Book The First: Poverty Chapter 29 Mrs Flintwinch goes on Dreaming

There was a fair stroke of business doing, as Mistress Affery made out,
for her husband had abundant occupation in his little office, and saw
more people than had been used to come there for some years. This might
easily be, the house having been long deserted; but he did receive
letters, and comers, and keep books, and correspond. Moreover, he went
about to other counting-houses, and to wharves, and docks, and to the
Custom House,' and to Garraway's Coffee House, and the Jerusalem Coffee
House, and on 'Change; so that he was much in and out. He began, too,
sometimes of an evening, when Mrs Clennam expressed no particular wish
for his society, to resort to a tavern in the neighbourhood to look at
the shipping news and closing prices in the evening paper, and even to
exchange Small socialities with mercantile Sea Captains who frequented
that establishment.

At some period of every day, he and Mrs Clennam held
a council on matters of business; and it appeared to Affery, who was
always groping about, listening and watching, that the two clever ones
were making money. The state of mind into which Mr Flintwinch's dazed lady had fallen, had
now begun to be so expressed in all her looks and actions that she was
held in very low account by the two clever ones, as a person, never
of strong intellect, who was becoming foolish. Perhaps because her
appearance was not of a commercial cast, or perhaps because it occurred
to him that his having taken her to wife might expose his judgment to
doubt in the minds of customers, Mr Flintwinch laid his commands upon
her that she should hold her peace on the subject of her conjugal
relations, and should no longer call him Jeremiah out of the domestic
trio. Her frequent forgetfulness of this admonition intensified her
startled manner, since Mr Flintwinch's habit of avenging himself on her
remissness by making springs after her on the staircase, and shaking
her, occasioned her to be always nervously uncertain when she might be
thus waylaid next.