'

'I have never heard any noises here, worth speaking of.'

'Ah! But you would, though, if you lived in the house, and was obliged
to go about it as I am,' said Affery; 'and you'd feel that they was so
well worth speaking of, that you'd feel you was nigh bursting through
not being allowed to speak of 'em. Here's Jeremiah! You'll get me
killed.'

'My good Affery, I solemnly declare to you that I can see the light of
the open door on the pavement of the hall, and so could you if you would
uncover your face and look.'

'I durstn't do it,' said Affery, 'I durstn't never, Arthur. I'm always
blind-folded when Jeremiah an't a looking, and sometimes even when he
is.'

'He cannot shut the door without my seeing him,' said Arthur. 'You are
as safe with me as if he was fifty miles away.'

('I wish he was!' cried Affery.)

'Affery, I want to know what is amiss here; I want some light thrown
on the secrets of this house.' 'I tell you, Arthur,' she interrupted,
'noises is the secrets, rustlings and stealings about, tremblings,
treads overhead and treads underneath.'

'But those are not all the secrets.'

'I don't know,' said Affery. 'Don't ask me no more. Your old sweetheart
an't far off, and she's a blabber.'

His old sweetheart, being in fact so near at hand that she was then
reclining against him in a flutter, a very substantial angle of
forty-five degrees, here interposed to assure Mistress Affery with
greater earnestness than directness of asseveration, that what she heard
should go no further, but should be kept inviolate, 'if on no other
account on Arthur's--sensible of intruding in being too familiar Doyce
and Clennam's.'

'I make an imploring appeal to you, Affery, to you, one of the few
agreeable early remembrances I have, for my mother's sake, for your
husband's sake, for my own, for all our sakes. I am sure you can tell me
something connected with the coming here of this man, if you will.'

'Why, then I'll tell you, Arthur,' returned Affery--'Jeremiah's coming!'

'No, indeed he is not. The door is open, and he is standing outside,
talking.'

'I'll tell you then,' said Affery, after listening, 'that the first time
he ever come he heard the noises his own self. "What's that?" he said to
me. "I don't know what it is," I says to him, catching hold of him,
"but I have heard it over and over again." While I says it, he stands a
looking at me, all of a shake, he do.'

'Has he been here often?'

'Only that