What have you been doing, woman?' inquired Jeremiah. 'You've been rung
for fifty times.' 'Oh Jeremiah,' said Mistress Affery, 'I have been a-dreaming!' Reminded of her former achievement in that way, Mr Flintwinch held the
candle to her head, as if he had some idea of lighting her up for the
illumination of the kitchen.
'Don't you know it's her tea-time?' he demanded with a vicious grin, and
giving one of the legs of Mistress Affery's chair a kick.
'Jeremiah? Tea-time? I don't know what's come to me. But I got such a
dreadful turn, Jeremiah, before I went--off a-dreaming, that I think it
must be that.' 'Yoogh! Sleepy-Head!' said Mr Flintwinch, 'what are you talking about?'
'Such a strange noise, Jeremiah, and such a curious movement. In the
kitchen here--just here.' Jeremiah held up his light and looked at the blackened ceiling, held
down his light and looked at the damp stone floor, turned round with his
light and looked about at the spotted and blotched walls
. 'Rats, cats, water, drains,' said Jeremiah.
Mistress Affery negatived each with a shake of her head. 'No, Jeremiah;
I have felt it before. I have felt it up-stairs, and once on the
staircase as I was going from her room to ours in the night--a rustle
and a sort of trembling touch behind me.'
'Affery, my woman,' said Mr Flintwinch grimly, after advancing his nose
to that lady's lips as a test for the detection of spirituous liquors,
'if you don't get tea pretty quick, old woman, you'll become sensible
of a rustle and a touch that'll send you flying to the other end of the
kitchen.' This prediction stimulated Mrs Flintwinch to bestir herself, and to
hasten up-stairs to Mrs Clennam's chamber. But, for all that, she now
began to entertain a settled conviction that there was something wrong
in the gloomy house.
Henceforth, she was never at peace in it after
daylight departed; and never went up or down stairs in the dark without
having her apron over her head, lest she should see something. What with these ghostly apprehensions and her singular dreams, Mrs
Flintwinch fell that evening into a haunted state of mind, from which
it may be long before this present narrative descries any trace of her
recovery. In the vagueness and indistinctness of all her new experiences
and perceptions, as everything about her was mysterious to herself she
began to be mysterious to others: and became as difficult to be made out
to anybody's satisfaction as she found the house and everything in it
difficult to make out to her own.