As Mrs Clennam never removed her eyes from Blandois (on whom they had some effect, as a steady look has on a lower sort of dog), so Jeremiah never removed his from Arthur. It was as if they had tacitly agreed to take their different provinces. Thus, in the ensuing silence, Jeremiah stood scraping his chin and looking at Arthur as though he were trying to screw his thoughts out of him with an instrument.
After a little, the visitor, as if he felt the silence irksome, rose, and impatiently put himself with his back to the sacred fire which had burned through so many years. Thereupon Mrs Clennam said, moving one of her hands for the first time, and moving it very slightly with an action of dismissal:
‘Please to leave us to our business, Arthur.’
‘Mother, I do so with reluctance.’
‘Never mind with what,’ she returned, ‘or with what not. Please to leave us. Come back at any other time when you may consider it a duty to bury half an hour wearily here. Good night.’
She held up her muffled fingers that he might touch them with his, according to their usual custom, and he stood over her wheeled chair to touch her face with his lips. He thought, then, that her cheek was more strained than usual, and that it was colder. As he followed the direction of her eyes, in rising again, towards Mr Flintwinch’s good friend, Mr Blandois, Mr Blandois snapped his finger and thumb with one loud contemptuous snap.
‘I leave your—your business acquaintance in my mother’s room, Mr Flintwinch,’ said Clennam, ‘with a great deal of surprise and a great deal of unwillingness.’
The person referred to snapped his finger and thumb again.
‘Good night, mother.’
‘Good night.’