conscious and confused, Arthur asked his pardon, if he had stared
at him unpolitely. 'But my mind runs so much upon this matter,' he said,
'that I lose myself.'

'Hah! Yet I don't see,' returned Mr Flintwinch, quite at his leisure,
'why it should trouble YOU, Arthur.'

'No?'

'No,' said Mr Flintwinch, very shortly and decidedly: much as if he were
of the canine race, and snapped at Arthur's hand.

'Is it nothing to see those placards about? Is it nothing to me to
see my mother's name and residence hawked up and down in such an
association?'

'I don't see,' returned Mr Flintwinch, scraping his horny cheek, 'that
it need signify much to you. But I'll tell you what I do see, Arthur,'
glancing up at the windows; 'I see the light of fire and candle in your
mother's room!'

'And what has that to do with it?'

'Why, sir, I read by it,' said Mr Flintwinch, screwing himself at him,
'that if it's advisable (as the proverb says it is) to let sleeping dogs
lie, it's just as advisable, perhaps, to let missing dogs lie. Let 'em
be. They generally turn up soon enough.'

Mr Flintwinch turned short round when he had made this remark, and went
into the dark hall. Clennam stood there, following him with his eyes,
as he dipped for a light in the phosphorus-box in the little room at the
side, got one after three or four dips, and lighted the dim lamp against
the wall. All the while, Clennam was pursuing the probabilities--rather
as if they were being shown to him by an invisible hand than as if he
himself were conjuring them up--of Mr Flintwinch's ways and means of
doing that darker deed, and removing its traces by any of the black
avenues of shadow that lay around them.

'Now, sir,' said the testy Jeremiah; 'will it be agreeable to walk
up-stairs?'

'My mother is alone, I suppose?'

'Not alone,' said Mr Flintwinch. 'Mr Casby and his daughter are with
her. They came in while I was smoking, and I stayed behind to have my
smoke out.'

This was the second disappointment. Arthur made no remark upon it, and
repaired to his mother's room, where Mr Casby and Flora had been
taking tea, anchovy paste, and hot buttered toast. The relics of those
delicacies were not yet removed, either from the table or from the
scorched countenance of Affery, who, with the kitchen toasting-fork
still in her hand, looked like a sort of allegorical personage; except
that she had a considerable advantage over the general run of such
personages in point