In Book the Second, Chapter One, Dickens
writes,
After
hailing the morn with this second salutation, he threw a boot at the woman as a third.
It was a very muddy boot, and may introduce the odd curcumstance connected with Mr.
Cruncher's domestic economy, that, whereas he often came home after banking hours with
clean boots, he often got up next morning to find the same boots covered with
clay.
As Jerry sleeps, his
wife causes him to awaken; so,addressing her as "Aggerawayter," he asks her what she is
doing. Mrs. Cruncher, who is fastidious and thoroughly scrubs their meager home, tells
her husband that she is merely praying. But, this statement angers her husband who
accuses her of praying against him. He tells his wife that if she "must go flopping
...down," she should "flop" in favor of her husband, not against him, for he is "an
honest tradesman."
The truth is that Mrs. Cruncher
realizes that Jerry is involved in some illegal business as he works in the night and
returns in the early hours of the morning with muddied boots. She suspects him of grave
robbing, but does not accuse him. The young son wonders, too, why Jerry's fingers are
always rusty when there is no rust in the Cruncher home. Here, then, is a
humorous parallel to the Resurrection motif which was seriously introduced with Dr.
Manette's having been "recalled to life": Jerry resurrects cadavers from their graves
for study by scientists of the time.
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