrit? Is she to come to work

here for ever? To come to tea here for ever? To come backwards and

forwards here, in the same way, for ever?' 'How can you talk about "for

ever" to a maimed creature like me? Are we not all cut down like the

grass of the field, and was not I shorn by the scythe many years ago:

since when I have been lying here, waiting to be gathered into the

barn?' 'Ay, ay! But since you have been lying here--not near dead--nothing like

it--numbers of children and young people, blooming women, strong men,

and what not, have been cut down and carried; and still here are you,

you see, not much changed after all. Your time and mine may be a long

one yet. When I say for ever, I mean (though I am not poetical) through

all our time.' Mr Flintwinch gave this explanation with great calmness,

and calmly waited for an answer.

'So long as Little Dorrit is quiet and industrious, and stands in need

of the slight help I can give her, and deserves it; so long, I suppose,

unless she withdraws of her own act, she will continue to come here, I

being spared.' 'Nothing more than that?' said Flintwinch, stroking his mouth and chin. 'What should there be more than that! What could there be more than

that!' she ejaculated in her sternly wondering way.

Mrs Flintwinch dreamed, that, for the space of a minute or two, they

remained looking at each other with the candle between them, and

that she somehow derived an impression that they looked at each other

fixedly. 'Do you happen to know, Mrs Clennam,' Affery's liege lord then demanded

in a much lower voice, and with an amount of expression that seemed

quite out of proportion to the simple purpose of his words, 'where she

lives?' 'No.' 'Would you--now, would you like to know?' said Jeremiah with a pounce as

if he had sprung upon her. 'If I cared to know, I should know already. Could I not have asked her

any day?' 'Then you don't care to know?'




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