prompt:
Chapter: While the waters of Venice and the ruins of Rome were sunning themselves
for the pleasure of the Dorrit family, and were daily being sketched
out of all earthly proportion, lineament, and likeness, by travelling
pencils innumerable, the firm of Doyce and Clennam hammered away in
Bleeding Heart Yard, and the vigorous clink of iron upon iron was heard
there through the working hours.

The younger partner had, by this time, brought the business into sound
trim; and the elder, left free to follow his own ingenious devices, had
done much to enhance the character of the factory. As an ingenious man,
     he had necessarily to encounter every discouragement that the ruling
     powers for a length of time had been able by any means to put in the way
     of this class of culprits; but that was only reasonable self-defence in
     the powers, since How to do it must obviously be regarded as the natural
     and mortal enemy of How not to do it. In this was to be found the basis
     of the wise system, by tooth and nail upheld by the Circumlocution
     Office, of warning every ingenious British subject to be ingenious
     at his peril: of harassing him, obstructing him, inviting robbers (by
             making his remedy uncertain, and expensive) to plunder him, and at the
     best of confiscating his property after a short term of enjoyment, as
     though invention were on a par with felony. The system had uniformly
     found great favour with the Barnacles, and that was only reasonable,
     too; for one who worthily invents must be in earnest, and the Barnacles
     abhorred and dreaded nothing half so much. That again was very
     reasonable; since in a country suffering under the affliction of a great
     amount of earnestness, there might, in an exceeding short space of time,
     be not a single Barnacle left sticking to a post.

     Daniel Doyce faced his condition with its pains and penalties attached
     to it, and soberly worked on for the work's sake. Clennam cheering him
     with a hearty co-operation, was a moral support to him, besides doing
     good service in his business relation. The concern prospered, and the
     partners were fast friends.

     But Daniel could not forget the old design of so many years. It was not
     in reason to be expected that he should; if he could have lightly
     forgotten it, he could never have conceived it, or had the patience and
     perseverance to work it out. So Clennam thought, when he sometimes
     observed him of an evening looking over the models and drawings, and
     consoling himself by muttering with a sigh as he put them away again,
     that the thing was as true as it ever was.

     To show no sympathy with so much endeavour, and so much disappointment,
     would have been to fail in what Clennam regarded as among the implied
     obligations of his partnership. A revival of the passing interest in
     the subject which had been by chance awakened at the door of the
     Circumlocution Office, originated in this feeling. He asked his partner
     to explain the invention to him; 'having a lenient consideration,' he
     stipulated, 'for my being no workman, Doyce.'

     'No workman?' said Doyce. 'You would have been a thorough workman if you
     had given yourself to it. You have as good a head for understanding such
     things as I have met with.'

     'A totally uneducated one, I am sorry to add,' said Clennam.

     'I don't know that,' returned Doyce, 'and I wouldn't have you say
     that. No man of sense who has been generally improved, and has improved
     himself, can be called quite uneducated as to anything. I don't
     particularly favour mysteries. I would as soon, on a fair and clear
     explanation, be judged by one class of man as another, provided he had
     the qualification I have named.'

     'At all events,' said Clennam--'this sounds as if we were exchanging
     compliments, but we know we are not--I shall have the advantage of as
     plain an explanation as can be given.'

     'Well!' said Daniel, in his steady even way,'I'll try to make it so.'

     He had the power, often to be found in union with such a character, of
     explaining what he himself perceived, and meant, with the direct force
     and distinctness with which it struck his own mind. His manner of
     demonstration was so orderly and neat and simple, that it was not easy
     to mistake him. There was something almost ludicrous in the complete
     irreconcilability of a vague conventional notion that he must be a
     visionary man, with the precise, sagacious travelling of his eye and
     thumb over the plans, their patient stoppages at particular points,
     their careful returns to other points whence little channels of
     explanation had to be traced up, and his steady manner of making
     everything good and everything sound at each important stage, before
     taking his hearer on a line's-breadth further. His dismissal of himself
     from his description, was hardly less remarkable. He never said, I
     discovered this adaptation or invented that combination; but showed the
     whole thing as if the Divine artificer had made it, and he had happened
     to find it; so modest he was about it, such a pleasant touch of respect
     was mingled with his quiet admiration of it, and so calmly convinced he
     was that it was established on irrefragable laws.

     Not only that evening, but for several succeeding evenings, Clennam was
     quite charmed by this investigation. The more he pursued it, and the
     oftener he glanced at the grey head bending over it, and the shrewd eye
     kindling with pleasure in it and love of it--instrument for probing his
     heart though it had been made for twelve long years--the less he could
     reconcile it to his younger energy to let it go without one effort more.
     At length he said:

     'Doyce, it came to this at last--that the business was to be sunk with
     Heaven knows how many more wrecks, or begun all over again?'

     'Yes,' returned Doyce, 'that's what the noblemen and gentlemen made of
     it after a dozen years.'

     'And pretty fellows too!' said Clennam, bitterly.

     'The usual thing!' observed Doyce. 'I must not make a martyr of myself,
     when I am one of so large a company.'

     'Relinquish it, or begin it all over again?' mused Clennam.

     'That was exactly the long and the short of it,' said Doyce.

     'Then, my friend,' cried Clennam, starting up and taking his
     work-roughened hand, 'it shall be begun all over again!'

     Doyce looked alarmed, and replied in a hurry--for him, 'No, no. Better
     put it by. Far better put it by. It will be heard of, one day. I can
     put it by. You forget, my good Clennam; I _have_ put it by. It's all at an
     end.'

     'Yes, Doyce,' returned Clennam, 'at an end as far as your efforts and
     rebuffs are concerned, I admit, but not as far as mine are. I am younger
     than you: I have only once set foot in that precious office, and I am
     fresh game for them. Come! I'll try them. You shall do exactly as you
     have been doing since we have been together. I will add (as I easily
             can) to what I have been doing, the attempt to get public justice done
     to you; and, unless I have some success to report, you shall hear no
     more of it.'

     Daniel Doyce was still reluctant to consent, and again and again urged
     that they had better put it by. But it was natural that he should
     gradually allow himself to be over-persuaded by Clennam, and should
     yield. Yield he did. So Arthur resumed the long and hopeless labour of
     striving to make way with the Circumlocution Office.

     The waiting-rooms of that Department soon began to be familiar with his
     presence, and he was generally ushered into them by its janitors much
     as a pickpocket might be shown into a police-office; the principal
     difference being that the object of the latter class of public business
     is to keep the pickpocket, while the Circumlocution object was to
     get rid of Clennam. However, he was resolved to stick to the Great
     Department; and so the work of form-filling, corresponding, minuting,
     memorandum-making, signing, counter-signing, counter-counter-signing,
     referring backwards and forwards, and referring sideways, crosswise, and
     zig-zag, recommenced.

     Here arises a feature of the Circumlocution Office, not previously
     mentioned in the present record. When that admirable Department got
     into trouble, and was, by some infuriated members of Parliament whom
     the smaller Barnacles almost suspected of labouring under diabolic
     possession, attacked on the merits of no individual case, but as an
     Institution wholly abominable and Bedlamite; then the noble or right
     honourable Barnacle who represented it in the House, would smite that
     member and cleave him asunder, with a statement of the quantity of
     business (for the prevention of business) done by the Circumlocution
     Office. Then would that noble or right honourable Barnacle hold in his
     hand a paper containing a few figures, to which, with the permission
     of the House, he would entreat its attention. Then would the inferior
     Barnacles exclaim, obeying orders,'Hear, Hear, Hear!' and 'Read!' Then
     would the noble or right honourable Barnacle perceive, sir, from this
     little document, which he thought might carry conviction even to the
     perversest mind (Derisive laughter and cheering from the Barnacle fry),
     that within the short compass of the last financial half-year, this
     much-maligned Department (Cheers) had written and received fifteen
     thousand letters (Loud cheers), had written twenty-four thousand minutes
     (Louder cheers), and thirty-two thousand five hundred and seventeen
     memoranda (Vehement cheering). Nay, an ingenious gentleman connected
     with the Department, and himself a valuable public servant, had done
     him the favour to make a curious calculation of the amount of stationery
     consumed in it during the same period. It formed a part of this same
     short document; and he derived from it the remarkable fact that the
     sheets of foolscap paper it had devoted to the public service would pave
     the footways on both sides of Oxford Street from end to end, and leave
     nearly a quarter of a mile to spare for the park (Immense cheering and
             laughter); while of tape--red tape--it had used enough to stretch, in
     graceful festoons, from Hyde Park Corner to the General Post Office.
     Then, amidst a burst of official exultation, would the noble or right
     honourable Barnacle sit down, leaving the mutilated fragments of the
     Member on the field. No one, after that exemplary demolition of him,
     would have the hardihood to hint that the more the Circumlocution Office
     did, the less was done, and that the greatest blessing it could confer
     on an unhappy public would be to do nothing.

     With sufficient occupation on his hands, now that he had this additional
     task--such a task had many and many a serviceable man died of before his
     day--Arthur Clennam led a life of slight variety. Regular visits to his
     mother's dull sick room, and visits scarcely less regular to Mr Meagles
     at Twickenham, were its only changes during many months.

     He sadly and sorely missed Little Dorrit. He had been prepared to miss
     her very much, but not so much. He knew to the full extent only through
     experience, what a large place in his life was left blank when her
     familiar little figure went out of it. He felt, too, that he must
     relinquish the hope of its return, understanding the family character
     sufficiently well to be assured that he and she were divided by a broad
     ground of separation. The old interest he had had in her, and her old
     trusting reliance on him, were tinged with melancholy in his mind: so
     soon had change stolen over them, and so soon had they glided into the
     past with other secret tendernesses.

     When he received her letter he was greatly moved, but did not the less
     sensibly feel that she was far divided from him by more than distance.
     It helped him to a clearer and keener perception of the place assigned
     him by the family. He saw that he was cherished in her grateful
     remembrance secretly, and that they resented him with the jail and the
     rest of its belongings.

     Through all these meditations which every day of his life crowded about
     her, he thought of her otherwise in the old way. She was his innocent
     friend, his delicate child, his dear Little Dorrit. This very change
     of circumstances fitted curiously in with the habit, begun on the night
     when the roses floated away, of considering himself as a much older man
     than his years really made him. He regarded her from a point of view
     which in its remoteness, tender as it was, he little thought would have
     been unspeakable agony to her. He speculated about her future destiny,
     and about the husband she might have, with an affection for her which
     would have drained her heart of its dearest drop of hope, and broken it.

     Everything about him tended to confirm him in the custom of looking on
     himself as an elderly man, from whom such aspirations as he had combated
     in the case of Minnie Gowan (though that was not so long ago either,
             reckoning by months and seasons), were finally departed. His relations
     with her father and mother were like those on which a widower son-in-law
     might have stood. If the twin sister who was dead had lived to pass away
     in the bloom of womanhood, and he had been her husband, the nature of
     his intercourse with Mr and Mrs Meagles would probably have been just
     what it was. This imperceptibly helped to render habitual the impression
     within him, that he had done with, and dismissed that part of life.

     He invariably heard of Minnie from them, as telling them in her letters
     how happy she was, and how she loved her husband; but inseparable from
     that subject, he invariably saw the old cloud on Mr Meagles's face. Mr
     Meagles had never been quite so radiant since the marriage as before.
     He had never quite recovered the separation from Pet. He was the same
     good-humoured, open creature; but as if his face, from being much turned
     towards the pictures of his two children which could show him only one
     look, unconsciously adopted a characteristic from them, it always had
     now, through all its changes of expression, a look of loss in it.

     One wintry Saturday when Clennam was at the cottage, the Dowager Mrs
     Gowan drove up, in the Hampton Court equipage which pretended to be the
     exclusive equipage of so many individual proprietors. She descended, in
     her shady ambuscade of green fan, to favour Mr and Mrs Meagles with a
     call.

     'And how do you both do, Papa and Mama Meagles?' said she, encouraging
     her humble connections. 'And when did you last hear from or about my
     poor fellow?'

     My poor fellow was her son; and this mode of speaking of him politely
     kept alive, without any offence in the world, the pretence that he had
     fallen a victim to the Meagles' wiles.

     'And the dear pretty one?' said Mrs Gowan. 'Have you later news of her
     than I have?'

     Which also delicately implied that her son had been captured by mere
     beauty, and under its fascination had forgone all sorts of worldly
     advantages.

     'I am sure,' said Mrs Gowan, without straining her attention on the
     answers she received, 'it's an unspeakable comfort to know they continue
     happy. My poor fellow is of such a restless disposition, and has been
     so used to roving about, and to being inconstant and popular among all
     manner of people, that it's the greatest comfort in life. I suppose
     they're as poor as mice, Papa Meagles?'

     Mr Meagles, fidgety under the question, replied, 'I hope not, ma'am. I
     hope they will manage their little income.'

     'Oh! my dearest Meagles!' returned the lady, tapping him on the arm with
     the green fan and then adroitly interposing it between a yawn and
     the company, 'how can you, as a man of the world and one of the most
     business-like of human beings--for you know you are business-like, and a
     great deal too much for us who are not--'

     (Which went to the former purpose, by making Mr Meagles out to be an
      artful schemer.)

     '--How can you talk about their managing their little means? My poor
     dear fellow! The idea of his managing hundreds! And the sweet pretty
     creature too. The notion of her managing! Papa Meagles! Don't!'

     'Well, ma'am,' said Mr Meagles, gravely, 'I am sorry to admit, then,
     that Henry certainly does anticipate his means.'

     'My dear good man--I use no ceremony with you, because we are a kind of
     relations;--positively, Mama Meagles,' exclaimed Mrs Gowan cheerfully,
     as if the absurd coincidence then flashed upon her for the first time,
     'a kind of relations! My dear good man, in this world none of us can
     have _everything_ our own way.'

     This again went to the former point, and showed Mr Meagles with all good
     breeding that, so far, he had been brilliantly successful in his deep
     designs. Mrs Gowan thought the hit so good a one, that she dwelt upon
     it; repeating 'Not _everything_. No, no; in this world we must not expect
     _everything_, Papa Meagles.'

     'And may I ask, ma'am,' retorted Mr Meagles, a little heightened in
     colour, 'who does expect everything?'

     'Oh, nobody, nobody!' said Mrs Gowan. 'I was going to say--but you put
     me out. You interrupting Papa, what was I going to say?'

     Drooping her large green fan, she looked musingly at Mr Meagles while
     she thought about it; a performance not tending to the cooling of that
     gentleman's rather heated spirits.

     'Ah! Yes, to be sure!' said Mrs Gowan. 'You must remember that my poor
     fellow has always been accustomed to expectations. They may have been
     realised, or they may not have been realised--'

     'Let us say, then, may not have been realised,' observed Mr Meagles.

     The Dowager for a moment gave him an angry look; but tossed it off with
     her head and her fan, and pursued the tenor of her way in her former
     manner.

     'It makes no difference. My poor fellow has been accustomed to that
     sort of thing, and of course you knew it, and were prepared for the
     consequences. I myself always clearly foresaw the consequences, and am
     not surprised. And you must not be surprised. In fact, can't be
     surprised. Must have been prepared for it.'

     Mr Meagles looked at his wife and at Clennam; bit his lip; and coughed.

     'And now here's my poor fellow,' Mrs Gowan pursued, 'receiving notice
     that he is to hold himself in expectation of a baby, and all the
     expenses attendant on such an addition to his family! Poor Henry! But
     it can't be helped now; it's too late to help it now. Only don't talk of
     anticipating means, Papa Meagles, as a discovery; because that would be
     too much.'

     'Too much, ma'am?' said Mr Meagles, as seeking an explanation.

     'There, there!' said Mrs Gowan, putting him in his inferior place with
     an expressive action of her hand. 'Too much for my poor fellow's
     mother to bear at this time of day. They are fast married, and can't
     be unmarried. There, there! I know that! You needn't tell me that, Papa
     Meagles. I know it very well. What was it I said just now? That it was
     a great comfort they continued happy. It is to be hoped they will still
     continue happy. It is to be hoped Pretty One will do everything she
     can to make my poor fellow happy, and keep him contented. Papa and Mama
     Meagles, we had better say no more about it. We never did look at this
     subject from the same side, and we never shall. There, there! Now I am
     good.'

     Truly, having by this time said everything she could say in maintenance
     of her wonderfully mythical position, and in admonition to Mr Meagles
     that he must not expect to bear his honours of alliance too cheaply, Mrs
     Gowan was disposed to forgo the rest. If Mr Meagles had submitted to
     a glance of entreaty from Mrs Meagles, and an expressive gesture from
     Clennam, he would have left her in the undisturbed enjoyment of this
     state of mind. But Pet was the darling and pride of his heart; and if he
     could ever have championed her more devotedly, or loved her better, than
     in the days when she was the sunlight of his house, it would have been
     now, when, as its daily grace and delight, she was lost to it.

     'Mrs Gowan, ma'am,' said Mr Meagles, 'I have been a plain man all my
     life. If I was to try--no matter whether on myself, on somebody else,
     or both--any genteel mystifications, I should probably not succeed in
     them.'

     'Papa Meagles,' returned the Dowager, with an affable smile, but with
     the bloom on her cheeks standing out a little more vividly than usual as
     the neighbouring surface became paler,'probably not.'

     'Therefore, my good madam,' said Mr Meagles, at great pains to
     restrain himself, 'I hope I may, without offence, ask to have no such
     mystification played off upon me.'

     'Mama Meagles,' observed Mrs Gowan, 'your good man is incomprehensible.'

     Her turning to that worthy lady was an artifice to bring her into the
     discussion, quarrel with her, and vanquish her. Mr Meagles interposed to
     prevent that consummation.

     'Mother,' said he, 'you are inexpert, my dear, and it is not a fair
     match. Let me beg of you to remain quiet. Come, Mrs Gowan, come! Let
     us try to be sensible; let us try to be good-natured; let us try to
     be fair. Don't you pity Henry, and I won't pity Pet. And don't be
     one-sided, my dear madam; it's not considerate, it's not kind. Don't
     let us say that we hope Pet will make Henry happy, or even that we hope
     Henry will make Pet happy,' (Mr Meagles himself did not look happy as he
             spoke the words,) 'but let us hope they will make each other happy.'

     'Yes, sure, and there leave it, father,' said Mrs Meagles the
     kind-hearted and comfortable.

     'Why, mother, no,' returned Mr Meagles, 'not exactly there. I can't
     quite leave it there; I must say just half-a-dozen words more. Mrs
     Gowan, I hope I am not over-sensitive. I believe I don't look it.'

     'Indeed you do not,' said Mrs Gowan, shaking her head and the great
     green fan together, for emphasis.

     'Thank you, ma'am; that's well. Notwithstanding which, I feel a
     little--I don't want to use a strong word--now shall I say hurt?'
     asked Mr Meagles at once with frankness and moderation, and with a
     conciliatory appeal in his tone.

     'Say what you like,' answered Mrs Gowan. 'It is perfectly indifferent to
     me.'

     'No, no, don't say that,' urged Mr Meagles, 'because that's not
     responding amiably. I feel a little hurt when I hear references made to
     consequences having been foreseen, and to its being too late now, and so
     forth.'

     '_Do_ you, Papa Meagles?' said Mrs Gowan. 'I am not surprised.'

     'Well, ma'am,' reasoned Mr Meagles, 'I was in hopes you would have been
     at least surprised, because to hurt me wilfully on so tender a subject
     is surely not generous.'

     'I am not responsible,' said Mrs Gowan, 'for your conscience, you know.'

     Poor Mr Meagles looked aghast with astonishment.

     'If I am unluckily obliged to carry a cap about with me, which is yours
     and fits you,' pursued Mrs Gowan, 'don't blame me for its pattern, Papa
     Meagles, I beg!'

     'Why, good Lord, ma'am!' Mr Meagles broke out, 'that's as much as to
     state--'

     'Now, Papa Meagles, Papa Meagles,' said Mrs Gowan, who became extremely
     deliberate and prepossessing in manner whenever that gentleman became at
     all warm, 'perhaps to prevent confusion, I had better speak for myself
     than trouble your kindness to speak for me. It's as much as to state,
     you begin. If you please, I will finish the sentence. It is as much as
     to state--not that I wish to press it or even recall it, for it is of no
     use now, and my only wish is to make the best of existing
     circumstances--that from the first to the last I always objected to this
     match of yours, and at a very late period yielded a most unwilling
     consent to it.'

     'Mother!' cried Mr Meagles. 'Do you hear this! Arthur! Do you hear
     this!'

     'The room being of a convenient size,' said Mrs Gowan, looking about
     as she fanned herself, 'and quite charmingly adapted in all respects to
     conversation, I should imagine I am audible in any part of it.'

     Some moments passed in silence, before Mr Meagles could hold himself in
     his chair with sufficient security to prevent his breaking out of it at
     the next word he spoke. At last he said: 'Ma'am, I am very unwilling to
     revive them, but I must remind you what my opinions and my course were,
     all along, on that unfortunate subject.'

     'O, my dear sir!' said Mrs Gowan, smiling and shaking her head with
     accusatory intelligence, 'they were well understood by me, I assure
     you.'

     'I never, ma'am,' said Mr Meagles, 'knew unhappiness before that time,
     I never knew anxiety before that time. It was a time of such distress to
     me that--' That Mr Meagles could really say no more about it, in short,
     but passed his handkerchief before his face.

     'I understood the whole affair,' said Mrs Gowan, composedly looking
     over her fan. 'As you have appealed to Mr Clennam, I may appeal to Mr
     Clennam, too. He knows whether I did or not.'

     'I am very unwilling,' said Clennam, looked to by all parties, 'to take
     any share in this discussion, more especially because I wish to preserve
     the best understanding and the clearest relations with Mr Henry Gowan.
     I have very strong reasons indeed, for entertaining that wish. Mrs Gowan
     attributed certain views of furthering the marriage to my friend here,
     in conversation with me before it took place; and I endeavoured to
     undeceive her. I represented that I knew him (as I did and do) to be
     strenuously opposed to it, both in opinion and action.'

     'You see?' said Mrs Gowan, turning the palms of her hands towards Mr
     Meagles, as if she were Justice herself, representing to him that he had
     better confess, for he had not a leg to stand on. 'You see? Very good!
     Now Papa and Mama Meagles both!' here she rose; 'allow me to take the
     liberty of putting an end to this rather formidable controversy. I will
     not say another word upon its merits. I will only say that it is an
     additional proof of what one knows from all experience; that this kind
     of thing never answers--as my poor fellow himself would say, that it
     never pays--in one word, that it never does.'

     Mr Meagles asked, What kind of thing?

     'It is in vain,' said Mrs Gowan, 'for people to attempt to get on
     together who have such extremely different antecedents; who are jumbled
     against each other in this accidental, matrimonial sort of way; and who
     cannot look at the untoward circumstance which has shaken them together
     in the same light. It never does.'

     Mr Meagles was beginning, 'Permit me to say, ma'am--'

     'No, don't,' returned Mrs Gowan. 'Why should you! It is an ascertained
     fact. It never does. I will therefore, if you please, go my way, leaving
     you to yours. I shall at all times be happy to receive my poor fellow's
     pretty wife, and I shall always make a point of being on the most
     affectionate terms with her. But as to these terms, semi-family and
     semi-stranger, semi-goring and semi-boring, they form a state of things
     quite amusing in its impracticability. I assure you it never does.'

     The Dowager here made a smiling obeisance, rather to the room than to
     any one in it, and therewith took a final farewell of Papa and Mama
     Meagles. Clennam stepped forward to hand her to the Pill-Box which was
     at the service of all the Pills in Hampton Court Palace; and she got
     into that vehicle with distinguished serenity, and was driven away.

     Thenceforth the Dowager, with a light and careless humour, often
     recounted to her particular acquaintance how, after a hard trial, she
     had found it impossible to know those people who belonged to Henry's
     wife, and who had made that desperate set to catch him. Whether she had
     come to the conclusion beforehand, that to get rid of them would give
     her favourite pretence a better air, might save her some occasional
     inconvenience, and could risk no loss (the pretty creature being fast
             married, and her father devoted to her), was best known to herself.
     Though this history has its opinion on that point too, and decidedly in
     the affirmative.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Hey! Arthur! Remember him? So the whole Doyce & Clennam operation is going quite well. They are good friends, good business partners, and generally getting along swimmingly. Having Arthur do the CFO stuff is great and makes it so Doyce can do the COO stuff. Doyce is still bummed that his awesome invention has never been patented or used, but he's totally too old to fight the Circumlocution Office. Arthur volunteers for the job and goes at it with gusto. That basically becomes his main activity, besides regular Doyce & Clennam work and visiting the Meagleses. Arthur thinks of himself as an old man. Although he misses Little Dorrit, he thinks of her like a child he took under his protection, who he now doesn't get to watch grow up. But still, he really misses her. Sort of a surprising amount. One day when he's hanging out what the Meagleses, Mrs. Gowan shows up. She's obnoxious and patronizing and basically comes there on purpose to pick some kind of fight. The conversation is pretty funny, since she sucks, and since Meagles isn't too shy to tell her so, but we'll just sum it up: 1) Poor, poor Gowan, who threw it all away to marry Pet. 2) Poor, poor me, who totally objected to this marriage all along. 3) Hey, rich Mr. Meagles, throw some money their way because Gowan is used to a certain lifestyle and they're going to have a baby soon . And 4) Don't sound so surprised about any of this, since you had to have known it when you were plotting to marry your daughter off to him. Meagles is all furious and flabbergasted by this malarkey. His main retorts are: 1) Um, it's actually Pet who's the sad one here. 2) I have never been happy about this marriage and am still not happy about it. 3) Hope he gets by on his income, whatever it might be. And finally 4) You are smoking crack if you think we had anything to do with this. The visit goes poorly. Mrs. Gowan ends by saying that, just as she always suspected, people in different classes can't really get along. The narrator then busts out that Mrs. Gowan planned the whole thing so she wouldn't have to have the Meagles in her life, and so that her other friends would have an easier time believing all the stuff she constantly peddles about Gowan and the marriage. That's pretty cold.


prompt:
Chapter: 'Arthur, my dear boy,' said Mr Meagles, on the evening of the following
day, 'Mother and I have been talking this over, and we don't feel
comfortable in remaining as we are. That elegant connection of
ours--that dear lady who was here yesterday--'

'I understand,' said Arthur.

'Even that affable and condescending ornament of society,' pursued Mr
Meagles, 'may misrepresent us, we are afraid. We could bear a great
deal, Arthur, for her sake; but we think we would rather not bear that,
    if it was all the same to her.'

    'Good,' said Arthur. 'Go on.'

    'You see,' proceeded Mr Meagles 'it might put us wrong with our
    son-in-law, it might even put us wrong with our daughter, and it might
    lead to a great deal of domestic trouble. You see, don't you?'

    'Yes, indeed,' returned Arthur, 'there is much reason in what you say.'
    He had glanced at Mrs Meagles, who was always on the good and sensible
    side; and a petition had shone out of her honest face that he would
    support Mr Meagles in his present inclinings.

    'So we are very much disposed, are Mother and I,' said Mr Meagles, 'to
    pack up bags and baggage and go among the Allongers and Marshongers once
    more. I mean, we are very much disposed to be off, strike right through
    France into Italy, and see our Pet.'

    'And I don't think,' replied Arthur, touched by the motherly
    anticipation in the bright face of Mrs Meagles (she must have been very
            like her daughter, once), 'that you could do better. And if you ask me
    for my advice, it is that you set off to-morrow.'

    'Is it really, though?' said Mr Meagles. 'Mother, this is being backed
    in an idea!'

    Mother, with a look which thanked Clennam in a manner very agreeable to
    him, answered that it was indeed.

    'The fact is, besides, Arthur,' said Mr Meagles, the old cloud coming
    over his face, 'that my son-in-law is already in debt again, and that I
    suppose I must clear him again. It may be as well, even on this account,
    that I should step over there, and look him up in a friendly way. Then
    again, here's Mother foolishly anxious (and yet naturally too) about
    Pet's state of health, and that she should not be left to feel lonesome
    at the present time. It's undeniably a long way off, Arthur, and a
    strange place for the poor love under all the circumstances. Let her be
    as well cared for as any lady in that land, still it is a long way off.
    just as Home is Home though it's never so Homely, why you see,' said Mr
    Meagles, adding a new version to the proverb, 'Rome is Rome, though it's
    never so Romely.'

    'All perfectly true,' observed Arthur, 'and all sufficient reasons for
    going.'

    'I am glad you think so; it decides me. Mother, my dear, you may get
    ready. We have lost our pleasant interpreter (she spoke three foreign
            languages beautifully, Arthur; you have heard her many a time), and you
    must pull me through it, Mother, as well as you can. I require a deal
    of pulling through, Arthur,' said Mr Meagles, shaking his head, 'a deal
    of pulling through. I stick at everything beyond a noun-substantive--and
    I stick at him, if he's at all a tight one.'

    'Now I think of it,' returned Clennam, 'there's Cavalletto. He shall
    go with you, if you like. I could not afford to lose him, but you will
    bring him safe back.'

    'Well! I am much obliged to you, my boy,' said Mr Meagles, turning it
    over, 'but I think not. No, I think I'll be pulled through by Mother.
    Cavallooro (I stick at his very name to start with, and it sounds like
            the chorus to a comic song) is so necessary to you, that I don't like
    the thought of taking him away. More than that, there's no saying when
    we may come home again; and it would never do to take him away for
    an indefinite time. The cottage is not what it was. It only holds two
    little people less than it ever did, Pet, and her poor unfortunate maid
    Tattycoram; but it seems empty now. Once out of it, there's no knowing
    when we may come back to it. No, Arthur, I'll be pulled through by
    Mother.'

    They would do best by themselves perhaps, after all, Clennam thought;
    therefore did not press his proposal.

    'If you would come down and stay here for a change, when it wouldn't
    trouble you,' Mr Meagles resumed, 'I should be glad to think--and so
    would Mother too, I know--that you were brightening up the old place
    with a bit of life it was used to when it was full, and that the Babies
    on the wall there had a kind eye upon them sometimes. You so belong to
    the spot, and to them, Arthur, and we should every one of us have been
    so happy if it had fallen out--but, let us see--how's the weather for
    travelling now?' Mr Meagles broke off, cleared his throat, and got up to
    look out of the window.

    They agreed that the weather was of high promise; and Clennam kept the
    talk in that safe direction until it had become easy again, when he
    gently diverted it to Henry Gowan and his quick sense and agreeable
    qualities when he was delicately dealt with; he likewise dwelt on the
    indisputable affection he entertained for his wife. Clennam did not fail
    of his effect upon good Mr Meagles, whom these commendations greatly
    cheered; and who took Mother to witness that the single and cordial
    desire of his heart in reference to their daughter's husband, was
    harmoniously to exchange friendship for friendship, and confidence for
    confidence. Within a few hours the cottage furniture began to be wrapped
    up for preservation in the family absence--or, as Mr Meagles expressed
    it, the house began to put its hair in papers--and within a few days
    Father and Mother were gone, Mrs Tickit and Dr Buchan were posted, as of
    yore, behind the parlour blind, and Arthur's solitary feet were rustling
    among the dry fallen leaves in the garden walks.

    As he had a liking for the spot, he seldom let a week pass without
    paying a visit. Sometimes, he went down alone from Saturday to Monday;
    sometimes his partner accompanied him; sometimes, he merely strolled for
    an hour or two about the house and garden, saw that all was right, and
    returned to London again. At all times, and under all circumstances, Mrs
    Tickit, with her dark row of curls, and Dr Buchan, sat in the parlour
    window, looking out for the family return.

    On one of his visits Mrs Tickit received him with the words, 'I
    have something to tell you, Mr Clennam, that will surprise you.' So
    surprising was the something in question, that it actually brought Mrs
    Tickit out of the parlour window and produced her in the garden walk,
    when Clennam went in at the gate on its being opened for him.

    'What is it, Mrs Tickit?' said he.

    'Sir,' returned that faithful housekeeper, having taken him into the
    parlour and closed the door; 'if ever I saw the led away and deluded
    child in my life, I saw her identically in the dusk of yesterday
    evening.'

    'You don't mean Tatty--'

    'Coram yes I do!' quoth Mrs Tickit, clearing the disclosure at a leap.

    'Where?'

    'Mr Clennam,' returned Mrs Tickit, 'I was a little heavy in my eyes,
    being that I was waiting longer than customary for my cup of tea which
    was then preparing by Mary Jane. I was not sleeping, nor what a person
    would term correctly, dozing. I was more what a person would strictly
    call watching with my eyes closed.'

    Without entering upon an inquiry into this curious abnormal condition,
    Clennam said, 'Exactly. Well?'

    'Well, sir,' proceeded Mrs Tickit, 'I was thinking of one thing and
    thinking of another, just as you yourself might. Just as anybody might.'

    'Precisely so,' said Clennam. 'Well?'

    'And when I do think of one thing and do think of another,' pursued
    Mrs Tickit, 'I hardly need to tell you, Mr Clennam, that I think of the
    family. Because, dear me! a person's thoughts,' Mrs Tickit said this
    with an argumentative and philosophic air, 'however they may stray, will
    go more or less on what is uppermost in their minds. They _will_ do it,
    sir, and a person can't prevent them.'

    Arthur subscribed to this discovery with a nod.

    'You find it so yourself, sir, I'll be bold to say,' said Mrs Tickit,
    'and we all find it so. It an't our stations in life that changes us, Mr
    Clennam; thoughts is free!--As I was saying, I was thinking of one thing
    and thinking of another, and thinking very much of the family. Not of
    the family in the present times only, but in the past times too. For
    when a person does begin thinking of one thing and thinking of another
    in that manner, as it's getting dark, what I say is, that all times
    seem to be present, and a person must get out of that state and consider
    before they can say which is which.'

    He nodded again; afraid to utter a word, lest it should present any new
    opening to Mrs Tickit's conversational powers.

    'In consequence of which,' said Mrs Tickit, 'when I quivered my eyes and
    saw her actual form and figure looking in at the gate, I let them close
    again without so much as starting, for that actual form and figure came
    so pat to the time when it belonged to the house as much as mine or your
    own, that I never thought at the moment of its having gone away. But,
    sir, when I quivered my eyes again, and saw that it wasn't there, then
    it all flooded upon me with a fright, and I jumped up.'

    'You ran out directly?' said Clennam.

    'I ran out,' assented Mrs Tickit, 'as fast as ever my feet would carry
    me; and if you'll credit it, Mr Clennam, there wasn't in the whole
    shining Heavens, no not so much as a finger of that young woman.'

    Passing over the absence from the firmament of this novel constellation,
    Arthur inquired of Mrs Tickit if she herself went beyond the gate?

    'Went to and fro, and high and low,' said Mrs Tickit, 'and saw no sign
    of her!'

    He then asked Mrs Tickit how long a space of time she supposed there
    might have been between the two sets of ocular quiverings she had
    experienced? Mrs Tickit, though minutely circumstantial in her reply,
    had no settled opinion between five seconds and ten minutes. She was so
    plainly at sea on this part of the case, and had so clearly been
    startled out of slumber, that Clennam was much disposed to regard the
    appearance as a dream. Without hurting Mrs Tickit's feelings with that
    infidel solution of her mystery, he took it away from the cottage with
    him; and probably would have retained it ever afterwards if a
    circumstance had not soon happened to change his opinion.

    He was passing at nightfall along the Strand, and the lamp-lighter was
    going on before him, under whose hand the street-lamps, blurred by the
    foggy air, burst out one after another, like so many blazing sunflowers
    coming into full-blow all at once,--when a stoppage on the pavement,
    caused by a train of coal-waggons toiling up from the wharves at the
    river-side, brought him to a stand-still. He had been walking quickly,
    and going with some current of thought, and the sudden check given to
    both operations caused him to look freshly about him, as people under
    such circumstances usually do.

    Immediately, he saw in advance--a few people intervening, but still
    so near to him that he could have touched them by stretching out
    his arm--Tattycoram and a strange man of a remarkable appearance: a
    swaggering man, with a high nose, and a black moustache as false in its
    colour as his eyes were false in their expression, who wore his heavy
    cloak with the air of a foreigner. His dress and general appearance were
    those of a man on travel, and he seemed to have very recently joined
    the girl. In bending down (being much taller than she was), listening
    to whatever she said to him, he looked over his shoulder with the
    suspicious glance of one who was not unused to be mistrustful that his
    footsteps might be dogged. It was then that Clennam saw his face; as
    his eyes lowered on the people behind him in the aggregate, without
    particularly resting upon Clennam's face or any other.

    He had scarcely turned his head about again, and it was still bent down,
    listening to the girl, when the stoppage ceased, and the obstructed
    stream of people flowed on. Still bending his head and listening to the
    girl, he went on at her side, and Clennam followed them, resolved to
    play this unexpected play out, and see where they went.

    He had hardly made the determination (though he was not long about it),
    when he was again as suddenly brought up as he had been by the stoppage.
    They turned short into the Adelphi,--the girl evidently leading,--and
    went straight on, as if they were going to the Terrace which overhangs
    the river.

    There is always, to this day, a sudden pause in that place to the roar
    of the great thoroughfare. The many sounds become so deadened that the
    change is like putting cotton in the ears, or having the head thickly
    muffled. At that time the contrast was far greater; there being no small
    steam-boats on the river, no landing places but slippery wooden stairs
    and foot-causeways, no railroad on the opposite bank, no hanging bridge
    or fish-market near at hand, no traffic on the nearest bridge of stone,
    nothing moving on the stream but watermen's wherries and coal-lighters.
    Long and broad black tiers of the latter, moored fast in the mud as if
    they were never to move again, made the shore funereal and silent after
    dark; and kept what little water-movement there was, far out towards
    mid-stream. At any hour later than sunset, and not least at that hour
    when most of the people who have anything to eat at home are going home
    to eat it, and when most of those who have nothing have hardly yet slunk
    out to beg or steal, it was a deserted place and looked on a deserted
    scene.

    Such was the hour when Clennam stopped at the corner, observing the girl
    and the strange man as they went down the street. The man's footsteps
    were so noisy on the echoing stones that he was unwilling to add the
    sound of his own. But when they had passed the turning and were in the
    darkness of the dark corner leading to the terrace, he made after them
    with such indifferent appearance of being a casual passenger on his way,
    as he could assume.

    When he rounded the dark corner, they were walking along the terrace
    towards a figure which was coming towards them. If he had seen it by
    itself, under such conditions of gas-lamp, mist, and distance, he might
    not have known it at first sight, but with the figure of the girl to
    prompt him, he at once recognised Miss Wade.

    He stopped at the corner, seeming to look back expectantly up the street
    as if he had made an appointment with some one to meet him there; but he
    kept a careful eye on the three. When they came together, the man took
    off his hat, and made Miss Wade a bow. The girl appeared to say a few
    words as though she presented him, or accounted for his being late, or
    early, or what not; and then fell a pace or so behind, by herself. Miss
    Wade and the man then began to walk up and down; the man having the
    appearance of being extremely courteous and complimentary in manner;
    Miss Wade having the appearance of being extremely haughty.

    When they came down to the corner and turned, she was saying, 'If I
    pinch myself for it, sir, that is my business. Confine yourself to
    yours, and ask me no question.'

    'By Heaven, ma'am!' he replied, making her another bow. 'It was my
    profound respect for the strength of your character, and my admiration
    of your beauty.'

    'I want neither the one nor the other from any one,' said she, 'and
    certainly not from you of all creatures. Go on with your report.'

    'Am I pardoned?' he asked, with an air of half abashed gallantry.

    'You are paid,' she said, 'and that is all you want.'

    Whether the girl hung behind because she was not to hear the business,
    or as already knowing enough about it, Clennam could not determine. They
    turned and she turned. She looked away at the river, as she walked
    with her hands folded before her; and that was all he could make of
    her without showing his face. There happened, by good fortune, to be a
    lounger really waiting for some one; and he sometimes looked over the
    railing at the water, and sometimes came to the dark corner and looked
    up the street, rendering Arthur less conspicuous.

    When Miss Wade and the man came back again, she was saying, 'You must
    wait until to-morrow.'

    'A thousand pardons?' he returned. 'My faith! Then it's not convenient
    to-night?'

    'No. I tell you I must get it before I can give it to you.'

    She stopped in the roadway, as if to put an end to the conference. He of
    course stopped too. And the girl stopped.

    'It's a little inconvenient,' said the man. 'A little. But, Holy Blue!
    that's nothing in such a service. I am without money to-night, by
    chance. I have a good banker in this city, but I would not wish to draw
    upon the house until the time when I shall draw for a round sum.'

    'Harriet,' said Miss Wade, 'arrange with him--this gentleman here--for
    sending him some money to-morrow.' She said it with a slur of the word
    gentleman which was more contemptuous than any emphasis, and walked
    slowly on.

    The man bent his head again, and the girl spoke to him as they both
    followed her. Clennam ventured to look at the girl as they moved away.
    He could note that her rich black eyes were fastened upon the man with a
    scrutinising expression, and that she kept at a little distance from
    him, as they walked side by side to the further end of the terrace.

    A loud and altered clank upon the pavement warned him, before he could
    discern what was passing there, that the man was coming back alone.
    Clennam lounged into the road, towards the railing; and the man passed
    at a quick swing, with the end of his cloak thrown over his shoulder,
    singing a scrap of a French song.

    The whole vista had no one in it now but himself. The lounger had
    lounged out of view, and Miss Wade and Tattycoram were gone. More than
    ever bent on seeing what became of them, and on having some information
    to give his good friend, Mr Meagles, he went out at the further end of
    the terrace, looking cautiously about him. He rightly judged that, at
    first at all events, they would go in a contrary direction from their
    late companion. He soon saw them in a neighbouring bye-street, which was
    not a thoroughfare, evidently allowing time for the man to get well
    out of their way. They walked leisurely arm-in-arm down one side of the
    street, and returned on the opposite side. When they came back to the
    street-corner, they changed their pace for the pace of people with an
    object and a distance before them, and walked steadily away. Clennam, no
    less steadily, kept them in sight.

    They crossed the Strand, and passed through Covent Garden (under the
            windows of his old lodging where dear Little Dorrit had come that
            night), and slanted away north-east, until they passed the great
    building whence Tattycoram derived her name, and turned into the Gray's
    Inn Road. Clennam was quite at home here, in right of Flora, not to
    mention the Patriarch and Pancks, and kept them in view with ease. He
    was beginning to wonder where they might be going next, when that wonder
    was lost in the greater wonder with which he saw them turn into the
    Patriarchal street. That wonder was in its turn swallowed up on the
    greater wonder with which he saw them stop at the Patriarchal door. A
    low double knock at the bright brass knocker, a gleam of light into the
    road from the opened door, a brief pause for inquiry and answer and the
    door was shut, and they were housed.

    After looking at the surrounding objects for assurance that he was
    not in an odd dream, and after pacing a little while before the house,
    Arthur knocked at the door. It was opened by the usual maid-servant,
    and she showed him up at once, with her usual alacrity, to Flora's
    sitting-room.

    There was no one with Flora but Mr F.'s Aunt, which respectable
    gentlewoman, basking in a balmy atmosphere of tea and toast, was
    ensconced in an easy-chair by the fireside, with a little table at her
    elbow, and a clean white handkerchief spread over her lap on which
    two pieces of toast at that moment awaited consumption. Bending over
    a steaming vessel of tea, and looking through the steam, and breathing
    forth the steam, like a malignant Chinese enchantress engaged in the
    performance of unholy rites, Mr F.'s Aunt put down her great teacup and
    exclaimed, 'Drat him, if he an't come back again!'

    It would seem from the foregoing exclamation that this uncompromising
    relative of the lamented Mr F., measuring time by the acuteness of her
    sensations and not by the clock, supposed Clennam to have lately gone
    away; whereas at least a quarter of a year had elapsed since he had had
    the temerity to present himself before her.

    'My goodness Arthur!' cried Flora, rising to give him a cordial
    reception, 'Doyce and Clennam what a start and a surprise for though not
    far from the machinery and foundry business and surely might be taken
    sometimes if at no other time about mid-day when a glass of sherry and a
    humble sandwich of whatever cold meat in the larder might not come amiss
    nor taste the worse for being friendly for you know you buy it somewhere
    and wherever bought a profit must be made or they would never keep the
    place it stands to reason without a motive still never seen and learnt
    now not to be expected, for as Mr F. himself said if seeing is believing
    not seeing is believing too and when you don't see you may fully believe
    you're not remembered not that I expect you Arthur Doyce and Clennam to
    remember me why should I for the days are gone but bring another teacup
    here directly and tell her fresh toast and pray sit near the fire.'

    Arthur was in the greatest anxiety to explain the object of his
    visit; but was put off for the moment, in spite of himself, by what he
    understood of the reproachful purport of these words, and by the genuine
    pleasure she testified in seeing him.

    'And now pray tell me something all you know,' said Flora, drawing her
    chair near to his, 'about the good dear quiet little thing and all the
    changes of her fortunes carriage people now no doubt and horses without
    number most romantic, a coat of arms of course and wild beasts on their
    hind legs showing it as if it was a copy they had done with mouths from
    ear to ear good gracious, and has she her health which is the first
    consideration after all for what is wealth without it Mr F. himself so
    often saying when his twinges came that sixpence a day and find yourself
    and no gout so much preferable, not that he could have lived on anything
    like it being the last man or that the previous little thing though far
    too familiar an expression now had any tendency of that sort much too
    slight and small but looked so fragile bless her?'

    Mr F.'s Aunt, who had eaten a piece of toast down to the crust, here
    solemnly handed the crust to Flora, who ate it for her as a matter of
    business. Mr F.'s Aunt then moistened her ten fingers in slow succession
    at her lips, and wiped them in exactly the same order on the white
    handkerchief; then took the other piece of toast, and fell to work
    upon it. While pursuing this routine, she looked at Clennam with an
    expression of such intense severity that he felt obliged to look at her
    in return, against his personal inclinations.

    'She is in Italy, with all her family, Flora,' he said, when the dreaded
    lady was occupied again.

    'In Italy is she really?' said Flora, 'with the grapes growing
    everywhere and lava necklaces and bracelets too that land of poetry with
    burning mountains picturesque beyond belief though if the organ-boys
    come away from the neighbourhood not to be scorched nobody can wonder
    being so young and bringing their white mice with them most humane, and
    is she really in that favoured land with nothing but blue about her and
    dying gladiators and Belvederes though Mr F. himself did not believe
    for his objection when in spirits was that the images could not be true
    there being no medium between expensive quantities of linen badly got
    up and all in creases and none whatever, which certainly does not seem
    probable though perhaps in consequence of the extremes of rich and poor
    which may account for it.'

    Arthur tried to edge a word in, but Flora hurried on again.

    'Venice Preserved too,' said she, 'I think you have been there is it
    well or ill preserved for people differ so and Maccaroni if they really
    eat it like the conjurors why not cut it shorter, you are acquainted
    Arthur--dear Doyce and Clennam at least not dear and most assuredly
    not Doyce for I have not the pleasure but pray excuse me--acquainted I
    believe with Mantua what _has_ it got to do with Mantua-making for I never
    have been able to conceive?'

    'I believe there is no connection, Flora, between the two,' Arthur was
    beginning, when she caught him up again.

    'Upon your word no isn't there I never did but that's like me I run away
    with an idea and having none to spare I keep it, alas there was a time
    dear Arthur that is to say decidedly not dear nor Arthur neither but you
    understand me when one bright idea gilded the what's-his-name horizon of
    et cetera but it is darkly clouded now and all is over.'

    Arthur's increasing wish to speak of something very different was by
    this time so plainly written on his face, that Flora stopped in a tender
    look, and asked him what it was?

    'I have the greatest desire, Flora, to speak to some one who is now in
    this house--with Mr Casby no doubt. Some one whom I saw come in, and
    who, in a misguided and deplorable way, has deserted the house of a
    friend of mine.'

    'Papa sees so many and such odd people,' said Flora, rising, 'that I
    shouldn't venture to go down for any one but you Arthur but for you I
    would willingly go down in a diving-bell much more a dining-room and
    will come back directly if you'll mind and at the same time not mind Mr
    F.'s Aunt while I'm gone.'

    With those words and a parting glance, Flora bustled out, leaving
    Clennam under dreadful apprehension of this terrible charge.

    The first variation which manifested itself in Mr F.'s Aunt's demeanour
    when she had finished her piece of toast, was a loud and prolonged
    sniff. Finding it impossible to avoid construing this demonstration
    into a defiance of himself, its gloomy significance being unmistakable,
    Clennam looked plaintively at the excellent though prejudiced lady
    from whom it emanated, in the hope that she might be disarmed by a meek
    submission.

    'None of your eyes at me,' said Mr F.'s Aunt, shivering with hostility.
    'Take that.'

    'That' was the crust of the piece of toast. Clennam accepted the boon
    with a look of gratitude, and held it in his hand under the pressure
    of a little embarrassment, which was not relieved when Mr F.'s Aunt,
    elevating her voice into a cry of considerable power, exclaimed, 'He
    has a proud stomach, this chap! He's too proud a chap to eat it!' and,
    coming out of her chair, shook her venerable fist so very close to his
    nose as to tickle the surface. But for the timely return of Flora, to
    find him in this difficult situation, further consequences might
    have ensued. Flora, without the least discomposure or surprise, but
    congratulating the old lady in an approving manner on being 'very lively
    to-night', handed her back to her chair.

    'He has a proud stomach, this chap,' said Mr F.'s relation, on being
    reseated. 'Give him a meal of chaff!'

    'Oh! I don't think he would like that, aunt,' returned Flora.

    'Give him a meal of chaff, I tell you,' said Mr F.'s Aunt, glaring round
    Flora on her enemy. 'It's the only thing for a proud stomach. Let him
    eat up every morsel. Drat him, give him a meal of chaff!'

    Under a general pretence of helping him to this refreshment, Flora got
    him out on the staircase; Mr F.'s Aunt even then constantly reiterating,
    with inexpressible bitterness, that he was 'a chap,' and had a 'proud
    stomach,' and over and over again insisting on that equine provision
    being made for him which she had already so strongly prescribed.

    'Such an inconvenient staircase and so many corner-stairs Arthur,'
    whispered Flora, 'would you object to putting your arm round me under my
    pelerine?'

    With a sense of going down-stairs in a highly-ridiculous manner, Clennam
    descended in the required attitude, and only released his fair burden at
    the dining-room door; indeed, even there she was rather difficult to
    be got rid of, remaining in his embrace to murmur, 'Arthur, for mercy's
    sake, don't breathe it to papa!'

    She accompanied Arthur into the room, where the Patriarch sat alone,
    with his list shoes on the fender, twirling his thumbs as if he had
    never left off. The youthful Patriarch, aged ten, looked out of his
    picture-frame above him with no calmer air than he. Both smooth heads
    were alike beaming, blundering, and bumpy.

    'Mr Clennam, I am glad to see you. I hope you are well, sir, I hope you
    are well. Please to sit down, please to sit down.'

    'I had hoped, sir,' said Clennam, doing so, and looking round with a
    face of blank disappointment, 'not to find you alone.'

    'Ah, indeed?' said the Patriarch, sweetly. 'Ah, indeed?'

    'I told you so you know papa,' cried Flora.

    'Ah, to be sure!' returned the Patriarch. 'Yes, just so. Ah, to be
    sure!'

    'Pray, sir,'demanded Clennam, anxiously, 'is Miss Wade gone?'

    'Miss--? Oh, you call her Wade,' returned Mr Casby. 'Highly proper.'

    Arthur quickly returned, 'What do you call her?'

    'Wade,' said Mr Casby. 'Oh, always Wade.'

    After looking at the philanthropic visage and the long silky white hair
    for a few seconds, during which Mr Casby twirled his thumbs, and smiled
    at the fire as if he were benevolently wishing it to burn him that he
    might forgive it, Arthur began:

    'I beg your pardon, Mr Casby--'

    'Not so, not so,' said the Patriarch, 'not so.'

    '--But, Miss Wade had an attendant with her--a young woman brought up
    by friends of mine, over whom her influence is not considered very
    salutary, and to whom I should be glad to have the opportunity of giving
    the assurance that she has not yet forfeited the interest of those
    protectors.'

    'Really, really?' returned the Patriarch.

    'Will you therefore be so good as to give me the address of Miss Wade?'

    'Dear, dear, dear!' said the Patriarch, 'how very unfortunate! If you
    had only sent in to me when they were here! I observed the young woman,
    Mr Clennam. A fine full-coloured young woman, Mr Clennam, with very dark
    hair and very dark eyes. If I mistake not, if I mistake not?'

    Arthur assented, and said once more with new expression, 'If you would
    be so good as to give me the address.'

    'Dear, dear, dear!' exclaimed the Patriarch in sweet regret. 'Tut, tut,
    tut! what a pity, what a pity! I have no address, sir. Miss Wade mostly
    lives abroad, Mr Clennam. She has done so for some years, and she is (if
            I may say so of a fellow-creature and a lady) fitful and uncertain to a
    fault, Mr Clennam. I may not see her again for a long, long time. I may
    never see her again. What a pity, what a pity!'

    Clennam saw now, that he had as much hope of getting assistance out of
    the Portrait as out of the Patriarch; but he said nevertheless:

    'Mr Casby, could you, for the satisfaction of the friends I have
    mentioned, and under any obligation of secrecy that you may consider it
    your duty to impose, give me any information at all touching Miss Wade?
    I have seen her abroad, and I have seen her at home, but I know nothing
    of her. Could you give me any account of her whatever?'

    'None,' returned the Patriarch, shaking his big head with his utmost
    benevolence. 'None at all. Dear, dear, dear! What a real pity that
    she stayed so short a time, and you delayed! As confidential agency
    business, agency business, I have occasionally paid this lady money; but
    what satisfaction is it to you, sir, to know that?'

    'Truly, none at all,' said Clennam.

    'Truly,' assented the Patriarch, with a shining face as he
    philanthropically smiled at the fire, 'none at all, sir. You hit the
    wise answer, Mr Clennam. Truly, none at all, sir.'

    His turning of his smooth thumbs over one another as he sat there, was
    so typical to Clennam of the way in which he would make the subject
    revolve if it were pursued, never showing any new part of it nor
    allowing it to make the smallest advance, that it did much to help to
    convince him of his labour having been in vain. He might have taken any
    time to think about it, for Mr Casby, well accustomed to get on anywhere
    by leaving everything to his bumps and his white hair, knew his strength
    to lie in silence. So there Casby sat, twirling and twirling, and making
    his polished head and forehead look largely benevolent in every knob.

    With this spectacle before him, Arthur had risen to go, when from the
    inner Dock where the good ship Pancks was hove down when out in no
    cruising ground, the noise was heard of that steamer labouring towards
    him. It struck Arthur that the noise began demonstratively far off, as
    though Mr Pancks sought to impress on any one who might happen to think
    about it, that he was working on from out of hearing.

    Mr Pancks and he shook hands, and the former brought his employer a
    letter or two to sign. Mr Pancks in shaking hands merely scratched his
    eyebrow with his left forefinger and snorted once, but Clennam, who
    understood him better now than of old, comprehended that he had almost
    done for the evening and wished to say a word to him outside. Therefore,
    when he had taken his leave of Mr Casby, and (which was a more difficult
            process) of Flora, he sauntered in the neighbourhood on Mr Pancks's line
    of road.

    He had waited but a short time when Mr Pancks appeared. Mr Pancks
    shaking hands again with another expressive snort, and taking off his
    hat to put his hair up, Arthur thought he received his cue to speak to
    him as one who knew pretty well what had just now passed. Therefore he
    said, without any preface:

    'I suppose they were really gone, Pancks?'

    'Yes,' replied Pancks. 'They were really gone.'

    'Does he know where to find that lady?'

    'Can't say. I should think so.'

    Mr Pancks did not? No, Mr Pancks did not. Did Mr Pancks know anything
    about her?

    'I expect,' rejoined that worthy, 'I know as much about her as she knows
    about herself. She is somebody's child--anybody's, nobody's. Put her in
    a room in London here with any six people old enough to be her parents,
    and her parents may be there for anything she knows. They may be in any
    house she sees, they may be in any churchyard she passes, she may run
    against 'em in any street, she may make chance acquaintance of 'em at
    any time; and never know it. She knows nothing about 'em. She knows
    nothing about any relative whatever. Never did. Never will.'

    'Mr Casby could enlighten her, perhaps?'

    'May be,' said Pancks. 'I expect so, but don't know. He has long had
    money (not overmuch as I make out) in trust to dole out to her when
    she can't do without it. Sometimes she's proud and won't touch it for
    a length of time; sometimes she's so poor that she must have it. She
    writhes under her life. A woman more angry, passionate, reckless,
    and revengeful never lived. She came for money to-night. Said she had
    peculiar occasion for it.'

    'I think,' observed Clennam musing, 'I by chance know what occasion--I
    mean into whose pocket the money is to go.'

    'Indeed?' said Pancks. 'If it's a compact, I recommend that party to be
    exact in it. I wouldn't trust myself to that woman, young and handsome
    as she is, if I had wronged her; no, not for twice my proprietor's
    money! Unless,' Pancks added as a saving clause, 'I had a lingering
    illness on me, and wanted to get it over.'

    Arthur, hurriedly reviewing his own observation of her, found it to
    tally pretty nearly with Mr Pancks's view.

    'The wonder is to me,' pursued Pancks, 'that she has never done for my
    proprietor, as the only person connected with her story she can lay
    hold of. Mentioning that, I may tell you, between ourselves, that I am
    sometimes tempted to do for him myself.'

    Arthur started and said, 'Dear me, Pancks, don't say that!'

    'Understand me,' said Pancks, extending five cropped coaly finger-nails
    on Arthur's arm; 'I don't mean, cut his throat. But by all that's
    precious, if he goes too far, I'll cut his hair!'

    Having exhibited himself in the new light of enunciating this tremendous
    threat, Mr Pancks, with a countenance of grave import, snorted several
    times and steamed away.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: All right, everyone, get ready for the plot to thicken! Fasten your seatbelts - it's about to get crazy! Oh, right, sorry - first this. Meagles tells Arthur that he and Mrs. Meagles are going to take off for Italy to go be with Pet, pay Gowan's debts, and generally provide moral support for their daughter. Arthur promises to look in on the house while they're gone. One day, when he's there, the housekeeper tells him that she has seen Tattycoram hanging around outside. At first Arthur thinks this was probably a dream or something, but then a few days later he's out walking and he sees... Tattycoram! And she's walking with... Blandois! Arthur follows them until they meet up with... Miss Wade! Then Arthur lurks nearby ninja-style and overhears Miss Wade saying she will pay Blandois tomorrow. They split up, with Blandois going off alone, and Arthur follows Miss Wade and Tattycoram. He is totally flabbergasted to see the two women go into the Casbys' house. What the what? Arthur goes in too, and a servant takes him in to see Flora, who is eating lunch with Mr. F's Aunt. Flora launches into her usual mix of super-fast talking and non sequiturs . Mr. F's Aunt still hilariously hates him and is still hilariously senile. When Arthur can finally get a word in edgewise and explain, Flora takes him downstairs to see her dad. He admits that Miss Wade and Tattycoram were there, but can't give Arthur any info about them or even an address. They sit in silence for a while, since Casby is very impressive and regal-looking with his full head of luxurious and somehow reassuring hair. Then Pancks shows up. Arthur waits for Pancks outside, then Pancks tells him some of what's up. Miss Wade is an orphan, and probably illegitimate. She does, however, get some kind of allowance from a trust through Casby. Casby probably knows a little bit about her parents, and probably also knows where to find her, but he won't give up any of the info. Arthur then adds that today she was getting the money to pay Blandois - though he obviously doesn't know for what. Pancks then suddenly flips out and says he's often thought about going after Casby with a sharp blade and cutting his... hair.


prompt:
Chapter: The shady waiting-rooms of the Circumlocution Office, where he passed a
good deal of time in company with various troublesome Convicts who were
under sentence to be broken alive on that wheel, had afforded Arthur
Clennam ample leisure, in three or four successive days, to exhaust the
subject of his late glimpse of Miss Wade and Tattycoram. He had been
able to make no more of it and no less of it, and in this unsatisfactory
condition he was fain to leave it.

During this space he had not been to his mother's dismal old house.
One of his customary evenings for repairing thither now coming round,
    he left his dwelling and his partner at nearly nine o'clock, and slowly
    walked in the direction of that grim home of his youth.

    It always affected his imagination as wrathful, mysterious, and sad;
    and his imagination was sufficiently impressible to see the whole
    neighbourhood under some tinge of its dark shadow. As he went along,
    upon a dreary night, the dim streets by which he went, seemed all
    depositories of oppressive secrets. The deserted counting-houses, with
    their secrets of books and papers locked up in chests and safes; the
    banking-houses, with their secrets of strong rooms and wells, the
    keys of which were in a very few secret pockets and a very few secret
    breasts; the secrets of all the dispersed grinders in the vast mill,
    among whom there were doubtless plunderers, forgers, and trust-betrayers
    of many sorts, whom the light of any day that dawned might reveal; he
    could have fancied that these things, in hiding, imparted a heaviness
    to the air. The shadow thickening and thickening as he approached its
    source, he thought of the secrets of the lonely church-vaults, where the
    people who had hoarded and secreted in iron coffers were in their turn
    similarly hoarded, not yet at rest from doing harm; and then of the
    secrets of the river, as it rolled its turbid tide between two frowning
    wildernesses of secrets, extending, thick and dense, for many miles, and
    warding off the free air and the free country swept by winds and wings
    of birds.

    The shadow still darkening as he drew near the house, the melancholy
    room which his father had once occupied, haunted by the appealing face
    he had himself seen fade away with him when there was no other watcher
    by the bed, arose before his mind. Its close air was secret. The gloom,
    and must, and dust of the whole tenement, were secret. At the heart of
    it his mother presided, inflexible of face, indomitable of will, firmly
    holding all the secrets of her own and his father's life, and austerely
    opposing herself, front to front, to the great final secret of all life.

    He had turned into the narrow and steep street from which the court of
    enclosure wherein the house stood opened, when another footstep turned
    into it behind him, and so close upon his own that he was jostled to the
    wall. As his mind was teeming with these thoughts, the encounter took
    him altogether unprepared, so that the other passenger had had time to
    say, boisterously, 'Pardon! Not my fault!' and to pass on before the
    instant had elapsed which was requisite to his recovery of the realities
    about him.

    When that moment had flashed away, he saw that the man striding on
    before him was the man who had been so much in his mind during the last
    few days. It was no casual resemblance, helped out by the force of
    the impression the man made upon him. It was the man; the man he had
    followed in company with the girl, and whom he had overheard talking to
    Miss Wade.

    The street was a sharp descent and was crooked too, and the man (who
            although not drunk had the air of being flushed with some strong drink)
    went down it so fast that Clennam lost him as he looked at him. With
    no defined intention of following him, but with an impulse to keep the
    figure in view a little longer, Clennam quickened his pace to pass the
    twist in the street which hid him from his sight. On turning it, he saw
    the man no more.

    Standing now, close to the gateway of his mother's house, he looked
    down the street: but it was empty. There was no projecting shadow large
    enough to obscure the man; there was no turning near that he could have
    taken; nor had there been any audible sound of the opening and closing
    of a door. Nevertheless, he concluded that the man must have had a key
    in his hand, and must have opened one of the many house-doors and gone
    in.

    Ruminating on this strange chance and strange glimpse, he turned into
    the court-yard. As he looked, by mere habit, towards the feebly lighted
    windows of his mother's room, his eyes encountered the figure he had
    just lost, standing against the iron railings of the little waste
    enclosure looking up at those windows and laughing to himself. Some of
    the many vagrant cats who were always prowling about there by night,
    and who had taken fright at him, appeared to have stopped when he had
    stopped, and were looking at him with eyes by no means unlike his own
    from tops of walls and porches, and other safe points of pause. He had
    only halted for a moment to entertain himself thus; he immediately went
    forward, throwing the end of his cloak off his shoulder as he went,
    ascended the unevenly sunken steps, and knocked a sounding knock at the
    door.

    Clennam's surprise was not so absorbing but that he took his resolution
    without any incertitude. He went up to the door too, and ascended the
    steps too. His friend looked at him with a braggart air, and sang to
    himself.

    'Who passes by this road so late?
    Compagnon de la Majolaine;
    Who passes by this road so late?
    Always gay!'

    After which he knocked again.

    'You are impatient, sir,' said Arthur.

    'I am, sir. Death of my life, sir,' returned the stranger, 'it's my
    character to be impatient!'

    The sound of Mistress Affery cautiously chaining the door before she
    opened it, caused them both to look that way. Affery opened it a very
    little, with a flaring candle in her hands and asked who was that, at
    that time of night, with that knock! 'Why, Arthur!' she added with
    astonishment, seeing him first. 'Not you sure? Ah, Lord save us! No,'
    she cried out, seeing the other. 'Him again!'

    'It's true! Him again, dear Mrs Flintwinch,' cried the stranger. 'Open
    the door, and let me take my dear friend Jeremiah to my arms! Open the
    door, and let me hasten myself to embrace my Flintwinch!'

    'He's not at home,' cried Affery.

    'Fetch him!' cried the stranger. 'Fetch my Flintwinch! Tell him that it
    is his old Blandois, who comes from arriving in England; tell him that
    it is his little boy who is here, his cabbage, his well-beloved! Open
    the door, beautiful Mrs Flintwinch, and in the meantime let me to pass
    upstairs, to present my compliments--homage of Blandois--to my lady! My
    lady lives always? It is well. Open then!'

    To Arthur's increased surprise, Mistress Affery, stretching her eyes
    wide at himself, as if in warning that this was not a gentleman for
    him to interfere with, drew back the chain, and opened the door. The
    stranger, without ceremony, walked into the hall, leaving Arthur to
    follow him.

    'Despatch then! Achieve then! Bring my Flintwinch! Announce me to my
    lady!' cried the stranger, clanking about the stone floor.

    'Pray tell me, Affery,' said Arthur aloud and sternly, as he surveyed
    him from head to foot with indignation; 'who is this gentleman?'

    'Pray tell me, Affery,' the stranger repeated in his turn, 'who--ha, ha,
    ha!--who is this gentleman?'

    The voice of Mrs Clennam opportunely called from her chamber above,
    'Affery, let them both come up. Arthur, come straight to me!'

    'Arthur?' exclaimed Blandois, taking off his hat at arm's length,
    and bringing his heels together from a great stride in making him a
    flourishing bow. 'The son of my lady? I am the all-devoted of the son of
    my lady!'

    Arthur looked at him again in no more flattering manner than before,
    and, turning on his heel without acknowledgment, went up-stairs. The
    visitor followed him up-stairs. Mistress Affery took the key from behind
    the door, and deftly slipped out to fetch her lord.

    A bystander, informed of the previous appearance of Monsieur Blandois
    in that room, would have observed a difference in Mrs Clennam's present
    reception of him. Her face was not one to betray it; and her suppressed
    manner, and her set voice, were equally under her control. It wholly
    consisted in her never taking her eyes off his face from the moment of
    his entrance, and in her twice or thrice, when he was becoming noisy,
    swaying herself a very little forward in the chair in which she sat
    upright, with her hands immovable upon its elbows; as if she gave him
    the assurance that he should be presently heard at any length he would.
    Arthur did not fail to observe this; though the difference between the
    present occasion and the former was not within his power of observation.

    'Madame,' said Blandois, 'do me the honour to present me to Monsieur,
    your son. It appears to me, madame, that Monsieur, your son, is disposed
    to complain of me. He is not polite.'

    'Sir,' said Arthur, striking in expeditiously, 'whoever you are, and
    however you come to be here, if I were the master of this house I would
    lose no time in placing you on the outside of it.'

    'But you are not,' said his mother, without looking at him.
    'Unfortunately for the gratification of your unreasonable temper, you
    are not the master, Arthur.'

    'I make no claim to be, mother. If I object to this person's manner of
    conducting himself here, and object to it so much, that if I had any
    authority here I certainly would not suffer him to remain a minute, I
    object on your account.'

    'In the case of objection being necessary,' she returned, 'I could
    object for myself. And of course I should.'

    The subject of their dispute, who had seated himself, laughed aloud, and
    rapped his legs with his hand.

    'You have no right,' said Mrs Clennam, always intent on Blandois,
    however directly she addressed her son, 'to speak to the prejudice of
    any gentleman (least of all a gentleman from another country), because
    he does not conform to your standard, or square his behaviour by your
    rules. It is possible that the gentleman may, on similar grounds, object
    to you.'

    'I hope so,' returned Arthur.

    'The gentleman,' pursued Mrs Clennam, 'on a former occasion brought
    a letter of recommendation to us from highly esteemed and responsible
    correspondents. I am perfectly unacquainted with the gentleman's object
    in coming here at present. I am entirely ignorant of it, and cannot be
    supposed likely to be able to form the remotest guess at its nature;'
    her habitual frown became stronger, as she very slowly and weightily
    emphasised those words; 'but, when the gentleman proceeds to explain
    his object, as I shall beg him to have the goodness to do to myself and
    Flintwinch, when Flintwinch returns, it will prove, no doubt, to be one
    more or less in the usual way of our business, which it will be both our
    business and our pleasure to advance. It can be nothing else.'

    'We shall see, madame!' said the man of business.

    'We shall see,' she assented. 'The gentleman is acquainted with
    Flintwinch; and when the gentleman was in London last, I remember
    to have heard that he and Flintwinch had some entertainment or
    good-fellowship together. I am not in the way of knowing much that
    passes outside this room, and the jingle of little worldly things beyond
    it does not much interest me; but I remember to have heard that.'

    'Right, madame. It is true.' He laughed again, and whistled the burden
    of the tune he had sung at the door.

    'Therefore, Arthur,' said his mother, 'the gentleman comes here as an
    acquaintance, and no stranger; and it is much to be regretted that your
    unreasonable temper should have found offence in him. I regret it. I say
    so to the gentleman. You will not say so, I know; therefore I say it for
    myself and Flintwinch, since with us two the gentleman's business lies.'

    The key of the door below was now heard in the lock, and the door was
    heard to open and close. In due sequence Mr Flintwinch appeared; on
    whose entrance the visitor rose from his chair, laughing loud, and
    folded him in a close embrace.

    'How goes it, my cherished friend!' said he. 'How goes the world, my
    Flintwinch? Rose-coloured? So much the better, so much the better! Ah,
    but you look charming! Ah, but you look young and fresh as the flowers
    of Spring! Ah, good little boy! Brave child, brave child!'

    While heaping these compliments on Mr Flintwinch, he rolled him about
    with a hand on each of his shoulders, until the staggerings of that
    gentleman, who under the circumstances was dryer and more twisted than
    ever, were like those of a teetotum nearly spent.

    'I had a presentiment, last time, that we should be better and more
    intimately acquainted. Is it coming on you, Flintwinch? Is it yet coming
    on?'

    'Why, no, sir,' retorted Mr Flintwinch. 'Not unusually. Hadn't you
    better be seated? You have been calling for some more of that port, sir,
    I guess?'

    'Ah, Little joker! Little pig!' cried the visitor. 'Ha ha ha ha!' And
    throwing Mr Flintwinch away, as a closing piece of raillery, he sat down
    again.

    The amazement, suspicion, resentment, and shame, with which Arthur
    looked on at all this, struck him dumb. Mr Flintwinch, who had spun
    backward some two or three yards under the impetus last given to him,
    brought himself up with a face completely unchanged in its stolidity
    except as it was affected by shortness of breath, and looked hard at
    Arthur. Not a whit less reticent and wooden was Mr Flintwinch outwardly,
    than in the usual course of things: the only perceptible difference in
    him being that the knot of cravat which was generally under his ear,
    had worked round to the back of his head: where it formed an ornamental
    appendage not unlike a bagwig, and gave him something of a courtly
    appearance.

    As Mrs Clennam never removed her eyes from Blandois (on whom they had
            some effect, as a steady look has on a lower sort of dog), so Jeremiah
    never removed his from Arthur. It was as if they had tacitly agreed to
    take their different provinces. Thus, in the ensuing silence, Jeremiah
    stood scraping his chin and looking at Arthur as though he were trying
    to screw his thoughts out of him with an instrument.

    After a little, the visitor, as if he felt the silence irksome, rose,
    and impatiently put himself with his back to the sacred fire which had
    burned through so many years. Thereupon Mrs Clennam said, moving one of
    her hands for the first time, and moving it very slightly with an action
    of dismissal:

    'Please to leave us to our business, Arthur.'

    'Mother, I do so with reluctance.'

    'Never mind with what,' she returned, 'or with what not. Please to leave
    us. Come back at any other time when you may consider it a duty to bury
    half an hour wearily here. Good night.'

    She held up her muffled fingers that he might touch them with his,
    according to their usual custom, and he stood over her wheeled chair to
    touch her face with his lips. He thought, then, that her cheek was
    more strained than usual, and that it was colder. As he followed the
    direction of her eyes, in rising again, towards Mr Flintwinch's good
    friend, Mr Blandois, Mr Blandois snapped his finger and thumb with one
    loud contemptuous snap.

    'I leave your--your business acquaintance in my mother's room, Mr
    Flintwinch,' said Clennam, 'with a great deal of surprise and a great
    deal of unwillingness.'

    The person referred to snapped his finger and thumb again.

    'Good night, mother.'

    'Good night.'

    'I had a friend once, my good comrade Flintwinch,' said Blandois,
    standing astride before the fire, and so evidently saying it to arrest
    Clennam's retreating steps, that he lingered near the door; 'I had a
    friend once, who had heard so much of the dark side of this city and
    its ways, that he wouldn't have confided himself alone by night with two
    people who had an interest in getting him under the ground--my faith!
    not even in a respectable house like this--unless he was bodily too
    strong for them. Bah! What a poltroon, my Flintwinch! Eh?'

    'A cur, sir.'

    'Agreed! A cur. But he wouldn't have done it, my Flintwinch, unless he
    had known them to have the will to silence him, without the power. He
    wouldn't have drunk from a glass of water under such circumstances--not
    even in a respectable house like this, my Flintwinch--unless he had seen
    one of them drink first, and swallow too!'

    Disdaining to speak, and indeed not very well able, for he was
    half-choking, Clennam only glanced at the visitor as he passed out.
    The visitor saluted him with another parting snap, and his nose came
    down over his moustache and his moustache went up under his nose, in an
    ominous and ugly smile.

    'For Heaven's sake, Affery,' whispered Clennam, as she opened the door
    for him in the dark hall, and he groped his way to the sight of the
    night-sky, 'what is going on here?'

    Her own appearance was sufficiently ghastly, standing in the dark
    with her apron thrown over her head, and speaking behind it in a low,
    deadened voice.

    'Don't ask me anything, Arthur. I've been in a dream for ever so long.
    Go away!'

    He went out, and she shut the door upon him. He looked up at the windows
    of his mother's room, and the dim light, deadened by the yellow blinds,
    seemed to say a response after Affery, and to mutter, 'Don't ask me
    anything. Go away!'

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Arthur goes to visit his mommy dearest. Every step closer to the house makes him more and more miserable. Suddenly, he sees... Blandois! Blandois is running fast, and Arthur loses him, but then he sees him knocking on Mrs. Clennam's door just as Arthur is coming up. Affery opens the door and Blandois walks right in like he owns the place and demands to see Flintwinch. Mrs. Clennam asks both Blandois and Arthur to come upstairs. There, she doesn't take her eyes off Blandois, and Arthur can tell she is super tense. Arthur is taken aback and says that if he owned the house, he'd throw Blandois out. Mrs. Clennam is all, well you don't, and declares that this must be about business, and that everyone needs to just calm down. Flintwinch returns, gets a half-bear hug half-beating from Blandois, and also very gets tense. Then Mrs. Clennam asks Arthur to leave and come back some other time when "you may consider it a duty to bury half an hour wearily here" . Aw, that's so sweet, mom, and I love seeing you too! Arthur reluctantly goes, but not before Blandois implies that Mrs. Clennam and Flintwinch have motives to kill him and that he's being brave by seeing them. Arthur is totally confused and asks Affery what's going on before he leaves. She just flips her apron over her head and says that she's dreaming.