Sentence:  It was with feelings of no small astonishment, when the carriage drew up before the door with the red lamp, and the very legible inscription of ‘Sawyer, late Nockemorf,' that Mr. Pickwick saw, on popping his head out of the coach window, the boy in the gray livery very busily employed in putting up the shutters—the which, being an unusual and an unbusinesslike <WSD>proceeding</WSD> at that hour of the morning, at once suggested to his mind two inferences: the one, that some good friend and patient of Mr. Bob Sawyer's was dead; the other, that Mr. Bob Sawyer himself was bankrupt. 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  An event or happening; something that happens