u put it away
somewhere, and you kept your own counsel where. You're an active woman
at that time, and if you want to get that paper, you can get it. But,
mark. There comes a time when you are struck into what you are now, and
then if you want to get that paper, you can't get it. So it lies, long
years, in its hiding-place. At last, when we are expecting Arthur home
every day, and when any day may bring him home, and it's impossible to
say what rummaging he may make about the house, I recommend you five
thousand times, if you can't get at it, to let me get at it, that it may
be put in the fire. But no--no one but you knows where it is, and that's
power; and, call yourself whatever humble names you will, I call you a
female Lucifer in appetite for power! On a Sunday night, Arthur comes
home. He has not been in this room ten minutes, when he speaks of his
father's watch. You know very well that the Do Not Forget, at the time
when his father sent that watch to you, could only mean, the rest of the
story being then all dead and over, Do Not Forget the suppression. Make
restitution! Arthur's ways have frightened you a bit, and the paper
shall be burnt after all. So, before that jumping jade and Jezebel,' Mr
Flintwinch grinned at his wife, 'has got you into bed, you at last tell
me where you have put the paper, among the old ledgers in the cellars,
where Arthur himself went prowling the very next morning. But it's not
to be burnt on a Sunday night. No; you are strict, you are; we must wait
over twelve o'clock, and get into Monday. Now, all this is a swallowing
of me up alive that rasps me; so, feeling a little out of temper, and
not being as strict as yourself, I take a look at the document before
twelve o'clock to refresh my memory as to its appearance--fold up one of
the many yellow old papers in the cellars like it--and afterwards, when
we have got into Monday morning, and I have, by the light of your
lamp, to walk from you, lying on that bed, to this grate, make a little
exchange like the conjuror, and burn accordingly. My brother
Ephraim, the lunatic-keeper (I wish he had had himself to keep in a
strait-waistcoat), had had many jobs since the close of the long job he
got from you, but had not done well. His wife died (not that that
was much; mine might have died instead, and welcome), he speculated
unsuccessfully in lunatics, he got into difficulty about over-roasting
a patient to bring him to reason, and he got into debt.