ne, went tearing round as though they had a
suicidal mission to grind the business to dust and tear the factory to
pieces. A communication of great trap-doors in the floor and roof with
the workshop above and the workshop below, made a shaft of light in
this perspective, which brought to Clennam's mind the child's old
picture-book, where similar rays were the witnesses of Abel's
murder. The noises were sufficiently removed and shut out from the
counting-house to blend into a busy hum, interspersed with periodical
clinks and thumps. The patient figures at work were swarthy with the
filings of iron and steel that danced on every bench and bubbled up
through every chink in the planking. The workshop was arrived at by a
step-ladder from the outer yard below, where it served as a shelter for
the large grindstone where tools were sharpened. The whole had at once
a fanciful and practical air in Clennam's eyes, which was a welcome
change; and, as often as he raised them from his first work of getting
the array of business documents into perfect order, he glanced at these
things with a feeling of pleasure in his pursuit that was new to him.

Raising his eyes thus one day, he was surprised to see a bonnet
labouring up the step-ladder. The unusual apparition was followed by
another bonnet. He then perceived that the first bonnet was on the head
of Mr F.'s Aunt, and that the second bonnet was on the head of Flora,
who seemed to have propelled her legacy up the steep ascent with
considerable difficulty. Though not altogether enraptured at the sight
of these visitors, Clennam lost no time in opening the counting-house
door, and extricating them from the workshop; a rescue which was
rendered the more necessary by Mr F.'s Aunt already stumbling over some
impediment, and menacing steam power as an Institution with a stony
reticule she carried.

'Good gracious, Arthur,--I should say Mr Clennam, far more proper--the
climb we have had to get up here and how ever to get down again without
a fire-escape and Mr F.'s Aunt slipping through the steps and bruised
all over and you in the machinery and foundry way too only think, and
never told us!'

Thus, Flora, out of breath. Meanwhile, Mr F.'s Aunt rubbed her esteemed
insteps with her umbrella, and vindictively glared.

'Most unkind never to have come back to see us since that day, though
naturally it was not to be expected that there should be any attraction
at our house and you were much m