Chapter: The house in the city preserved its heavy dulness through all these
transactions, and the invalid within it turned the same unvarying
round of life. Morning, noon, and night, morning, noon, and night, each
recurring with its accompanying monotony, always the same reluctant
return of the same sequences of machinery, like a dragging piece of
clockwork.

The wheeled chair had its associated remembrances and reveries, one may
suppose, as every place that is made the station of a human being has.
Pictures of demolished streets and altered houses, as they formerly were
when the occupant of the chair was familiar with them, images of people
as they too used to be, with little or no allowance made for the lapse
of time since they were seen; of these, there must have been many in the
long routine of gloomy days. To stop the clock of busy existence at the
hour when we were personally sequestered from it, to suppose mankind
stricken motionless when we were brought to a stand-still, to be unable
to measure the changes beyond our view by any larger standard than
the shrunken one of our own uniform and contracted existence, is the
infirmity of many invalids, and the mental unhealthiness of almost all
recluses.

What scenes and actors the stern woman most reviewed, as she sat
from season to season in her one dark room, none knew but herself. Mr
Flintwinch, with his wry presence brought to bear upon her daily like
some eccentric mechanical force, would perhaps have screwed it out of
her, if there had been less resistance in her; but she was too strong
for him. So far as Mistress Affery was concerned, to regard her
liege-lord and her disabled mistress with a face of blank wonder, to
go about the house after dark with her apron over her head, always to
listen for the strange noises and sometimes to hear them, and never
to emerge from her ghostly, dreamy, sleep-waking state, was occupation
enough for her.

There was a fair stroke of business doing, as Mistress Affery made out,
      for her husband had abundant occupation in his little office, and saw
      more people than had been used to come there for some years. This might
      easily be, the house having been long deserted; but he did receive
      letters, and comers, and keep books, and correspond. Moreover, he went
      about to other counting-houses, and to wharves, and docks, and to the
      Custom House, and to Garraway's Coffee House, and the Jerusalem Coffee
      House, and on 'Change; so that he was much in and out. He began, too,
      sometimes of an evening, when Mrs Clennam expressed no particular wish
      for his society, to resort to a tavern in the neighbourhood to look at
      the shipping news and closing prices in the evening paper, and even to
      exchange small socialities with mercantile Sea Captains who frequented
      that establishment. At some period of every day, he and Mrs Clennam held
      a council on matters of business; and it appeared to Affery, who was
      always groping about, listening and watching, that the two clever ones
      were making money.

      The state of mind into which Mr Flintwinch's dazed lady had fallen, had
      now begun to be so expressed in all her looks and actions that she was
      held in very low account by the two clever ones, as a person, never
      of strong intellect, who was becoming foolish. Perhaps because her
      appearance was not of a commercial cast, or perhaps because it occurred
      to him that his having taken her to wife might expose his judgment to
      doubt in the minds of customers, Mr Flintwinch laid his commands upon
      her that she should hold her peace on the subject of her conjugal
      relations, and should no longer call him Jeremiah out of the domestic
      trio. Her frequent forgetfulness of this admonition intensified her
      startled manner, since Mr Flintwinch's habit of avenging himself on her
      remissness by making springs after her on the staircase, and shaking
      her, occasioned her to be always nervously uncertain when she might be
      thus waylaid next.

      Little Dorrit had finished a long day's work in Mrs Clennam's room, and
      was neatly gathering up her shreds and odds and ends before going home.
      Mr Pancks, whom Affery had just shown in, was addressing an inquiry to
      Mrs Clennam on the subject of her health, coupled with the remark that,
      'happening to find himself in that direction,' he had looked in to
      inquire, on behalf of his proprietor, how she found herself. Mrs
      Clennam, with a deep contraction of her brows, was looking at him.

      'Mr Casby knows,' said she, 'that I am not subject to changes. The
      change that I await here is the great change.'

      'Indeed, ma'am?' returned Mr Pancks, with a wandering eye towards the
      figure of the little seamstress on her knee picking threads and fraying
      of her work from the carpet. 'You look nicely, ma'am.'

      'I bear what I have to bear,' she answered. 'Do you what you have to
      do.'

      'Thank you, ma'am,' said Mr Pancks, 'such is my endeavour.'

      'You are often in this direction, are you not?' asked Mrs Clennam.

      'Why, yes, ma'am,' said Pancks, 'rather so lately; I have lately been
      round this way a good deal, owing to one thing and another.'

      'Beg Mr Casby and his daughter not to trouble themselves, by deputy,
      about me. When they wish to see me, they know I am here to see them.
      They have no need to trouble themselves to send. You have no need to
      trouble yourself to come.'

      'Not the least trouble, ma'am,' said Mr Pancks. 'You really are looking
      uncommonly nicely, ma'am.'

      'Thank you. Good evening.'

      The dismissal, and its accompanying finger pointed straight at the door,
      was so curt and direct that Mr Pancks did not see his way to prolong his
      visit. He stirred up his hair with his sprightliest expression, glanced
      at the little figure again, said 'Good evening, ma 'am; don't come down,
      Mrs Affery, I know the road to the door,' and steamed out. Mrs Clennam,
      her chin resting on her hand, followed him with attentive and darkly
      distrustful eyes; and Affery stood looking at her as if she were
      spell-bound.

      Slowly and thoughtfully, Mrs Clennam's eyes turned from the door by
      which Pancks had gone out, to Little Dorrit, rising from the carpet.
      With her chin drooping more heavily on her hand, and her eyes vigilant
      and lowering, the sick woman sat looking at her until she attracted her
      attention. Little Dorrit coloured under such a gaze, and looked down.
      Mrs Clennam still sat intent.

      'Little Dorrit,' she said, when she at last broke silence, 'what do you
      know of that man?'

      'I don't know anything of him, ma'am, except that I have seen him about,
      and that he has spoken to me.'

      'What has he said to you?'

      'I don't understand what he has said, he is so strange. But nothing
      rough or disagreeable.'

      'Why does he come here to see you?'

      'I don't know, ma'am,' said Little Dorrit, with perfect frankness.

      'You know that he does come here to see you?'

      'I have fancied so,' said Little Dorrit. 'But why he should come here or
      anywhere for that, ma'am, I can't think.'

      Mrs Clennam cast her eyes towards the ground, and with her strong, set
      face, as intent upon a subject in her mind as it had lately been upon
      the form that seemed to pass out of her view, sat absorbed. Some minutes
      elapsed before she came out of this thoughtfulness, and resumed her hard
      composure.

      Little Dorrit in the meanwhile had been waiting to go, but afraid to
      disturb her by moving. She now ventured to leave the spot where she
      had been standing since she had risen, and to pass gently round by the
      wheeled chair. She stopped at its side to say 'Good night, ma'am.'

      Mrs Clennam put out her hand, and laid it on her arm. Little Dorrit,
      confused under the touch, stood faltering. Perhaps some momentary
      recollection of the story of the Princess may have been in her mind.

      'Tell me, Little Dorrit,' said Mrs Clennam, 'have you many friends now?'

      'Very few, ma'am. Besides you, only Miss Flora and--one more.'

      'Meaning,' said Mrs Clennam, with her unbent finger again pointing to
      the door, 'that man?'

      'Oh no, ma'am!'

      'Some friend of his, perhaps?'

      'No ma'am.' Little Dorrit earnestly shook her head. 'Oh no! No one at
      all like him, or belonging to him.'

      'Well!' said Mrs Clennam, almost smiling. 'It is no affair of mine. I
      ask, because I take an interest in you; and because I believe I was your
      friend when you had no other who could serve you. Is that so?'

      'Yes, ma'am; indeed it is. I have been here many a time when, but for
      you and the work you gave me, we should have wanted everything.'

      'We,' repeated Mrs Clennam, looking towards the watch, once her dead
      husband's, which always lay upon her table. 'Are there many of you?'

      'Only father and I, now. I mean, only father and I to keep regularly out
      of what we get.'

      'Have you undergone many privations? You and your father and who else
      there may be of you?' asked Mrs Clennam, speaking deliberately, and
      meditatively turning the watch over and over.

      'Sometimes it has been rather hard to live,' said Little Dorrit, in her
      soft voice, and timid uncomplaining way; 'but I think not harder--as to
      that--than many people find it.'

      'That's well said!' Mrs Clennam quickly returned. 'That's the truth!
      You are a good, thoughtful girl. You are a grateful girl too, or I much
      mistake you.'

      'It is only natural to be that. There is no merit in being that,' said
      Little Dorrit. 'I am indeed.'

      Mrs Clennam, with a gentleness of which the dreaming Affery had never
      dreamed her to be capable, drew down the face of her little seamstress,
      and kissed her on the forehead.

      'Now go, Little Dorrit,' said she,'or you will be late, poor child!'

      In all the dreams Mistress Affery had been piling up since she first
      became devoted to the pursuit, she had dreamed nothing more astonishing
      than this. Her head ached with the idea that she would find the other
      clever one kissing Little Dorrit next, and then the two clever ones
      embracing each other and dissolving into tears of tenderness for all
      mankind. The idea quite stunned her, as she attended the light footsteps
      down the stairs, that the house door might be safely shut.

      On opening it to let Little Dorrit out, she found Mr Pancks, instead
      of having gone his way, as in any less wonderful place and among less
      wonderful phenomena he might have been reasonably expected to do,
      fluttering up and down the court outside the house. The moment he saw
      Little Dorrit, he passed her briskly, said with his finger to his nose
      (as Mrs Affery distinctly heard), 'Pancks the gipsy, fortune-telling,'
      and went away. 'Lord save us, here's a gipsy and a fortune-teller in it
      now!' cried Mistress Affery. 'What next!'

      She stood at the open door, staggering herself with this enigma, on a
      rainy, thundery evening. The clouds were flying fast, and the wind was
      coming up in gusts, banging some neighbouring shutters that had broken
      loose, twirling the rusty chimney-cowls and weather-cocks, and rushing
      round and round a confined adjacent churchyard as if it had a mind to
      blow the dead citizens out of their graves. The low thunder, muttering
      in all quarters of the sky at once, seemed to threaten vengeance for
      this attempted desecration, and to mutter, 'Let them rest! Let them
      rest!'

      Mistress Affery, whose fear of thunder and lightning was only to
      be equalled by her dread of the haunted house with a premature and
      preternatural darkness in it, stood undecided whether to go in or not,
      until the question was settled for her by the door blowing upon her in
      a violent gust of wind and shutting her out. 'What's to be done now,
      what's to be done now!' cried Mistress Affery, wringing her hands in
      this last uneasy dream of all; 'when she's all alone by herself
      inside, and can no more come down to open it than the churchyard dead
      themselves!'

      In this dilemma, Mistress Affery, with her apron as a hood to keep the
      rain off, ran crying up and down the solitary paved enclosure several
      times. Why she should then stoop down and look in at the keyhole of the
      door as if an eye would open it, it would be difficult to say; but it
      is none the less what most people would have done in the same situation,
      and it is what she did.

      From this posture she started up suddenly, with a half scream, feeling
      something on her shoulder. It was the touch of a hand; of a man's hand.

      The man was dressed like a traveller, in a foraging cap with fur about
      it, and a heap of cloak. He looked like a foreigner. He had a quantity
      of hair and moustache--jet black, except at the shaggy ends, where
      it had a tinge of red--and a high hook nose. He laughed at Mistress
      Affery's start and cry; and as he laughed, his moustache went up under
      his nose, and his nose came down over his moustache.

      'What's the matter?' he asked in plain English. 'What are you frightened
      at?'

      'At you,' panted Affery.

      'Me, madam?'

      'And the dismal evening, and--and everything,' said Affery. 'And here!
      The wind has been and blown the door to, and I can't get in.'

      'Hah!' said the gentleman, who took that very coolly. 'Indeed! Do you
      know such a name as Clennam about here?'

      'Lord bless us, I should think I did, I should think I did!' cried
      Affery, exasperated into a new wringing of hands by the inquiry.

      'Where about here?'

      'Where!' cried Affery, goaded into another inspection of the keyhole.
      'Where but here in this house? And she's all alone in her room, and lost
      the use of her limbs and can't stir to help herself or me, and t'other
      clever one's out, and Lord forgive me!' cried Affery, driven into a
      frantic dance by these accumulated considerations, 'if I ain't a-going
      headlong out of my mind!'

      Taking a warmer view of the matter now that it concerned himself, the
      gentleman stepped back to glance at the house, and his eye soon rested
      on the long narrow window of the little room near the hall-door.

      'Where may the lady be who has lost the use of her limbs, madam?' he
      inquired, with that peculiar smile which Mistress Affery could not
      choose but keep her eyes upon.

      'Up there!' said Affery. 'Them two windows.'

      'Hah! I am of a fair size, but could not have the honour of presenting
      myself in that room without a ladder. Now, madam, frankly--frankness is
      a part of my character--shall I open the door for you?'

      'Yes, bless you, sir, for a dear creetur, and do it at once,' cried
      Affery, 'for she may be a-calling to me at this very present minute, or
      may be setting herself a fire and burning herself to death, or there's
      no knowing what may be happening to her, and me a-going out of my mind
      at thinking of it!'

      'Stay, my good madam!' He restrained her impatience with a smooth white
      hand. 'Business-hours, I apprehend, are over for the day?'

      'Yes, yes, yes,' cried Affery. 'Long ago.'

      'Let me make, then, a fair proposal. Fairness is a part of my character.
      I am just landed from the packet-boat, as you may see.' He showed her
      that his cloak was very wet, and that his boots were saturated with
      water; she had previously observed that he was dishevelled and sallow,
      as if from a rough voyage, and so chilled that he could not keep his
      teeth from chattering. 'I am just landed from the packet-boat, madam,
      and have been delayed by the weather: the infernal weather! In
      consequence of this, madam, some necessary business that I should
      otherwise have transacted here within the regular hours (necessary
              business because money-business), still remains to be done. Now, if you
      will fetch any authorised neighbouring somebody to do it in return for
      my opening the door, I'll open the door. If this arrangement should be
      objectionable, I'll--' and with the same smile he made a significant
      feint of backing away.

      Mistress Affery, heartily glad to effect the proposed compromise, gave
      in her willing adhesion to it. The gentleman at once requested her to
      do him the favour of holding his cloak, took a short run at the narrow
      window, made a leap at the sill, clung his way up the bricks, and in
      a moment had his hand at the sash, raising it. His eyes looked so very
      sinister, as he put his leg into the room and glanced round at Mistress
      Affery, that she thought with a sudden coldness, if he were to go
      straight up-stairs to murder the invalid, what could she do to prevent
      him?

      Happily he had no such purpose; for he reappeared, in a moment, at the
      house door. 'Now, my dear madam,' he said, as he took back his cloak and
      threw it on, 'if you have the goodness to--what the Devil's that!'

      The strangest of sounds. Evidently close at hand from the peculiar
      shock it communicated to the air, yet subdued as if it were far off. A
      tremble, a rumble, and a fall of some light dry matter.

      'What the Devil is it?'

      'I don't know what it is, but I've heard the like of it over and over
      again,' said Affery, who had caught his arm.

      He could hardly be a very brave man, even she thought in her dreamy
      start and fright, for his trembling lips had turned colourless. After
      listening a few moments, he made light of it.

      'Bah! Nothing! Now, my dear madam, I think you spoke of some clever
      personage. Will you be so good as to confront me with that genius?' He
      held the door in his hand, as though he were quite ready to shut her out
      again if she failed.

      'Don't you say anything about the door and me, then,' whispered Affery.

      'Not a word.'

      'And don't you stir from here, or speak if she calls, while I run round
      the corner.'

      'Madam, I am a statue.'

      Affery had so vivid a fear of his going stealthily up-stairs the moment
      her back was turned, that after hurrying out of sight, she returned to
      the gateway to peep at him. Seeing him still on the threshold, more out
      of the house than in it, as if he had no love for darkness and no
      desire to probe its mysteries, she flew into the next street, and sent a
      message into the tavern to Mr Flintwinch, who came out directly. The
      two returning together--the lady in advance, and Mr Flintwinch coming up
      briskly behind, animated with the hope of shaking her before she could
      get housed--saw the gentleman standing in the same place in the dark,
      and heard the strong voice of Mrs Clennam calling from her room, 'Who is
      it? What is it? Why does no one answer? Who _is_ that, down there?'

 Same old same old at Mrs. Clennam's place. Well, sort of. Affery notices that suddenly business seems to be picking up, and Flintwinch is constantly going out to the City. This stresses Affery out. Also, the constant weird house noises also stress her out. One day, when Little Dorrit is doing needlework at Mrs. Clennam's, Pancks stops by. He acts sort of odd, pretending to ask about Mrs. Clennam's health on behalf of Casby, but he's clearly really there to see Little Dorrit. Mrs. Clennam gets suspicious and interrogates Little Dorrit about him. Little Dorrit doesn't know anything, so Mrs. Clennam interrogates her a little bit about what her life in poverty is like. It's sucky, and Little Dorrit tells her so. Then - get ready for this, because it knocks Affery for a huge loop - out of nowhere... OK, are you sitting down? No, really, sit down - it's about to get crazy.... Mrs. Clennam kisses Little Dorrit! Oh, for Pete's sake, on the forehead, people! Calm down and get your heads out of the gutter. Still, who ever thought Mrs. Clennam would kiss anyone? It's nuts. Little Dorrit leaves and Affery sees her out. As she turns to go back into the house, the wind slams shut the door, locking her out, and it starts to rain. Suddenly, Affery is accosted by... Rigaud! Or, as we will now call him, Blandois. He introduces himself as a traveler with business , and offers to break open the house door if Affery will go find him someone to talk to about business. Affery is a little wary but doesn't think she has a choice. He opens the window, then the door, really quickly. In the house, he has a mild panic attack at a strange noise and some falling dust. Affery gets Flintwinch from the pub.

