'Be so good,' said Jeremiah, closing the house door, and taking a pretty
sharp survey of the smiling visitor in his turn, 'as to step into my
counting-house.--It's all right, I tell you!' petulantly breaking off to
answer the voice up-stairs, still unsatisfied, though Affery was there,
speaking in persuasive tones. 'Don't I tell you it's all right? Preserve
the woman, has she no reason at all in her!'
'Timorous,' remarked the stranger.
'Timorous?' said Mr Flintwinch, turning his head to retort, as he went
before with the candle. 'More courageous than ninety men in a hundred,
sir, let me tell you.' 'Though an invalid?'
'Many years an invalid. Mrs Clennam. The only one of that name left
in the House now. My partner.' Saying something apologetically as he
crossed the hall, to the effect that at that time of night they were
not in the habit of receiving any one, and were always shut up,
Mr Flintwinch led the way into his own office, which presented a
sufficiently business-like appearance. Here he put the light on his
desk, and said to the stranger, with his wryest twist upon him, 'Your
commands.' 'MY name is Blandois.'
'Blandois. I don't know it,' said Jeremiah.
'I thought it possible,' resumed the other, 'that you might have been
advised from Paris--' 'We have had no advice from Paris respecting anybody of the name of
Blandois,' said Jeremiah. 'No?' 'No.'
Jeremiah stood in his favourite attitude.The smiling Mr Blandois,
opening his cloak to get his hand to a breast-pocket, paused to say,
with a laugh in his glittering eyes, which it occurred to Mr Flintwinch
were too near together: 'You are so like a friend of mine! Not so identically the same as I
supposed when I really did for the moment take you to be the same in the
dusk--for which I ought to apologise; permit me to do so; a readiness
to confess my errors is, I hope, a part of the frankness of my
character--still, however, uncommonly like.'
'Indeed?' said Jeremiah, perversely. 'But I have not received any letter
of advice from anywhere respecting anybody of the name of Blandois.' 'Just so,' said the stranger. 'JUST so,' said Jeremiah. Mr Blandois, not at all put out by this omission on the part of the
correspondents of the house of Clennam and Co., took his pocket-book
from his breast-pocket, selected a letter from that receptacle, and
handed it to Mr Flintwinch.
'No doubt you are well acquainted with the
writing. Perhaps the letter speaks for itself, and requires no advice.
You are a far more competent judge of such affairs than I am. It is my
misfortune to be, not so much a man of business, as what the world calls
(arbitrarily) a gentleman.'