od faith, I believe so.' 'And so you may, Arthur.'

'Affery, what girl was that in my mother's room just now?'

'Girl?' said Mrs Flintwinch in a rather sharp key.

'It was a girl, surely, whom I saw near you--almost hidden in the dark
corner?'

'Oh! She? Little Dorrit? She's nothing; she's a whim of--hers.' It was a
peculiarity of Affery Flintwinch that she never spoke of Mrs Clennam
by name. 'But there's another sort of girls than that about. Have you
forgot your old sweetheart? Long and long ago, I'll be bound.'

'I suffered enough from my mother's separating us, to remember her.

I recollect her very well.'

'Have you got another?'

'No.'

'Here's news for you, then. She's well to do now, and a widow. And if
you like to have her, why you can.'

'And how do you know that, Affery?'

'Them two clever ones have been speaking about it.--There's Jeremiah on
the stairs!' She was gone in a moment.

Mrs Flintwinch had introduced into the web that his mind was busily
weaving, in that old workshop where the loom of his youth had stood, the
last thread wanting to the pattern. The airy folly of a boy's love had
found its way even into that house, and he had been as wretched under
its hopelessness as if the house had been a castle of romance. Little
more than a week ago at Marseilles, the face of the pretty girl from
whom he had parted with regret, had had an unusual interest for him, and
a tender hold upon him, because of some resemblance, real or imagined,
to this first face that had soared out of his gloomy life into the
bright glories of fancy. He leaned upon the sill of the long low window,
and looking out upon the blackened forest of chimneys again, began to
dream; for it had been the uniform tendency of this man's life--so much
was wanting in it to think about, so much that might have been better
directed and happier to speculate upon--to make him a dreamer, after
all.

CHAPTER 4. Mrs Flintwinch has a Dream

When Mrs Flintwinch dreamed, she usually dreamed, unlike the son of her
old mistress, with her eyes shut. She had a curiously vivid dream that
night, and before she had left the son of her old mistress many hours.
In fact it was not at all like a dream; it was so very real in every
respect. It happened in this wise.

The bed-chamber occupied by Mr and Mrs Flintwinch was within a few paces
of that to which Mrs Clennam had been so long confined. It was not on
the same floor, for it was a room at