her cold grey
eyes and her cold grey hair, and her immovable face, as stiff as the
folds of her stony head-dress,--her being beyond the reach of the
seasons seemed but a fit sequence to her being beyond the reach of all
changing emotions.

On her little table lay two or three books, her handkerchief, a pair of
steel spectacles newly taken off, and an old-fashioned gold watch in a
heavy double case. Upon this last object her son's eyes and her own now
rested together.

'I see that you received the packet I sent you on my father's death,
safely, mother.'

'You see.'

'I never knew my father to show so much anxiety on any subject, as that
his watch should be sent straight to you.'

'I keep it here as a remembrance of your father.'

'It was not until the last, that he expressed the wish; when he could
only put his hand upon it, and very indistinctly say to me "your
mother." A moment before, I thought him wandering in his mind, as he
had been for many hours--I think he had no consciousness of pain in his
short illness--when I saw him turn himself in his bed and try to open
it.'

'Was your father, then, not wandering in his mind when he tried to open
it?'

'No. He was quite sensible at that time.'

Mrs Clennam shook her head; whether in dismissal of the deceased or
opposing herself to her son's opinion, was not clearly expressed.

'After my father's death I opened it myself, thinking there might be,
for anything I knew, some memorandum there. However, as I need not tell
you, mother, there was nothing but the old silk watch-paper worked in
beads, which you found (no doubt) in its place between the cases, where
I found and left it.'

Mrs Clennam signified assent; then added, 'No more of business on this
day,' and then added, 'Affery, it is nine o'clock.'

Upon this, the old woman cleared the little table, went out of the room,
and quickly returned with a tray on which was a dish of little rusks and
a small precise pat of butter, cool, symmetrical, white, and plump. The
old man who had been standing by the door in one attitude during the
whole interview, looking at the mother up-stairs as he had looked at the
son down-stairs, went out at the same time, and, after a longer absence,
returned with another tray on which was the greater part of a bottle
of port wine (which, to judge by his panting, he had brought from the
cellar), a lemon, a sugar-basin, and a spice box. With these materials
and the aid of the kettl