'Your husband does?'

'Does? It makes me shake from head to foot, to hear him give it
her. My husband, Jeremiah Flintwinch, can conquer even your
mother. What can he be but a clever one to do that!'

His shuffling footstep coming towards them caused her to retreat to
the other end of the room. Though a tall, hard-favoured, sinewy
old woman, who in her youth might have enlisted in the Foot Guards
without much fear of discovery, she collapsed before the little
keen-eyed crab-like old man.

'Now, Affery,' said he, 'now, woman, what are you doing? Can't you
find Master Arthur something or another to pick at?'

Master Arthur repeated his recent refusal to pick at anything.

'Very well, then,' said the old man; 'make his bed. Stir
yourself.' His neck was so twisted that the knotted ends of his
white cravat usually dangled under one ear; his natural acerbity
and energy, always contending with a second nature of habitual
repression, gave his features a swollen and suffused look; and
altogether, he had a weird appearance of having hanged himself at
one time or other, and of having gone about ever since, halter and
all, exactly as some timely hand had cut him down.

'You'll have bitter words together to-morrow, Arthur; you and your
mother,' said Jeremiah. 'Your having given up the business on your
father's death--which she suspects, though we have left it to you