of significant emblematical purpose.

Flora had spread her bonnet and shawl upon the bed, with a care
indicative of an intention to stay some time. Mr Casby, too, was beaming
near the hob, with his benevolent knobs shining as if the warm butter of
the toast were exuding through the patriarchal skull, and with his face
as ruddy as if the colouring matter of the anchovy paste were mantling
in the patriarchal visage. Seeing this, as he exchanged the
usual salutations, Clennam decided to speak to his mother without
postponement.

It had long been customary, as she never changed her room, for those who
had anything to say to her apart, to wheel her to her desk; where she
sat, usually with the back of her chair turned towards the rest of the
room, and the person who talked with her seated in a corner, on a stool
which was always set in that place for that purpose. Except that it
was long since the mother and son had spoken together without the
intervention of a third person, it was an ordinary matter of course
within the experience of visitors for Mrs Clennam to be asked, with a
word of apology for the interruption, if she could be spoken with on
a matter of business, and, on her replying in the affirmative, to be
wheeled into the position described.

Therefore, when Arthur now made such an apology, and such a request,
and moved her to her desk and seated himself on the stool, Mrs Finching
merely began to talk louder and faster, as a delicate hint that she
could overhear nothing, and Mr Casby stroked his long white locks with
sleepy calmness.

'Mother, I have heard something to-day which I feel persuaded you don't
know, and which I think you should know, of the antecedents of that man
I saw here.'

'I know nothing of the antecedents of the man you saw here, Arthur.'

She spoke aloud. He had lowered his own voice; but she rejected that
advance towards confidence as she rejected every other, and spoke in her
usual key and in her usual stern voice.

'I have received it on no circuitous information; it has come to me
direct.' She asked him, exactly as before, if he were there to tell her
what it was?

'I thought it right that you should know it.'

'And what is it?'

'He has been a prisoner in a French gaol.'

She answered with composure, 'I should think that very likely.'

'But in a gaol for criminals, mother. On an accusation of murder.'

She started at the word, and her looks expressed her natural horror. Yet