lancing in
dread from the one averted face to the other, had been the peacefullest
occupation of his childhood. She gave him one glassy kiss, and four
stiff fingers muffled in worsted. This embrace concluded, he sat down on
the opposite side of her little table. There was a fire in the grate,
as there had been night and day for fifteen years. There was a kettle on
the hob, as there had been night and day for fifteen years. There was a
little mound of damped ashes on the top of the fire, and another little
mound swept together under the grate, as there had been night and day
for fifteen years. There was a smell of black dye in the airless room,
which the fire had been drawing out of the crape and stuff of the
widow's dress for fifteen months, and out of the bier-like sofa for
fifteen years.

'Mother, this is a change from your old active habits.'

'The world has narrowed to these dimensions, Arthur,' she rep lied,
glancing round the room. 'It is well for me that I never set my heart
upon its hollow vanities.'

The old influence of her presence and her stern strong voice, so
gathered about her son, that he felt conscious of a renewal of the timid
chill and reserve of his childhood.

'Do you never leave your room, mother?'

'What with my rheumatic affection, and what with its attendant debility
or nervous weakness--names are of no matter now--I have lost the use
of my limbs. I never leave my room. I have not been outside this door
for--tell him for how long,' she said, speaking over her shoulder.

'A dozen year next Christmas,' returned a cracked voice out of the
dimness behind.

'Is that Affery?' said Arthur, looking towards it.

The cracked voice replied that it was Affery: and an old woman came
forward into what doubtful light there was, and kissed her hand once;
then subsided again into the dimness.

'I am able,' said Mrs Clennam, with a slight motion of her
worsted-muffled right hand toward a chair on wheels, standing before a
tall writing cabinet close shut up, 'I am able to attend to my business
duties, and I am thankful for the privilege. It is a great privilege.
But no more of business on this day. It is a bad night, is it not?'

'Yes, mother.'

'Does it snow?'

'Snow, mother? And we only yet in September?'

'All seasons are alike to me,' she returned, with a grim kind of
luxuriousness. 'I know nothing of summer and winter, shut up here.

The Lord has been pleased to put me beyond all that.' With