carrying the load himself, wished the old man good night, and
went up-stairs with her to the top of the house.

They mounted up and up, through the musty smell of an old close house,
little used, to a large garret bed-room. Meagre and spare, like all the
other rooms, it was even uglier and grimmer than the rest, by being the
place of banishment for the worn-out furniture. Its movables were ugly
old chairs with worn-out seats, and ugly old chairs without any seats;
a threadbare patternless carpet, a maimed table, a crippled wardrobe,
a lean set of fire-irons like the skeleton of a set deceased, a
washing-stand that looked as if it had stood for ages in a hail of
dirty soapsuds, and a bedstead with four bare atomies of posts, each
terminating in a spike, as if for the dismal accommodation of lodgers
who might prefer to impale themselves. Arthur opened the long low
window, and looked out upon the old blasted and blackened forest of
chimneys, and the old red glare in the sky, which had seemed to him once
upon a time but a nightly reflection of the fiery environment that was
presented to his childish fancy in all directions, let it look where it
would.

He drew in his head again, sat down at the bedside, and looked on at
Affery Flintwinch making the bed.

'Affery, you were not married when I went away.'

She screwed her mouth into the form of saying 'No,' shook her head, and
proceeded to get a pillow into its case.

'How did it happen?'

'Why, Jeremiah, o' course,' said Affery, with an end of the pillow-case
between her teeth.

'Of course he proposed it, but how did it all come about? I should have
thought that neither of you would have married; least of all should I
have thought of your marrying each other.'

'No more should I,' said Mrs Flintwinch, tying the pillow tightly in its
case.

'That's what I mean. When did you begin to think otherwise?'

'Never begun to think otherwise at all,' said Mrs Flintwinch.

Seeing, as she patted the pillow into its place on the bolster, that he
was still looking at her as if waiting for the rest of her reply,
she gave it a great poke in the middle, and asked, 'How could I help
myself?'

'How could you help yourself from being married!'

'O' course,' said Mrs Flintwinch. 'It was no doing o' mine. I'D never
thought of it. I'd got something to do, without thinking, indeed! She
kept me to it (as well as he) when she could go about, and she could go
about then.' 'Well?'

'W