perhaps have screwed it out of her, if there had been less
resistance in her; but she was too strong for him. So far as Mistress Affery was
concerned, to regard her liege-lord and her disabled mistress with a face of
blank wonder, to go about the house after dark with her apron over her head,
always to listen for the strange noises and sometimes to hear them, and never to
emerge from her ghostly, dreamy, sleep-waking state, was occupation enough for
her.
    There was a fair stroke of business doing, as Mistress Affery made out, for
her husband had abundant occupation in his little office, and saw more people
than had been used to come there for some years. This might easily be, the house
having been long deserted; but he did receive letters, and comers, and keep
books, and correspond. Moreover, he went about to other counting-houses, and to
wharves, and docks, and to the Custom House, and to Garraway's Coffee House, and
the Jerusalem Coffee House, and on 'Change; so that he was much in and out. He
began, too, sometimes of an evening, when Mrs. Clennam expressed no particular
wish for his society, to resort to a tavern in the neighbourhood to look at the
shipping news and closing prices in the evening paper, and even to exchange
small socialities with mercantile Sea Captains who frequented that
establishment. At some period of every day, he and Mrs. Clennam held a council
on matters of business; and it appeared to Affery, who was always groping about,
listening and watching, that the two clever ones were making money.
    The state of mind into which Mr. Flintwinch's dazed lady had fallen, had now
begun to be so expressed in all her looks and actions, that she was held in very
low account by the two clever ones, as a person, never of strong intellect, who
was becoming foolish. Perhaps because her appearance was not of a commercial
cast, or perhaps because it occurred to him that his having taken her to wife
might expose his judgment to doubt in the minds of customers, Mr. Flintwinch
laid his commands upon her that she should hold her peace on the subject of her
conjugal relations, and should no longer call him Jeremiah out of the domestic
trio. Her frequent forgetfulness of this admonition intensified her startled
manner, since Mr. Flintwinch's habit of avenging himself on her remissness by
making springs after her on the staircase, and shaking her, occasioned her to be
always nervously uncertain when she might