Little Dorrit.........................................................................................................................................................1

15. No just Cause or Impediment why these Two Persons should not be joined together

I have been occupied with this story, during many working hours of two years. I must have been very ill

employed, if I could not leave its merits and demerits as a whole, to express themselves on its being read as a

whole. But, as it is not unreasonable to suppose that I may have held its threads with a more continuous

attention than anyone else can have given them during its desultory publication, it is not unreasonable to ask

that the weaving may be looked at in its completed state, and with the pattern finished.

If I might offer any apology for so exaggerated a fiction as the Barnacles and the Circumlocution Office, I

would seek it in the common experience of an Englishman, without presuming to mention the unimportant

fact of my having done that violence to good manners, in the days of a Russian war, and of a Court of Inquiry

at Chelsea. If I might make so bold as to defend that extravagant conception, Mr Merdle, I would hint that it

originated after the Railroadshare epoch, in the times of a certain Irish bank, and of one or two other equally

laudable enterprises. If I were to plead anything in mitigation of the preposterous fancy that a bad design will

sometimes claim to be a good and an expressly religious design, it would be the curious coincidence that it

has been brought to its climax in these pages, in the days of the public examination of late Directors of a

Royal British Bank. But, I submit myself to suffer judgment to go by default on all these counts, if need be,

and to accept the assurance (on good authority) that nothing like them was ever known in this land. Some of

my readers may have an interest in being informed whether or no any portions of the Marshalsea Prison are

yet standing. I did not know, myself, until the sixth of this present month, when I went to look. I found the

outer front courtyard, often mentioned here, metamorphosed into a butter shop; and I then almost gave up

every brick of the jail for lost. Wandering, however, down a certain adjacent 'Angel Court, leading to

Bermondsey', I came to 'Marshalsea Place:' the houses in which I recognised, not only as the great block of

the former prison, but as preserving the rooms that arose in my mind'seye when I became Little Dorrit's

biographer. The smallest boy I ever conversed with, carrying the largest baby I ever saw, offered a

supernaturally intelligent explanation of the locality in its old uses, and was very nearly correct. How this

young Newton (for such I judge him to be) came by his information, I don't know; he was a quarter of a

century too young to know anything about it of himself. I pointed to the window of the room where Little

Dorrit was born, and where her father lived so long, and asked him what was the name of the lodger who

tenanted that apartment at present? He said, 'Tom Pythick.' I asked him who was Tom Pythick? and he said,

A little further on, I found the older and smaller wall, which used to enclose the pentup inner prison where

nobody was put, except for ceremony. But, whosoever goes into Marshalsea Place, turning out of Angel

Court, leading to Bermondsey, will find his feet on the very pavingstones of the extinct Marshalsea jail; will

see its narrow yard to the right and to the left, very little altered if at all, except that the walls were lowered

when the place got free; will look upon rooms in which the debtors lived; and will stand among the crowding

In the Preface to Bleak House I remarked that I had never had so many readers. In the Preface to its next

successor, Little Dorrit, I have still to repeat the same words. Deeply sensible of the affection and confidence

that have grown up between us, I add to this Preface, as I added to that, May we meet again!

A blazing sun upon a fierce August day was no greater rarity in southern France then, than at any other time,

before or since. Everything in Marseilles, and about Marseilles, had stared at the fervid sky, and been stared

at in return, until a staring habit had become universal there. Strangers were stared out of countenance by

staring white houses, staring white walls, staring white streets, staring tracts of arid road, staring hills from

which verdure was burnt away. The only things to be seen not fixedly staring and glaring were the vines

drooping under their load of grapes. These did occasionally wink a little, as the hot air barely moved their

There was no wind to make a ripple on the foul water within the harbour, or on the beautiful sea without. The

line of demarcation between the two colours, black and blue, showed the point which the pure sea would not

pass; but it lay as quiet as the abominable pool, with which it never mixed. Boats without awnings were too

hot to touch; ships blistered at their moorings; the stones of the quays had not cooled, night or day, for

months. Hindoos, Russians, Chinese, Spaniards, Portuguese, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Genoese, Neapolitans,

Venetians, Greeks, Turks, descendants from all the builders of Babel, come to trade at Marseilles, sought the

shade aliketaking refuge in any hidingplace from a sea too intensely blue to be looked at, and a sky of

The universal stare made the eyes ache. Towards the distant line of Italian coast, indeed, it was a little

relieved by light clouds of mist, slowly rising from the evaporation of the sea, but it softened nowhere else.

Far away the staring roads, deep in dust, stared from the hillside, stared from the hollow, stared from the

interminable plain. Far away the dusty vines overhanging wayside cottages, and the monotonous wayside

avenues of parched trees without shade, drooped beneath the stare of earth and sky. So did the horses with

drowsy bells, in long files of carts, creeping slowly towards the interior; so did their recumbent drivers, when

they were awake, which rarely happened; so did the exhausted labourers in the fields. Everything that lived or

grew, was oppressed by the glare; except the lizard, passing swiftly over rough stone walls, and the cicala,

chirping his dry hot chirp, like a rattle. The very dust was scorched brown, and something quivered in the

Blinds, shutters, curtains, awnings, were all closed and drawn to keep out the stare. Grant it but a chink or

keyhole, and it shot in like a whitehot arrow. The churches were the freest from it. To come out of the

twilight of pillars and archesdreamily dotted with winking lamps, dreamily peopled with ugly old shadows

piously dozing, spitting, and beggingwas to plunge into a fiery river, and swim for life to the nearest strip

of shade. So, with people lounging and lying wherever shade was, with but little hum of tongues or barking

of dogs, with occasional jangling of discordant church bells and rattling of vicious drums, Marseilles, a fact

to be strongly smelt and tasted, lay broiling in the sun one day. In Marseilles that day there was a villainous

prison. In one of its chambers, so repulsive a place that even the obtrusive stare blinked at it, and left it to

such refuse of reflected light as it could find for itself, were two men. Besides the two men, a notched and

disfigured bench, immovable from the wall, with a draughtboard rudely hacked upon it with a knife, a set of

draughts, made of old buttons and soup bones, a set of dominoes, two mats, and two or three wine bottles.

That was all the chamber held, exclusive of rats and other unseen vermin, in addition to the seen vermin, the

It received such light as it got through a grating of iron bars fashioned like a pretty large window, by means

of which it could be always inspected from the gloomy staircase on which the grating gave. There was a

broad strong ledge of stone to this grating where the bottom of it was let into the masonry, three or four feet

above the ground. Upon it, one of the two men lolled, half sitting and half lying, with his knees drawn up, and

his feet and shoulders planted against the opposite sides of the aperture. The bars were wide enough apart to

admit of his thrusting his arm through to the elbow; and so he held on negligently, for his greater ease.

A prison taint was on everything there. The imprisoned air, the imprisoned light, the imprisoned damps, the

imprisoned men, were all deteriorated by confinement. As the captive men were faded and haggard, so the

iron was rusty, the stone was slimy, the wood was rotten, the air was faint, the light was dim. Like a well, like

a vault, like a tomb, the prison had no knowledge of the brightness outside, and would have kept its polluted

The man who lay on the ledge of the grating was even chilled. He jerked his great cloak more heavily upon

him by an impatient movement of one shoulder, and growled, 'To the devil with this Brigand of a Sun that

He was waiting to be fed, looking sideways through the bars that he might see the further down the stairs,

with much of the expression of a wild beast in similar expectation. But his eyes, too close together, were not

so nobly set in his head as those of the king of beasts are in his, and they were sharp rather than

brightpointed weapons with little surface to betray them. They had no depth or change; they glittered, and

they opened and shut. So far, and waiving their use to himself, a clockmaker could have made a better pair.

He had a hook nose, handsome after its kind, but too high between the eyes by probably just as much as his

eyes were too near to one another. For the rest, he was large and tall in frame, had thin lips, where his thick

moustache showed them at all, and a quantity of dry hair, of no definable colour, in its shaggy state, but shot

with red. The hand with which he held the grating (seamed all over the back with ugly scratches newly

healed), was unusually small and plump; would have been unusually white but for the prison grime. The

'It's all one, master,' said the pig, in a submissive manner, and not without cheerfulness; 'I can wake when I

As he said it, he rose, shook himself, scratched himself, tied his brown coat loosely round his neck by the

sleeves (he had previously used it as a coverlet), and sat down upon the pavement yawning, with his back

'The midday bells will ringin forty minutes.' When he made the little pause, he had looked round the

'How can I say? I always know what the hour is, and where I am. I was brought in here at night, and out of a

boat, but I know where I am. See here! Marseilles harbour;' on his knees on the pavement, mapping it all out

with a swarthy forefinger; 'Toulon (where the galleys are), Spain over there, Algiers over there. Creeping

away to the left here, Nice. Round by the Cornice to Genoa. Genoa Mole and Harbour. Quarantine Ground.

City there; terrace gardens blushing with the bella donna. Here, Porto Fino. Stand out for Leghorn. Out again

for Civita Vecchia. so away to hey! there's no room for Naples;' he had got to the wall by this time; 'but it's

He remained on his knees, looking up at his fellowprisoner with a lively look for a prison. A sunburnt,

quick, lithe, little man, though rather thickset. Earrings in his brown ears, white teeth lighting up his

grotesque brown face, intensely black hair clustering about his brown throat, a ragged red shirt open at his

brown breast. Loose, seamanlike trousers, decent shoes, a long red cap, a red sash round his waist, and a

'Judge if I come back from Naples as I went! See here, my master! Civita Vecchia, Leghorn, Porto Fino,

Genoa, Cornice, Off Nice (which is in there), Marseilles, you and me. The apartment of the jailer and his

keys is where I put this thumb; and here at my wrist they keep the national razor in its casethe guillotine

Some lock below gurgled in its throat immediately afterwards, and then a door crashed. Slow steps began

ascending the stairs; the prattle of a sweet little voice mingled with the noise they made; and the

prisonkeeper appeared carrying his daughter, three or four years old, and a basket.

'How goes the world this forenoon, gentlemen? My little one, you see, going round with me to have a peep at

her father's birds. Fie, then! Look at the birds, my pretty, look at the birds.'

He looked sharply at the birds himself, as he held the child up at the grate, especially at the little bird, whose

activity he seemed to mistrust. 'I have brought your bread, Signor John Baptist,' said he (they all spoke in

French, but the little man was an Italian); 'and if I might recommend you not to game'

'You don't recommend the master!' said John Baptist, showing his teeth as he smiled.

'Oh! but the master wins,' returned the jailer, with a passing look of no particular liking at the other man, 'and

you lose. It's quite another thing. You get husky bread and sour drink by it; and he gets sausage of Lyons,

veal in savoury jelly, white bread, strachino cheese, and good wine by it. Look at the birds, my pretty!'

The fair little face, touched with divine compassion, as it peeped shrinkingly through the grate, was like an

angel's in the prison. John Baptist rose and moved towards it, as if it had a good attraction for him. The other

'Stay!' said the jailer, putting his little daughter on the outer ledge of the grate, 'she shall feed the birds. This

big loaf is for Signor John Baptist. We must break it to get it through into the cage. So, there's a tame bird to

kiss the little hand! This sausage in a vine leaf is for Monsieur Rigaud. Againthis veal in savoury jelly is

for Monsieur Rigaud. Againthese three white little loaves are for Monsieur Rigaud. Again, this

The child put all these things between the bars into the soft, Smooth, wellshaped hand, with evident

dreadmore than once drawing back her own and looking at the man with her fair brow roughened into an

expression half of fright and half of anger. Whereas she had put the lump of coarse bread into the swart,

scaled, knotted hands of John Baptist (who had scarcely as much nail on his eight fingers and two thumbs as

would have made out one for Monsieur Rigaud), with ready confidence; and, when he kissed her hand, had

herself passed it caressingly over his face. Monsieur Rigaud, indifferent to this distinction, propitiated the

father by laughing and nodding at the daughter as often as she gave him anything; and, so soon as he had all

his viands about him in convenient nooks of the ledge on which he rested, began to eat with an appetite.

When Monsieur Rigaud laughed, a change took place in his face, that was more remarkable than

prepossessing. His moustache went up under his nose, and his nose came down over his moustache, in a very

'There!' said the jailer, turning his basket upside down to beat the crumbs out, 'I have expended all the money

I received; here is the note of it, and that's a thing accomplished. Monsieur Rigaud, as I expected yesterday,

the President will look for the pleasure of your society at an hour after midday, today.'

'There is no news for me?' asked John Baptist, who had begun, contentedly, to munch his bread.

'What do I know!' cried the jailer, turning upon him with southern quickness, and gesticulating with both his

hands and all his fingers, as if he were threatening to tear him to pieces. 'My friend, how is it possible for me

to tell how long you are to lie here? What do I know, John Baptist Cavalletto? Death of my life! There are

prisoners here sometimes, who are not in such a devil of a hurry to be tried.' He seemed to glance obliquely at

Monsieur Rigaud in this remark; but Monsieur Rigaud had already resumed his meal, though not with quite

'Adieu, my birds!' said the keeper of the prison, taking his pretty child in his arms, and dictating the words

Her innocent face looked back so brightly over his shoulder, as he walked away with her, singing her the

'Who passes by this road so late? Compagnon de la Majolaine! Who passes by this road so late? Always gay!'

that John Baptist felt it a point of honour to reply at the grate, and in good time and tune, though a little

'Of all the king's knights 'tis the flower, Compagnon de la Majolaine! Of all the king's knights 'tis the flower,

which accompanied them so far down the few steep stairs, that the prisonkeeper had to stop at last for his

little daughter to hear the song out, and repeat the Refrain while they were yet in sight. Then the child's head

disappeared, and the prisonkeeper's head disappeared, but the little voice prolonged the strain until the door

Monsieur Rigaud, finding the listening John Baptist in his way before the echoes had ceased (even the echoes

were the weaker for imprisonment, and seemed to lag), reminded him with a push of his foot that he had

better resume his own darker place. The little man sat down again upon the pavement with the negligent ease

of one who was thoroughly accustomed to pavements; and placing three hunks of coarse bread before

himself, and falling to upon a fourth, began contentedly to work his way through them as if to clear them off

Perhaps he glanced at the Lyons sausage, and perhaps he glanced at the veal in savoury jelly, but they were

not there long, to make his mouth water; Monsieur Rigaud soon dispatched them, in spite of the president and

tribunal, and proceeded to suck his fingers as clean as he could, and to wipe them on his vine leaves. Then, as

he paused in his drink to contemplate his fellowprisoner, his moustache went up, and his nose came down.

'A little dry, but I have my old sauce here,' returned John Baptist, holding up his knife. 'How sauce?'

'I can cut my bread solike a melon. Or solike an omelette. Or solike a fried fish. Or solike Lyons

sausage,' said John Baptist, demonstrating the various cuts on the bread he held, and soberly chewing what he

It was no great gift, for there was mighty little wine left; but Signor Cavalletto, jumping to his feet, received

the bottle gratefully, turned it upside down at his mouth, and smacked his lips.

The little man obeyed his orders, and stood ready to give him a lighted match; for he was now rolling his

tobacco into cigarettes by the aid of little squares of paper which had been brought in with it.

'A thousand thanks, my master!' John Baptist said in his own language, and with the quick conciliatory

Monsieur Rigaud arose, lighted a cigarette, put the rest of his stock into a breastpocket, and stretched

himself out at full length upon the bench. Cavalletto sat down on the pavement, holding one of his ankles in

each hand, and smoking peacefully. There seemed to be some uncomfortable attraction of Monsieur Rigaud's

eyes to the immediate neighbourhood of that part of the pavement where the thumb had been in the plan.

They were so drawn in that direction, that the Italian more than once followed them to and back from the

'What an infernal hole this is!' said Monsieur Rigaud, breaking a long pause. 'Look at the light of day. Day?

the light of yesterday week, the light of six months ago, the light of six years ago. So slack and dead!'

It came languishing down a square funnel that blinded a window in the staircase wall, through which the sky

'Cavalletto,' said Monsieur Rigaud, suddenly withdrawing his gaze from this funnel to which they had both

'How long have we been here?' 'I, eleven weeks, tomorrow night at midnight. You, nine weeks and three

'Have I ever done anything here? Ever touched the broom, or spread the mats, or rolled them up, or found the

John Baptist answered with that peculiar backhanded shake of the right forefinger which is the most

'No! You knew from the first moment when you saw me here, that I was a gentleman?'

'ALTRO!' returned John Baptist, closing his eyes and giving his head a most vehement toss. The word being,

according to its Genoese emphasis, a confirmation, a contradiction, an assertion, a denial, a taunt, a

compliment, a joke, and fifty other things, became in the present instance, with a significance beyond all

'Haha! You are right! A gentleman I am! And a gentleman I'll live, and a gentleman I'll die! It's my intent to

'Here I am! See me! Shaken out of destiny's dicebox into the company of a mere smuggler;shut up with a

poor little contraband trader, whose papers are wrong, and whom the police lay hold of besides, for placing

his boat (as a means of getting beyond the frontier) at the disposition of other little people whose papers are

wrong; and he instinctively recognises my position, even by this light and in this place. It's well done! By

'What's the hour now?' he asked, with a dry hot pallor upon him, rather difficult of association with

Shall I tell you on what accusation? It must be now, or never, for I shall not return here. Either I shall go free,

or I shall go to be made ready for shaving. You know where they keep the razor.'

Signor Cavalletto took his cigarette from between his parted lips, and showed more momentary discomfiture

'I am a'Monsieur Rigaud stood up to say it'I am a cosmopolitan gentleman. I own no particular country.

My father was Swiss Canton de Vaud. My mother was French by blood, English by birth. I myself was

His theatrical air, as he stood with one arm on his hip within the folds of his cloak, together with his manner

of disregarding his companion and addressing the opposite wall instead, seemed to intimate that he was

rehearsing for the President, whose examination he was shortly to undergo, rather than troubling himself

'Call me fiveandthirty years of age. I have seen the world. I have lived here, and lived there, and lived like

a gentleman everywhere. I have been treated and respected as a gentleman universally. If you try to prejudice

me by making out that I have lived by my witshow do your lawyers liveyour politiciansyour

He kept his small smooth hand in constant requisition, as if it were a witness to his gentility that had often

'Two years ago I came to Marseilles. I admit that I was poor; I had been ill. When your lawyers, your

politicians, your intriguers, your men of the Exchange fall ill, and have not scraped money together, they

become poor. I put up at the Cross of Gold, kept then by Monsieur Henri Barronneausixtyfive at least,

and in a failing state of health. I had lived in the house some four months when Monsieur Henri Barronneau

had the misfortune to die; at any rate, not a rare misfortune, that. It happens without any aid of mine, pretty

John Baptist having smoked his cigarette down to his fingers' ends, Monsieur Rigaud had the magnanimity to

throw him another. He lighted the second at the ashes of the first, and smoked on, looking sideways at his

'Monsieur Barronneau left a widow. She was twoandtwenty. She had gained a reputation for beauty, and

(which is often another thing) was beautiful. I continued to live at the Cross of Gold. I married Madame

Barronneau. It is not for me to say whether there was any great disparity in such a match. Here I stand, with

the contamination of a jail upon me; but it is possible that you may think me better suited to her than her

He had a certain air of being a handsome manwhich he was not; and a certain air of being a wellbred

manwhich he was not. It was mere swagger and challenge; but in this particular, as in many others,

'Be it as it may, Madame Barronneau approved of me. That is not to prejudice me, I hope?'

His eye happening to light upon John Baptist with this inquiry, that little man briskly shook his head in the

negative, and repeated in an argumentative tone under his breath, altro, altro, altro, altroan infinite number

' Now came the difficulties of our position. I am proud. I say nothing in defence of pride, but I am proud. It is

also my character to govern. I can't submit; I must govern. Unfortunately, the property of Madame Rigaud

was settled upon herself. Such was the insane act of her late husband. More unfortunately still, she had

relations. When a wife's relations interpose against a husband who is a gentleman, who is proud, and who

must govern, the consequences are inimical to peace. There was yet another source of difference between us.

Madame Rigaud was unfortunately a little vulgar. I sought to improve her manners and ameliorate her

general tone; she (supported in this likewise by her relations) resented my endeavours. Quarrels began to

arise between us; and, propagated and exaggerated by the slanders of the relations of Madame Rigaud, to

become notorious to the neighbours. It has been said that I treated Madame Rigaud with cruelty. I may have

been seen to slap her facenothing more. I have a light hand; and if I have been seen apparently to correct

If the playfulness of Monsieur Rigaud were at all expressed by his smile at this point, the relations of

Madame Rigaud might have said that they would have much preferred his correcting that unfortunate woman

'I am sensitive and brave. I do not advance it as a merit to be sensitive and brave, but it is my character. If the

male relations of Madame Rigaud had put themselves forward openly, I should have known how to deal with

them. They knew that, and their machinations were conducted in secret; consequently, Madame Rigaud and I

were brought into frequent and unfortunate collision. Even when I wanted any little sum of money for my

personal expenses, I could not obtain it without collisionand I, too, a man whose character it is to govern!

One night, Madame Rigaud and myself were walking amicablyI may say like loverson a height

overhanging the sea. An evil star occasioned Madame Rigaud to advert to her relations; I reasoned with her

on that subject, and remonstrated on the want of duty and devotion manifested in her allowing herself to be

influenced by their jealous animosity towards her husband. Madame Rigaud retorted; I retorted; Madame

Rigaud grew warm; I grew warm, and provoked her. I admit it. Frankness is a part of my character. At length,

Madame Rigaud, in an access of fury that I must ever deplore, threw herself upon me with screams of passion

(no doubt those that were overheard at some distance), tore my clothes, tore my hair, lacerated my hands,

trampled and trod the dust, and finally leaped over, dashing herself to death upon the rocks below. Such is the

train of incidents which malice has perverted into my endeavouring to force from Madame Rigaud a

relinquishment of her rights; and, on her persistence in a refusal to make the concession I required, struggling

He stepped aside to the ledge where the vine leaves yet lay strewn about, collected two or three, and stood

'It's ugly,' returned the little man, who had risen, and was brightening his knife upon his shoe, as he leaned an

'Altro!' returned John Baptist. The word was an apology now, and stood for 'Oh, by no means!'

'Well,' cried the other, uneasily flinging the end of his cloak over his shoulder with an oath, 'let them do their

'Truly I think they will,' murmured John Baptist to himself, as he bent his head to put his knife in his sash.

Nothing more was said on either side, though they both began walking to and fro, and necessarily crossed at

every turn. Monsieur Rigaud sometimes stopped, as if he were going to put his case in a new light, or make

some irate remonstrance; but Signor Cavalletto continuing to go slowly to and fro at a grotesque kind of

Byandby the noise of the key in the lock arrested them both. The sound of voices succeeded, and the tread

of feet. The door clashed, the voices and the feet came on, and the prisonkeeper slowly ascended the stairs,

'Now, Monsieur Rigaud,' said he, pausing for a moment at the grate, with his keys in his hands, 'have the

'I am to depart in state, I see?' 'Why, unless you did,' returned the jailer, 'you might depart in so many pieces

that it would be difficult to get you together again. There's a crowd, Monsieur Rigaud, and it doesn't love

He passed on out of sight, and unlocked and unbarred a low door in the corner of the chamber. 'Now,' said he,

There is no sort of whiteness in all the hues under the sun at all like the whiteness of Monsieur Rigaud's face

as it was then. Neither is there any expression of the human countenance at all like that expression in every

little line of which the frightened heart is seen to beat. Both are conventionally compared with death; but the

difference is the whole deep gulf between the struggle done, and the fight at its most desperate extremity.

He lighted another of his paper cigars at his companion's; put it tightly between his teeth; covered his head

with a soft slouched hat; threw the end of his cloak over his shoulder again; and walked out into the side

gallery on which the door opened, without taking any further notice of Signor Cavalletto. As to that little man

himself, his whole attention had become absorbed in getting near the door and looking out at it. Precisely as a

beast might approach the opened gate of his den and eye the freedom beyond, he passed those few moments

There was an officer in command of the soldiers; a stout, serviceable, profoundly calm man, with his drawn

sword in his hand, smoking a cigar. He very briefly directed the placing of Monsieur Rigaud in the midst of

the party, put himself with consummate indifference at their head, gave the word 'march!' and so they all went

jingling down the staircase. The door clashedthe key turnedand a ray of unusual light, and a breath of

unusual air, seemed to have passed through the jail, vanishing in a tiny wreath of smoke from the cigar.

Still, in his captivity, like a lower animallike some impatient ape, or roused bear of the smaller

speciesthe prisoner, now left solitary, had jumped upon the ledge, to lose no glimpse of this departure. As

he yet stood clasping the grate with both hands, an uproar broke upon his hearing; yells, shrieks, oaths,

threats, execrations, all comprehended in it, though (as in a storm) nothing but a raging swell of sound

Excited into a still greater resemblance to a caged wild animal by his anxiety to know more, the prisoner

leaped nimbly down, ran round the chamber, leaped nimbly up again, clasped the grate and tried to shake it,

leaped down and ran, leaped up and listened, and never rested until the noise, becoming more and more

distant, had died away. How many better prisoners have worn their noble hearts out so; no man thinking of it;

not even the beloved of their souls realising it; great kings and governors, who had made them captive,

careering in the sunlight jauntily, and men cheering them on. Even the said great personages dying in bed,

making exemplary ends and sounding speeches; and polite history, more servile than their instruments,

At last, John Baptist, now able to choose his own spot within the compass of those walls for the exercise of

his faculty of going to sleep when he would, lay down upon the bench, with his face turned over on his

crossed arms, and slumbered. In his submission, in his lightness, in his good humour, in his shortlived

passion, in his easy contentment with hard bread and hard stones, in his ready sleep, in his fits and starts,

The wide stare stared itself out for one while; the Sun went down in a red, green, golden glory; the stars came

out in the heavens, and the fireflies mimicked them in the lower air, as men may feebly imitate the goodness

of a better order of beings; the long dusty roads and the interminable plains were in reposeand so deep a

hush was on the sea, that it scarcely whispered of the time when it shall give up its dead.

'Then you may be sure there is none. When these people howl, they howl to be heard.'

'I mean the French people. They're always at it. As to Marseilles, we know what Marseilles is. It sent the most

insurrectionary tune into the world that was ever composed. It couldn't exist without allonging and

The speaker, with a whimsical good humour upon him all the time, looked over the parapetwall with the

greatest disparagement of Marseilles; and taking up a determined position by putting his hands in his pockets

'Allong and marshong, indeed. It would be more creditable to you, I think, to let other people allong and

marshong about their lawful business, instead of shutting 'em up in quarantine!'

'Out today!' repeated the first. 'It's almost an aggravation of the enormity, that we shall be out today. Out!

'For no very strong reason, I must say. But as we come from the East, and as the East is the country of the

'The plague!' repeated the other. 'That's my grievance. I have had the plague continually, ever since I have

been here. I am like a sane man shut up in a madhouse; I can't stand the suspicion of the thing. I came here as

well as ever I was in my life; but to suspect me of the plague is to give me the plague. And I have had

'No. If you knew the real state of the case, that's the last observation you would think of making. I have been

waking up night after night, and saying, NOW I have got it, NOW it has developed itself, NOW I am in for it,

NOW these fellows are making out their case for their precautions. Why, I'd as soon have a spit put through

me, and be stuck upon a card in a collection of beetles, as lead the life I have been leading here.'

'Well, Mr Meagles, say no more about it now it's over,' urged a cheerful feminine voice.

'Over!' repeated Mr Meagles, who appeared (though without any ill nature) to be in that peculiar state of

mind in which the last word spoken by anybody else is a new injury. 'Over! and why should I say no more

It was Mrs Meagles who had spoken to Mr Meagles; and Mrs Meagles was, like Mr Meagles, comely and

healthy, with a pleasant English face which had been looking at homely things for fiveandfifty years or

'There! Never mind, Father, never mind!' said Mrs Meagles. 'For goodness sake content yourself with Pet.'

'With Pet?' repeated Mr Meagles in his injured vein. Pet, however, being close behind him, touched him on

the shoulder, and Mr Meagles immediately forgave Marseilles from the bottom of his heart.

Pet was about twenty. A fair girl with rich brown hair hanging free in natural ringlets. A lovely girl, with a

frank face, and wonderful eyes; so large, so soft, so bright, set to such perfection in her kind good head. She

was round and fresh and dimpled and spoilt, and there was in Pet an air of timidity and dependence which

was the best weakness in the world, and gave her the only crowning charm a girl so pretty and pleasant could

'Now, I ask you,' said Mr Meagles in the blandest confidence, falling back a step himself, and handing his

daughter a step forward to illustrate his question: 'I ask you simply, as between man and man, you know, DID

'It has had the result of making even quarantine enjoyable.' 'Come!' said Mr Meagles, 'that's something to be

sure. I am obliged to you for that remark. Now, Pet, my darling, you had better go along with Mother and get

ready for the boat. The officer of health, and a variety of humbugs in cocked hats, are coming off to let us out

of this at last: and all we jailbirds are to breakfast together in something approaching to a Christian style

again, before we take wing for our different destinations. Tattycoram, stick you close to your young mistress.'

He spoke to a handsome girl with lustrous dark hair and eyes, and very neatly dressed, who replied with a

half curtsey as she passed off in the train of Mrs Meagles and Pet. They crossed the bare scorched terrace all

three together, and disappeared through a staring white archway. Mr Meagles's companion, a grave dark man

of forty, still stood looking towards this archway after they were gone; until Mr Meagles tapped him on the

They took one silent turn backward and forward in the shade of the wall, getting, at the height on which the

quarantine barracks are placed, what cool refreshment of sea breeze there was at seven in the morning. Mr

'Thank youthat Tattycoram was a name; and I have several times wondered at the oddity of it.'

'Why, the fact is,' said Mr Meagles, 'Mrs Meagles and myself are, you see, practical people.'

'That you have frequently mentioned in the course of the agreeable and interesting conversations we have had

together, walking up and down on these stones,' said the other, with a half smile breaking through the gravity

'Practical people. So one day, five or six years ago now, when we took Pet to church at the Foundlingyou

have heard of the Foundling Hospital in London? Similar to the Institution for the Found Children in Paris?'

'Well! One day when we took Pet to church there to hear the musicbecause, as practical people, it is the

business of our lives to show her everything that we think can please herMother (my usual name for Mrs

Meagles) began to cry so, that it was necessary to take her out. "What's the matter, Mother?" said I, when we

had brought her a little round: "you are frightening Pet, my dear." "Yes, I know that, Father," says Mother,

"but I think it's through my loving her so much, that it ever came into my head." "That ever what came into

your head, Mother?" "O dear, dear!" cried Mother, breaking out again, "when I saw all those children ranged

tier above tier, and appealing from the father none of them has ever known on earth, to the great Father of us

all in Heaven, I thought, does any wretched mother ever come here, and look among those young faces,

wondering which is the poor child she brought into this forlorn world, never through all its life to know her

love, her kiss, her face, her voice, even her name!" Now that was practical in Mother, and I told her so. I said,

'So I said next day: Now, Mother, I have a proposition to make that I think you'll approve of. Let us take one

of those same little children to be a little maid to Pet. We are practical people. So if we should find her

temper a little defective, or any of her ways a little wide of ours, we shall know what we have to take into

account. We shall know what an immense deduction must be made from all the influences and experiences

that have formed usno parents, no childbrother or sister, no individuality of home, no Glass Slipper, or

'By George!' said Mr Meagles, 'I was forgetting the name itself. Why, she was called in the Institution,

Harriet Beadlean arbitrary name, of course. Now, Harriet we changed into Hattey, and then into Tatty,

because, as practical people, we thought even a playful name might be a new thing to her, and might have a

softening and affectionate kind of effect, don't you see? As to Beadle, that I needn't say was wholly out of the

question. If there is anything that is not to be tolerated on any terms, anything that is a type of Jackinoffice

insolence and absurdity, anything that represents in coats, waistcoats, and big sticks our English holding on

by nonsense after every one has found it out, it is a beadle. You haven't seen a beadle lately?'

'Then,' said Mr Meagles, laying his forefinger on his companion's breast with great animation, 'don't you see a

beadle, now, if you can help it. Whenever I see a beadle in full fig, coming down a street on a Sunday at the

head of a charity school, I am obliged to turn and run away, or I should hit him. The name of Beadle being

out of the question, and the originator of the Institution for these poor foundlings having been a blessed

creature of the name of Coram, we gave that name to Pet's little maid. At one time she was Tatty, and at one

time she was Coram, until we got into a way of mixing the two names together, and now she is always

'Your daughter,' said the other, when they had taken another silent turn to and fro, and, after standing for a

moment at the wall glancing down at the sea, had resumed their walk, 'is your only child, I know, Mr

Meagles. May I ask youin no impertinent curiosity, but because I have had so much pleasure in your

society, may never in this labyrinth of a world exchange a quiet word with you again, and wish to preserve an

accurate remembrance of you and yoursmay I ask you, if I have not gathered from your good wife that you

'Never mind,' said Mr Meagles. 'If I am grave about it, I am not at all sorrowful. It quiets me for a moment,

but does not make me unhappy. Pet had a twin sister who died when we could just see her eyesexactly like

'Yes, and being practical people, a result has gradually sprung up in the minds of Mrs Meagles and myself

which perhaps you mayor perhaps you may notunderstand. Pet and her baby sister were so exactly

alike, and so completely one, that in our thoughts we have never been able to separate them since. It would be

of no use to tell us that our dead child was a mere infant. We have changed that child according to the

changes in the child spared to us and always with us. As Pet has grown, that child has grown; as Pet has

become more sensible and womanly, her sister has become more sensible and womanly by just the same

degrees. It would be as hard to convince me that if I was to pass into the other world to morrow, I should

not, through the mercy of God, be received there by a daughter, just like Pet, as to persuade me that Pet

herself is not a reality at my side.' 'I understand you,' said the other, gently.

'As to her,' pursued her father, 'the sudden loss of her little picture and playfellow, and her early association

with that mystery in which we all have our equal share, but which is not often so forcibly presented to a child,

has necessarily had some influence on her character. Then, her mother and I were not young when we

married, and Pet has always had a sort of grownup life with us, though we have tried to adapt ourselves to

her. We have been advised more than once when she has been a little ailing, to change climate and air for her

as often as we couldespecially at about this time of her lifeand to keep her amused. So, as I have no

need to stick at a bankdesk now (though I have been poor enough in my time I assure you, or I should have

married Mrs Meagles long before), we go trotting about the world. This is how you found us staring at the

Nile, and the Pyramids, and the Sphinxes, and the Desert, and all the rest of it; and this is how Tattycoram

'Don't mention it,' returned Mr Meagles, 'I am sure you are quite welcome. And now, Mr Clennam, perhaps I

'Indeed, no. I am such a waif and stray everywhere, that I am liable to be drifted where any current may set.'

'It's extraordinary to meif you'll excuse my freedom in saying sothat you don't go straight to London,'

'I have no will. That is to say,'he coloured a little,'next to none that I can put in action now. Trained by

main force; broken, not bent; heavily ironed with an object on which I was never consulted and which was

never mine; shipped away to the other end of the world before I was of age, and exiled there until my father's

death there, a year ago; always grinding in a mill I always hated; what is to be expected from me in middle

life? Will, purpose, hope? All those lights were extinguished before I could sound the words.'

'Ah! Easily said. I am the son, Mr Meagles, of a hard father and mother. I am the only child of parents who

weighed, measured, and priced everything; for whom what could not be weighed, measured, and priced, had

no existence. Strict people as the phrase is, professors of a stern religion, their very religion was a gloomy

sacrifice of tastes and sympathies that were never their own, offered up as a part of a bargain for the security

of their possessions. Austere faces, inexorable discipline, penance in this world and terror in the

nextnothing graceful or gentle anywhere, and the void in my cowed heart everywherethis was my

childhood, if I may so misuse the word as to apply it to such a beginning of life.'

'Really though?' said Mr Meagles, made very uncomfortable by the picture offered to his imagination. 'That

was a tough commencement. But come! You must now study, and profit by, all that lies beyond it, like a

'If the people who are usually called practical, were practical in your direction'

'My unknown course is easier and more helpful than I had expected to find it, then,' said Clennam, shaking

The boat was filled with the cocked hats to which Mr Meagles entertained a national objection; and the

wearers of those cocked hats landed and came up the steps, and all the impounded travellers congregated

together. There was then a mighty production of papers on the part of the cocked hats, and a calling over of

names, and great work of signing, sealing, stamping, inking, and sanding, with exceedingly blurred, gritty,

and undecipherable results. Finally, everything was done according to rule, and the travellers were at liberty

They made little account of stare and glare, in the new pleasure of recovering their freedom, but flitted across

the harbour in gay boats, and reassembled at a great hotel, whence the sun was excluded by closed lattices,

and where bare paved floors, lofty ceilings, and resounding corridors tempered the intense heat. There, a

great table in a great room was soon profusely covered with a superb repast; and the quarantine quarters

became bare indeed, remembered among dainty dishes, southern fruits, cooled wines, flowers from Genoa,

snow from the mountain tops, and all the colours of the rainbow flashing in the mirrors.

'But I bear those monotonous walls no illwill now,' said Mr Meagles. 'One always begins to forgive a place

as soon as it's left behind; I dare say a prisoner begins to relent towards his prison, after he is let out.'

They were about thirty in company, and all talking; but necessarily in groups. Father and Mother Meagles sat

with their daughter between them, the last three on one side of the table: on the opposite side sat Mr

Clennam; a tall French gentleman with raven hair and beard, of a swart and terrible, not to say genteelly

diabolical aspect, but who had shown himself the mildest of men; and a handsome young Englishwoman,

travelling quite alone, who had a proud observant face, and had either withdrawn herself from the rest or been

avoided by the restnobody, herself excepted perhaps, could have quite decided which. The rest of the party

were of the usual materials: travellers on business, and travellers for pleasure; officers from India on leave;

merchants in the Greek and Turkey trades; a clerical English husband in a meek strait waistcoat, on a

wedding trip with his young wife; a majestic English mama and papa, of the patrician order, with a family of

three growingup daughters, who were keeping a journal for the confusion of their fellowcreatures; and a

deaf old English mother, tough in travel, with a very decidedly grownup daughter indeed, which daughter

went sketching about the universe in the expectation of ultimately toning herself off into the married state.

The reserved Englishwoman took up Mr Meagles in his last remark. 'Do you mean that a prisoner forgives his

'That was my speculation, Miss Wade. I don't pretend to know positively how a prisoner might feel. I never

'Mademoiselle doubts,' said the French gentleman in his own language, 'it's being so easy to forgive?'

Pet had to translate this passage to Mr Meagles, who never by any accident acquired any knowledge whatever

of the language of any country into which he travelled. 'Oh!' said he. 'Dear me! But that's a pity, isn't it?'

'Not exactly that. Put it another way. That you can't believe it easy to forgive.'

'My experience,' she quietly returned, 'has been correcting my belief in many respects, for some years. It is

'Well, well! But it's not natural to bear malice, I hope?' said Mr Meagles, cheerily.

'If I had been shut up in any place to pine and suffer, I should always hate that place and wish to burn it

down, or raze it to the ground. I know no more.' 'Strong, sir?' said Mr Meagles to the Frenchman; it being

another of his habits to address individuals of all nations in idiomatic English, with a perfect conviction that

they were bound to understand it somehow. 'Rather forcible in our fair friend, you'll agree with me, I think?'

The French gentleman courteously replied, 'Plaitil?' To which Mr Meagles returned with much satisfaction,

The breakfast beginning byandby to languish, Mr Meagles made the company a speech. It was short

enough and sensible enough, considering that it was a speech at all, and hearty. It merely went to the effect

that as they had all been thrown together by chance, and had all preserved a good understanding together, and

were now about to disperse, and were not likely ever to find themselves all together again, what could they do

better than bid farewell to one another, and give one another goodspeed in a simultaneous glass of cool

champagne all round the table? It was done, and with a general shaking of hands the assembly broke up for

The solitary young lady all this time had said no more. She rose with the rest, and silently withdrew to a

remote corner of the great room, where she sat herself on a couch in a window, seeming to watch the

reflection of the water as it made a silver quivering on the bars of the lattice. She sat, turned away from the

whole length of the apartment, as if she were lonely of her own haughty choice. And yet it would have been

as difficult as ever to say, positively, whether she avoided the rest, or was avoided.

The shadow in which she sat, falling like a gloomy veil across her forehead, accorded very well with the

character of her beauty. One could hardly see the face, so still and scornful, set off by the arched dark

eyebrows, and the folds of dark hair, without wondering what its expression would be if a change came over

it. That it could soften or relent, appeared next to impossible. That it could deepen into anger or any extreme

of defiance, and that it must change in that direction when it changed at all, would have been its peculiar

impression upon most observers. It was dressed and trimmed into no ceremony of expression. Although not

an open face, there was no pretence in it. 'I am selfcontained and self reliant; your opinion is nothing to

me; I have no interest in you, care nothing for you, and see and hear you with indifference'this it said

plainly. It said so in the proud eyes, in the lifted nostril, in the handsome but compressed and even cruel

mouth. Cover either two of those channels of expression, and the third would have said so still. Mask them

Pet had moved up to her (she had been the subject of remark among her family and Mr Clennam, who were

'Are you'she turned her eyes, and Pet faltered'expecting any one to meet you here, Miss Wade?'

'Father is sending to the Poste Restante. Shall he have the pleasure of directing the messenger to ask if there

'We are afraid,' said Pet, sitting down beside her, shyly and half tenderly, 'that you will feel quite deserted

'Not,' said Pet, apologetically and embarrassed by her eyes, 'not, of course, that we are any company to you,

'No. Of course. Butin short,' said Pet, timidly touching her hand as it lay impassive on the sofa between

them, 'will you not allow Father to tender you any slight assistance or service? He will be very glad.'

'Very glad,' said Mr Meagles, coming forward with his wife and Clennam. 'Anything short of speaking the

'I am obliged to you,' she returned, 'but my arrangements are made, and I prefer to go my own way in my own

'Do you?' said Mr Meagles to himself, as he surveyed her with a puzzled look. 'Well! There's character in

'I am not much used to the society of young ladies, and I am afraid I may not show my appreciation of it as

She would not have put out her hand, it seemed, but that Mr Meagles put out his so straight before her that

she could not pass it. She put hers in it, and it lay there just as it had lain upon the couch.

'Goodbye!' said Mr Meagles. 'This is the last goodbye upon the list, for Mother and I have just said it to Mr

Clennam here, and he only waits to say it to Pet. Goodbye! We may never meet again.'

'In our course through life we shall meet the people who are coming to meet us, from many strange places

and by many strange roads,' was the composed reply; 'and what it is set to us to do to them, and what it is set

to them to do to us, will all be done.' There was something in the manner of these words that jarred upon Pet's

ear. It implied that what was to be done was necessarily evil, and it caused her to say in a whisper, 'O Father!'

and to shrink childishly, in her spoilt way, a little closer to him. This was not lost on the speaker.

'Your pretty daughter,' she said, 'starts to think of such things. Yet,' looking full upon her, 'you may be sure

that there are men and women already on their road, who have their business to do with YOU, and who will

do it. Of a certainty they will do it. They may be coming hundreds, thousands, of miles over the sea there;

they may be close at hand now; they may be coming, for anything you know or anything you can do to

With the coldest of farewells, and with a certain worn expression on her beauty that gave it, though scarcely

Now, there were many stairs and passages that she had to traverse in passing from that part of the spacious

house to the chamber she had secured for her own occupation. When she had almost completed the journey,

and was passing along the gallery in which her room was, she heard an angry sound of muttering and

sobbing. A door stood open, and within she saw the attendant upon the girl she had just left; the maid with

She stood still, to look at this maid. A sullen, passionate girl! Her rich black hair was all about her face, her

face was flushed and hot, and as she sobbed and raged, she plucked at her lips with an unsparing hand.

'Selfish brutes!' said the girl, sobbing and heaving between whiles. 'Not caring what becomes of me! Leaving

me here hungry and thirsty and tired, to starve, for anything they care! Beasts! Devils! Wretches!'

She looked up suddenly, with reddened eyes, and with her hands suspended, in the act of pinching her neck,

freshly disfigured with great scarlet blots. 'It's nothing to you what's the matter. It don't signify to any one.'

'You are not sorry,' said the girl. 'You are glad. You know you are glad. I never was like this but twice over in

'Yes. You seem to come like my own anger, my own malice, my own whatever it isI don't know what it

is. But I am illused, I am illused, I am illused!' Here the sobs and the tears, and the tearing hand, which

had all been suspended together since the first surprise, went on together anew.

The visitor stood looking at her with a strange attentive smile. It was wonderful to see the fury of the contest

in the girl, and the bodily struggle she made as if she were rent by the Demons of old.

'I am younger than she is by two or three years, and yet it's me that looks after her, as if I was old, and it's she

that's always petted and called Baby! I detest the name. I hate her! They make a fool of her, they spoil her.

She thinks of nothing but herself, she thinks no more of me than if I was a stock and a stone!' So the girl went

'If they take much care of themselves, and little or none of you, you must not mind it.'

'I don't care for that. I'll run away. I'll do some mischief. I won't bear it; I can't bear it; I shall die if I try to

The observer stood with her hand upon her own bosom, looking at the girl, as one afflicted with a diseased

The girl raged and battled with all the force of her youth and fulness of life, until by little and little her

passionate exclamations trailed off into broken murmurs as if she were in pain. By corresponding degrees she

sank into a chair, then upon her knees, then upon the ground beside the bed, drawing the coverlet with her,

half to hide her shamed head and wet hair in it, and half, as it seemed, to embrace it, rather than have nothing

'Go away from me, go away from me! When my temper comes upon me, I am mad. I know I might keep it

off if I only tried hard enough, and sometimes I do try hard enough, and at other times I don't and won't.

What have I said! I knew when I said it, it was all lies. They think I am being taken care of somewhere, and

They are nothing but good to me. I love them dearly; no people could ever be kinder to a thankless creature

than they always are to me. Do, do go away, for I am afraid of you. I am afraid of myself when I feel my

temper coming, and I am as much afraid of you. Go away from me, and let me pray and cry myself better!'

The day passed on; and again the wide stare stared itself out; and the hot night was on Marseilles; and

through it the caravan of the morning, all dispersed, went their appointed ways. And thus ever by day and

night, under the sun and under the stars, climbing the dusty hills and toiling along the weary plains,

journeying by land and journeying by sea, coming and going so strangely, to meet and to act and react on one

It was a Sunday evening in London, gloomy, close, and stale. Maddening church bells of all degrees of

dissonance, sharp and flat, cracked and clear, fast and slow, made the brickandmortar echoes hideous.

Melancholy streets, in a penitential garb of soot, steeped the souls of the people who were condemned to look

at them out of windows, in dire despondency. In every thoroughfare, up almost every alley, and down almost

every turning, some doleful bell was throbbing, jerking, tolling, as if the Plague were in the city and the

deadcarts were going round. Everything was bolted and barred that could by possibility furnish relief to an

overworked people. No pictures, no unfamiliar animals, no rare plants or flowers, no natural or artificial

wonders of the ancient worldall TABOO with that enlightened strictness, that the ugly South Sea gods in

the British Museum might have supposed themselves at home again. Nothing to see but streets, streets,

streets. Nothing to breathe but streets, streets, streets. Nothing to change the brooding mind, or raise it up.

Nothing for the spent toiler to do, but to compare the monotony of his seventh day with the monotony of his

six days, think what a weary life he led, and make the best of itor the worst, according to the probabilities.

At such a happy time, so propitious to the interests of religion and morality, Mr Arthur Clennam, newly

arrived from Marseilles by way of Dover, and by Dover coach the Blueeyed Maid, sat in the window of a

coffeehouse on Ludgate Hill. Ten thousand responsible houses surrounded him, frowning as heavily on the

streets they composed, as if they were every one inhabited by the ten young men of the Calender's story, who

blackened their faces and bemoaned their miseries every night. Fifty thousand lairs surrounded him where

people lived so unwholesomely that fair water put into their crowded rooms on Saturday night, would be

corrupt on Sunday morning; albeit my lord, their county member, was amazed that they failed to sleep in

company with their butcher's meat. Miles of close wells and pits of houses, where the inhabitants gasped for

air, stretched far away towards every point of the compass. Through the heart of the town a deadly sewer

ebbed and flowed, in the place of a fine fresh river. What secular want could the million or so of human

beings whose daily labour, six days in the week, lay among these Arcadian objects, from the sweet sameness

of which they had no escape between the cradle and the gravewhat secular want could they possibly have

upon their seventh day? Clearly they could want nothing but a stringent policeman.

Mr Arthur Clennam sat in the window of the coffeehouse on Ludgate Hill, counting one of the neighbouring

bells, making sentences and burdens of songs out of it in spite of himself, and wondering how many sick

people it might be the death of in the course of the year. As the hour approached, its changes of measure

made it more and more exasperating. At the quarter, it went off into a condition of deadlylively importunity,

urging the populace in a voluble manner to Come to church, Come to church, Come to church! At the ten

minutes, it became aware that the congregation would be scanty, and slowly hammered out in low spirits,

They WON'T come, they WON'T come, they WON'T come! At the five minutes, it abandoned hope, and

shook every house in the neighbourhood for three hundred seconds, with one dismal swing per second, as a

But its sound had revived a long train of miserable Sundays, and the procession would not stop with the bell,

but continued to march on. 'Heaven forgive me,' said he, 'and those who trained me. How I have hated this

There was the dreary Sunday of his childhood, when he sat with his hands before him, scared out of his

senses by a horrible tract which commenced business with the poor child by asking him in its title, why he

was going to Perdition?a piece of curiosity that he really, in a frock and drawers, was not in a condition to

satisfy and which, for the further attraction of his infant mind, had a parenthesis in every other line with

some such hiccupping reference as 2 Ep. Thess. c. iii, v. 6 7. There was the sleepy Sunday of his boyhood,

when, like a military deserter, he was marched to chapel by a picquet of teachers three times a day, morally

handcuffed to another boy; and when he would willingly have bartered two meals of indigestible sermon for

another ounce or two of inferior mutton at his scanty dinner in the flesh. There was the interminable Sunday

of his nonage; when his mother, stern of face and unrelenting of heart, would sit all day behind a Bible

bound, like her own construction of it, in the hardest, barest, and straitest boards, with one dinted ornament

on the cover like the drag of a chain, and a wrathful sprinkling of red upon the edges of the leavesas if it,

of all books! were a fortification against sweetness of temper, natural affection, and gentle intercourse. There

was the resentful Sunday of a little later, when he sat down glowering and glooming through the tardy length

of the day, with a sullen sense of injury in his heart, and no more real knowledge of the beneficent history of

the New Testament than if he had been bred among idolaters. There was a legion of Sundays, all days of

unserviceable bitterness and mortification, slowly passing before him. 'Beg pardon, sir,' said a brisk waiter,

'Stay!' said Clennam, rousing himself. 'I was not thinking of what I said; I answered mechanically. I am not

He sat in the same place as the day died, looking at the dull houses opposite, and thinking, if the disembodied

spirits of former inhabitants were ever conscious of them, how they must pity themselves for their old places

of imprisonment. Sometimes a face would appear behind the dingy glass of a window, and would fade away

into the gloom as if it had seen enough of life and had vanished out of it. Presently the rain began to fall in

slanting lines between him and those houses, and people began to collect under cover of the public passage

opposite, and to look out hopelessly at the sky as the rain dropped thicker and faster. Then wet umbrellas

began to appear, draggled skirts, and mud. What the mud had been doing with itself, or where it came from,

who could say? But it seemed to collect in a moment, as a crowd will, and in five minutes to have splashed

all the sons and daughters of Adam. The lamplighter was going his rounds now; and as the fiery jets sprang

up under his touch, one might have fancied them astonished at being suffered to introduce any show of

Mr Arthur Clennam took up his hat and buttoned his coat, and walked out. In the country, the rain would

have developed a thousand fresh scents, and every drop would have had its bright association with some

beautiful form of growth or life. In the city, it developed only foul stale smells, and was a sickly, lukewarm,

He crossed by St Paul's and went down, at a long angle, almost to the water's edge, through some of the

crooked and descending streets which lie (and lay more crookedly and closely then) between the river and

Cheapside. Passing, now the mouldy hall of some obsolete Worshipful Company, now the illuminated

windows of a Congregationless Church that seemed to be waiting for some adventurous Belzoni to dig it out

and discover its history; passing silent warehouses and wharves, and here and there a narrow alley leading to

the river, where a wretched little bill, FOUND DROWNED, was weeping on the wet wall; he came at last to

the house he sought. An old brick house, so dingy as to be all but black, standing by itself within a gateway.

Before it, a square courtyard where a shrub or two and a patch of grass were as rank (which is saying much)

as the iron railings enclosing them were rusty; behind it, a jumble of roots. It was a double house, with long,

narrow, heavilyframed windows. Many years ago, it had had it in its mind to slide down sideways; it had

been propped up, however, and was leaning on some halfdozen gigantic crutches: which gymnasium for the

neighbouring cats, weatherstained, smoke blackened, and overgrown with weeds, appeared in these latter

'Nothing changed,' said the traveller, stopping to look round. 'Dark and miserable as ever. A light in my

mother's window, which seems never to have been extinguished since I came home twice a year from school,

He went up to the door, which had a projecting canopy in carved work of festooned jacktowels and

children's heads with water on the brain, designed after a oncepopular monumental pattern, and knocked. A

shuffling step was soon heard on the stone floor of the hall, and the door was opened by an old man, bent and

He had a candle in his hand, and he held it up for a moment to assist his keen eyes. 'Ah, Mr Arthur?' he said,

'Your figure is filled out, and set,' said the old man, turning to look at him with the light raised again, and

shaking his head; 'but you don't come up to your father in my opinion. Nor yet your mother.'

'She is as she always is now. Keeps her room when not actually bedridden, and hasn't been out of it fifteen

times in as many years, Arthur.' They had walked into a spare, meagre diningroom. The old man had put the

candlestick upon the table, and, supporting his right elbow with his left hand, was smoothing his leathern

jaws while he looked at the visitor. The visitor offered his hand. The old man took it coldly enough, and

'I doubt if your mother will approve of your coming home on the Sabbath, Arthur,' he said, shaking his head

'Oh! I? I? I am not the master. It's not what _I_ would have. I have stood between your father and mother for

'Yes, Arthur, yes. Oh, to be sure! I'll tell her that you have come home. Please to wait here. You won't find

He took another candle from a cupboard, lighted it, left the first on the table, and went upon his errand. He

was a short, bald old man, in a highshouldered black coat and waistcoat, drab breeches, and long drab

gaiters. He might, from his dress, have been either clerk or servant, and in fact had long been both. There was

nothing about him in the way of decoration but a watch, which was lowered into the depths of its proper

pocket by an old black ribbon, and had a tarnished copper key moored above it, to show where it was sunk.

His head was awry, and he had a onesided, crablike way with him, as if his foundations had yielded at

about the same time as those of the house, and he ought to have been propped up in a similar manner.

'How weak am I,' said Arthur Clennam, when he was gone, 'that I could shed tears at this reception! I, who

have never experienced anything else; who have never expected anything else.' He not only could, but did. It

was the momentary yielding of a nature that had been disappointed from the dawn of its perceptions, but had

not quite given up all its hopeful yearnings yet. He subdued it, took up the candle, and examined the room.

The old articles of furniture were in their old places; the Plagues of Egypt, much the dimmer for the fly and

smoke plagues of London, were framed and glazed upon the walls. There was the old cellaret with nothing in

it, lined with lead, like a sort of coffin in compartments; there was the old dark closet, also with nothing in it,

of which he had been many a time the sole contents, in days of punishment, when he had regarded it as the

veritable entrance to that bourne to which the tract had found him galloping. There was the large, hard

featured clock on the sideboard, which he used to see bending its figured brows upon him with a savage joy

when he was behindhand with his lessons, and which, when it was wound up once a week with an iron

handle, used to sound as if it were growling in ferocious anticipation of the miseries into which it would bring

him. But here was the old man come back, saying, 'Arthur, I'll go before and light you.'

Arthur followed him up the staircase, which was panelled off into spaces like so many mourning tablets, into

a dim bedchamber, the floor of which had gradually so sunk and settled, that the fire place was in a dell.

On a black bierlike sofa in this hollow, propped up behind with one great angular black bolster like the

block at a state execution in the good old times, sat his mother in a widow's dress.

She and his father had been at variance from his earliest remembrance. To sit speechless himself in the midst

of rigid silence, glancing in dread from the one averted face to the other, had been the peacefullest occupation

of his childhood. She gave him one glassy kiss, and four stiff fingers muffled in worsted. This embrace

concluded, he sat down on the opposite side of her little table. There was a fire in the grate, as there had been

night and day for fifteen years. There was a kettle on the hob, as there had been night and day for fifteen

years. There was a little mound of damped ashes on the top of the fire, and another little mound swept

together under the grate, as there had been night and day for fifteen years. There was a smell of black dye in

the airless room, which the fire had been drawing out of the crape and stuff of the widow's dress for fifteen

'The world has narrowed to these dimensions, Arthur,' she rep lied, glancing round the room. 'It is well for me

The old influence of her presence and her stern strong voice, so gathered about her son, that he felt conscious

'What with my rheumatic affection, and what with its attendant debility or nervous weaknessnames are of

no matter nowI have lost the use of my limbs. I never leave my room. I have not been outside this door

'A dozen year next Christmas,' returned a cracked voice out of the dimness behind.

The cracked voice replied that it was Affery: and an old woman came forward into what doubtful light there

'I am able,' said Mrs Clennam, with a slight motion of her worsted muffled right hand toward a chair on

wheels, standing before a tall writing cabinet close shut up, 'I am able to attend to my business duties, and I

am thankful for the privilege. It is a great privilege. But no more of business on this day. It is a bad night, is it

'All seasons are alike to me,' she returned, with a grim kind of luxuriousness. 'I know nothing of summer and

The Lord has been pleased to put me beyond all that.' With her cold grey eyes and her cold grey hair, and her

immovable face, as stiff as the folds of her stony headdress,her being beyond the reach of the seasons

seemed but a fit sequence to her being beyond the reach of all changing emotions.

On her little table lay two or three books, her handkerchief, a pair of steel spectacles newly taken off, and an

oldfashioned gold watch in a heavy double case. Upon this last object her son's eyes and her own now rested

'I see that you received the packet I sent you on my father's death, safely, mother.'

'I never knew my father to show so much anxiety on any subject, as that his watch should be sent straight to

'It was not until the last, that he expressed the wish; when he could only put his hand upon it, and very

indistinctly say to me "your mother." A moment before, I thought him wandering in his mind, as he had been

for many hoursI think he had no consciousness of pain in his short illnesswhen I saw him turn himself

Mrs Clennam shook her head; whether in dismissal of the deceased or opposing herself to her son's opinion,

'After my father's death I opened it myself, thinking there might be, for anything I knew, some memorandum

there. However, as I need not tell you, mother, there was nothing but the old silk watch paper worked in

beads, which you found (no doubt) in its place between the cases, where I found and left it.'

Mrs Clennam signified assent; then added, 'No more of business on this day,' and then added, 'Affery, it is

Upon this, the old woman cleared the little table, went out of the room, and quickly returned with a tray on

which was a dish of little rusks and a small precise pat of butter, cool, symmetrical, white, and plump. The

old man who had been standing by the door in one attitude during the whole interview, looking at the mother

up stairs as he had looked at the son downstairs, went out at the same time, and, after a longer absence,

returned with another tray on which was the greater part of a bottle of port wine (which, to judge by his

panting, he had brought from the cellar), a lemon, a sugarbasin, and a spice box. With these materials and

the aid of the kettle, he filled a tumbler with a hot and odorous mixture, measured out and compounded with

as much nicety as a physician's prescription. Into this mixture Mrs Clennam dipped certain of the rusks, and

ate them; while the old woman buttered certain other of the rusks, which were to be eaten alone. When the

invalid had eaten all the rusks and drunk all the mixture, the two trays were removed; and the books and the

candle, watch, handkerchief, and spectacles were replaced upon the table. She then put on the spectacles and

read certain passages aloud from a booksternly, fiercely, wrathfullypraying that her enemies (she made

them by her tone and manner expressly hers) might be put to the edge of the sword, consumed by fire,

smitten by plagues and leprosy, that their bones might be ground to dust, and that they might be utterly

exterminated. As she read on, years seemed to fall away from her son like the imaginings of a dream, and all

the old dark horrors of his usual preparation for the sleep of an innocent child to overshadow him.

She shut the book and remained for a little time with her face shaded by her hand. So did the old man,

in attitude; so, probably, did the old woman in her dimmer part of the room. Then the sick woman was ready

'Good night, Arthur. Affery will see to your accommodation. Only touch me, for my hand is tender.' He

touched the worsted muffling of her handthat was nothing; if his mother had been sheathed in brass there

would have been no new barrier between themand followed the old man and woman downstairs.

The latter asked him, when they were alone together among the heavy shadows of the diningroom, would he

'You shall if you like,' said Affery. 'There's her tomorrow's partridge in the larderher first this year; say the

'Have something to drink, then,' said Affery; 'you shall have some of her bottle of port, if you like. I'll tell

'It's no reason, Arthur,' said the old woman, bending over him to whisper, 'that because I am afeared of my

'Well then, don't you be cowed. You're clever, Arthur, an't you? ' He nodded, as she seemed to expect an

answer in the affirmative. 'Then stand up against them! She's awful clever, and none but a clever one durst

say a word to her. HE'S a clever oneoh, he's a clever one!and he gives it her when he has a mind to't, he

'Does? It makes me shake from head to foot, to hear him give it her. My husband, Jeremiah Flintwinch, can

His shuffling footstep coming towards them caused her to retreat to the other end of the room. Though a tall,

hardfavoured, sinewy old woman, who in her youth might have enlisted in the Foot Guards without much

'Now, Affery,' said he, 'now, woman, what are you doing? Can't you find Master Arthur something or another

'Very well, then,' said the old man; 'make his bed. Stir yourself.' His neck was so twisted that the knotted ends

of his white cravat usually dangled under one ear; his natural acerbity and energy, always contending with a

second nature of habitual repression, gave his features a swollen and suffused look; and altogether, he had a

weird appearance of having hanged himself at one time or other, and of having gone about ever since, halter

'You'll have bitter words together tomorrow, Arthur; you and your mother,' said Jeremiah. 'Your having

given up the business on your father's deathwhich she suspects, though we have left it to you to tell

'I have given up everything in life for the business, and the time came for me to give up that.'

'Good!' cried Jeremiah, evidently meaning Bad. 'Very good! only don't expect me to stand between your

mother and you, Arthur. I stood between your mother and your father, fending off this, and fending off that,

' Good. I'm glad to hear it; because I should have had to decline it, if I had been. That's enoughas your

mother saysand more than enough of such matters on a Sabbath night. Affery, woman, have you found

She had been collecting sheets and blankets from a press, and hastened to gather them up, and to reply, 'Yes,

Jeremiah.' Arthur Clennam helped her by carrying the load himself, wished the old man good night, and went

They mounted up and up, through the musty smell of an old close house, little used, to a large garret

bedroom. Meagre and spare, like all the other rooms, it was even uglier and grimmer than the rest, by being

the place of banishment for the wornout furniture. Its movables were ugly old chairs with wornout seats,

and ugly old chairs without any seats; a threadbare patternless carpet, a maimed table, a crippled wardrobe, a

lean set of fireirons like the skeleton of a set deceased, a washingstand that looked as if it had stood for

ages in a hail of dirty soapsuds, and a bedstead with four bare atomies of posts, each terminating in a spike, as

if for the dismal accommodation of lodgers who might prefer to impale themselves. Arthur opened the long

low window, and looked out upon the old blasted and blackened forest of chimneys, and the old red glare in

the sky, which had seemed to him once upon a time but a nightly reflection of the fiery environment that was

He drew in his head again, sat down at the bedside, and looked on at Affery Flintwinch making the bed.

She screwed her mouth into the form of saying 'No,' shook her head, and proceeded to get a pillow into its

'Why, Jeremiah, o' course,' said Affery, with an end of the pillow case between her teeth.

'Of course he proposed it, but how did it all come about? I should have thought that neither of you would

Seeing, as she patted the pillow into its place on the bolster, that he was still looking at her as if waiting for

the rest of her reply, she gave it a great poke in the middle, and asked, 'How could I help myself?'

'O' course,' said Mrs Flintwinch. 'It was no doing o' mine. I'D never thought of it. I'd got something to do,

without thinking, indeed! She kept me to it (as well as he) when she could go about, and she could go about

'Well?' echoed Mrs Flintwinch. 'That's what I said myself. Well! What's the use of considering? If them two

'The Lord bless you, Arthur, and forgive me the wish!' cried Affery, speaking always in a low tone. 'If they

hadn't been both of a mind in it, how could it ever have been? Jeremiah never courted me; t'ant likely that he

would, after living in the house with me and ordering me about for as many years as he'd done. He said to me

one day, he said, "Affery," he said, "now I am going to tell you something. What do you think of the name of

Flintwinch?" "What do I think of it?" I says. "Yes," he said, "because you're going to take it," he said. "Take

Mrs Flintwinch went on to spread the upper sheet over the bed, and the blanket over that, and the counterpane

'Well?' echoed Mrs Flintwinch again. 'How could I help myself? He said to me, "Affery, you and me must be

married, and I'll tell you why. She's failing in health, and she'll want pretty constant attendance up in her

room, and we shall have to be much with her, and there'll be nobody about now but ourselves when we're

away from her, and altogether it will be more convenient. She's of my opinion," he said, "so if you'll put your

bonnet on next Monday morning at eight, we'll get it over."' Mrs Flintwinch tucked up the bed.

'Well?' repeated Mrs Flintwinch, 'I think so! I sits me down and says it. Well!Jeremiah then says to me,

"As to banns, next Sunday being the third time of asking (for I've put 'em up a fortnight), is my reason for

naming Monday. She'll speak to you about it herself, and now she'll find you prepared, Affery." That same

day she spoke to me, and she said, "So, Affery, I understand that you and Jeremiah are going to be married. I

am glad of it, and so are you, with reason. It is a very good thing for you, and very welcome under the

circumstances to me. He is a sensible man, and a trustworthy man, and a persevering man, and a pious man."

What could I say when it had come to that? Why, if it had beena smothering instead of a wedding,' Mrs

Flintwinch cast about in her mind with great pains for this form of expression, 'I couldn't have said a word

'Oh! She? Little Dorrit? She's nothing; she's a whim ofhers.' It was a peculiarity of Affery Flintwinch that

she never spoke of Mrs Clennam by name. 'But there's another sort of girls than that about. Have you forgot

'Here's news for you, then. She's well to do now, and a widow. And if you like to have her, why you can.'

'Them two clever ones have been speaking about it.There's Jeremiah on the stairs!' She was gone in a

Mrs Flintwinch had introduced into the web that his mind was busily weaving, in that old workshop where

the loom of his youth had stood, the last thread wanting to the pattern. The airy folly of a boy's love had

found its way even into that house, and he had been as wretched under its hopelessness as if the house had

been a castle of romance. Little more than a week ago at Marseilles, the face of the pretty girl from whom he

had parted with regret, had had an unusual interest for him, and a tender hold upon him, because of some

resemblance, real or imagined, to this first face that had soared out of his gloomy life into the bright glories of

fancy. He leaned upon the sill of the long low window, and looking out upon the blackened forest of

chimneys again, began to dream; for it had been the uniform tendency of this man's lifeso much was

wanting in it to think about, so much that might have been better directed and happier to speculate uponto

When Mrs Flintwinch dreamed, she usually dreamed, unlike the son of her old mistress, with her eyes shut.

She had a curiously vivid dream that night, and before she had left the son of her old mistress many hours. In

fact it was not at all like a dream; it was so very real in every respect. It happened in this wise.

The bedchamber occupied by Mr and Mrs Flintwinch was within a few paces of that to which Mrs Clennam

had been so long confined. It was not on the same floor, for it was a room at the side of the house, which was

approached by a steep descent of a few odd steps, diverging from the main staircase nearly opposite to Mrs

Clennam's door. It could scarcely be said to be within call, the walls, doors, and panelling of the old place

were so cumbrous; but it was within easy reach, in any undress, at any hour of the night, in any temperature.

At the head of the bed and within a foot of Mrs Flintwinch's ear, was a bell, the line of which hung ready to

Mrs Clennam's hand. Whenever this bell rang, up started Affery, and was in the sick room before she was

Having got her mistress into bed, lighted her lamp, and given her good night, Mrs Flintwinch went to roost as

usual, saving that her lord had not yet appeared. It was her lord himself who became unlike the last theme

in the mind, according to the observation of most philosophersthe subject of Mrs Flintwinch's dream. It

seemed to her that she awoke after sleeping some hours, and found Jeremiah not yet abed. That she looked at

the candle she had left burning, and, measuring the time like King Alfred the Great, was confirmed by its

wasted state in her belief that she had been asleep for some considerable period. That she arose thereupon,

muffled herself up in a wrapper, put on her shoes, and went out on the staircase, much surprised, to look for

The staircase was as wooden and solid as need be, and Affery went straight down it without any of those

deviations peculiar to dreams. She did not skim over it, but walked down it, and guided herself by the

banisters on account of her candle having died out. In one corner of the hall, behind the housedoor, there

was a little waitingroom, like a wellshaft, with a long narrow window in it as if it had been ripped up. In

Mrs Flintwinch crossed the hall, feeling its pavement cold to her stockingless feet, and peeped in between the

rusty hinges on the door, which stood a little open. She expected to see Jeremiah fast asleep or in a fit, but he

was calmly seated in a chair, awake, and in his usual health. But whathey?Lord forgive us!Mrs

For, Mr Flintwinch awake, was watching Mr Flintwinch asleep. He sat on one side of the small table, looking

keenly at himself on the other side with his chin sunk on his breast, snoring. The waking Flintwinch had his

full front face presented to his wife; the sleeping Flintwinch was in profile. The waking Flintwinch was the

old original; the sleeping Flintwinch was the double. just as she might have distinguished between a tangible

object and its reflection in a glass, Affery made out this difference with her head going round and round.

If she had had any doubt which was her own Jeremiah, it would have been resolved by his impatience. He

looked about him for an offensive weapon, caught up the snuffers, and, before applying them to the

cabbageheaded candle, lunged at the sleeper as though he would have run him through the body.

Mr Flintwinch made a movement with the snuffers, as if he would have enforced silence on his companion by

putting them down his throat; the companion, coming to himself, said, rubbing his eyes, 'I forgot where I

'You have been asleep,' snarled Jeremiah, referring to his watch, 'two hours. You said you would be rested

'Halfpast two o'clock in the morning,' muttered Jeremiah. 'Where's your hat? Where's your coat? Where's the

'All here,' said Double, tying up his throat with sleepy carefulness in a shawl. 'Stop a minute. Now give me

the sleeve not that sleeve, the other one. Ha! I'm not as young as I was.' Mr Flintwinch had pulled him into

his coat with vehement energy. 'You promised me a second glass after I was rested.'

'Drink it!' returned Jeremiah, 'andchoke yourself, I was going to saybut go, I mean.'At the same time he

'Her portwine, I believe?' said Double, tasting it as if he were in the Docks, with hours to spare. 'Her health.'

'And all friends round St Paul's.' He emptied and put down the wineglass halfway through this ancient

civic toast, and took up the box. It was an iron box some two feet square, which he carried under his arms

pretty easily. Jeremiah watched his manner of adjusting it, with jealous eyes; tried it with his hands, to be

sure that he had a firm hold of it; bade him for his life be careful what he was about; and then stole out on

tiptoe to open the door for him. Affery, anticipating the last movement, was on the staircase. The sequence of

things was so ordinary and natural, that, standing there, she could hear the door open, feel the night air, and

But now came the most remarkable part of the dream. She felt so afraid of her husband, that being on the

staircase, she had not the power to retreat to her room (which she might easily have done before he had

fastened the door), but stood there staring. Consequently when he came up the staircase to bed, candle in

hand, he came full upon her. He looked astonished, but said not a word. He kept his eyes upon her, and kept

advancing; and she, completely under his influence, kept retiring before him. Thus, she walking backward

and he walking forward, they came into their own room. They were no sooner shut in there, than Mr

Flintwinch took her by the throat, and shook her until she was black in the face.

'Why, Affery, womanAffery!' said Mr Flintwinch. 'What have you been dreaming of? Wake up, wake up!

'Why, Affery, womanAffery! You have been getting out of bed in your sleep, my dear! I come up, after

having fallen asleep myself, below, and find you in your wrapper here, with the nightmare. Affery, woman,'

said Mr Flintwinch, with a friendly grin on his expressive countenance, 'if you ever have a dream of this sort

again, it'll be a sign of your being in want of physic. And I'll give you such a dose, old womansuch a dose!'

As the city clocks struck nine on Monday morning, Mrs Clennam was wheeled by Jeremiah Flintwinch of the

cutdown aspect to her tall cabinet. When she had unlocked and opened it, and had settled herself at its desk,

Jeremiah withdrewas it might be, to hang himself more effectuallyand her son appeared.

She shook her head, with the same austere air of luxuriousness that she had shown overnight when speaking

'I shall never be better any more. It is well for me, Arthur, that I know it and can bear it.'

Sitting with her hands laid separately upon the desk, and the tall cabinet towering before her, she looked as if

she were performing on a dumb church organ. Her son thought so (it was an old thought with him), while he

She opened a drawer or two, looked over some business papers, and put them back again. Her severe face had

no thread of relaxation in it, by which any explorer could have been guided to the gloomy labyrinth of her

'Shall I speak of our affairs, mother? Are you inclined to enter upon business?'

'Am I inclined, Arthur? Rather, are you? Your father has been dead a year and more. I have been at your

'There was much to arrange before I could leave; and when I did leave, I travelled a little for rest and relief.'

She turned her face towards him, as not having heard or understood his last words. 'For rest and relief.'

She glanced round the sombre room, and appeared from the motion of her lips to repeat the words to herself,

'Besides, mother, you being sole executrix, and having the direction and management of the estate, there

remained little business, or I might say none, that I could transact, until you had had time to arrange matters

'The accounts are made out,' she returned. 'I have them here. The vouchers have all been examined and

'It is quite enough, mother, to know that the business is completed. Shall I proceed then?'

'Mother, our House has done less and less for some years past, and our dealings have been progressively on

the decline. We have never shown much confidence, or invited much; we have attached no people to us; the

track we have kept is not the track of the time; and we have been left far behind. I need not dwell on this to

'I know what you mean,' she answered, in a qualified tone. 'Even this old house in which we speak,' pursued

her son, 'is an instance of what I say. In my father's earlier time, and in his uncle's time before him, it was a

place of businessreally a place of business, and business resort. Now, it is a mere anomaly and incongruity

here, out of date and out of purpose. All our consignments have long been made to Rovinghams' the

commission merchants; and although, as a check upon them, and in the stewardship of my father's

resources, your judgment and watchfulness have been actively exerted, still those qualities would have

influenced my father's fortunes equally, if you had lived in any private dwelling: would they not?'

'Do you consider,' she returned, without answering his question, 'that a house serves no purpose, Arthur, in

sheltering your infirm and afflictedjustly infirm and righteously afflictedmother?'

'I foresee,' she returned, fixing her eyes upon him, 'what it is. But the Lord forbid that I should repine under

any visitation. In my sinfulness I merit bitter disappointment, and I accept it.'

'Mother, I grieve to hear you speak like this, though I have had my apprehensions that you would'

'You have anticipated, mother, that I decide for my part, to abandon the business. I have done with it. I will

not take upon myself to advise you; you will continue it, I see. If I had any influence with you, I would

simply use it to soften your judgment of me in causing you this disappointment: to represent to you that I

have lived the half of a long term of life, and have never before set my own will against yours. I cannot say

that I have been able to conform myself, in heart and spirit, to your rules; I cannot say that I believe my forty

years have been profitable or pleasant to myself, or any one; but I have habitually submitted, and I only ask

Woe to the suppliant, if such a one there were or ever had been, who had any concession to look for in the

inexorable face at the cabinet. Woe to the defaulter whose appeal lay to the tribunal where those severe eyes

presided. Great need had the rigid woman of her mystical religion, veiled in gloom and darkness, with

lightnings of cursing, vengeance, and destruction, flashing through the sable clouds. Forgive us our debts as

we forgive our debtors, was a prayer too poor in spirit for her. Smite Thou my debtors, Lord, wither them,

crush them; do Thou as I would do, and Thou shalt have my worship: this was the impious tower of stone she

'Mother, I have yet something more to say. It has been upon my mind, night and day, this long time. It is far

more difficult to say than what I have said. That concerned myself; this concerns us all.'

She took her hands from the desk; folded them in her lap; and sat looking towards the fire, with the

'You knew my father infinitely better than I ever knew him; and his reserve with me yielded to you. You

were much the stronger, mother, and directed him. As a child, I knew it as well as I know it now. I knew that

your ascendancy over him was the cause of his going to China to take care of the business there, while you

took care of it here (though I do not even now know whether these were really terms of separation that you

agreed upon); and that it was your will that I should remain with you until I was twenty, and then go to him

At the word Suspect, she turned her eyes momentarily upon her son, with a dark frown. She then suffered

them to seek the fire, as before; but with the frown fixed above them, as if the sculptor of old Egypt had

'that he had any secret remembrance which caused him trouble of mindremorse? Whether you ever

observed anything in his conduct suggesting that; or ever spoke to him upon it, or ever heard him hint at such

'I do not understand what kind of secret remembrance you mean to infer that your father was a prey to,' she

'Is it possible, mother,' her son leaned forward to be the nearer to her while he whispered it, and laid his hand

nervously upon her desk, 'is it possible, mother, that he had unhappily wronged any one, and made no

Looking at him wrathfully, she bent herself back in her chair to keep him further off, but gave him no reply.

'I am deeply sensible, mother, that if this thought has never at any time flashed upon you, it must seem cruel

and unnatural in me, even in this confidence, to breathe it. But I cannot shake it off.

Time and change (I have tried both before breaking silence) do nothing to wear it out. Remember, I was with

my father. Remember, I saw his face when he gave the watch into my keeping, and struggled to express that

he sent it as a token you would understand, to you. Remember, I saw him at the last with the pencil in his

failing hand, trying to write some word for you to read, but to which he could give no shape. The more

remote and cruel this vague suspicion that I have, the stronger the circumstances that could give it any

semblance of probability to me. For Heaven's sake, let us examine sacredly whether there is any wrong

Still so recoiling in her chair that her overpoised weight moved it, from time to time, a little on its wheels,

and gave her the appearance of a phantom of fierce aspect gliding away from him, she interposed her left

arm, bent at the elbow with the back of her hand towards her face, between herself and him, and looked at

'In grasping at money and in driving hard bargainsI have begun, and I must speak of such things now,

mothersome one may have been grievously deceived, injured, ruined. You were the moving power of all

this machinery before my birth; your stronger spirit has been infused into all my father's dealings for more

than two score years. You can set these doubts at rest, I think, if you will really help me to discover the truth.

He stopped in the hope that she would speak. But her grey hair was not more immovable in its two folds, than

'If reparation can be made to any one, if restitution can be made to any one, let us know it and make it. Nay,

mother, if within my means, let ME make it. I have seen so little happiness come of money; it has brought

within my knowledge so little peace to this house, or to any one belonging to it, that it is worth less to me

than to another. It can buy me nothing that will not be a reproach and misery to me, if I am haunted by a

suspicion that it darkened my father's last hours with remorse, and that it is not honestly and justly mine.'

There was a bellrope hanging on the panelled wall, some two or three yards from the cabinet. By a swift and

sudden action of her foot, she drove her wheeled chair rapidly back to it and pulled it violentlystill holding

her arm up in its shieldlike posture, as if he were striking at her, and she warding off the blow.

In a moment the girl had withdrawn, and the old man stood within the door. 'What! You're hammer and

tongs, already, you two?' he said, coolly stroking his face. 'I thought you would be. I was pretty sure of it.'

She stretched out the arm with which she had shielded herself, and as she went on, pointed at the object of her

'In the very hour of his return almostbefore the shoe upon his foot is dryhe asperses his father's memory

to his mother! Asks his mother to become, with him, a spy upon his father's transactions through a lifetime!

Has misgivings that the goods of this world which we have painfully got together early and late, with wear

and tear and toil and selfdenial, are so much plunder; and asks to whom they shall be given up, as reparation

Although she said this raging, she said it in a voice so far from being beyond her control that it was even

'Reparation!' said she. 'Yes, truly! It is easy for him to talk of reparation, fresh from journeying and junketing

in foreign lands, and living a life of vanity and pleasure. But let him look at me, in prison, and in bonds here.

I endure without murmuring, because it is appointed that I shall so make reparation for my sins. Reparation!

Thus was she always balancing her bargains with the Majesty of heaven, posting up the entries to her credit,

strictly keeping her setoff, and claiming her due. She was only remarkable in this, for the force and

emphasis with which she did it. Thousands upon thousands do it, according to their varying manner, every

The old man handed it to her from the table. She put two fingers between the leaves, closed the book upon

them, and held it up to her son in a threatening way. ' In the days of old, Arthur, treated of in this

commentary, there were pious men, beloved of the Lord, who would have cursed their sons for less than this:

who would have sent them forth, and sent whole nations forth, if such had supported them, to be avoided of

God and man, and perish, down to the baby at the breast. But I only tell you that if you ever renew that theme

with me, I will renounce you; I will so dismiss you through that doorway, that you had better have been

motherless from your cradle. I will never see or know you more. And if, after all, you were to come into this

darkened room to look upon me lying dead, my body should bleed, if I could make it, when you came near

In part relieved by the intensity of this threat, and in part (monstrous as the fact is) by a general impression

that it was in some sort a religious proceeding, she handed back the book to the old man, and was silent.

'Now,' said Jeremiah; 'premising that I'm not going to stand between you two, will you let me ask (as I have

'Take your version of it,' returned Arthur, finding it left to him to speak, 'from my mother. Let it rest there.

What I have said, was said to my mother only.' 'Oh!' returned the old man. 'From your mother? Take it from

your mother? Well! But your mother mentioned that you had been suspecting your father. That's not dutiful,

'Enough,' said Mrs Clennam, turning her face so that it was addressed for the moment to the old man only.

'Yes, but stop a bit, stop a bit,' the old man persisted. 'Let us see how we stand. Have you told Mr Arthur that

he mustn't lay offences at his father's door? That he has no right to do it? That he has no ground to go upon?'

'Ah! Exactly,' said the old man. 'You tell him so now. You hadn't told him so before, and you tell him so now.

Ay, ay! That's right! You know I stood between you and his father so long, that it seems as if death had made

no difference, and I was still standing between you. So I will, and so in fairness I require to have that plainly

put forward. Arthur, you please to hear that you have no right to mistrust your father, and have no ground to

He put his hands to the back of the wheeled chair, and muttering to himself, slowly wheeled his mistress back

to her cabinet. 'Now,' he resumed, standing behind her: 'in case I should go away leaving things half done,

and so should be wanted again when you come to the other half and get into one of your flights, has Arthur

He observed the look and said, 'To my mother, of course. She does what she pleases.'

'And if any pleasure,' she said after a short pause, 'could arise for me out of the disappointment of my

expectations that my son, in the prime of his life, would infuse new youth and strength into it, and make it of

great profit and power, it would be in advancing an old and faithful servant. Jeremiah, the captain deserts the

Jeremiah, whose eyes glistened as if they saw money, darted a sudden look at the son, which seemed to say, 'I

owe YOU no thanks for this; YOU have done nothing towards it!' and then told the mother that he thanked

her, and that Affery thanked her, and that he would never desert her, and that Affery would never desert her.

Finally, he hauled up his watch from its depths, and said, 'Eleven. Time for your oysters!' and with that

change of subject, which involved no change of expression or manner, rang the bell.

But Mrs Clennam, resolved to treat herself with the greater rigour for having been supposed to be

unacquainted with reparation, refused to eat her oysters when they were brought. They looked tempting; eight

in number, circularly set out on a white plate on a tray covered with a white napkin, flanked by a slice of

buttered French roll, and a little compact glass of cool wine and water; but she resisted all persuasions, and

sent them down againplacing the act to her credit, no doubt, in her Eternal DayBook.

This refection of oysters was not presided over by Affery, but by the girl who had appeared when the bell was

rung; the same who had been in the dimlylighted room last night. Now that he had an opportunity of

observing her, Arthur found that her diminutive figure, small features, and slight spare dress, gave her the

appearance of being much younger than she was. A woman, probably of not less than twoandtwenty, she

might have been passed in the street for little more than half that age. Not that her face was very youthful, for

in truth there was more consideration and care in it than naturally belonged to her utmost years; but she was

so little and light, so noiseless and shy, and appeared so conscious of being out of place among the three hard

elders, that she had all the manner and much of the appearance of a subdued child.

In a hard way, and in an uncertain way that fluctuated between patronage and putting down, the sprinkling

from a wateringpot and hydraulic pressure, Mrs Clennam showed an interest in this dependent. Even in the

moment of her entrance, upon the violent ringing of the bell, when the mother shielded herself with that

singular action from the son, Mrs Clennam's eyes had had some individual recognition in them, which

seemed reserved for her. As there are degrees of hardness in the hardest metal, and shades of colour in black

itself, so, even in the asperity of Mrs Clennam's demeanour towards all the rest of humanity and towards

Little Dorrit let herself out to do needlework. At so much a day or at so littlefrom eight to eight, Little

Dorrit was to be hired. Punctual to the moment, Little Dorrit appeared; punctual to the moment, Little Dorrit

Another of the moral phenomena of Little Dorrit. Besides her consideration money, her daily contract

included meals. She had an extraordinary repugnance to dining in company; would never do so, if it were

possible to escape. Would always plead that she had this bit of work to begin first, or that bit of work to finish

first; and would, of a certainty, scheme and plannot very cunningly, it would seem, for she deceived no

oneto dine alone. Successful in this, happy in carrying off her plate anywhere, to make a table of her lap,

or a box, or the ground, or even as was supposed, to stand on tiptoe, dining moderately at a mantelshelf;

It was not easy to make out Little Dorrit's face; she was so retiring, plied her needle in such removed corners,

and started away so scared if encountered on the stairs. But it seemed to be a pale transparent face, quick in

expression, though not beautiful in feature, its soft hazel eyes excepted. A delicately bent head, a tiny form, a

quick little pair of busy hands, and a shabby dressit must needs have been very shabby to look at all so,

For these particulars or generalities concerning Little Dorrit, Mr Arthur was indebted in the course of the day

to his own eyes and to Mrs Affery's tongue. If Mrs Affery had had any will or way of her own, it would

probably have been unfavourable to Little Dorrit. But as 'them two clever ones'Mrs Affery's perpetual

reference, in whom her personality was swallowed upwere agreed to accept Little Dorrit as a matter of

course, she had nothing for it but to follow suit. Similarly, if the two clever ones had agreed to murder Little

Dorrit by candlelight, Mrs Affery, being required to hold the candle, would no doubt have done it.

In the intervals of roasting the partridge for the invalid chamber, and preparing a bakingdish of beef and

pudding for the dining room, Mrs Affery made the communications above set forth; invariably putting her

head in at the door again after she had taken it out, to enforce resistance to the two clever ones. It appeared to

have become a perfect passion with Mrs Flintwinch, that the only son should be pitted against them.

In the course of the day, too, Arthur looked through the whole house. Dull and dark he found it. The gaunt

rooms, deserted for years upon years, seemed to have settled down into a gloomy lethargy from which

nothing could rouse them again. The furniture, at once spare and lumbering, hid in the rooms rather than

furnished them, and there was no colour in all the house; such colour as had ever been there, had long ago

started away on lost sunbeamsgot itself absorbed, perhaps, into flowers, butterflies, plumage of birds,

precious stones, what not. There was not one straight floor from the foundation to the roof; the ceilings were

so fantastically clouded by smoke and dust, that old women might have told fortunes in them better than in

grouts of tea; the deadcold hearths showed no traces of having ever been warmed but in heaps of soot that

had tumbled down the chimneys, and eddied about in little dusky whirlwinds when the doors were opened. In

what had once been a drawingroom, there were a pair of meagre mirrors, with dismal processions of black

figures carrying black garlands, walking round the frames; but even these were short of heads and legs, and

one undertakerlike Cupid had swung round on its own axis and got upside down, and another had fallen off

altogether. The room Arthur Clennam's deceased father had occupied for business purposes, when he first

remembered him, was so unaltered that he might have been imagined still to keep it invisibly, as his visible

relict kept her room upstairs; Jeremiah Flintwinch still going between them negotiating. His picture, dark

and gloomy, earnestly speechless on the wall, with the eyes intently looking at his son as they had looked

when life departed from them, seemed to urge him awfully to the task he had attempted; but as to any

yielding on the part of his mother, he had now no hope, and as to any other means of setting his distrust at

Down in the cellars, as up in the bedchambers, old objects that he well remembered were changed by age

and decay, but were still in their old places; even to empty beercasks hoary with cobwebs, and empty

winebottles with fur and fungus choking up their throats. There, too, among unusual bottleracks and pale

slants of light from the yard above, was the strong room stored with old ledgers, which had as musty and

corrupt a smell as if they were regularly balanced, in the dead small hours, by a nightly resurrection of old

The bakingdish was served up in a penitential manner on a shrunken cloth at an end of the diningtable, at

two o'clock, when he dined with Mr Flintwinch, the new partner. Mr Flintwinch informed him that his mother

had recovered her equanimity now, and that he need not fear her again alluding to what had passed in the

morning. 'And don't you lay offences at your father's door, Mr Arthur,' added Jeremiah, 'once for all, don't do

Mr Flintwinch had been already rearranging and dusting his own particular little office, as if to do honour to

his accession to new dignity. He resumed this occupation when he was replete with beef, had sucked up all

the gravy in the bakingdish with the flat of his knife, and had drawn liberally on a barrel of small beer in the

scullery. Thus refreshed, he tucked up his shirtsleeves and went to work again; and Mr Arthur, watching

him as he set about it, plainly saw that his father's picture, or his father's grave, would be as communicative

'Now, Affery, woman,' said Mr Flintwinch, as she crossed the hall. 'You hadn't made Mr Arthur's bed when I

But Mr Arthur found the house so blank and dreary, and was so unwilling to assist at another implacable

consignment of his mother's enemies (perhaps himself among them) to mortal disfigurement and immortal

ruin, that he announced his intention of lodging at the coffeehouse where he had left his luggage. Mr

Flintwinch taking kindly to the idea of getting rid of him, and his mother being indifferent, beyond

considerations of saving, to most domestic arrangements that were not bounded by the walls of her own

chamber, he easily carried this point without new offence. Daily business hours were agreed upon, which his

mother, Mr Flintwinch, and he, were to devote together to a necessary checking of books and papers; and he

The business hours, allowing for intervals of invalid regimen of oysters and partridges, during which

Clennam refreshed himself with a walk, were from ten to six for about a fortnight. Sometimes Little Dorrit

was employed at her needle, sometimes not, sometimes appeared as a humble visitor: which must have been

her character on the occasion of his arrival. His original curiosity augmented every day, as he watched for

her, saw or did not see her, and speculated about her. Influenced by his predominant idea, he even fell into a

habit of discussing with himself the possibility of her being in some way associated with it. At last he

Thirty years ago there stood, a few doors short of the church of Saint George, in the borough of Southwark,

on the lefthand side of the way going southward, the Marshalsea Prison. It had stood there many years

before, and it remained there some years afterwards; but it is gone now, and the world is none the worse

It was an oblong pile of barrack building, partitioned into squalid houses standing back to back, so that there

were no back rooms; environed by a narrow paved yard, hemmed in by high walls duly spiked at top. Itself a

close and confined prison for debtors, it contained within it a much closer and more confined jail for

smugglers. Offenders against the revenue laws, and defaulters to excise or customs who had incurred fines

which they were unable to pay, were supposed to be incarcerated behind an ironplated door closing up a

second prison, consisting of a strong cell or two, and a blind alley some yard and a half wide, which formed

the mysterious termination of the very limited skittleground in which the Marshalsea debtors bowled down

Supposed to be incarcerated there, because the time had rather outgrown the strong cells and the blind alley.

In practice they had come to be considered a little too bad, though in theory they were quite as good as ever;

which may be observed to be the case at the present day with other cells that are not at all strong, and with

other blind alleys that are stoneblind. Hence the smugglers habitually consorted with the debtors (who

received them with open arms), except at certain constitutional moments when somebody came from some

Office, to go through some form of overlooking something which neither he nor anybody else knew anything

about. On these truly British occasions, the smugglers, if any, made a feint of walking into the strong cells

and the blind alley, while this somebody pretended to do his something: and made a reality of walking out

again as soon as he hadn't done itneatly epitomising the administration of most of the public affairs in our

There had been taken to the Marshalsea Prison, long before the day when the sun shone on Marseilles and on

the opening of this narrative, a debtor with whom this narrative has some concern.

He was, at that time, a very amiable and very helpless middleaged gentleman, who was going out again

directly. Necessarily, he was going out again directly, because the Marshalsea lock never turned upon a

debtor who was not. He brought in a portmanteau with him, which he doubted its being worth while to

unpack; he was so perfectly clearlike all the rest of them, the turnkey on the lock saidthat he was going

He was a shy, retiring man; welllooking, though in an effeminate style; with a mild voice, curling hair, and

irresolute handsrings upon the fingers in those dayswhich nervously wandered to his trembling lip a

hundred times in the first halfhour of his acquaintance with the jail. His principal anxiety was about his

'Do you think, sir,' he asked the turnkey, 'that she will be very much shocked, if she should come to the gate

The turnkey gave it as the result of his experience that some of 'em was and some of 'em wasn't. In general,

more no than yes. 'What like is she, you see?' he philosophically asked: 'that's what it hinges on.'

'She is so little used to go out alone,' said the debtor, 'that I am at a loss to think how she will ever make her

'Perhaps.' The irresolute fingers went to the trembling lip. 'I hope she will. She may not think of it.'

'Or p'raps,' said the turnkey, offering his suggestions from the the top of his wellworn wooden stool, as he

might have offered them to a child for whose weakness he felt a compassion, 'p'raps she'll get her brother, or

One or another on 'em,' said the turnkey, repudiating beforehand the refusal of all his suggestions.

'The children?' said the turnkey. 'And the rules? Why, lord set you up like a corner pin, we've a reg'lar

playground o' children here. Children! Why we swarm with 'em. How many a you got?'

'Two,' said the debtor, lifting his irresolute hand to his lip again, and turning into the prison.

The turnkey followed him with his eyes. 'And you another,' he observed to himself, 'which makes three on

you. And your wife another, I'll lay a crown. Which makes four on you. And another coming, I'll lay

halfacrown. Which'll make five on you. And I'll go another seven and sixpence to name which is the

He was right in all his particulars. She came next day with a little boy of three years old, and a little girl of

'Got a room now; haven't you?' the turnkey asked the debtor after a week or two.

'I expect a few necessary articles of furniture to be delivered by the carrier, this afternoon.'

'Why, yes, we think it better that we should not be scattered, even for a few weeks.'

'Even for a few weeks, OF course,' replied the turnkey. And he followed him again with his eyes, and nodded

The affairs of this debtor were perplexed by a partnership, of which he knew no more than that he had

invested money in it; by legal matters of assignment and settlement, conveyance here and conveyance there,

suspicion of unlawful preference of creditors in this direction, and of mysterious spiriting away of property in

that; and as nobody on the face of the earth could be more incapable of explaining any single item in the heap

of confusion than the debtor himself, nothing comprehensible could be made of his case. To question him in

detail, and endeavour to reconcile his answers; to closet him with accountants and sharp practitioners, learned

in the wiles of insolvency and bankruptcy; was only to put the case out at compound interest and

incomprehensibility. The irresolute fingers fluttered more and more ineffectually about the trembling lip on

every such occasion, and the sharpest practitioners gave him up as a hopeless job.

'Out?' said the turnkey, 'he'll never get out, unless his creditors take him by the shoulders and shove him out.'

He had been there five or six months, when he came running to this turnkey one forenoon to tell him,

'We intended,' he returned, 'that she should go to a country lodging only tomorrow. What am I to do! Oh,

'Don't waste your time in clasping your hands and biting your fingers,' responded the practical turnkey, taking

The turnkey conducted himtrembling from head to foot, and constantly crying under his breath, What was

he to do! while his irresolute fingers bedabbled the tears upon his faceup one of the common staircases in

the prison to a door on the garret story. Upon which door the turnkey knocked with the handle of his key.

The turnkey, opening the door, disclosed in a wretched, ill smelling little room, two hoarse, puffy,

redfaced personages seated at a rickety table, playing at allfours, smoking pipes, and drinking brandy.

'Doctor,' said the turnkey, 'here's a gentleman's wife in want of you without a minute's loss of time!'

The doctor's friend was in the positive degree of hoarseness, puffiness, redfacedness, allfours, tobacco,

dirt, and brandy; the doctor in the comparativehoarser, puffier, more redfaced, more allfourey,

tobaccoer, dirtier, and brandier. The doctor was amazingly shabby, in a torn and darned roughweather

seajacket, out at elbows and eminently short of buttons (he had been in his time the experienced surgeon

carried by a passenger ship), the dirtiest white trousers conceivable by mortal man, carpet slippers, and no

visible linen. 'Childbed?' said the doctor. 'I'm the boy!' With that the doctor took a comb from the

chimneypiece and stuck his hair uprightwhich appeared to be his way of washing himself produced a

professional chest or case, of most abject appearance, from the cupboard where his cup and saucer and coals

were, settled his chin in the frowsy wrapper round his neck, and became a ghastly medical scarecrow.

The doctor and the debtor ran downstairs, leaving the turnkey to return to the lock, and made for the debtor's

room. All the ladies in the prison had got hold of the news, and were in the yard. Some of them had already

taken possession of the two children, and were hospitably carrying them off; others were offering loans of

little comforts from their own scanty store; others were sympathising with the greatest volubility. The

gentlemen prisoners, feeling themselves at a disadvantage, had for the most part retired, not to say sneaked, to

their rooms; from the open windows of which some of them now complimented the doctor with whistles as

he passed below, while others, with several stories between them, interchanged sarcastic references to the

It was a hot summer day, and the prison rooms were baking between the high walls. In the debtor's confined

chamber, Mrs Bangham, charwoman and messenger, who was not a prisoner (though she had been once), but

was the popular medium of communication with the outer world, had volunteered her services as flycatcher

and general attendant. The walls and ceiling were blackened with flies. Mrs Bangham, expert in sudden

device, with one hand fanned the patient with a cabbage leaf, and with the other set traps of vinegar and sugar

in gallipots; at the same time enunciating sentiments of an encouraging and congratulatory nature, adapted to

'The flies trouble you, don't they, my dear?' said Mrs Bangham. 'But p'raps they'll take your mind off of it,

and do you good. What between the buryin ground, the grocer's, the waggonstables, and the paunch trade,

the Marshalsea flies gets very large. P'raps they're sent as a consolation, if we only know'd it. How are you

now, my dear? No better? No, my dear, it ain't to be expected; you'll be worse before you're better, and you

know it, don't you? Yes. That's right! And to think of a sweet little cherub being born inside the lock! Now

ain't it pretty, ain't THAT something to carry you through it pleasant? Why, we ain't had such a thing happen

here, my dear, not for I couldn't name the time when. And you a crying too?' said Mrs Bangham, to rally the

patient more and more. 'You! Making yourself so famous! With the flies a falling into the gallipots by fifties!

And everything a going on so well! And here if there ain't,' said Mrs Bangham as the door opened, 'if there

ain't your dear gentleman along with Dr Haggage! And now indeed we ARE complete, I THINK!'

The doctor was scarcely the kind of apparition to inspire a patient with a sense of absolute completeness, but

as he presently delivered the opinion, 'We are as right as we can be, Mrs Bangham, and we shall come out of

this like a house afire;' and as he and Mrs Bangham took possession of the poor helpless pair, as everybody

else and anybody else had always done, the means at hand were as good on the whole as better would have

been. The special feature in Dr Haggage's treatment of the case, was his determination to keep Mrs Bangham

'Mrs Bangham,' said the doctor, before he had been there twenty minutes, 'go outside and fetch a little brandy,

'Mrs Bangham,' returned the doctor, 'I am in professional attendance on this lady, and don't choose to allow

any discussion on your part. Go outside and fetch a little brandy, or I foresee that you'll break down.'

'You're to be obeyed, sir,' said Mrs Bangham, rising. 'If you was to put your own lips to it, I think you

'Mrs Bangham,' returned the doctor, 'I am not your business, thank you, but you are mine. Never you mind

ME, if you please. What you have got to do, is, to do as you are told, and to go and get what I bid you.'

Mrs Bangham submitted; and the doctor, having administered her potion, took his own. He repeated the

treatment every hour, being very determined with Mrs Bangham. Three or four hours passed; the flies fell

into the traps by hundreds; and at length one little life, hardly stronger than theirs, appeared among the

'A very nice little girl indeed,' said the doctor; 'little, but wellformed. Halloa, Mrs Bangham! You're looking

queer! You be off, ma'am, this minute, and fetch a little more brandy, or we shall have you in hysterics.'

By this time, the rings had begun to fall from the debtor's irresolute hands, like leaves from a wintry tree. Not

one was left upon them that night, when he put something that chinked into the doctor's greasy palm. In the

meantime Mrs Bangham had been out on an errand to a neighbouring establishment decorated with three

'Thank you,' said the doctor, 'thank you. Your good lady is quite composed. Doing charmingly.'

'I am very happy and very thankful to know it,' said the debtor, 'though I little thought once, that'

'That a child would be born to you in a place like this?' said the doctor. 'Bah, bah, sir, what does it signify? A

little more elbowroom is all we want here. We are quiet here; we don't get badgered here; there's no knocker

here, sir, to be hammered at by creditors and bring a man's heart into his mouth. Nobody comes here to ask if

a man's at home, and to say he'll stand on the door mat till he is. Nobody writes threatening letters about

money to this place. It's freedom, sir, it's freedom! I have had today's practice at home and abroad, on a

march, and aboard ship, and I'll tell you this: I don't know that I have ever pursued it under such quiet

circumstances as here this day. Elsewhere, people are restless, worried, hurried about, anxious respecting one

thing, anxious respecting another. Nothing of the kind here, sir. We have done all thatwe know the worst

of it; we have got to the bottom, we can't fall, and what have we found? Peace. That's the word for it. Peace.'

With this profession of faith, the doctor, who was an old jailbird, and was more sodden than usual, and had

the additional and unusual stimulus of money in his pocket, returned to his associate and chum in hoarseness,

Now, the debtor was a very different man from the doctor, but he had already begun to travel, by his opposite

segment of the circle, to the same point. Crushed at first by his imprisonment, he had soon found a dull relief

in it. He was under lock and key; but the lock and key that kept him in, kept numbers of his troubles out. If he

had been a man with strength of purpose to face those troubles and fight them, he might have broken the net

that held him, or broken his heart; but being what he was, he languidly slipped into this smooth descent, and

When he was relieved of the perplexed affairs that nothing would make plain, through having them returned

upon his hands by a dozen agents in succession who could make neither beginning, middle, nor end of them

or him, he found his miserable place of refuge a quieter refuge than it had been before. He had unpacked the

portmanteau long ago; and his elder children now played regularly about the yard, and everybody knew the

'Why, I'm getting proud of you,' said his friend the turnkey, one day. 'You'll be the oldest inhabitant soon. The

The turnkey really was proud of him. He would mention him in laudatory terms to newcomers, when his

back was turned. 'You took notice of him,' he would say, 'that went out of the lodge just now?'

'Brought up as a gentleman, he was, if ever a man was. Ed'cated at no end of expense. Went into the

Marshal's house once to try a new piano for him. Played it, I understand, like one o'clock beautiful! As to

languagesspeaks anything. We've had a Frenchman here in his time, and it's my opinion he knowed more

French than the Frenchman did. We've had an Italian here in his time, and he shut him up in about half a

minute. You'll find some characters behind other locks, I don't say you won't; but if you want the top sawyer

When his youngest child was eight years old, his wife, who had long been languishing awayof her own

inherent weakness, not that she retained any greater sensitiveness as to her place of abode than he didwent

upon a visit to a poor friend and old nurse in the country, and died there. He remained shut up in his room for

a fortnight afterwards; and an attorney's clerk, who was going through the Insolvent Court, engrossed an

address of condolence to him, which looked like a Lease, and which all the prisoners signed.

When he appeared again he was greyer (he had soon begun to turn grey); and the turnkey noticed that his

hands went often to his trembling lips again, as they had used to do when he first came in.

But he got pretty well over it in a month or two; and in the meantime the children played about the yard as

Then Mrs Bangham, long popular medium of communication with the outer world, began to be infirm, and to

be found oftener than usual comatose on pavements, with her basket of purchases spilt, and the change of her

clients ninepence short. His son began to supersede Mrs Bangham, and to execute commissions in a knowing

Time went on, and the turnkey began to fail. His chest swelled, and his legs got weak, and he was short of

breath. The wellworn wooden stool was 'beyond him,' he complained. He sat in an arm chair with a

cushion, and sometimes wheezed so, for minutes together, that he couldn't turn the key. When he was

overpowered by these fits, the debtor often turned it for him. 'You and me,' said the turnkey, one snowy

winter's night when the lodge, with a bright fire in it, was pretty full of company, 'is the oldest inhabitants. I

wasn't here myself above seven year before you. I shan't last long. When I'm off the lock for good and all,

The turnkey went off the lock of this world next day. His words were remembered and repeated; and tradition

afterwards handed down from generation to generationa Marshalsea generation might be calculated as

about three monthsthat the shabby old debtor with the soft manner and the white hair, was the Father of the

And he grew to be proud of the title. If any impostor had arisen to claim it, he would have shed tears in

resentment of the attempt to deprive him of his rights. A disposition began to be perceived in him to

exaggerate the number of years he had been there; it was generally understood that you must deduct a few

All newcomers were presented to him. He was punctilious in the exaction of this ceremony. The wits would

perform the office of introduction with overcharged pomp and politeness, but they could not easily overstep

his sense of its gravity. He received them in his poor room (he disliked an introduction in the mere yard, as

informala thing that might happen to anybody), with a kind of boweddown beneficence. They were

welcome to the Marshalsea, he would tell them. Yes, he was the Father of the place. So the world was kind

enough to call him; and so he was, if more than twenty years of residence gave him a claim to the title. It

looked small at first, but there was very good company thereamong a mixturenecessarily a

It became a not unusual circumstance for letters to be put under his door at night, enclosing halfacrown,

two halfcrowns, now and then at long intervals even halfasovereign, for the Father of the Marshalsea.

'With the compliments of a collegian taking leave.' He received the gifts as tributes, from admirers, to a

public character. Sometimes these correspondents assumed facetious names, as the Brick, Bellows, Old

Gooseberry, Wideawake, Snooks, Mops, Cutaway, the Dogsmeat Man; but he considered this in bad taste,

In the fulness of time, this correspondence showing signs of wearing out, and seeming to require an effort on

the part of the correspondents to which in the hurried circumstances of departure many of them might not be

equal, he established the custom of attending collegians of a certain standing, to the gate, and taking leave of

them there. The collegian under treatment, after shaking hands, would occasionally stop to wrap up

He would look round surprised.'Me?' he would say, with a smile. By this time the collegian would be up with

him, and he would paternally add,'What have you forgotten? What can I do for you?'

'I forgot to leave this,' the collegian would usually return, 'for the Father of the Marshalsea.'

'My good sir,' he would rejoin, 'he is infinitely obliged to you.' But, to the last, the irresolute hand of old

would remain in the pocket into which he had slipped the money during two or three turns about the yard, lest

One afternoon he had been doing the honours of the place to a rather large party of collegians, who happened

to be going out, when, as he was coming back, he encountered one from the poor side who had been taken in

execution for a small sum a week before, had 'settled' in the course of that afternoon, and was going out too.

The man was a mere Plasterer in his working dress; had his wife with him, and a bundle; and was in high

They were pretty far divided, going their several ways, when the Plasterer called out, 'I say!sir!' and came

'It ain't much,' said the Plasterer, putting a little pile of halfpence in his hand, 'but it's well meant.'

The Father of the Marshalsea had never been offered tribute in copper yet. His children often had, and with

his perfect acquiescence it had gone into the common purse to buy meat that he had eaten, and drink that he

had drunk; but fustian splashed with white lime, bestowing halfpence on him, front to front, was new.

The Plasterer turned him towards the wall, that his face might not be seen; and the action was so delicate, and

the man was so penetrated with repentance, and asked pardon so honestly, that he could make him no less

'Bless your soul, sir,' urged the Plasterer, 'I did indeed. I'd do more by you than the rest of 'em do, I fancy.'

'Give me the money again,' said the other, eagerly, 'and I'll keep it, and never spend it. Thank you for it, thank

They shook hands and parted. The collegians, assembled in Symposium in the Snuggery that night, marvelled

what had happened to their Father; he walked so late in the shadows of the yard, and seemed so downcast.

The baby whose first draught of air had been tinctured with Doctor Haggage's brandy, was handed down

among the generations of collegians, like the tradition of their common parent. In the earlier stages of her

existence, she was handed down in a literal and prosaic sense; it being almost a part of the entrance footing of

'By rights,' remarked the turnkey when she was first shown to him, 'I ought to be her godfather.'

The debtor irresolutely thought of it for a minute, and said, 'Perhaps you wouldn't object to really being her

Thus it came to pass that she was christened one Sunday afternoon, when the turnkey, being relieved, was off

the lock; and that the turnkey went up to the font of Saint George's Church, and promised and vowed and

renounced on her behalf, as he himself related when he came back, 'like a good 'un.'

This invested the turnkey with a new proprietary share in the child, over and above his former official one.

When she began to walk and talk, he became fond of her; bought a little armchair and stood it by the high

fender of the lodge fireplace; liked to have her company when he was on the lock; and used to bribe her

with cheap toys to come and talk to him. The child, for her part, soon grew so fond of the turnkey that she

would come climbing up the lodgesteps of her own accord at all hours of the day. When she fell asleep in

the little armchair by the high fender, the turnkey would cover her with his pockethandkerchief; and when

she sat in it dressing and undressing a doll which soon came to be unlike dolls on the other side of the lock,

and to bear a horrible family resemblance to Mrs Banghamhe would contemplate her from the top of his

stool with exceeding gentleness. Witnessing these things, the collegians would express an opinion that the

turnkey, who was a bachelor, had been cut out by nature for a family man. But the turnkey thanked them, and

said, 'No, on the whole it was enough to see other people's children there.' At what period of her early life the

little creature began to perceive that it was not the habit of all the world to live locked up in narrow yards

surrounded by high walls with spikes at the top, would be a difficult question to settle. But she was a very,

very little creature indeed, when she had somehow gained the knowledge that her clasp of her father's hand

was to be always loosened at the door which the great key opened; and that while her own light steps were

free to pass beyond it, his feet must never cross that line. A pitiful and plaintive look, with which she had

begun to regard him when she was still extremely young, was perhaps a part of this discovery.

With a pitiful and plaintive look for everything, indeed, but with something in it for only him that was like

protection, this Child of the Marshalsea and the child of the Father of the Marshalsea, sat by her friend the

turnkey in the lodge, kept the family room, or wandered about the prisonyard, for the first eight years of her

life. With a pitiful and plaintive look for her wayward sister; for her idle brother; for the high blank walls; for

the faded crowd they shut in; for the games of the prison children as they whooped and ran, and played at

Wistful and wondering, she would sit in summer weather by the high fender in the lodge, looking up at the

sky through the barred window, until, when she turned her eyes away, bars of light would arise between her

and her friend, and she would see him through a grating, too. 'Thinking of the fields,' the turnkey said once,

'Why, they'reover there, my dear,' said the turnkey, with a vague flourish of his key. 'Just about there.'

'Are they very pretty, Bob?' She called him Bob, by his own particular request and instruction.

'Lovely. Full of flowers. There's buttercups, and there's daisies, and there's'the turnkey hesitated, being

'Nor any of the people?' she asked, glancing at the listless crowd within. 'O are you quite sure and certain,

At this difficult point of the conversation Bob gave in, and changed the subject to hardbake: always his last

resource when he found his little friend getting him into a political, social, or theological corner. But this was

the origin of a series of Sunday excursions that these two curious companions made together. They used to

issue from the lodge on alternate Sunday afternoons with great gravity, bound for some meadows or green

lanes that had been elaborately appointed by the turnkey in the course of the week; and there she picked grass

and flowers to bring home, while he smoked his pipe. Afterwards, there were teagardens, shrimps, ale, and

other delicacies; and then they would come back hand in hand, unless she was more than usually tired, and

In those early days, the turnkey first began profoundly to consider a question which cost him so much mental

labour, that it remained undetermined on the day of his death. He decided to will and bequeath his little

property of savings to his godchild, and the point arose how could it be so 'tied up' as that only she should

have the benefit of it? His experience on the lock gave him such an acute perception of the enormous

difficulty of 'tying up' money with any approach to tightness, and contrariwise of the remarkable ease with

which it got loose, that through a series of years he regularly propounded this knotty point to every new

'Supposing,' he would say, stating the case with his key on the professional gentleman's waistcoat; 'supposing

a man wanted to leave his property to a young female, and wanted to tie it up so that nobody else should ever

'Settle it strictly on herself,' the professional gentleman would complacently answer.

'But look here,' quoth the turnkey. 'Supposing she had, say a brother, say a father, say a husband, who would

'It would be settled on herself, and they would have no more legal claim on it than you,' would be the

'Stop a bit,' said the turnkey. 'Supposing she was tenderhearted, and they came over her. Where's your law

The deepest character whom the turnkey sounded, was unable to produce his law for tying such a knot as that.

But that was long afterwards, when his goddaughter was past sixteen. The first half of that space of her life

was only just accomplished, when her pitiful and plaintive look saw her father a widower. From that time the

protection that her wondering eyes had expressed towards him, became embodied in action, and the Child of

At first, such a baby could do little more than sit with him, deserting her livelier place by the high fender, and

quietly watching him. But this made her so far necessary to him that he became accustomed to her, and began

to be sensible of missing her when she was not there. Through this little gate, she passed out of childhood

What her pitiful look saw, at that early time, in her father, in her sister, in her brother, in the jail; how much,

or how little of the wretched truth it pleased God to make visible to her; lies hidden with many mysteries. It is

enough that she was inspired to be something which was not what the rest were, and to be that something,

different and laborious, for the sake of the rest. Inspired? Yes. Shall we speak of the inspiration of a poet or a

priest, and not of the heart impelled by love and selfdevotion to the lowliest work in the lowliest way of life!

With no earthly friend to help her, or so much as to see her, but the one so strangely assorted; with no

knowledge even of the common daily tone and habits of the common members of the free community who

are not shut up in prisons; born and bred in a social condition, false even with a reference to the falsest

condition outside the walls; drinking from infancy of a well whose waters had their own peculiar stain, their

own unwholesome and unnatural taste; the Child of the Marshalsea began her womanly life.

No matter through what mistakes and discouragements, what ridicule (not unkindly meant, but deeply felt) of

her youth and little figure, what humble consciousness of her own babyhood and want of strength, even in the

matter of lifting and carrying; through how much weariness and hopelessness, and how many secret tears; she

drudged on, until recognised as useful, even indispensable. That time came. She took the place of eldest of

the three, in all things but precedence; was the head of the fallen family; and bore, in her own heart, its

At thirteen, she could read and keep accounts, that is, could put down in words and figures how much the

bare necessaries that they wanted would cost, and how much less they had to buy them with. She had been,

by snatches of a few weeks at a time, to an evening school outside, and got her sister and brother sent to

dayschools by desultory starts, during three or four years. There was no instruction for any of them at home;

but she knew wellno one betterthat a man so broken as to be the Father of the Marshalsea, could be no

To these scanty means of improvement, she added another of her own contriving. Once, among the

heterogeneous crowd of inmates there appeared a dancingmaster. Her sister had a great desire to learn the

dancingmaster's art, and seemed to have a taste that way. At thirteen years old, the Child of the Marshalsea

presented herself to the dancingmaster, with a little bag in her hand, and preferred her humble petition.

'Oh! You are the young lady, are you?' said the dancingmaster, surveying the small figure and uplifted face.

'Nothing for me, sir, thank you,' anxiously undrawing the strings of the little bag; 'but if, while you stay here,

'My child, I'll teach her for nothing,' said the dancingmaster, shutting up the bag. He was as goodnatured a

dancingmaster as ever danced to the Insolvent Court, and he kept his word. The sister was so apt a pupil,

and the dancingmaster had such abundant leisure to bestow upon her (for it took him a matter of ten weeks

to set to his creditors, lead off, turn the Commissioners, and right and left back to his professional pursuits),

that wonderful progress was made. Indeed the dancingmaster was so proud of it, and so wishful to display it

before he left to a few select friends among the collegians, that at six o'clock on a certain fine morning, a

minuet de la cour came off in the yardthe college rooms being of too confined proportions for the

purposein which so much ground was covered, and the steps were so conscientiously executed, that the

The success of this beginning, which led to the dancingmaster's continuing his instruction after his release,

emboldened the poor child to try again. She watched and waited months for a seamstress. In the fulness of

'I beg your pardon, ma'am,' she said, looking timidly round the door of the milliner, whom she found in tears

Everybody seemed to hear of her as soon as they arrived; for the milliner sat up in bed, drying her eyes, and

'I am sorry I haven't got anything for you,' said the milliner, shaking her head.

'Why should you do that,' returned the milliner, 'with me before you? It has not done me much good.'

'Nothingwhatever it isseems to have done anybody much good who comes here,' she returned in all

'Yes, I am afraid I am very little indeed,' returned the Child of the Marshalsea; and so began to sob over that

unfortunate defect of hers, which came so often in her way. The millinerwho was not morose or

hardhearted, only newly insolventwas touched, took her in hand with goodwill, found her the most

patient and earnest of pupils, and made her a cunning workwoman in course of time.

In course of time, and in the very selfsame course of time, the Father of the Marshalsea gradually developed

a new flower of character. The more Fatherly he grew as to the Marshalsea, and the more dependent he

became on the contributions of his changing family, the greater stand he made by his forlorn gentility. With

the same hand that he pocketed a collegian's halfcrown half an hour ago, he would wipe away the tears that

streamed over his cheeks if any reference were made to his daughters' earning their bread. So, over and above

other daily cares, the Child of the Marshalsea had always upon her the care of preserving the genteel fiction

The sister became a dancer. There was a ruined uncle in the family groupruined by his brother, the Father

of the Marshalsea, and knowing no more how than his ruiner did, but accepting the fact as an inevitable

certaintyon whom her protection devolved. Naturally a retired and simple man, he had shown no particular

sense of being ruined at the time when that calamity fell upon him, further than that he left off washing

himself when the shock was announced, and never took to that luxury any more. He had been a very

indifferent musical amateur in his better days; and when he fell with his brother, resorted for support to

playing a clarionet as dirty as himself in a small Theatre Orchestra. It was the theatre in which his niece

became a dancer; he had been a fixture there a long time when she took her poor station in it; and he accepted

the task of serving as her escort and guardian, just as he would have accepted an illness, a legacy, a feast,

To enable this girl to earn her few weekly shillings, it was necessary for the Child of the Marshalsea to go

'Fanny is not going to live with us just now, father. She will be here a good deal in the day, but she is going to

'I think uncle wants a companion, father. He should be attended to, and looked after.'

'A companion? He passes much of his time here. And you attend to him and look after him, Amy, a great deal

more than ever your sister will. You all go out so much; you all go out so much.'

This was to keep up the ceremony and pretence of his having no idea that Amy herself went out by the day to

'But we are always glad to come home, father; now, are we not? And as to Fanny, perhaps besides keeping

uncle company and taking care of him, it may be as well for her not quite to live here, always. She was not

'Well, Amy, well. I don't quite follow you, but it's natural I suppose that Fanny should prefer to be outside,

and even that you often should, too. So, you and Fanny and your uncle, my dear, shall have your own way.

To get her brother out of the prison; out of the succession to Mrs Bangham in executing commissions, and

out of the slang interchange with very doubtful companions consequent upon both; was her hardest task. At

eighteen he would have dragged on from hand to mouth, from hour to hour, from penny to penny, until

eighty. Nobody got into the prison from whom he derived anything useful or good, and she could find no

'Dear Bob,' said she, 'what is to become of poor Tip?' His name was Edward, and Ted had been transformed

The turnkey had strong private opinions as to what would become of poor Tip, and had even gone so far with

the view of averting their fulfilment, as to sound Tip in reference to the expediency of running away and

going to serve his country. But Tip had thanked him, and said he didn't seem to care for his country.

'Well, my dear,' said the turnkey, 'something ought to be done with him. Suppose I try and get him into the

The turnkey had now two points to put to the professional gentlemen as they passed in and out. He put this

second one so perseveringly that a stool and twelve shillings a week were at last found for Tip in the office of

an attorney in a great National Palladium called the Palace Court; at that time one of a considerable list of

everlasting bulwarks to the dignity and safety of Albion, whose places know them no more.

Tip languished in Clifford's Inns for six months, and at the expiration of that term sauntered back one evening

with his hands in his pockets, and incidentally observed to his sister that he was not going back again.

'Not going back again?' said the poor little anxious Child of the Marshalsea, always calculating and planning

Tip tired of everything. With intervals of Marshalsea lounging, and Mrs Bangham succession, his small

second mother, aided by her trusty friend, got him into a warehouse, into a market garden, into the hop trade,

into the law again, into an auctioneers, into a brewery, into a stockbroker's, into the law again, into a coach

office, into a waggon office, into the law again, into a general dealer's, into a distillery, into the law again,

into a wool house, into a dry goods house, into the Billingsgate trade, into the foreign fruit trade, and into the

docks. But whatever Tip went into, he came out of tired, announcing that he had cut it. Wherever he went,

this foredoomed Tip appeared to take the prison walls with him, and to set them up in such trade or calling;

and to prowl about within their narrow limits in the old slipshod, purposeless, downatheel way; until the

real immovable Marshalsea walls asserted their fascination over him, and brought him back.

Nevertheless, the brave little creature did so fix her heart on her brother's rescue, that while he was ringing

out these doleful changes, she pinched and scraped enough together to ship him for Canada. When he was

tired of nothing to do, and disposed in its turn to cut even that, he graciously consented to go to Canada. And

there was grief in her bosom over parting with him, and joy in the hope of his being put in a straight course at

'God bless you, dear Tip. Don't be too proud to come and see us, when you have made your fortune.'

After making the voyage to that port from London, he found himself so strongly impelled to cut the vessel,

that he resolved to walk back again. Carrying out which intention, he presented himself before her at the

expiration of a month, in rags, without shoes, and much more tired than ever. At length, after another interval

of successorship to Mrs Bangham, he found a pursuit for himself, and announced it.

'All right. I shall do now. You needn't look anxious about me any more, old girl.'

She lost sight of him for months afterwards, and only heard from him once. A whisper passed among the

elder collegians that he had been seen at a mock auction in Moorfields, pretending to buy plated articles for

massive silver, and paying for them with the greatest liberality in bank notes; but it never reached her ears.

One evening she was alone at workstanding up at the window, to save the twilight lingering above the

She kissed and welcomed him; but was afraid to ask him any questions. He saw how anxious and timid she

'Not expecting this time that what you had found would answer very well, I am less surprised and sorry than I

'Don't look so startled. No, Amy, not the worst of it. I have come back, you see; butDON'T look so

startledI have come back in what I may call a new way. I am off the volunteer list altogether. I am in now,

'Well, I don't want to say it,' he returned in a reluctant tone; 'but if you can't understand me without my saying

For the first time in all those years, she sunk under her cares. She cried, with her clasped hands lifted above

her head, that it would kill their father if he ever knew it; and fell down at Tip's graceless feet.

It was easier for Tip to bring her to her senses than for her to bring him to understand that the Father of the

Marshalsea would be beside himself if he knew the truth. The thing was incomprehensible to Tip, and

altogether a fanciful notion. He yielded to it in that light only, when he submitted to her entreaties, backed by

those of his uncle and sister. There was no want of precedent for his return; it was accounted for to the father

in the usual way; and the collegians, with a better comprehension of the pious fraud than Tip, supported it

This was the life, and this the history, of the child of the Marshalsea at twentytwo. With a still surviving

attachment to the one miserable yard and block of houses as her birthplace and home, she passed to and fro in

it shrinkingly now, with a womanly consciousness that she was pointed out to every one. Since she had begun

to work beyond the walls, she had found it necessary to conceal where she lived, and to come and go as

secretly as she could, between the free city and the iron gates, outside of which she had never slept in her life.

Her original timidity had grown with this concealment, and her light step and her little figure shunned the

Worldly wise in hard and poor necessities, she was innocent in all things else. Innocent, in the mist through

which she saw her father, and the prison, and the turbid living river that flowed through it and flowed on.

This was the life, and this the history, of Little Dorrit; now going home upon a dull September evening,

observed at a distance by Arthur Clennam. This was the life, and this the history, of Little Dorrit; turning at

the end of London Bridge, recrossing it, going back again, passing on to Saint George's Church, turning back

suddenly once more, and flitting in at the open outer gate and little courtyard of the Marshalsea.

Arthur Clennam stood in the street, waiting to ask some passerby what place that was. He suffered a few

people to pass him in whose face there was no encouragement to make the inquiry, and still stood pausing in

He stooped a good deal, and plodded along in a slow preoccupied manner, which made the bustling London

thoroughfares no very safe resort for him. He was dirtily and meanly dressed, in a threadbare coat, once blue,

reaching to his ankles and buttoned to his chin, where it vanished in the pale ghost of a velvet collar. A piece

of red cloth with which that phantom had been stiffened in its lifetime was now laid bare, and poked itself up,

at the back of the old man's neck, into a confusion of grey hair and rusty stock and buckle which altogether

nearly poked his hat off. A greasy hat it was, and a napless; impending over his eyes, cracked and crumpled

at the brim, and with a wisp of pockethandkerchief dangling out below it. His trousers were so long and

loose, and his shoes so clumsy and large, that he shuffled like an elephant; though how much of this was gait,

and how much trailing cloth and leather, no one could have told. Under one arm he carried a limp and

wornout case, containing some wind instrument; in the same hand he had a pennyworth of snuff in a little

packet of whiteybrown paper, from which he slowly comforted his poor blue old nose with a lengthened

out pinch, as Arthur Clennam looked at him. To this old man crossing the courtyard, he preferred his

inquiry, touching him on the shoulder. The old man stopped and looked round, with the expression in his

weak grey eyes of one whose thoughts had been far off, and who was a little dull of hearing also.

'Ay! This place?' returned the old man, staying his pinch of snuff on its road, and pointing at the place

'Sir,' said the old man, with the air of deeming it not quite necessary to insist upon that designation, 'the

'I beg your pardon,' said Arthur, stopping him once more, 'but will you allow me to ask you another question?

'Any one can go IN,' replied the old man; plainly adding by the significance of his emphasis, 'but it is not

'Sir,' returned the old man, squeezing his little packet of snuff in his hand, and turning upon his interrogator as

'I beg you to excuse me. I am not impertinently curious, but have a good object. Do you know the name of

Arthur pulled off his hat to him. 'Grant me the favour of halfa dozen words. I was wholly unprepared for

your announcement, and hope that assurance is my sufficient apology for having taken the liberty of

addressing you. I have recently come home to England after a long absence. I have seen at my

mother'sMrs Clennam in the citya young woman working at her needle, whom I have only heard

addressed or spoken of as Little Dorrit. I have felt sincerely interested in her, and have had a great desire to

know something more about her. I saw her, not a minute before you came up, pass in at that door.'

The old man looked at him attentively. 'Are you a sailor, sir?' he asked. He seemed a little disappointed by the

shake of the head that replied to him. 'Not a sailor? I judged from your sunburnt face that you might be. Are

'I do assure you that I am, and do entreat you to believe that I am, in plain earnest.'

'I know very little of the world, sir,' returned the other, who had a weak and quavering voice. 'I am merely

passing on, like the shadow over the sundial. It would be worth no man's while to mislead me; it would

really be too easytoo poor a success, to yield any satisfaction. The young woman whom you saw go in

here is my brother's child. My brother is William Dorrit; I am Frederick. You say you have seen her at your

mother's (I know your mother befriends her), you have felt an interest in her, and you wish to know what she

'My brother,' said the old man, pausing on the step and slowly facing round again, 'has been here many years;

and much that happens even among ourselves, out of doors, is kept from him for reasons that I needn't enter

upon now. Be so good as to say nothing of my niece's working at her needle. Be so good as to say nothing

that goes beyond what is said among us. If you keep within our bounds, you cannot well be wrong. Now!

Arthur followed him down a narrow entry, at the end of which a key was turned, and a strong door was

opened from within. It admitted them into a lodge or lobby, across which they passed, and so through another

door and a grating into the prison. The old man always plodding on before, turned round, in his slow, stiff,

stooping manner, when they came to the turnkey on duty, as if to present his companion. The turnkey

The night was dark; and the prison lamps in the yard, and the candles in the prison windows faintly shining

behind many sorts of wry old curtain and blind, had not the air of making it lighter. A few people loitered

about, but the greater part of the population was within doors. The old man, taking the righthand side of the

yard, turned in at the third or fourth doorway, and began to ascend the stairs. 'They are rather dark, sir, but

He paused for a moment before opening a door on the second story. He had no sooner turned the handle than

the visitor saw Little Dorrit, and saw the reason of her setting so much store by dining alone.

She had brought the meat home that she should have eaten herself, and was already warming it on a gridiron

over the fire for her father, clad in an old grey gown and a black cap, awaiting his supper at the table. A clean

cloth was spread before him, with knife, fork, and spoon, saltcellar, pepperbox, glass, and pewter alepot.

Such zests as his particular little phial of cayenne pepper and his pennyworth of pickles in a saucer, were not

She started, coloured deeply, and turned white. The visitor, more with his eyes than by the slight impulsive

'I found this gentleman,' said the uncle'Mr Clennam, William, son of Amy's friendat the outer gate,

wishful, as he was going by, of paying his respects, but hesitating whether to come in or not. This is my

'I hope,' said Arthur, very doubtful what to say, 'that my respect for your daughter may explain and justify my

'Mr Clennam,' returned the other, rising, taking his cap off in the flat of his hand, and so holding it, ready to

put on again, 'you do me honour. You are welcome, sir;' with a low bow. 'Frederick, a chair. Pray sit down,

He put his black cap on again as he had taken it off, and resumed his own seat. There was a wonderful air of

benignity and patronage in his manner. These were the ceremonies with which he received the collegians.

'You are welcome to the Marshalsea, sir. I have welcomed many gentlemen to these walls. Perhaps you are

'You know, I dare say, that my daughter Amy was born here. A good girl, sir, a dear girl, and long a comfort

and support to me. Amy, my dear, put this dish on; Mr Clennam will excuse the primitive customs to which

we are reduced here. Is it a compliment to ask you if you would do me the honour, sir, to'

He felt himself quite lost in wonder at the manner of the man, and that the probability of his daughter's

having had a reserve as to her family history, should be so far out of his mind.

She filled his glass, put all the little matters on the table ready to his hand, and then sat beside him while he

ate his supper. Evidently in observance of their nightly custom, she put some bread before herself, and

touched his glass with her lips; but Arthur saw she was troubled and took nothing. Her look at her father, half

admiring him and proud of him, half ashamed for him, all devoted and loving, went to his inmost heart.

The Father of the Marshalsea condescended towards his brother as an amiable, wellmeaning man; a private

character, who had not arrived at distinction. 'Frederick,' said he, 'you and Fanny sup at your lodgings

tonight, I know. What have you done with Fanny, Frederick?' 'She is walking with Tip.'

'Tipas you may knowis my son, Mr Clennam. He has been a little wild, and difficult to settle, but his

introduction to the world was rather'he shrugged his shoulders with a faint sigh, and looked round the

'You could hardly have been here since your boyhood without my knowledge. It very seldom happens that

anybodyof any pretensionsany pretensionscomes here without being presented to me.'

'As many as forty or fifty in a day have been introduced to my brother,' said Frederick, faintly lighting up

'Yes!' the Father of the Marshalsea assented. 'We have even exceeded that number. On a fine Sunday in term

time, it is quite a Leveequite a Levee. Amy, my dear, I have been trying half the day to remember the

name of the gentleman from Camberwell who was introduced to me last Christmas week by that agreeable

'Frederick, do you remember his name?' Frederick doubted if he had ever heard it. No one could doubt that

Frederick was the last person upon earth to put such a question to, with any hope of information.

'I mean,' said his brother, 'the gentleman who did that handsome action with so much delicacy. Ha! Tush! The

name has quite escaped me. Mr Clennam, as I have happened to mention handsome and delicate action, you

'Very much,' said Arthur, withdrawing his eyes from the delicate head beginning to droop and the pale face

'It is so generous, and shows so much fine feeling, that it is almost a duty to mention it. I said at the time that

I always would mention it on every suitable occasion, without regard to personal sensitiveness.

Awellait's of no use to disguise the factyou must know, Mr Clennam, that it does sometimes occur

that people who come here desire to offer some littleTestimonialto the Father of the place.'

To see her hand upon his arm in mute entreaty halfrepressed, and her timid little shrinking figure turning

'Sometimes,' he went on in a low, soft voice, agitated, and clearing his throat every now and then;

'sometimeshemit takes one shape and sometimes another; but it is generallyhaMoney. And it is, I

cannot but confess it, it is too oftenhem acceptable. This gentleman that I refer to, was presented to me,

Mr Clennam, in a manner highly gratifying to my feelings, and conversed not only with great politeness, but

with greatahem information.' All this time, though he had finished his supper, he was nervously going

about his plate with his knife and fork, as if some of it were still before him. 'It appeared from his

conversation that he had a garden, though he was delicate of mentioning it at first, as gardens arehemare

not accessible to me. But it came out, through my admiring a very fine cluster of geraniumbeautiful cluster

of geranium to be surewhich he had brought from his conservatory. On my taking notice of its rich colour,

he showed me a piece of paper round it, on which was written, "For the Father of the Marshalsea," and

presented it to me. But this washemnot all. He made a particular request, on taking leave, that I would

remove the paper in half an hour. I haI did so; and I found that it containedahemtwo guineas. I

assure you, Mr Clennam, I have receivedhemTestimonials in many ways, and of many degrees of value,

and they have always beenha unfortunately acceptable; but I never was more pleased than with

thisahemthis particular Testimonial.' Arthur was in the act of saying the little he could say on such a

theme, when a bell began to ring, and footsteps approached the door. A pretty girl of a far better figure and

much more developed than Little Dorrit, though looking much younger in the face when the two were

observed together, stopped in the doorway on seeing a stranger; and a young man who was with her, stopped

'Mr Clennam, Fanny. My eldest daughter and my son, Mr Clennam. The bell is a signal for visitors to retire,

and so they have come to say good night; but there is plenty of time, plenty of time. Girls, Mr Clennam will

excuse any household business you may have together. He knows, I dare say, that I have but one room here.'

Amy opened a drawer in an old piece of furniture that was a chest of drawers above and a bedstead below,

and produced two little bundles, which she handed to her brother and sister. 'Mended and made up?' Clennam

heard the sister ask in a whisper. To which Amy answered 'Yes.' He had risen now, and took the opportunity

of glancing round the room. The bare walls had been coloured green, evidently by an unskilled hand, and

were poorly decorated with a few prints. The window was curtained, and the floor carpeted; and there were

shelves and pegs, and other such conveniences, that had accumulated in the course of years. It was a close,

confined room, poorly furnished; and the chimney smoked to boot, or the tin screen at the top of the fireplace

was superfluous; but constant pains and care had made it neat, and even, after its kind, comfortable. All the

while the bell was ringing, and the uncle was anxious to go. 'Come, Fanny, come, Fanny,' he said, with his

Fanny bade her father good night, and whisked off airily. Tip had already clattered downstairs. 'Now, Mr

Clennam,' said the uncle, looking back as he shuffled out after them, 'the lock, sir, the lock.'

Mr Clennam had two things to do before he followed; one, to offer his testimonial to the Father of the

Marshalsea, without giving pain to his child; the other to say something to that child, though it were but a

She had slipped out after the rest, and they were alone. 'Not on any account,' said the visitor, hurriedly. 'Pray

'Mr Clennam,' said the Father, 'I am deeply, deeply' But his visitor had shut up his hand to stop the

He saw no Little Dorrit on his way down, or in the yard. The last two or three stragglers were hurrying to the

lodge, and he was following, when he caught sight of her in the doorway of the first house from the entrance.

'Pray forgive me,' he said, 'for speaking to you here; pray forgive me for coming here at all! I followed you

tonight. I did so, that I might endeavour to render you and your family some service. You know the terms

on which I and my mother are, and may not be surprised that I have preserved our distant relations at her

house, lest I should unintentionally make her jealous, or resentful, or do you any injury in her estimation.

What I have seen here, in this short time, has greatly increased my heartfelt wish to be a friend to you. It

would recompense me for much disappointment if I could hope to gain your confidence.'

'You are very good, sir. You speak very earnestly to me. But I but I wish you had not watched me.'

He understood the emotion with which she said it, to arise in her father's behalf; and he respected it, and was

'Mrs Clennam has been of great service to me; I don't know what we should have done without the

employment she has given me; I am afraid it may not be a good return to become secret with her; I can say no

more tonight, sir. I am sure you mean to be kind to us. Thank you, thank you.' 'Let me ask you one question

'No. She does not even know that I live here. We have a friend, father and Ia poor labouring man, but the

best of friendsand I wrote out that I wished to do needlework, and gave his address. And he got what I

wrote out displayed at a few places where it cost nothing, and Mrs Clennam found me that way, and sent for

She was so tremulous and agitated, and he was so moved by compassion for her, and by deep interest in her

story as it dawned upon him, that he could scarcely tear himself away. But the stoppage of the bell, and the

quiet in the prison, were a warning to depart; and with a few hurried words of kindness he left her gliding

But he remained too late. The inner gate was locked, and the lodge closed. After a little fruitless knocking

with his hand, he was standing there with the disagreeable conviction upon him that he had got to get through

'Caught, eh?' said the voice. 'You won't go home till morning. Oh! It's you, is it, Mr Clennam?'

The voice was Tip's; and they stood looking at one another in the prisonyard, as it began to rain.

'I believe I am!' said Tip, sarcastically. 'About! But not in your way. I belong to the shop, only my sister has a

'We had better get hold of Amy first of all,' said Tip, referring any difficulty to her as a matter of course.

'You needn't do that, if you don't mind paying for a bed. If you don't mind paying, they'll make you up one on

the Snuggery table, under the circumstances. If you'll come along, I'll introduce you there.'

As they passed down the yard, Arthur looked up at the window of the room he had lately left, where the light

was still burning. 'Yes, sir,' said Tip, following his glance. 'That's the governor's. She'll sit with him for

another hour reading yesterday's paper to him, or something of that sort; and then she'll come out like a little

'The governor sleeps up in the room, and she has a lodging at the turnkey's. First house there,' said Tip,

pointing out the doorway into which she had retired. 'First house, sky parlour. She pays twice as much for it

as she would for one twice as good outside. But she stands by the governor, poor dear girl, day and night.'

This brought them to the tavernestablishment at the upper end of the prison, where the collegians had just

vacated their social evening club. The apartment on the groundfloor in which it was held, was the Snuggery

in question; the presidential tribune of the chairman, the pewterpots, glasses, pipes, tobaccoashes, and

general flavour of members, were still as that convivial institution had left them on its adjournment. The

Snuggery had two of the qualities popularly held to be essential to grog for ladies, in respect that it was hot

and strong; but in the third point of analogy, requiring plenty of it, the Snuggery was defective; being but a

The unaccustomed visitor from outside, naturally assumed everybody here to be prisonerslandlord, waiter,

barmaid, potboy, and all. Whether they were or not, did not appear; but they all had a weedy look. The keeper

of a chandler's shop in a front parlour, who took in gentlemen boarders, lent his assistance in making the bed.

He had been a tailor in his time, and had kept a phaeton, he said. He boasted that he stood up litigiously for

the interests of the college; and he had undefined and undefinable ideas that the marshal intercepted a 'Fund,'

which ought to come to the collegians. He liked to believe this, and always impressed the shadowy grievance

on newcomers and strangers; though he could not, for his life, have explained what Fund he meant, or how

the notion had got rooted in his soul. He had fully convinced himself, notwithstanding, that his own proper

share of the Fund was three and ninepence a week; and that in this amount he, as an individual collegian, was

swindled by the marshal, regularly every Monday. Apparently, he helped to make the bed, that he might not

lose an opportunity of stating this case; after which unloading of his mind, and after announcing (as it seemed

he always did, without anything coming of it) that he was going to write a letter to the papers and show the

marshal up, he fell into miscellaneous conversation with the rest. It was evident from the general tone of the

whole party, that they had come to regard insolvency as the normal state of mankind, and the payment of

debts as a disease that occasionally broke out. In this strange scene, and with these strange spectres flitting

about him, Arthur Clennam looked on at the preparations as if they were part of a dream. Pending which, the

longinitiated Tip, with an awful enjoyment of the Snuggery's resources, pointed out the common kitchen

fire maintained by subscription of collegians, the boiler for hot water supported in like manner, and other

premises generally tending to the deduction that the way to be healthy, wealthy, and wise, was to come to the

The two tables put together in a corner, were, at length, converted into a very fair bed; and the stranger was

left to the Windsor chairs, the presidential tribune, the beery atmosphere, sawdust, pipelights, spittoons and

repose. But the last item was long, long, long, in linking itself to the rest. The novelty of the place, the

coming upon it without preparation, the sense of being locked up, the remembrance of that room upstairs, of

the two brothers, and above all of the retiring childish form, and the face in which he now saw years of

Speculations, too, bearing the strangest relations towards the prison, but always concerning the prison, ran

like nightmares through his mind while he lay awake. Whether coffins were kept ready for people who might

die there, where they were kept, how they were kept, where people who died in the prison were buried, how

they were taken out, what forms were observed, whether an implacable creditor could arrest the dead? As to

escaping, what chances there were of escape? Whether a prisoner could scale the walls with a cord and

grapple, how he would descend upon the other side? whether he could alight on a housetop, steal down a

staircase, let himself out at a door, and get lost in the crowd? As to Fire in the prison, if one were to break out

And these involuntary starts of fancy were, after all, but the setting of a picture in which three people kept

before him. His father, with the steadfast look with which he had died, prophetically darkened forth in the

portrait; his mother, with her arm up, warding off his suspicion; Little Dorrit, with her hand on the degraded

What if his mother had an old reason she well knew for softening to this poor girl! What if the prisoner now

sleeping quietlyHeaven grant it!by the light of the great Day of judgment should trace back his fall to

her. What if any act of hers and of his father's, should have even remotely brought the grey heads of those

A swift thought shot into his mind. In that long imprisonment here, and in her own long confinement to her

room, did his mother find a balance to be struck? 'I admit that I was accessory to that man's captivity. I have

suffered for it in kind. He has decayed in his prison: I in mine. I have paid the penalty.'

When all the other thoughts had faded out, this one held possession of him. When he fell asleep, she came

before him in her wheeled chair, warding him off with this justification. When he awoke, and sprang up

causelessly frightened, the words were in his ears, as if her voice had slowly spoken them at his pillow, to

break his rest: 'He withers away in his prison; I wither away in mine; inexorable justice is done; what do I

The morning light was in no hurry to climb the prison wall and look in at the Snuggery windows; and when it

did come, it would have been more welcome if it had come alone, instead of bringing a rush of rain with it.

But the equinoctial gales were blowing out at sea, and the impartial southwest wind, in its flight, would not

neglect even the narrow Marshalsea. While it roared through the steeple of St George's Church, and twirled

all the cowls in the neighbourhood, it made a swoop to beat the Southwark smoke into the jail; and, plunging

down the chimneys of the few early collegians who were yet lighting their fires, half suffocated them. Arthur

Clennam would have been little disposed to linger in bed, though his bed had been in a more private

situation, and less affected by the raking out of yesterday's fire, the kindling of to day's under the collegiate

boiler, the filling of that Spartan vessel at the pump, the sweeping and sawdusting of the common room, and

other such preparations. Heartily glad to see the morning, though little rested by the night, he turned out as

soon as he could distinguish objects about him, and paced the yard for two heavy hours before the gate was

The walls were so near to one another, and the wild clouds hurried over them so fast, that it gave him a

sensation like the beginning of seasickness to look up at the gusty sky. The rain, carried aslant by flaws of

wind, blackened that side of the central building which he had visited last night, but left a narrow dry trough

under the lee of the wall, where he walked up and down among the waits of straw and dust and paper, the

waste droppings of the pump, and the stray leaves of yesterday's greens. It was as haggard a view of life as a

Nor was it relieved by any glimpse of the little creature who had brought him there. Perhaps she glided out of

her doorway and in at that where her father lived, while his face was turned from both; but he saw nothing of

her. It was too early for her brother; to have seen him once, was to have seen enough of him to know that he

would be sluggish to leave whatever frowsy bed he occupied at night; so, as Arthur Clennam walked up and

down, waiting for the gate to open, he cast about in his mind for future rather than for present means of

At last the lodgegate turned, and the turnkey, standing on the step, taking an early comb at his hair, was

ready to let him out. With a joyful sense of release he passed through the lodge, and found himself again in

There was a string of people already straggling in, whom it was not difficult to identify as the nondescript

messengers, gobetweens, and errandbearers of the place. Some of them had been lounging in the rain until

the gate should open; others, who had timed their arrival with greater nicety, were coming up now, and

passing in with damp whiteybrown paper bags from the grocers, loaves of bread, lumps of butter, eggs,

milk, and the like. The shabbiness of these attendants upon shabbiness, the poverty of these insolvent waiters

upon insolvency, was a sight to see. Such threadbare coats and trousers, such fusty gowns and shawls, such

squashed hats and bonnets, such boots and shoes, such umbrellas and walkingsticks, never were seen in Rag

Fair. All of them wore the castoff clothes of other men and women, were made up of patches and pieces of

other people's individuality, and had no sartorial existence of their own proper. Their walk was the walk of a

race apart. They had a peculiar way of doggedly slinking round the corner, as if they were eternally going to

the pawnbroker's. When they coughed, they coughed like people accustomed to be forgotten on doorsteps and

in draughty passages, waiting for answers to letters in faded ink, which gave the recipients of those

manuscripts great mental disturbance and no satisfaction. As they eyed the stranger in passing, they eyed him

with borrowing eyeshungry, sharp, speculative as to his softness if they were accredited to him, and the

likelihood of his standing something handsome. Mendicity on commission stooped in their high shoulders,

shambled in their unsteady legs, buttoned and pinned and darned and dragged their clothes, frayed their

buttonholes, leaked out of their figures in dirty little ends of tape, and issued from their mouths in alcoholic

As these people passed him standing still in the courtyard, and one of them turned back to inquire if he

could assist him with his services, it came into Arthur Clennam's mind that he would speak to Little Dorrit

again before he went away. She would have recovered her first surprise, and might feel easier with him. He

asked this member of the fraternity (who had two red herrings in his hand, and a loaf and a blacking brush

under his arm), where was the nearest place to get a cup of coffee at. The nondescript replied in encouraging

The nondescript knew two Miss Dorrits; one who was born inside That was the one! That was the one?

The nondescript had known her many years. In regard of the other Miss Dorrit, the nondescript lodged in the

This changed the client's halfformed design of remaining at the coffeeshop until the nondescript should

bring him word that Dorrit had issued forth into the street. He entrusted the nondescript with a confidential

message to her, importing that the visitor who had waited on her father last night, begged the favour of a few

words with her at her uncle's lodging; he obtained from the same source full directions to the house, which

was very near; dismissed the nondescript gratified with halfacrown; and having hastily refreshed himself at

There were so many lodgers in this house that the doorpost seemed to be as full of bellhandles as a cathedral

organ is of stops. Doubtful which might be the clarionetstop, he was considering the point, when a

shuttlecock flew out of the parlour window, and alighted on his hat. He then observed that in the parlour

window was a blind with the inscription, MR CRIPPLES's ACADEMY; also in another line, EVENING

TUITION; and behind the blind was a little whitefaced boy, with a slice of breadandbutter and a

The window being accessible from the footway, he looked in over the blind, returned the shuttlecock, and put

'Dorrit?' said the little whitefaced boy (Master Cripples in fact). 'Mr Dorrit? Third bell and one knock.' The

pupils of Mr Cripples appeared to have been making a copybook of the streetdoor, it was so extensively

The frequency of the inscriptions, 'Old Dorrit,' and 'Dirty Dick,' in combination, suggested intentions of

personality on the part Of Mr Cripples's pupils. There was ample time to make these observations before the

'Oh!' said he, pondering. 'Out of my brother's way? True. Would you come upstairs and wait for her?'

Turning himself as slowly as he turned in his mind whatever he heard or said, he led the way up the narrow

stairs. The house was very close, and had an unwholesome smell. The little staircase windows looked in at

the back windows of other houses as unwholesome as itself, with poles and lines thrust out of them, on which

unsightly linen hung; as if the inhabitants were angling for clothes, and had had some wretched bites not

worth attending to. In the back garreta sickly room, with a turnup bedstead in it, so hastily and recently

turned up that the blankets were boiling over, as it were, and keeping the lid opena halffinished breakfast

There was no one there. The old man mumbling to himself, after some consideration, that Fanny had run

away, went to the next room to fetch her back. The visitor, observing that she held the door on the inside, and

that, when the uncle tried to open it, there was a sharp adjuration of 'Don't, stupid!' and an appearance of

loose stocking and flannel, concluded that the young lady was in an undress. The uncle, without appearing to

come to any conclusion, shuffled in again, sat down in his chair, and began warming his hands at the fire; not

'What did you think of my brother, sir?' he asked, when he byand by discovered what he was doing, left

'I was glad,' said Arthur, very much at a loss, for his thoughts were on the brother before him; 'to find him so

Arthur wondered what he could possibly want with the clarionet case. He did not want it at all. He

discovered, in due time, that it was not the little paper of snuff (which was also on the chimneypiece), put it

back again, took down the snuff instead, and solaced himself with a pinch. He was as feeble, spare, and slow

in his pinches as in everything else, but a certain little trickling of enjoyment of them played in the poor worn

'I am much impressed, Mr Dorrit, by all that I have seen of her and thought of her.'

'My brother would have been quite lost without Amy,' he returned. 'We should all have been lost without

Arthur fancied that he heard in these praises a certain tone of custom, which he had heard from the father last

night with an inward protest and feeling of antagonism. It was not that they stinted her praises, or were

insensible to what she did for them; but that they were lazily habituated to her, as they were to all the rest of

their condition. He fancied that although they had before them, every day, the means of comparison between

her and one another and themselves, they regarded her as being in her necessary place; as holding a position

towards them all which belonged to her, like her name or her age. He fancied that they viewed her, not as

having risen away from the prison atmosphere, but as appertaining to it; as being vaguely what they had a

Her uncle resumed his breakfast, and was munching toast sopped in coffee, oblivious of his guest, when the

third bell rang. That was Amy, he said, and went down to let her in; leaving the visitor with as vivid a picture

on his mind of his begrimed hands, dirtworn face, and decayed figure, as if he were still drooping in his

She came up after him, in the usual plain dress, and with the usual timid manner. Her lips were a little parted,

'Are you going to my mother's this morning? I think not, for it is past your usual hour.' 'Not today, sir. I am

'Will you allow Me to walk a little way in whatever direction you may be going? I can then speak to you as

we walk, both without detaining you here, and without intruding longer here myself.'

She looked embarrassed, but said, if he pleased. He made a pretence of having mislaid his walkingstick, to

give her time to set the bedstead right, to answer her sister's impatient knock at the wall, and to say a word

softly to her uncle. Then he found it, and they went downstairs; she first, he following; the uncle standing at

the stairhead, and probably forgetting them before they had reached the ground floor.

Mr Cripples's pupils, who were by this time coming to school, desisted from their morning recreation of

cuffing one another with bags and books, to stare with all the eyes they had at a stranger who had been to see

Dirty Dick. They bore the trying spectacle in silence, until the mysterious visitor was at a safe distance; when

they burst into pebbles and yells, and likewise into reviling dances, and in all respects buried the pipe of

peace with so many savage ceremonies, that, if Mr Cripples had been the chief of the Cripplewayboo tribe

with his warpaint on, they could scarcely have done greater justice to their education.

In the midst of this homage, Mr Arthur Clennam offered his arm to Little Dorrit, and Little Dorrit took it.

'Will you go by the Iron Bridge,' said he, 'where there is an escape from the noise of the street?' Little Dorrit

answered, if he pleased, and presently ventured to hope that he would 'not mind' Mr Cripples's boys, for she

had herself received her education, such as it was, in Mr Cripples's evening academy. He returned, with the

best will in the world, that Mr Cripples's boys were forgiven out of the bottom of his soul. Thus did Cripples

unconsciously become a master of the ceremonies between them, and bring them more naturally together

than Beau Nash might have done if they had lived in his golden days, and he had alighted from his coach and

The morning remained squally, and the streets were miserably muddy, but no rain fell as they walked towards

the Iron Bridge. The little creature seemed so young in his eyes, that there were moments when he found

himself thinking of her, if not speaking to her, as if she were a child. Perhaps he seemed as old in her eyes as

'I am sorry to hear you were so inconvenienced last night, sir, as to be locked in. It was very unfortunate.'

'Oh yes!' she said quickly; 'she believed there were excellent beds at the coffeehouse.' He noticed that the

coffeehouse was quite a majestic hotel to her, and that she treasured its reputation. 'I believe it is very

expensive,' said Little Dorrit, 'but MY father has told me that quite beautiful dinners may be got there. And

To think of growing up with a kind of awe upon one as to the luxuries of that superb establishment, the

'I asked you last night,' said Clennam, 'how you had become acquainted with my mother. Did you ever hear

He met her eyes raised to his with so much wonder in them (she was scared when the encounter took place,

'I have a reason for asking, which I cannot very well explain; but you must, on no account, suppose it to be of

a nature to cause you the least alarm or anxiety. Quite the reverse. And you think that at no time of your

He felt, from the tone in which she spoke, that she was glancing up at him with those parted lips; therefore he

looked before him, rather than make her heart beat quicker still by embarrassing her afresh.

Thus they emerged upon the Iron Bridge, which was as quiet after the roaring streets as though it had been

open country. The wind blew roughly, the wet squalls came rattling past them, skimming the pools on the

road and pavement, and raining them down into the river. The clouds raced on furiously in the leadColoured

sky, the smoke and mist raced after them, the dark tide ran fierce and strong in the same direction. Little

She hurriedly declined, saying that wet or dry made little difference to her; she was used to go about in all

weathers. He knew it to be so, and was touched with more pity; thinking of the slight figure at his side,

making its nightly way through the damp dark boisterous streets to such a place of rest. 'You spoke so

feelingly to me last night, sir, and I found afterwards that you had been so generous to my father, that I could

not resist your message, if it was only to thank you; especially as I wished very much to say to you' she

'That I hope you will not misunderstand my father. Don't judge him, sir, as you would judge others outside

the gates. He has been there so long! I never saw him outside, but I can understand that he must have grown

'Not,' she said, with a prouder air, as the misgiving evidently crept upon her that she might seem to be

abandoning him, 'not that he has anything to be ashamed of for himself, or that I have anything to be ashamed

of for him. He only requires to be understood. I only ask for him that his life may be fairly remembered. All

that he said was quite true. It all happened just as he related it. He is very much respected. Everybody who

comes in, is glad to know him. He is more courted than anyone else. He is far more thought of than the

If ever pride were innocent, it was innocent in Little Dorrit when she grew boastful of her father.

'It is often said that his manners are a true gentleman's, and quite a study. I see none like them in that place,

but he is admitted to be superior to all the rest. This is quite as much why they make him presents, as because

they know him to be needy. He is not to be blamed for being in need, poor love. Who could be in prison a

What affection in her words, what compassion in her repressed tears, what a great soul of fidelity within her,

'If I have found it best to conceal where my home is, it is not because I am ashamed of him. God forbid! Nor

am I so much ashamed of the place itself as might be supposed. People are not bad because they come there. I

have known numbers of good, persevering, honest people come there through misfortune. They are almost all

kindhearted to one another. And it would be ungrateful indeed in me, to forget that I have had many quiet,

comfortable hours there; that I had an excellent friend there when I was quite a baby, who was very very fond

of me; that I have been taught there, and have worked there, and have slept soundly there. I think it would be

almost cowardly and cruel not to have some little attachment for it, after all this.'

She had relieved the faithful fulness of her heart, and modestly said, raising her eyes appealingly to her new

friend's, 'I did not mean to say so much, nor have I ever but once spoken about this before. But it seems to set

it more right than it was last night. I said I wished you had not followed me, sir. I don't wish it so much now,

unless you should thinkindeed I don't wish it at all, unless I should have spoken so confusedly, thatthat

He told her with perfect truth that it was not the case; and putting himself between her and the sharp wind and

'I feel permitted now,' he said, 'to ask you a little more concerning your father. Has he many creditors?'

'Can you tell meI can get the information, no doubt, elsewhere, if you cannotwho is the most influential

Little Dorrit said, after considering a little, that she used to hear long ago of Mr Tite Barnacle as a man of

great power. He was a commissioner, or a board, or a trustee, 'or something.' He lived in Grosvenor Square,

she thought, or very near it. He was under Governmenthigh in the Circumlocution Office. She appeared to

have acquired, in her infancy, some awful impression of the might of this formidable Mr Tite Barnacle of

Grosvenor Square, or very near it, and the Circumlocution Office, which quite crushed her when she

The thought did not present itself so quietly but that her quickness intercepted it. 'Ah!' said Little Dorrit,

shaking her head with the mild despair of a lifetime. 'Many people used to think once of getting my poor

She forgot to be shy at the moment, in honestly warning him away from the sunken wreck he had a dream of

raising; and looked at him with eyes which assuredly, in association with her patient face, her fragile figure,

her spare dress, and the wind and rain, did not turn him from his purpose of helping her.

'Even if it could be done,' said she'and it never can be done nowwhere could father live, or how could he

live? I have often thought that if such a change could come, it might be anything but a service to him now.

People might not think so well of him outside as they do there. He might not be so gently dealt with outside

as he is there. He might not be so fit himself for the life outside as he is for that.' Here for the first time she

could not restrain her tears from falling; and the little thin hands he had watched when they were so busy,

' It would be a new distress to him even to know that I earn a little money, and that Fanny earns a little

money. He is so anxious about us, you see, feeling helplessly shut up there. Such a good, good father!'

He let the little burst of feeling go by before he spoke. It was soon gone. She was not accustomed to think of

herself, or to trouble any one with her emotions. He had but glanced away at the piles of city roofs and

chimneys among which the smoke was rolling heavily, and at the wilderness of masts on the river, and the

wilderness of steeples on the shore, indistinctly mixed together in the stormy haze, when she was again as

'Well, we will hope for him at least. You told me last night of a friend you had?'

And where did Plornish live? Plornish lived in Bleeding Heart Yard. He was 'only a plasterer,' Little Dorrit

said, as a caution to him not to form high social expectations of Plornish. He lived at the last house in

Bleeding Heart Yard, and his name was over a little gateway. Arthur took down the address and gave her his.

He had now done all he sought to do for the present, except that he wished to leave her with a reliance upon

'There is one friend!' he said, putting up his pocketbook. 'As I take you backyou are going back?'

'As I take you back,' the word home jarred upon him, 'let me ask you to persuade yourself that you have

They walked back through the miserable muddy streets, and among the poor, mean shops, and were jostled

by the crowds of dirty hucksters usual to a poor neighbourhood. There was nothing, by the short way, that

was pleasant to any of the five senses. Yet it was not a common passage through common rain, and mire, and

noise, to Clennam, having this little, slender, careful creature on his arm. How young she seemed to him, or

how old he to her; or what a secret either to the other, in that beginning of the destined interweaving of their

stories, matters not here. He thought of her having been born and bred among these scenes, and shrinking

through them now, familiar yet misplaced; he thought of her long acquaintance with the squalid needs of life,

and of her innocence; of her solicitude for others, and her few years, and her childish aspect.

They were come into the High Street, where the prison stood, when a voice cried, 'Little mother, little

mother!' Little Dorrit stopping and looking back, an excited figure of a strange kind bounced against them

(still crying 'little mother'), fell down, and scattered the contents of a large basket, filled with potatoes, in the

Maggy was not hurt, but picked herself up immediately, and then began to pick up the potatoes, in which

both Little Dorrit and Arthur Clennam helped. Maggy picked up very few potatoes and a great quantity of

mud; but they were all recovered, and deposited in the basket. Maggy then smeared her muddy face with her

shawl, and presenting it to Mr Clennam as a type of purity, enabled him to see what she was like.

She was about eightandtwenty, with large bones , large features, large feet and hands, large eyes and no

hair. Her large eyes were limpid and almost colourless; they seemed to be very little affected by light, and to

stand unnaturally still. There was also that attentive listening expression in her face, which is seen in the faces

of the blind; but she was not blind, having one tolerably serviceable eye. Her face was not exceedingly ugly,

though it was only redeemed from being so by a smile; a goodhumoured smile, and pleasant in itself, but

rendered pitiable by being constantly there. A great white cap, with a quantity of opaque frilling that was

always flapping about, apologised for Maggy's baldness, and made it so very difficult for her old black

bonnet to retain its place upon her head, that it held on round her neck like a gipsy's baby. A commission of

haberdashers could alone have reported what the rest of her poor dress was made of, but it had a strong

general resemblance to seaweed, with here and there a gigantic tealeaf. Her shawl looked particularly like a

Arthur Clennam looked at Little Dorrit with the expression of one saying, 'May I ask who this is?' Little

Dorrit, whose hand this Maggy, still calling her little mother, had begun to fondle, answered in words (they

'You can't think how good she is, sir,' said Little Dorrit, with infinite tenderness.

'Good SHE is,' echoed Maggy, transferring the pronoun in a most expressive way from herself to her little

'Or how clever,' said Little Dorrit. 'She goes on errands as well as any one.' Maggy laughed. 'And is as

trustworthy as the Bank of England.' Maggy laughed. 'She earns her own living entirely. Entirely, sir!' said

'Think of that, Maggy?' said Little Dorrit, taking her two large hands and clapping them together. 'A

'She means me,' said Little Dorrit, rather confused; 'she is very much attached to me. Her old grandmother

was not so kind to her as she should have been; was she, Maggy?' Maggy shook her head, made a drinking

vessel of her clenched left hand, drank out of it, and said, 'Gin.' Then beat an imaginary child, and said,

'When Maggy was ten years old,' said Little Dorrit, watching her face while she spoke, 'she had a bad fever,

'Ten years old,' said Maggy, nodding her head. 'But what a nice hospital! So comfortable, wasn't it? Oh so

'She had never been at peace before, sir,' said Little Dorrit, turning towards Arthur for an instant and speaking

'Such beds there is there!' cried Maggy. 'Such lemonades! Such oranges! Such d'licious broth and wine! Such

'So Maggy stopped there as long as she could,' said Little Dorrit, in her former tone of telling a child's story;

the tone designed for Maggy's ear, 'and at last, when she could stop there no longer, she came out. Then,

'And because she was very weak; indeed was so weak that when she began to laugh she couldn't stop

'Her grandmother did not know what to do with her, and for some years was very unkind to her indeed. At

length, in course of time, Maggy began to take pains to improve herself, and to be very attentive and very

industrious; and by degrees was allowed to come in and out as often as she liked, and got enough to do to

support herself, and does support herself. And that,' said Little Dorrit, clapping the two great hands together

Ah! But Arthur would have known what was wanting to its completeness, though he had never heard of the

words Little mother; though he had never seen the fondling of the small spare hand; though he had had no

sight for the tears now standing in the colourless eyes; though he had had no hearing for the sob that checked

the clumsy laugh. The dirty gateway with the wind and rain whistling through it, and the basket of muddy

potatoes waiting to be spilt again or taken up, never seemed the common hole it really was, when he looked

They were very near the end of their walk, and they now came out of the gateway to finish it. Nothing would

serve Maggy but that they must stop at a grocer's window, short of their destination, for her to show her

learning. She could read after a sort; and picked out the fat figures in the tickets of prices, for the most part

correctly. She also stumbled, with a large balance of success against her failures, through various

philanthropic recommendations to Try our Mixture, Try our Family Black, Try our Orangeflavoured Pekoe,

challenging competition at the head of Flowery Teas; and various cautions to the public against spurious

establishments and adulterated articles. When he saw how pleasure brought a rosy tint into Little Dorrit's face

when Maggy made a hit, he felt that he could have stood there making a library of the grocer's window until

The courtyard received them at last, and there he said goodbye to Little Dorrit. Little as she had always

looked, she looked less than ever when he saw her going into the Marshalsea lodge passage, the little mother

attended by her big child. The cage door opened, and when the small bird, reared in captivity, had tamely

The Circumlocution Office was (as everybody knows without being told) the most important Department

under Government. No public business of any kind could possibly be done at any time without the

acquiescence of the Circumlocution Office. Its finger was in the largest public pie, and in the smallest public

tart. It was equally impossible to do the plainest right and to undo the plainest wrong without the express

authority of the Circumlocution Office. If another Gunpowder Plot had been discovered half an hour before

the lighting of the match, nobody would have been justified in saving the parliament until there had been half

a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a familyvault full of

This glorious establishment had been early in the field, when the one sublime principle involving the difficult

art of governing a country, was first distinctly revealed to statesmen. It had been foremost to study that bright

revelation and to carry its shining influence through the whole of the official proceedings. Whatever was

required to be done, the Circumlocution Office was beforehand with all the public departments in the art of

Through this delicate perception, through the tact with which it invariably seized it, and through the genius

with which it always acted on it, the Circumlocution Office had risen to overtop all the public departments;

It is true that How not to do it was the great study and object of all public departments and professional

politicians all round the Circumlocution Office. It is true that every new premier and every new government,

coming in because they had upheld a certain thing as necessary to be done, were no sooner come in than they

applied their utmost faculties to discovering How not to do it. It is true that from the moment when a general

election was over, every returned man who had been raving on hustings because it hadn't been done, and who

had been asking the friends of the honourable gentleman in the opposite interest on pain of impeachment to

tell him why it hadn't been done, and who had been asserting that it must be done, and who had been

pledging himself that it should be done, began to devise, How it was not to be done. It is true that the debates

of both Houses of Parliament the whole session through, uniformly tended to the protracted deliberation,

How not to do it. It is true that the royal speech at the opening of such session virtually said, My lords and

gentlemen, you have a considerable stroke of work to do, and you will please to retire to your respective

chambers, and discuss, How not to do it. It is true that the royal speech, at the close of such session, virtually

said, My lords and gentlemen, you have through several laborious months been considering with great loyalty

and patriotism, How not to do it, and you have found out; and with the blessing of Providence upon the

harvest (natural, not political), I now dismiss you. All this is true, but the Circumlocution Office went beyond

Because the Circumlocution Office went on mechanically, every day, keeping this wonderful, allsufficient

wheel of statesmanship, How not to do it, in motion. Because the Circumlocution Office was down upon any

illadvised public servant who was going to do it, or who appeared to be by any surprising accident in remote

danger of doing it, with a minute, and a memorandum, and a letter of instructions that extinguished him. It

was this spirit of national efficiency in the Circumlocution Office that had gradually led to its having

something to do with everything. Mechanicians, natural philosophers, soldiers, sailors, petitioners,

memorialists, people with grievances, people who wanted to prevent grievances, people who wanted to

redress grievances, jobbing people, jobbed people, people who couldn't get rewarded for merit, and people

who couldn't get punished for demerit, were all indiscriminately tucked up under the foolscap paper of the

Numbers of people were lost in the Circumlocution Office. Unfortunates with wrongs, or with projects for the

general welfare (and they had better have had wrongs at first, than have taken that bitter English recipe for

certainly getting them), who in slow lapse of time and agony had passed safely through other public

departments; who, according to rule, had been bullied in this, overreached by that, and evaded by the other;

got referred at last to the Circumlocution Office, and never reappeared in the light of day. Boards sat upon

them, secretaries minuted upon them, commissioners gabbled about them, clerks registered, entered, checked,

and ticked them off, and they melted away. In short, all the business of the country went through the

Circumlocution Office, except the business that never came out of it; and its name was Legion.

Sometimes, angry spirits attacked the Circumlocution Office. Sometimes, parliamentary questions were

asked about it, and even parliamentary motions made or threatened about it by demagogues so low and

ignorant as to hold that the real recipe of government was, How to do it. Then would the noble lord, or right

honourable gentleman, in whose department it was to defend the Circumlocution Office, put an orange in his

pocket, and make a regular fieldday of the occasion. Then would he come down to that house with a slap

upon the table, and meet the honourable gentleman foot to foot. Then would he be there to tell that

honourable gentleman that the Circumlocution Office not only was blameless in this matter, but was

commendable in this matter, was extollable to the skies in this matter. Then would he be there to tell that

honourable gentleman that, although the Circumlocution Office was invariably right and wholly right, it

never was so right as in this matter. Then would he be there to tell that honourable gentleman that it would

have been more to his honour, more to his credit, more to his good taste, more to his good sense, more to half

the dictionary of commonplaces, if he had left the Circumlocution Office alone, and never approached this

matter. Then would he keep one eye upon a coach or crammer from the Circumlocution Office sitting below

the bar, and smash the honourable gentleman with the Circumlocution Office account of this matter. And

although one of two things always happened; namely, either that the Circumlocution Office had nothing to

say and said it, or that it had something to say of which the noble lord, or right honourable gentleman,

blundered one half and forgot the other; the Circumlocution Office was always voted immaculate by an

Such a nursery of statesmen had the Department become in virtue of a long career of this nature, that several

solemn lords had attained the reputation of being quite unearthly prodigies of business, solely from having

practised, How not to do it, as the head of the Circumlocution Office. As to the minor priests and acolytes of

that temple, the result of all this was that they stood divided into two classes, and, down to the junior

messenger, either believed in the Circumlocution Office as a heavenborn institution that had an absolute

right to do whatever it liked; or took refuge in total infidelity, and considered it a flagrant nuisance.

The Barnacle family had for some time helped to administer the Circumlocution Office. The Tite Barnacle

Branch, indeed, considered themselves in a general way as having vested rights in that direction, and took it

ill if any other family had much to say to it. The Barnacles were a very high family, and a very large family.

They were dispersed all over the public offices, and held all sorts of public places. Either the nation was

under a load of obligation to the Barnacles, or the Barnacles were under a load of obligation to the nation. It

was not quite unanimously settled which; the Barnacles having their opinion, the nation theirs.

The Mr Tite Barnacle who at the period now in question usually coached or crammed the statesman at the

head of the Circumlocution Office, when that noble or right honourable individual sat a little uneasily in his

saddle by reason of some vagabond making a tilt at him in a newspaper, was more flush of blood than money.

As a Barnacle he had his place, which was a snug thing enough; and as a Barnacle he had of course put in his

son Barnacle Junior in the office. But he had intermarried with a branch of the Stiltstalkings, who were also

better endowed in a sanguineous point of view than with real or personal property, and of this marriage there

had been issue, Barnacle junior and three young ladies. What with the patrician requirements of Barnacle

junior, the three young ladies, Mrs Tite Barnacle nee Stiltstalking, and himself, Mr Tite Barnacle found the

intervals between quarter day and quarter day rather longer than he could have desired; a circumstance which

he always attributed to the country's parsimony. For Mr Tite Barnacle, Mr Arthur Clennam made his fifth

inquiry one day at the Circumlocution Office; having on previous occasions awaited that gentleman

successively in a hall, a glass case, a waiting room, and a fireproof passage where the Department seemed to

keep its wind. On this occasion Mr Barnacle was not engaged, as he had been before, with the noble prodigy

at the head of the Department; but was absent. Barnacle Junior, however, was announced as a lesser star, yet

With Barnacle junior, he signified his desire to confer; and found that young gentleman singeing the calves of

his legs at the parental fire, and supporting his spine against the mantelshelf. It was a comfortable room,

handsomely furnished in the higher official manner; an presenting stately suggestions of the absent Barnacle,

in the thick carpet, the leathercovered desk to sit at, the leathercovered desk to stand at, the formidable

easychair and hearthrug, the interposed screen, the tornup papers, the dispatchboxes with little labels

sticking out of them, like medicine bottles or dead game, the pervading smell of leather and mahogany, and a

The present Barnacle, holding Mr Clennam's card in his hand, had a youthful aspect, and the fluffiest little

whisker, perhaps, that ever was seen. Such a downy tip was on his callow chin, that he seemed half fledged

like a young bird; and a compassionate observer might have urged that, if he had not singed the calves of his

legs, he would have died of cold. He had a superior eyeglass dangling round his neck, but unfortunately had

such flat orbits to his eyes and such limp little eyelids that it wouldn't stick in when he put it up, but kept

tumbling out against his waistcoat buttons with a click that discomposed him very much.

'Oh, I say. Look here! My father's not in the way, and won't be in the way today,' said Barnacle Junior. 'Is

(Click! Eyeglass down. Barnacle Junior quite frightened and feeling all round himself, but not able to find

'But I say. Look here! You haven't got any appointment, you know,' said Barnacle Junior.

(Click! Eyeglass down again. Barnacle Junior in that state of search after it that Mr Clennam felt it useless

'Is it,' said Barnacle junior, taking heed of his visitor's brown face, 'anything aboutTonnageor that sort of

(Pausing for a reply, he opened his right eye with his hand, and stuck his glass in it, in that inflammatory

'Look here, I tell you what! You had better call at our house, if you are going that way. Twentyfour, Mews

Street, Grosvenor Square. My father's got a slight touch of the gout, and is kept at home by it.'

(The misguided young Barnacle evidently going blind on his eye glass side, but ashamed to make any

'Thank you. I will call there now. Good morning.' Young Barnacle seemed discomfited at this, as not having

'You are quite sure,' said Barnacle junior, calling after him when he got to the door, unwilling wholly to

relinquish the bright business idea he had conceived; 'that it's nothing about Tonnage?'

With such assurance, and rather wondering what might have taken place if it HAD been anything about

Mews Street, Grosvenor Square, was not absolutely Grosvenor Square itself, but it was very near it. It was a

hideous little street of dead wall, stables, and dunghills, with lofts over coachhouses inhabited by

coachmen's families, who had a passion for drying clothes and decorating their windowsills with miniature

turnpike gates. The principal chimneysweep of that fashionable quarter lived at the blind end of Mews

Street; and the same corner contained an establishment much frequented about early morning and twilight for

the purchase of winebottles and kitchenstuff. Punch's shows used to lean against the dead wall in Mews

Street, while their proprietors were dining elsewhere; and the dogs of the neighbourhood made appointments

to meet in the same locality. Yet there were two or three small airless houses at the entrance end of Mews

Street, which went at enormous rents on account of their being abject hangerson to a fashionable situation;

and whenever one of these fearful little coops was to be let (which seldom happened, for they were in great

request), the house agent advertised it as a gentlemanly residence in the most aristocratic part of town,

If a gentlemanly residence coming strictly within this narrow margin had not been essential to the blood of

the Barnacles, this particular branch would have had a pretty wide selection among, let us say, ten thousand

houses, offering fifty times the accommodation for a third of the money. As it was, Mr Barnacle, finding his

gentlemanly residence extremely inconvenient and extremely dear, always laid it, as a public servant, at the

door of the country, and adduced it as another instance of the country's parsimony.

Arthur Clennam came to a squeezed house, with a ramshackle bowed front, little dingy windows, and a little

dark area like a damp waistcoatpocket, which he found to be number twentyfour, Mews Street, Grosvenor

Square. To the sense of smell the house was like a sort of bottle filled with a strong distillation of Mews; and

The footman was to the Grosvenor Square footmen, what the house was to the Grosvenor Square houses.

Admirable in his way, his way was a back and a bye way. His gorgeousness was not unmixed with dirt; and

both in complexion and consistency he had suffered from the closeness of his pantry. A sallow flabbiness was

upon him when he took the stopper out, and presented the bottle to Mr Clennam's nose.

'Be so good as to give that card to Mr Tite Barnacle, and to say that I have just now seen the younger Mr

The footman (who had as many large buttons with the Barnacle crest upon them on the flaps of his pockets,

as if he were the family strong box, and carried the plate and jewels about with him buttoned up) pondered

It required some judgment to do it without butting the inner hall door open, and in the consequent mental

confusion and physical darkness slipping down the kitchen stairs. The visitor, however, brought himself up

Still the footman said 'Walk in,' so the visitor followed him. At the inner halldoor, another bottle seemed to

be presented and another stopper taken out. This second vial appeared to be filled with concentrated

provisions and extract of Sink from the pantry. After a skirmish in the narrow passage, occasioned by the

footman's opening the door of the dismal diningroom with confidence, finding some one there with

consternation, and backing on the visitor with disorder, the visitor was shut up, pending his announcement, in

a close back parlour. There he had an opportunity of refreshing himself with both the bottles at once, looking

out at a low blinding wall three feet off, and speculating on the number of Barnacle families within the bills

Mr Barnacle would see him. Would he walk upstairs? He would, and he did; and in the drawingroom, with

his leg on a rest, he found Mr Barnacle himself, the express image and presentment of How not to do it.

Mr Barnacle dated from a better time, when the country was not so parsimonious and the Circumlocution

Office was not so badgered. He wound and wound folds of white cravat round his neck, as he wound and

wound folds of tape and paper round the neck of the country. His wristbands and collar were oppressive; his

voice and manner were oppressive. He had a large watchchain and bunch of seals, a coat buttoned up to

inconvenience, a waistcoat buttoned up to inconvenience, an unwrinkled pair of trousers, a stiff pair of boots.

He was altogether splendid, massive, overpowering, and impracticable. He seemed to have been sitting for

'You have called on me, I believe,' said Mr Barnacle, 'at the Circumlocution' giving it the air of a word of

Mr Barnacle solemnly bent his head as who should say, 'I do not deny that it is a liberty; proceed to take

'Allow me to observe that I have been for some years in China, am quite a stranger at home, and have no

Mr Barnacle tapped his fingers on the table, and, as if he were now sitting for his portrait to a new and

strange artist, appeared to say to his visitor, 'If you will be good enough to take me with my present lofty

'I have found a debtor in the Marshalsea Prison of the name of Dorrit, who has been there many years. I wish

to investigate his confused affairs so far as to ascertain whether it may not be possible, after this lapse of

time, to ameliorate his unhappy condition. The name of Mr Tite Barnacle has been mentioned to me as

representing some highly influential interest among his creditors. Am I correctly informed?'

It being one of the principles of the Circumlocution Office never, on any account whatever, to give a

'The Circumlocution Department, sir,' Mr Barnacle replied, 'may have possibly recommendedpossiblyI

cannot saythat some public claim against the insolvent estate of a firm or copartnership to which this

person may have belonged, should be enforced. The question may have been, in the course of official

business, referred to the Circumlocution Department for its consideration. The Department may have either

'The Circumlocution Department,' said Mr Barnacle, 'is not responsible for any gentleman's assumptions.'

'May I inquire how I can obtain official information as to the real state of the case?'

'It is competent,' said Mr Barnacle, 'to any member of the Public,' mentioning that obscure body with

reluctance, as his natural enemy, 'to memorialise the Circumlocution Department. Such formalities as are

required to be observed in so doing, may be known on application to the proper branch of that Department.'

'I must refer you,' returned Mr Barnacle, ringing the bell, 'to the Department itself for a formal answer to that

'The Department is accessible to thePublic,' Mr Barnacle was always checked a little by that word of

impertinent signification, 'if thePublic approaches it according to the official forms; if thePublic does

not approach it according to the official forms, thePublic has itself to blame.'

Mr Barnacle made him a severe bow, as a wounded man of family, a wounded man of place, and a wounded

man of a gentlemanly residence, all rolled into one; and he made Mr Barnacle a bow, and was shut out into

Having got to this pass, he resolved as an exercise in perseverance, to betake himself again to the

Circumlocution Office, and try what satisfaction he could get there. So he went back to the Circumlocution

Office, and once more sent up his card to Barnacle junior by a messenger who took it very ill indeed that he

should come back again, and who was eating mashed potatoes and gravy behind a partition by the hall fire.

He was readmitted to the presence of Barnacle junior, and found that young gentleman singeing his knees

now, and gaping his weary way on to four o'clock. 'I say. Look here. You stick to us in a devil of a manner,'

'Look here. Upon my soul you mustn't come into the place saying you want to know, you know,'

'I want to know,' said Arthur Clennam, who had made up his mind to persistence in one short form of words,

'the precise nature of the claim of the Crown against a prisoner for debt, named Dorrit.'

'I say. Look here. You really are going it at a great pace, you know. Egad, you haven't got an appointment,'

Barnacle junior stared at him until his eyeglass fell out, and then put it in again and stared at him until it fell

out again. 'You have no right to come this sort of move,' he then observed with the greatest weakness. 'Look

here. What do you mean? You told me you didn't know whether it was public business or not.'

'I have now ascertained that it is public business,' returned the suitor, 'and I want to know'and again

Its effect upon young Barnacle was to make him repeat in a defenceless way, 'Look here! Upon my SOUL

you mustn't come into the place saying you want to know, you know!' The effect of that upon Arthur

Clennam was to make him repeat his inquiry in exactly the same words and tone as before. The effect of that

upon young Barnacle was to make him a wonderful spectacle of failure and helplessness.

'Well, I tell you what. Look here. You had better try the Secretarial Department,' he said at last, sidling to the

bell and ringing it. 'Jenkinson,' to the mashed potatoes messenger, 'Mr Wobbler!'

Arthur Clennam, who now felt that he had devoted himself to the storming of the Circumlocution Office, and

must go through with it, accompanied the messenger to another floor of the building, where that functionary

pointed out Mr Wobbler's room. He entered that apartment, and found two gentlemen sitting face to face at a

large and easy desk, one of whom was polishing a gunbarrel on his pockethandkerchief, while the other

'So he went,' said the gentleman with the gunbarrel, who was an extremely deliberate speaker, 'down to his

cousin's place, and took the Dog with him by rail. Inestimable Dog. Flew at the porter fellow when he was

put into the dogbox, and flew at the guard when he was taken out. He got halfadozen fellows into a Barn,

and a good supply of Rats, and timed the Dog. Finding the Dog able to do it immensely, made the match, and

heavily backed the Dog. When the match came off, some devil of a fellow was bought over, Sir, Dog was

The gentleman who was spreading the marmalade returned, without looking up from that occupation, 'What

'Called him Lovely,' said the other gentleman. 'Said the Dog was the perfect picture of the old aunt from

Both gentlemen laughed for some time. The gentleman with the gun barrel, considering it, on inspection, in

a satisfactory state, referred it to the other; receiving confirmation of his views, he fitted it into its place in the

'I want to know' and Arthur Clennam again mechanically set forth what he wanted to know.

'Can't inform you,' observed Mr Wobbler, apparently to his lunch. 'Never heard of it. Nothing at all to do with

The suitor turned away and had left the room, when the gentleman with the gun called out 'Mister! Hallo!'

'Shut the door after you. You're letting in a devil of a draught here!' A few steps brought him to the second

door on the left in the next passage. In that room he found three gentlemen; number one doing nothing

particular, number two doing nothing particular, number three doing nothing particular. They seemed,

however, to be more directly concerned than the others had been in the effective execution of the great

principle of the office, as there was an awful inner apartment with a double door, in which the

Circumlocution Sages appeared to be assembled in council, and out of which there was an imposing coming

of papers, and into which there was an imposing going of papers, almost constantly; wherein another

'I want to know,' said Arthur Clennam,and again stated his case in the same barrelorgan way. As number

one referred him to number two, and as number two referred him to number three, he had occasion to state it

three times before they all referred him to number four, to whom he stated it again.

Number four was a vivacious, welllooking, welldressed, agreeable young fellowhe was a Barnacle, but

on the more sprightly side of the familyand he said in an easy way, 'Oh! you had better not bother yourself

This was such a new point of view that Arthur Clennam found himself at a loss how to receive it.

'You can if you like. I can give you plenty of forms to fill up. Lots of 'em here. You can have a dozen if you

'Would it be such hopeless work? Excuse me; I am a stranger in England.' 'I don't say it would be hopeless,'

returned number four, with a frank smile. 'I don't express an opinion about that; I only express an opinion

about you. I don't think you'd go on with it. However, of course, you can do as you like. I suppose there was a

failure in the performance of a contract, or something of that kind, was there?'

'Well! That you can find out. Then you'll find out what Department the contract was in, and then you'll find

'Why, you'llyou'll ask till they tell you. Then you'll memorialise that Department (according to regular

forms which you'll find out) for leave to memorialise this Department. If you get it (which you may after a

time), that memorial must be entered in that Department, sent to be registered in this Department, sent back to

be signed by that Department, sent back to be countersigned by this Department, and then it will begin to be

regularly before that Department. You'll find out when the business passes through each of these stages by

'But surely this is not the way to do the business,' Arthur Clennam could not help saying.

This airy young Barnacle was quite entertained by his simplicity in supposing for a moment that it was. This

light in hand young Barnacle knew perfectly that it was not. This touch and go young Barnacle had 'got up'

the Department in a private secretaryship, that he might be ready for any little bit of fat that came to hand;

and he fully understood the Department to be a politicodiplomatic hocus pocus piece of machinery for the

assistance of the nobs in keeping off the snobs. This dashing young Barnacle, in a word, was likely to become

'When the business is regularly before that Department, whatever it is,' pursued this bright young Barnacle,

'then you can watch it from time to time through that Department. When it comes regularly before this

Department, then you must watch it from time to time through this Department. We shall have to refer it right

and left; and when we refer it anywhere, then you'll have to look it up. When it comes back to us at any time,

then you had better look US up. When it sticks anywhere, you'll have to try to give it a jog. When you write

to another Department about it, and then to this Department about it, and don't hear anything satisfactory

Arthur Clennam looked very doubtful indeed. 'But I am obliged to you at any rate,' said he, 'for your

'Not at all,' replied this engaging young Barnacle. 'Try the thing, and see how you like it. It will be in your

power to give it up at any time, if you don't like it. You had better take a lot of forms away with you. Give

him a lot of forms!' With which instruction to number two, this sparkling young Barnacle took a fresh

handful of papers from numbers one and three, and carried them into the sanctuary to offer to the presiding

Arthur Clennam put his forms in his pocket gloomily enough, and went his way down the long stone passage

and the long stone staircase. He had come to the swing doors leading into the street, and was waiting, not

over patiently, for two people who were between him and them to pass out and let him follow, when the

voice of one of them struck familiarly on his ear. He looked at the speaker and recognised Mr Meagles. Mr

Meagles was very red in the faceredder than travel could have made himand collaring a short man who

it was such an unexpected hearing, and it was also such an unexpected sight to see Mr Meagles burst the

swing doors open, and emerge into the street with the short man, who was of an unoffending appearance, that

Clennam stood still for the moment exchanging looks of surprise with the porter. He followed, however,

quickly; and saw Mr Meagles going down the street with his enemy at his side. He soon came up with his old

travelling companion, and touched him on the back. The choleric face which Mr Meagles turned upon him

'How are you?' said Mr Meagles. 'How d'ye do? I have only just come over from abroad. I am glad to see

'Are as well as possible,' said Mr Meagles. 'I only wish you had come upon me in a more prepossessing

Though it was anything but a hot day, Mr Meagles was in a heated state that attracted the attention of the

passersby; more particularly as he leaned his back against a railing, took off his hat and cravat, and heartily

rubbed his steaming head and face, and his reddened ears and neck, without the least regard for public

'Come along then. Ah! you may well look at him.' He happened to have turned his eyes towards the offender

whom Mr Meagles had so angrily collared. 'He's something to look at, that fellow is.'

He was not much to look at, either in point of size or in point of dress; being merely a short, square, practical

looking man, whose hair had turned grey, and in whose face and forehead there were deep lines of cogitation,

which looked as though they were carved in hard wood. He was dressed in decent black, a little rusty, and

had the appearance of a sagacious master in some handicraft. He had a spectaclecase in his hand, which he

turned over and over while he was thus in question, with a certain free use of the thumb that is never seen but

'You keep with us,' said Mr Meagles, in a threatening kind of Way, 'and I'll introduce you presently. Now

Clennam wondered within himself, as they took the nearest way to the Park, what this unknown (who

complied in the gentlest manner) could have been doing. His appearance did not at all justify the suspicion

that he had been detected in designs on Mr Meagles's pockethandkerchief; nor had he any appearance of

being quarrelsome or violent. He was a quiet, plain, steady man; made no attempt to escape; and seemed a

little depressed, but neither ashamed nor repentant. If he were a criminal offender, he must surely be an

incorrigible hypocrite; and if he were no offender, why should Mr Meagles have collared him in the

Circumlocution Office? He perceived that the man was not a difficulty in his own mind alone, but in Mr

Meagles's too; for such conversation as they had together on the short way to the Park was by no means well

sustained, and Mr Meagles's eye always wandered back to the man, even when he spoke of something very

'Mr Clennam, will you do me the favour to look at this man? His name is Doyce, Daniel Doyce. You

'I certainly should not.' It was really a disconcerting question, with the man there.

'No. You would not. I know you would not. You wouldn't suppose him to be a public offender; would you?'

'No. But he is. He is a public offender. What has he been guilty of? Murder, manslaughter, arson, forgery,

swindling, house breaking, highway robbery, larceny, conspiracy, fraud? Which should you say, now?'

'I should say,' returned Arthur Clennam, observing a faint smile in Daniel Doyce's face, 'not one of them.'

'You are right,' said Mr Meagles. 'But he has been ingenious, and he has been trying to turn his ingenuity to

'This Doyce,' said Mr Meagles, 'is a smith and engineer. He is not in a large way, but he is well known as a

very ingenious man. A dozen years ago, he perfects an invention (involving a very curious secret process) of

great importance to his country and his fellow creatures. I won't say how much money it cost him, or how

many years of his life he had been about it, but he brought it to perfection a dozen years ago. Wasn't it a

dozen?' said Mr Meagles, addressing Doyce. 'He is the most exasperating man in the world; he never

'Rather better?' said Mr Meagles, 'you mean rather worse. Well, Mr Clennam, he addresses himself to the

Government. The moment he addresses himself to the Government, he becomes a public offender! Sir,' said

Mr Meagles, in danger of making himself excessively hot again, 'he ceases to be an innocent citizen, and

He is treated from that instant as a man who has done some infernal action. He is a man to be shirked, put off,

browbeaten, sneered at, handed over by this highlyconnected young or old gentleman, to that

highlyconnected young or old gentleman, and dodged back again; he is a man with no rights in his own

time, or his own property; a mere outlaw, whom it is justifiable to get rid of anyhow; a man to be worn out by

It was not so difficult to believe, after the morning's experience, as Mr Meagles supposed.

'Don't stand there, Doyce, turning your spectaclecase over and over,' cried Mr Meagles, 'but tell Mr

'I undoubtedly was made to feel,' said the inventor, 'as if I had committed an offence. In dancing attendance at

the various offices, I was always treated, more or less, as if it was a very bad offence. I have frequently found

it necessary to reflect, for my own selfsupport, that I really had not done anything to bring myself into the

Newgate Calendar, but only wanted to effect a great saving and a great improvement.'

'There!' said Mr Meagles. 'Judge whether I exaggerate. Now you'll be able to believe me when I tell you the

With this prelude, Mr Meagles went through the narrative; the established narrative, which has become

tiresome; the matterof course narrative which we all know by heart. How, after interminable attendance

and correspondence, after infinite impertinences, ignorances, and insults, my lords made a Minute, number

three thousand four hundred and seventytwo, allowing the culprit to make certain trials of his invention at

How the trials were made in the presence of a board of six, of whom two ancient members were too blind to

see it, two other ancient members were too deaf to hear it, one other ancient member was too lame to get near

it, and the final ancient member was too pig headed to look at it. How there were more years; more

impertinences, ignorances, and insults. How my lords then made a Minute, number five thousand one

hundred and three, whereby they resigned the business to the Circumlocution Office. How the

Circumlocution Office, in course of time, took up the business as if it were a bran new thing of yesterday,

which had never been heard of before; muddled the business, addled the business, tossed the business in a

wet blanket. How the impertinences, ignorances, and insults went through the multiplication table. How there

was a reference of the invention to three Barnacles and a Stiltstalking, who knew nothing about it; into whose

heads nothing could be hammered about it; who got bored about it, and reported physical impossibilities

about it. How the Circumlocution Office, in a Minute, number eight thousand seven hundred and forty, 'saw

no reason to reverse the decision at which my lords had arrived.' How the Circumlocution Office, being

reminded that my lords had arrived at no decision, shelved the business. How there had been a final interview

with the head of the Circumlocution Office that very morning, and how the Brazen Head had spoken, and had

been, upon the whole, and under all the circumstances, and looking at it from the various points of view, of

opinion that one of two courses was to be pursued in respect of the business: that was to say, either to leave it

'Upon which,' said Mr Meagles, 'as a practical man, I then and there, in that presence, took Doyce by the

collar, and told him it was plain to me that he was an infamous rascal and treasonable disturber of the

government peace, and took him away. I brought him out of the office door by the collar, that the very porter

might know I was a practical man who appreciated the official estimate of such characters; and here we are!'

If that airy young Barnacle had been there, he would have frankly told them perhaps that the Circumlocution

Office had achieved its function. That what the Barnacles had to do, was to stick on to the national ship as

long as they could. That to trim the ship, lighten the ship, clean the ship, would be to knock them off; that

they could but be knocked off once; and that if the ship went down with them yet sticking to it, that was the

'There!' said Mr Meagles, 'now you know all about Doyce. Except, which I own does not improve my state of

'You must have great patience,' said Arthur Clennam, looking at him with some wonder, 'great forbearance.'

Doyce smiled, as he said to Clennam, 'You see, my experience of these things does not begin with myself. It

has been in my way to know a little about them from time to time. Mine is not a particular case. I am not

worse used than a hundred others who have put themselves in the same positionthan all the others, I was

'I don't know that I should find that a consolation, if it were my case; but I am very glad that you do.'

'Understand me! I don't say,' he replied in his steady, planning way, and looking into the distance before him

as if his grey eye were measuring it, 'that it's recompense for a man's toil and hope; but it's a certain sort of

He spoke in that quiet deliberate manner, and in that undertone, which is often observable in mechanics who

consider and adjust with great nicety. It belonged to him like his suppleness of thumb, or his peculiar way of

tilting up his hat at the back every now and then, as if he were contemplating some halffinished work of his

'Disappointed?' he went on, as he walked between them under the trees. 'Yes. No doubt I am disappointed.

Hurt? Yes. No doubt I am hurt. That's only natural. But what I mean when I say that people who put

'Oh! of course I mean in England. When they take their inventions into foreign countries, that's quite

'What I mean is, that however this comes to be the regular way of our government, it is its regular way. Have

you ever heard of any projector or inventor who failed to find it all but inaccessible, and whom it did not

'Have you ever known it to be beforehand in the adoption of any useful thing? Ever known it to set an

'I am a good deal older than my friend here,' said Mr Meagles, 'and I'll answer that. Never.'

'But we all three have known, I expect,' said the inventor, 'a pretty many cases of its fixed determination to be

miles upon miles, and years upon years, behind the rest of us; and of its being found out persisting in the use

of things long superseded, even after the better things were well known and generally taken up?'

'Well then,' said Doyce, with a sigh, 'as I know what such a metal will do at such a temperature, and such a

body under such a pressure, so I may know (if I will only consider), how these great lords and gentlemen will

I have no right to be surprised, with a head upon my shoulders, and memory in it, that I fall into the ranks

with all who came before me. I ought to have let it alone. I have had warning enough, I am sure.'

With that he put up his spectaclecase, and said to Arthur, 'If I don't complain, Mr Clennam, I can feel

gratitude; and I assure you that I feel it towards our mutual friend. Many's the day, and many's the way in

Though it was evidently in the grain of his character, and of his respect for his own case, that he should

abstain from idle murmuring, it was evident that he had grown the older, the sterner, and the poorer, for his

long endeavour. He could not but think what a blessed thing it would have been for this man, if he had taken

a lesson from the gentlemen who were so kind as to take a nation's affairs in charge, and had learnt How not

Mr Meagles was hot and despondent for about five minutes, and then began to cool and clear up.

'Come, come!' said he. 'We shall not make this the better by being grim. Where do you think of going, Dan?'

'I shall go back to the factory,' said Dan. 'Why then, we'll all go back to the factory, or walk in that direction,'

returned Mr Meagles cheerfully. 'Mr Clennam won't be deterred by its being in Bleeding Heart Yard.'

As they went along, certainly one of the party, and probably more than one, thought that Bleeding Heart Yard

was no inappropriate destination for a man who had been in official correspondence with my lords and the

Barnaclesand perhaps had a misgiving also that Britannia herself might come to look for lodgings in

Bleeding Heart Yard some ugly day or other, if she overdid the Circumlocution Office.

A late, dull autumn night was closing in upon the river Saone. The stream, like a sullied lookingglass in a

gloomy place, reflected the clouds heavily; and the low banks leaned over here and there, as if they were half

curious, and half afraid, to see their darkening pictures in the water. The flat expanse of country about

Chalons lay a long heavy streak, occasionally made a little ragged by a row of poplar trees against the

wrathful sunset. On the banks of the river Saone it was wet, depressing, solitary; and the night deepened fast.

One man slowly moving on towards Chalons was the only visible figure in the landscape. Cain might have

looked as lonely and avoided. With an old sheepskin knapsack at his back, and a rough, unbarked stick cut

out of some wood in his hand; miry, footsore, his shoes and gaiters trodden out, his hair and beard

untrimmed; the cloak he carried over his shoulder, and the clothes he wore, sodden with wet; limping along

in pain and difficulty; he looked as if the clouds were hurrying from him, as if the wail of the wind and the

shuddering of the grass were directed against him, as if the low mysterious plashing of the water murmured at

He glanced here, and he glanced there, sullenly but shrinkingly; and sometimes stopped and turned about, and

'To the devil with this plain that has no end! To the devil with these stones that cut like knives! To the devil

And he would have visited his hatred upon it all with the scowl he threw about him, if he could. He trudged a

little further; and looking into the distance before him, stopped again. 'I, hungry, thirsty, weary. You,

imbeciles, where the lights are yonder, eating and drinking, and warming yourselves at fires! I wish I had the

But the teeth he set at the town, and the hand he shook at the town, brought the town no nearer; and the man

was yet hungrier, and thirstier, and wearier, when his feet were on its jagged pavement, and he stood looking

There was the hotel with its gateway, and its savoury smell of cooking; there was the cafe with its bright

windows, and its rattling of dominoes; there was the dyer's with its strips of red cloth on the doorposts; there

was the silversmith's with its earrings, and its offerings for altars; there was the tobacco dealer's with its lively

group of soldier customers coming out pipe in mouth; there were the bad odours of the town, and the rain and

the refuse in the kennels, and the faint lamps slung across the road, and the huge Diligence, and its mountain

of luggage, and its six grey horses with their tails tied up, getting under weigh at the coach office. But no

small cabaret for a straitened traveller being within sight, he had to seek one round the dark corner, where the

cabbage leaves lay thickest, trodden about the public cistern at which women had not yet left off drawing

water. There, in the back street he found one, the Break of Day. The curtained windows clouded the Break of

Day, but it seemed light and warm, and it announced in legible inscriptions with appropriate pictorial

embellishment of billiard cue and ball, that at the Break of Day one could play billiards; that there one could

find meat, drink, and lodgings, whether one came on horseback, or came on foot; and that it kept good wines,

liqueurs, and brandy. The man turned the handle of the Break of Day door, and limped in.

He touched his discoloured slouched hat, as he came in at the door, to a few men who occupied the room.

Two were playing dominoes at one of the little tables; three or four were seated round the stove, conversing

as they smoked; the billiardtable in the centre was left alone for the time; the landlady of the Daybreak sat

behind her little counter among her cloudy bottles of syrups, baskets of cakes, and leaden drainage for

Making his way to an empty little table in a corner of the room behind the stove, he put down his knapsack

and his cloak upon the ground. As he raised his head from stooping to do so, he found the landlady beside

'Ah, perfectly!' cried the landlady as before. 'Dispatch then, madame, if you please. Something to eat, as

His hoarse voice failed him, and he rested his head upon his hands until a bottle of wine was brought from the

counter. Having filled and emptied his little tumbler twice, and having broken off an end from the great loaf

that was set before him with his cloth and napkin, soupplate, salt, pepper, and oil, he rested his back against

the corner of the wall, made a couch of the bench on which he sat, and began to chew crust, until such time as

his repast should be ready. There had been that momentary interruption of the talk about the stove, and that

temporary inattention to and distraction from one another, which is usually inseparable in such a company

from the arrival of a stranger. It had passed over by this time; and the men had done glancing at him, and

'That's the true reason,' said one of them, bringing a story he had been telling, to a close, 'that's the true reason

why they said that the devil was let loose.' The speaker was the tall Swiss belonging to the church, and he

brought something of the authority of the church into the discussionespecially as the devil was in question.

The landlady having given her directions for the new guest's entertainment to her husband, who acted as cook

to the Break of Day, had resumed her needlework behind her counter. She was a smart, neat, bright little

woman, with a good deal of cap and a good deal of stocking, and she struck into the conversation with

'Ah Heaven, then,' said she. 'When the boat came up from Lyons, and brought the news that the devil was

actually let loose at Marseilles, some flycatchers swallowed it. But I? No, not I.'

'Madame, you are always right,' returned the tall Swiss. 'Doubtless you were enraged against that man,

'Ay, yes, then!' cried the landlady, raising her eyes from her work, opening them very wide, and tossing her

'He was a wicked wretch,' said the landlady, 'and well merited what he had the good fortune to escape. So

'Stay, madame! Let us see,' returned the Swiss, argumentatively turning his cigar between his lips. 'It may

have been his unfortunate destiny. He may have been the child of circumstances. It is always possible that he

had, and has, good in him if one did but know how to find it out. Philosophical philanthropy teaches'

The rest of the little knot about the stove murmured an objection to the introduction of that threatening

expression. Even the two players at dominoes glanced up from their game, as if to protest against

'Hold there, you and your philanthropy,' cried the smiling landlady, nodding her head more than ever. 'Listen

then. I am a woman, I. I know nothing of philosophical philanthropy. But I know what I have seen, and what

I have looked in the face in this world here, where I find myself. And I tell you this, my friend, that there are

people (men and women both, unfortunately) who have no good in themnone. That there are people whom

it is necessary to detest without compromise. That there are people who must be dealt with as enemies of the

human race. That there are people who have no human heart, and who must be crushed like savage beasts and

cleared out of the way. They are but few, I hope; but I have seen (in this world here where I find myself, and

even at the little Break of Day) that there are such people. And I do not doubt that this manwhatever they

The landlady's lively speech was received with greater favour at the Break of Day, than it would have elicited

from certain amiable whitewashers of the class she so unreasonably objected to, nearer Great Britain.

'My faith! If your philosophical philanthropy,' said the landlady, putting down her work, and rising to take the

stranger's soup from her husband, who appeared with it at a side door, 'puts anybody at the mercy of such

people by holding terms with them at all, in words or deeds, or both, take it away from the Break of Day, for

As she placed the soup before the guest, who changed his attitude to a sitting one, he looked her full in the

face, and his moustache went up under his nose, and his nose came down over his moustache.

'Well!' said the previous speaker, 'let us come back to our subject. Leaving all that aside, gentlemen, it was

because the man was acquitted on his trial that people said at Marseilles that the devil was let loose. That was

The traveller's soup was succeeded by a dish of meat, and that by a dish of vegetables. He ate all that was

placed before him, emptied his bottle of wine, called for a glass of rum, and smoked his cigarette with his cup

of coffee. As he became refreshed, he became overbearing; and patronised the company at the Daybreak in

certain small talk at which he assisted, as if his condition were far above his appearance.

The company might have had other engagements, or they might have felt their inferiority, but in any case

they dispersed by degrees, and not being replaced by other company, left their new patron in possession of

the Break of Day. The landlord was clinking about in his kitchen; the landlady was quiet at her work; and the

The landlady, who had been at one moment thinking within herself that this was a handsome man, at another

moment that this was an illlooking man, observed the nose coming down and the moustache going up, and

strongly inclined to the latter decision. Rigaud was a criminal, she said, who had killed his wife.

'Monsieur, the law could not prove it against him to its satisfaction. So the law says. Nevertheless, all the

world knows he did it. The people knew it so well, that they tried to tear him to pieces.'

The landlady of the Break of Day looked at him again, and felt almost confirmed in her last decision. He had

a fine hand, though, and he turned it with a great show. She began once more to think that he was not

'Did you mention, madameor was it mentioned among the gentlemen what became of him?' The

landlady shook her head; it being the first conversational stage at which her vivacious earnestness had ceased

to nod it, keeping time to what she said. It had been mentioned at the Daybreak, she remarked, on the

authority of the journals, that he had been kept in prison for his own safety. However that might be, he had

The guest sat looking at her as he smoked out his final cigarette, and as she sat with her head bent over her

work, with an expression that might have resolved her doubts, and brought her to a lasting conclusion on the

subject of his good or bad looks if she had seen it. When she did look up, the expression was not there. The

hand was smoothing his shaggy moustache. 'May one ask to be shown to bed, madame?'

Very willingly, monsieur. Hola, my husband! My husband would conduct him upstairs. There was one

traveller there, asleep, who had gone to bed very early indeed, being overpowered by fatigue; but it was a

large chamber with two beds in it, and space enough for twenty. This the landlady of the Break of Day

chirpingly explained, calling between whiles, 'Hola, my husband!' out at the side door.

My husband answered at length, 'It is I, my wife!' and presenting himself in his cook's cap, lighted the

traveller up a steep and narrow staircase; the traveller carrying his own cloak and knapsack, and bidding the

landlady good night with a complimentary reference to the pleasure of seeing her again tomorrow. It was a

large room, with a rough splintery floor, unplastered rafters overhead, and two bedsteads on opposite sides.

Here 'my husband' put down the candle he carried, and with a sidelong look at his guest stooping over his

knapsack, gruffly gave him the instruction, 'The bed to the right!' and left him to his repose. The landlord,

whether he was a good or a bad physiognomist, had fully made up his mind that the guest was an illlooking

The guest looked contemptuously at the clean coarse bedding prepared for him, and, sitting down on the rush

chair at the bedside, drew his money out of his pocket, and told it over in his hand. 'One must eat,' he

muttered to himself, 'but by Heaven I must eat at the cost of some other man tomorrow!'

As he sat pondering, and mechanically weighing his money in his palm, the deep breathing of the traveller in

the other bed fell so regularly upon his hearing that it attracted his eyes in that direction. The man was

covered up warm, and had drawn the white curtain at his head, so that he could be only heard, not seen. But

the deep regular breathing, still going on while the other was taking off his worn shoes and gaiters, and still

continuing when he had laid aside his coat and cravat, became at length a strong provocative to curiosity, and

The waking traveller, therefore, stole a little nearer, and yet a little nearer, and a little nearer to the sleeping

traveller's bed, until he stood close beside it. Even then he could not see his face, for he had drawn the sheet

over it. The regular breathing still continuing, he put his smooth white hand (such a treacherous hand it

The little Italian, previously influenced in his sleep, perhaps, by the stealthy presence at his bedside, stopped

in his regular breathing, and with a long deep respiration opened his eyes. At first they were not awake,

though open. He lay for some seconds looking placidly at his old prison companion, and then, all at once,

'Hush! What's the matter? Keep quiet! It's I. You know me?' cried the other, in a suppressed voice.

But John Baptist, widely staring, muttering a number of invocations and ejaculations, tremblingly backing

into a corner, slipping on his trousers, and tying his coat by the two sleeves round his neck, manifested an

unmistakable desire to escape by the door rather than renew the acquaintance. Seeing this, his old prison

'Cavalletto! Wake, boy! Rub your eyes and look at me. Not the name you used to call medon't use

John Baptist, staring at him with eyes opened to their utmost width, made a number of those national,

backhanded shakes of the right forefinger in the air, as if he were resolved on negativing beforehand

everything that the other could possibly advance during the whole term of his life.

'Cavalletto! Give me your hand. You know Lagnier, the gentleman. Touch the hand of a gentleman!'

Submitting himself to the old tone of condescending authority, John Baptist, not at all steady on his legs as

yet, advanced and put his hand in his patron's. Monsieur Lagnier laughed; and having given it a squeeze,

'Not shaved? No. See here!' cried Lagnier, giving his head a twirl; 'as tight on as your own.'

John Baptist, with a slight shiver, looked all round the room as if to recall where he was. His patron took that

'Look!' he said, holding up his shoes and gaiters. 'That's a poor trim for a gentleman, you'll say. No matter,

John Baptist, looking anything but reassured, sat down on the floor at the bedside, keeping his eyes upon his

'That's well!' cried Lagnier. 'Now we might be in the old infernal hole again, hey? How long have you been

'I was cautioned not to stay there, and so I left the town at once, and since then I have changed about. I have

been doing odds and ends at Avignon, at Pont Esprit, at Lyons; upon the Rhone, upon the Saone.' As he

spoke, he rapidly mapped the places out with his sunburnt hand upon the floor. 'And where are you going?'

John Baptist seemed to desire to evade the question without knowing how. 'By Bacchus!' he said at last, as if

he were forced to the admission, 'I have sometimes had a thought of going to Paris, and perhaps to England.'

'Cavalletto. This is in confidence. I also am going to Paris and perhaps to England. We'll go together.'

The little man nodded his head, and showed his teeth; and yet seemed not quite convinced that it was a

'We'll go together,' repeated Lagnier. 'You shall see how soon I will force myself to be recognised as a

'Then you shall hear before I sleepand in six words, for I want sleephow I appear before you, I, Lagnier.

'Altro, altro! Not Ri' Before John Baptist could finish the name, his comrade had got his hand under his

'Death! what are you doing? Do you want me to be trampled upon and stoned? Do YOU want to be trampled

upon and stoned? You would be. You don't imagine that they would set upon me, and let my prison chum go?

Don't think it!' There was an expression in his face as he released his grip of his friend's jaw, from which his

friend inferred that if the course of events really came to any stoning and trampling, Monsieur Lagnier would

so distinguish him with his notice as to ensure his having his full share of it. He remembered what a

cosmopolitan gentleman Monsieur Lagnier was, and how few weak distinctions he made.

'I am a man,' said Monsieur Lagnier, 'whom society has deeply wronged since you last saw me. You know

that I am sensitive and brave, and that it is my character to govern. How has society respected those qualities

in me? I have been shrieked at through the streets. I have been guarded through the streets against men, and

especially women, running at me armed with any weapons they could lay their hands on. I have lain in prison

for security, with the place of my confinement kept a secret, lest I should be torn out of it and felled by a

hundred blows. I have been carted out of Marseilles in the dead of night, and carried leagues away from it

packed in straw. It has not been safe for me to go near my house; and, with a beggar's pittance in my pocket, I

have walked through vile mud and weather ever since, until my feet are crippledlook at them! Such are the

humiliations that society has inflicted upon me, possessing the qualities I have mentioned, and which you

'Even here,' he went on in the same way, 'even in this mean drinkingshop, society pursues me. Madame

defames me, and her guests defame me. I, too, a gentleman with manners and accomplishments to strike them

To all of which John Baptist, listening attentively to the suppressed hoarse voice, said from time to time,

'Surely, surely!' tossing his head and shutting his eyes, as if there were the clearest case against society that

'Put my shoes there,' continued Lagnier. 'Hang my cloak to dry there by the door. Take my hat.' He obeyed

each instruction, as it was given. 'And this is the bed to which society consigns me, is it? Hah. Very well!'

As he stretched out his length upon it, with a ragged handkerchief bound round his wicked head, and only his

wicked head showing above the bedclothes, John Baptist was rather strongly reminded of what had so very

nearly happened to prevent the moustache from any more going up as it did, and the nose from any more

'Shaken out of destiny's dicebox again into your company, eh? By Heaven! So much the better for you.

John Baptist replied that he should sleep as long as he would, and wishing him a happy night, put out the

candle. One might have Supposed that the next proceeding of the Italian would have been to undress; but he

did exactly the reverse, and dressed himself from head to foot, saving his shoes. When he had so done, he lay

down upon his bed with some of its coverings over him, and his coat still tied round his neck, to get through

When he started up, the Godfather Break of Day was peeping at its namesake. He rose, took his shoes in his

hand, turned the key in the door with great caution, and crept downstairs. Nothing was astir there but the

smell of coffee, wine, tobacco, and syrups; and madame's little counter looked ghastly enough. But he had

paid madame his little note at it over night, and wanted to see nobody wanted nothing but to get on his

He prospered in his object. No movement or voice was heard when he opened the door; no wicked head tied

up in a ragged handkerchief looked out of the upper window. When the sun had raised his full disc above the

flat line of the horizon, and was striking fire out of the long muddy vista of paved road with its weary avenue

of little trees, a black speck moved along the road and splashed among the flaming pools of rainwater,

In London itself, though in the old rustic road towards a suburb of note where in the days of William

Shakespeare, author and stage player, there were Royal huntingseatshowbeit no sport is left there now

but for hunters of menBleeding Heart Yard was to be found; a place much changed in feature and in

fortune, yet with some relish of ancient greatness about it. Two or three mighty stacks of chimneys, and a few

large dark rooms which had escaped being walled and subdivided out of the recognition of their old

proportions, gave the Yard a character. It was inhabited by poor people, who set up their rest among its faded

glories, as Arabs of the desert pitch their tents among the fallen stones of the Pyramids; but there was a

As if the aspiring city had become puffed up in the very ground on which it stood, the ground had so risen

about Bleeding Heart Yard that you got into it down a flight of steps which formed no part of the original

approach, and got out of it by a low gateway into a maze of shabby streets, which went about and about,

tortuously ascending to the level again. At this end of the Yard and over the gateway, was the factory of

Daniel Doyce, often heavily beating like a bleeding heart of iron, with the clink of metal upon metal. The

opinion of the Yard was divided respecting the derivation of its name. The more practical of its inmates

abided by the tradition of a murder; the gentler and more imaginative inhabitants, including the whole of the

tender sex, were loyal to the legend of a young lady of former times closely imprisoned in her chamber by a

cruel father for remaining true to her own true love, and refusing to marry the suitor he chose for her. The

legend related how that the young lady used to be seen up at her window behind the bars, murmuring a

lovelorn song of which the burden was, 'Bleeding Heart, Bleeding Heart, bleeding away,' until she died. It

was objected by the murderous party that this Refrain was notoriously the invention of a tambourworker, a

spinster and romantic, still lodging in the Yard. But, forasmuch as all favourite legends must be associated

with the affections, and as many more people fall in love than commit murderwhich it may be hoped,

howsoever bad we are, will continue until the end of the world to be the dispensation under which we shall

livethe Bleeding Heart, Bleeding Heart, bleeding away story, carried the day by a great majority. Neither

party would listen to the antiquaries who delivered learned lectures in the neighbourhood, showing the

Bleeding Heart to have been the heraldic cognisance of the old family to whom the property had once

belonged. And, considering that the hourglass they turned from year to year was filled with the earthiest and

coarsest sand, the Bleeding Heart Yarders had reason enough for objecting to be despoiled of the one little

Down in to the Yard, by way of the steps, came Daniel Doyce, Mr Meagles, and Clennam. Passing along the

Yard, and between the open doors on either hand, all abundantly garnished with light children nursing heavy

ones, they arrived at its opposite boundary, the gateway. Here Arthur Clennam stopped to look about him for

the domicile of Plornish, plasterer, whose name, according to the custom of Londoners, Daniel Doyce had

It was plain enough, nevertheless, as Little Dorrit had said; over a limesplashed gateway in the corner,

within which Plornish kept a ladder and a barrel or two. The last house in Bleeding Heart Yard which she had

described as his place of habitation, was a large house, let off to various tenants; but Plornish ingeniously

hinted that he lived in the parlour, by means of a painted hand under his name, the forefinger of which hand

(on which the artist had depicted a ring and a most elaborate nail of the genteelest form) referred all inquirers

Parting from his companions, after arranging another meeting with Mr Meagles, Clennam went alone into the

entry, and knocked with his knuckles at the parlourdoor. It was opened presently by a woman with a child in

her arms, whose unoccupied hand was hastily rearranging the upper part of her dress. This was Mrs Plornish,

and this maternal action was the action of Mrs Plornish during a large part of her waking existence.

Was Mr Plornish at home? 'Well, sir,' said Mrs Plornish, a civil woman, 'not to deceive you, he's gone to look

'Not to deceive you' was a method of speech with Mrs Plornish. She would deceive you, under any

circumstances, as little as might be; but she had a trick of answering in this provisional form.

'I have been expecting him,' said Mrs Plornish, 'this half an hour, at any minute of time. Walk in, sir.' Arthur

entered the rather dark and close parlour (though it was lofty too), and sat down in the chair she placed for

'Not to deceive you, sir, I notice it,' said Mrs Plornish, 'and I take it kind of you.'

He was at a loss to understand what she meant; and by expressing as much in his looks, elicited her

'It ain't many that comes into a poor place, that deems it worth their while to move their hats,' said Mrs

Clennam returned, with an uncomfortable feeling in so very slight a courtesy being unusual, Was that all!

And stooping down to pinch the cheek of another young child who was sitting on the floor, staring at him,

'Four year just turned, sir,' said Mrs Plornish. 'He IS a fine little fellow, ain't he, sir? But this one is rather

sickly.' She tenderly hushed the baby in her arms, as she said it. 'You wouldn't mind my asking if it happened

to be a job as you was come about, sir, would you?' asked Mrs Plornish wistfully.

She asked it so anxiously, that if he had been in possession of any kind of tenement, he would have had it

plastered a foot deep rather than answer No. But he was obliged to answer No; and he saw a shade of

disappointment on her face, as she checked a sigh, and looked at the low fire. Then he saw, also, that Mrs

Plornish was a young woman, made somewhat slatternly in herself and her belongings by poverty; and so

dragged at by poverty and the children together, that their united forces had already dragged her face into

'All such things as jobs,' said Mrs Plornish, 'seems to me to have gone underground, they do indeed.' (Herein

Mrs Plornish limited her remark to the plastering trade, and spoke without reference to the Circumlocution

'Plornish finds it so,' she returned. 'He is quite unfortunate. Really he is.' Really he was. He was one of those

many wayfarers on the road of life, who seem to be afflicted with supernatural corns, rendering it impossible

A willing, working, soft hearted, not hardheaded fellow, Plornish took his fortune as smoothly as could be

expected; but it was a rough one. It so rarely happened that anybody seemed to want him, it was such an

exceptional case when his powers were in any request, that his misty mind could not make out how it

happened. He took it as it came, therefore; he tumbled into all kinds of difficulties, and tumbled out of them;

'It's not for want of looking after jobs, I am sure,' said Mrs Plornish, lifting up her eyebrows, and searching

for a solution of the problem between the bars of the grate; 'nor yet for want of working at them when they

Somehow or other, this was the general misfortune of Bleeding Heart Yard. From time to time there were

public complaints, pathetically going about, of labour being scarcewhich certain people seemed to take

extraordinarily ill, as though they had an absolute right to it on their own termsbut Bleeding Heart Yard,

though as willing a Yard as any in Britain, was never the better for the demand. That high old family, the

Barnacles, had long been too busy with their great principle to look into the matter; and indeed the matter had

nothing to do with their watchfulness in outgeneralling all other high old families except the Stiltstalkings.

While Mrs Plornish spoke in these words of her absent lord, her lord returned. A smoothcheeked,

freshcoloured, sandywhiskered man of thirty. Long in the legs, yielding at the knees, foolish in the face,

'I came,' said Clennam, rising, 'to beg the favour of a little conversation with you on the subject of the Dorrit

Plornish became suspicious. Seemed to scent a creditor. Said, 'Ah, yes. Well. He didn't know what

satisfaction he could give any gentleman, respecting that family. What might it be about, now?'

Plornish observed, not Smiling in return, And yet he hadn't the pleasure of being acquainted with the

'No,' said Arthur, 'I know your kind offices at second hand, but on the best authority; through Little

'Please to sit down again, Sir, and consider yourself welcome. Why, yes,' said Plornish, taking a chair, and

lifting the elder child upon his knee, that he might have the moral support of speaking to a stranger over his

head, 'I have been on the wrong side of the Lock myself, and in that way we come to know Miss Dorrit. Me

and my wife, we are well acquainted with Miss Dorrit.' 'Intimate!' cried Mrs Plornish. Indeed, she was so

proud of the acquaintance, that she had awakened some bitterness of spirit in the Yard by magnifying to an

enormous amount the sum for which Miss Dorrit's father had become insolvent. The Bleeding Hearts

'It was her father that I got acquainted with first. And through getting acquainted with him, you seewhyI

'Ah! And there's manners! There's polish! There's a gentleman to have run to seed in the Marshalsea jail!

Why, perhaps you are not aware,' said Plornish, lowering his voice, and speaking with a perverse admiration

of what he ought to have pitied or despised, 'not aware that Miss Dorrit and her sister dursn't let him know

that they work for a living. No!' said Plornish, looking with a ridiculous triumph first at his wife, and then all

'Without admiring him for that,' Clennam quietly observed, 'I am very sorry for him.' The remark appeared to

suggest to Plornish, for the first time, that it might not be a very fine trait of character after all. He pondered

'As to me,' he resumed, 'certainly Mr Dorrit is as affable with me, I am sure, as I can possibly expect.

Considering the differences and distances betwixt us, more so. But it's Miss Dorrit that we were speaking of.'

Mr Plornish picked a bit of lime out of his whisker, put it between his lips, turned it with his tongue like a

sugarplum, considered, found himself unequal to the task of lucid explanation, and appealing to his wife,

'Miss Dorrit,' said Sally, hushing the baby from side to side, and laying her chin upon the little hand as it tried

to disarrange the gown again, 'came here one afternoon with a bit of writing, telling that how she wished for

needlework, and asked if it would be considered any illconwenience in case she was to give her address

here.' (Plornish repeated, her address here, in a low voice, as if he were making responses at church.) 'Me and

Plornish says, No, Miss Dorrit, no illconwenience,' (Plornish repeated, no ill conwenience,) 'and she wrote

it in, according. Which then me and Plornish says, Ho Miss Dorrit!' (Plornish repeated, Ho Miss Dorrit.)

'Have you thought of copying it three or four times, as the way to make it known in more places than one?

No, says Miss Dorrit, I have not, but I will. She copied it out according, on this table, in a sweet writing, and

Plornish, he took it where he worked, having a job just then,' (Plornish repeated job just then,) 'and likewise

to the landlord of the Yard; through which it was that Mrs Clennam first happened to employ Miss Dorrit.'

Plornish repeated, employ Miss Dorrit; and Mrs Plornish having come to an end, feigned to bite the fingers of

'He is Mr Casby, by name, he is,' said Plornish, 'and Pancks, he collects the rents. That,' added Mr Plornish,

dwelling on the subject with a slow thoughtfulness that appeared to have no connection with any specific

object, and to lead him nowhere, 'that is about what they are, you may believe me or not, as you think proper.'

'Ay?' returned Clennam, thoughtful in his turn. 'Mr Casby, too! An old acquaintance of mine, long ago!'

Mr Plornish did not see his road to any comment on this fact, and made none. As there truly was no reason

why he should have the least interest in it, Arthur Clennam went on to the present purport of his visit;

namely, to make Plornish the instrument of effecting Tip's release, with as little detriment as possible to the

self reliance and selfhelpfulness of the young man, supposing him to possess any remnant of those

qualities: without doubt a very wide stretch of supposition. Plornish, having been made acquainted with the

cause of action from the Defendant's own mouth, gave Arthur to understand that the Plaintiff was a

'Chaunter'meaning, not a singer of anthems, but a seller of horsesand that he (Plornish) considered that

ten shillings in the pound 'would settle handsome,' and that more would be a waste of money. The Principal

and instrument soon drove off together to a stableyard in High Holborn, where a remarkably fine grey

gelding, worth, at the lowest figure, seventyfive guineas (not taking into account the value of the shot he

had been made to swallow for the improvement of his form), was to be parted with for a twentypound note,

in consequence of his having run away last week with Mrs Captain Barbary of Cheltenham, who wasn't up to

a horse of his courage, and who, in mere spite, insisted on selling him for that ridiculous sum: or, in other

words, on giving him away. Plornish, going up this yard alone and leaving his Principal outside, found a

gentleman with tight drab legs, a rather old hat, a little hooked stick, and a blue neckerchief (Captain Maroon

of Gloucestershire, a private friend of Captain Barbary); who happened to be there, in a friendly way, to

mention these little circumstances concerning the remarkably fine grey gelding to any real judge of a horse

and quick snapperup of a good thing, who might look in at that address as per advertisement. This

gentleman, happening also to be the Plaintiff in the Tip case, referred Mr Plornish to his solicitor, and

declined to treat with Mr Plornish, or even to endure his presence in the yard, unless he appeared there with a

twentypound note: in which case only, the gentleman would augur from appearances that he meant

business, and might be induced to talk to him. On this hint, Mr Plornish retired to communicate with his

Principal, and presently came back with the required credentials. Then said Captain Maroon, 'Now, how

much time do you want to make the other twenty in? Now, I'll give you a month.' Then said Captain Maroon,

when that wouldn't suit, 'Now, I'll tell what I'll do with you. You shall get me a good bill at four months,

made payable at a bankinghouse, for the other twenty!' Then said Captain Maroon, when THAT wouldn't

suit, 'Now, come; Here's the last I've got to say to you. You shall give me another ten down, and I'll run my

pen clean through it.' Then said Captain Maroon when THAT wouldn't suit, 'Now, I'll tell you what it is, and

this shuts it up; he has used me bad, but I'll let him off for another five down and a bottle of wine; and if you

mean done, say done, and if you don't like it, leave it.' Finally said Captain Maroon, when THAT wouldn't

suit either, 'Hand over, then!'And in consideration of the first offer, gave a receipt in full and discharged

'Mr Plornish,' said Arthur, 'I trust to you, if you please, to keep my secret. If you will undertake to let the

young man know that he is free, and to tell him that you were employed to compound for the debt by some

one whom you are not at liberty to name, you will not only do me a service, but may do him one, and his

'The last reason, sir,' said Plornish, 'would be quite sufficient. Your wishes shall be attended to.'

'A Friend has obtained his discharge, you can say if you please. A Friend who hopes that for his sister's sake,

'And if you will be so good, in your better knowledge of the family, as to communicate freely with me, and to

point out to me any means by which you think I may be delicately and really useful to Little Dorrit, I shall

'Don't name it, sir,' returned Plornish, 'it'll be ekally a pleasure an ait'l be ekally a pleasure and a'

Finding himself unable to balance his sentence after two efforts, Mr Plornish wisely dropped it. He took

He was earnest to finish his commission at once, and his Principal was in the same mind. So his Principal

offered to set him down at the Marshalsea Gate, and they drove in that direction over Blackfriars Bridge. On

the way, Arthur elicited from his new friend a confused summary of the interior life of Bleeding Heart Yard.

They was all hard up there, Mr Plornish said, uncommon hard up, to be sure. Well, he couldn't say how it

was; he didn't know as anybody could say how it was; all he know'd was, that so it was.

When a man felt, on his own back and in his own belly, that poor he was, that man (Mr Plornish gave it as his

decided belief) know'd well that he was poor somehow or another, and you couldn't talk it out of him, no

more than you could talk Beef into him. Then you see, some people as was better off said, and a good many

such people lived pretty close up to the mark themselves if not beyond it so he'd heerd, that they was

'improvident' (that was the favourite word) down the Yard. For instance, if they see a man with his wife and

children going to Hampton Court in a Wan, perhaps once in a year, they says, 'Hallo! I thought you was poor,

my improvident friend!' Why, Lord, how hard it was upon a man! What was a man to do? He couldn't go

mollancholy mad, and even if he did, you wouldn't be the better for it. In Mr Plornish's judgment you would

be the worse for it. Yet you seemed to want to make a man mollancholy mad. You was always at itif not

with your right hand, with your left. What was they a doing in the Yard? Why, take a look at 'em and see.

There was the girls and their mothers a working at their sewing, or their shoebinding, or their trimming, or

their waistcoat making, day and night and night and day, and not more than able to keep body and soul

together after alloften not so much. There was people of pretty well all sorts of trades you could name, all

wanting to work, and yet not able to get it. There was old people, after working all their lives, going and

being shut up in the workhouse, much worse fed and lodged and treated altogether, thanMr Plornish said

manufacturers, but appeared to mean malefactors. Why, a man didn't know where to turn himself for a crumb

of comfort. As to who was to blame for it, Mr Plornish didn't know who was to blame for it. He could tell you

who suffered, but he couldn't tell you whose fault it was. It wasn't HIS place to find out, and who'd mind

what he said, if he did find out? He only know'd that it wasn't put right by them what undertook that line of

business, and that it didn't come right of itself. And, in brief, his illogical opinion was, that if you couldn't do

nothing for him, you had better take nothing from him for doing of it; so far as he could make out, that was

about what it come to. Thus, in a prolix, gentlygrowling, foolish way, did Plornish turn the tangled skein of

his estate about and about, like a blind man who was trying to find some beginning or end to it; until they

reached the prison gate. There, he left his Principal alone; to wonder, as he rode away, how many thousand

Plornishes there might be within a day or two's journey of the Circumlocution Office, playing sundry curious

variations on the same tune, which were not known by ear in that glorious institution.

The mention of Mr Casby again revived in Clennam's memory the smouldering embers of curiosity and

interest which Mrs Flintwinch had fanned on the night of his arrival. Flora Casby had been the beloved of his

boyhood; and Flora was the daughter and only child of woodenheaded old Christopher (so he was still

occasionally spoken of by some irreverent spirits who had had dealings with him, and in whom familiarity

had bred its proverbial result perhaps), who was reputed to be rich in weekly tenants, and to get a good

quantity of blood out of the stones of several unpromising courts and alleys. After some days of inquiry and

research, Arthur Clennam became convinced that the case of the Father of the Marshalsea was indeed a

hopeless one, and sorrowfully resigned the idea of helping him to freedom again. He had no hopeful inquiry

to make at present, concerning Little Dorrit either; but he argued with himself that it mightfor anything he

knewit might be serviceable to the poor child, if he renewed this acquaintance. It is hardly necessary to add

that beyond all doubt he would have presented himself at Mr Casby's door, if there had been no Little Dorrit

in existence; for we all know how we all deceive ourselvesthat is to say, how people in general, our

With a comfortable impression upon him, and quite an honest one in its way, that he was still patronising

Little Dorrit in doing what had no reference to her, he found himself one afternoon at the corner of Mr

Casby's street. Mr Casby lived in a street in the Gray's Inn Road, which had set off from that thoroughfare

with the intention of running at one heat down into the valley, and up again to the top of Pentonville Hill; but

which had run itself out of breath in twenty yards, and had stood still ever since. There is no such place in

that part now; but it remained there for many years, looking with a baulked countenance at the wilderness

patched with unfruitful gardens and pimpled with eruptive summerhouses, that it had meant to run over in no

'The house,' thought Clennam, as he crossed to the door, 'is as little changed as my mother's, and looks almost

as gloomy. But the likeness ends outside. I know its staid repose within. The smell of its jars of old

When his knock at the bright brass knocker of obsolete shape brought a womanservant to the door, those

faded scents in truth saluted him like wintry breath that had a faint remembrance in it of the bygone spring.

He stepped into the sober, silent, airtight houseone might have fancied it to have been stifled by Mutes in

the Eastern mannerand the door, closing again, seemed to shut out sound and motion. The furniture was

formal, grave, and quaker like, but wellkept; and had as prepossessing an aspect as anything, from a

human creature to a wooden stool, that is meant for much use and is preserved for little, can ever wear. There

was a grave clock, ticking somewhere up the staircase; and there was a songless bird in the same direction,

pecking at his cage, as if he were ticking too. The parlourfire ticked in the grate. There was only one person

The servantmaid had ticked the two words 'Mr Clennam' so softly that she had not been heard; and he

consequently stood, within the door she had closed, unnoticed. The figure of a man advanced in life, whose

smooth grey eyebrows seemed to move to the ticking as the firelight flickered on them, sat in an armchair,

with his list shoes on the rug, and his thumbs slowly revolving over one another. This was old Christopher

Casbyrecognisable at a glanceas unchanged in twenty years and upward as his own solid furnitureas

little touched by the influence of the varying seasons as the old roseleaves and old lavender in his porcelain

Perhaps there never was a man, in this troublesome world, so troublesome for the imagination to picture as a

boy. And yet he had changed very little in his progress through life. Confronting him, in the room in which

he sat, was a boy's portrait, which anybody seeing him would have identified as Master Christopher Casby,

aged ten: though disguised with a haymaking rake, for which he had had, at any time, as much taste or use as

for a divingbell; and sitting (on one of his own legs) upon a bank of violets, moved to precocious

contemplation by the spire of a village church. There was the same smooth face and forehead, the same calm

blue eye, the same placid air. The shining bald head, which looked so very large because it shone so much;

and the long grey hair at its sides and back, like floss silk or spun glass, which looked so very benevolent

because it was never cut; were not, of course, to be seen in the boy as in the old man. Nevertheless, in the

Seraphic creature with the haymaking rake, were clearly to be discerned the rudiments of the Patriarch with

Patriarch was the name which many people delighted to give him. Various old ladies in the neighbourhood

spoke of him as The Last of the Patriarchs. So grey, so slow, so quiet, so impassionate, so very bumpy in the

head, Patriarch was the word for him. He had been accosted in the streets, and respectfully solicited to

become a Patriarch for painters and for sculptors; with so much importunity, in sooth, that it would appear to

be beyond the Fine Arts to remember the points of a Patriarch, or to invent one. Philanthropists of both sexes

had asked who he was, and on being informed, 'Old Christopher Casby, formerly Townagent to Lord

Decimus Tite Barnacle,' had cried in a rapture of disappointment, 'Oh! why, with that head, is he not a

benefactor to his species! Oh! why, with that head, is he not a father to the orphan and a friend to the

friendless!' With that head, however, he remained old Christopher Casby, proclaimed by common report rich

in house property; and with that head, he now sat in his silent parlour. Indeed it would be the height of

Arthur Clennam moved to attract his attention, and the grey eyebrows turned towards him.

Mr Casby seemed a feather's weight disappointed by the last words, having perhaps prepared himself for the

visitor's wishing to pay something else. 'Have I the pleasure, sir,' he proceeded'take a chair, if you

pleasehave I the pleasure of knowing? Ah! truly, yes, I think I have! I believe I am not mistaken in

supposing that I am acquainted with those features? I think I address a gentleman of whose return to this

Without thinking it worth while to explain that in the course of some quarter of a century he had experienced

occasional slight fluctuations in his health and spirits, Clennam answered generally that he had never been

better, or something equally to the purpose; and shook hands with the possessor of 'that head' as it shed its

'We arenot younger,' said Clennam. After this wise remark he felt that he was scarcely shining with

'And your respected father,' said Mr Casby, 'is no more! I was grieved to hear it, Mr Clennam, I was grieved.'

'There was a time,' said Mr Casby, 'when your parents and myself were not on friendly terms. There was a

little family misunderstanding among us. Your respected mother was rather jealous of her son, maybe; when I

His smooth face had a bloom upon it like ripe wallfruit. What with his blooming face, and that head, and his

blue eyes, he seemed to be delivering sentiments of rare wisdom and virtue. In like manner, his

physiognomical expression seemed to teem with benignity. Nobody could have said where the wisdom was,

or where the virtue was, or where the benignity was; but they all seemed to be somewhere about him. 'Those

times, however,' pursued Mr Casby, 'are past and gone, past and gone. I do myself the pleasure of making a

visit to your respected mother occasionally, and of admiring the fortitude and strength of mind with which

she bears her trials, bears her trials.' When he made one of these little repetitions, sitting with his hands

crossed before him, he did it with his head on one side, and a gentle smile, as if he had something in his

thoughts too sweetly profound to be put into words. As if he denied himself the pleasure of uttering it, lest he

'I have heard that you were kind enough on one of those occasions,' said Arthur, catching at the opportunity

'LittleDorrit? That's the seamstress who was mentioned to me by a small tenant of mine? Yes, yes. Dorrit?

'My daughter Flora,' said Mr Casby, 'as you may have heard probably, Mr Clennam, was married and

established in life, several years ago. She had the misfortune to lose her husband when she had been married

a few months. She resides with me again. She will be glad to see you, if you will permit me to let her know

'By all means,' returned Clennam. 'I should have preferred the request, if your kindness had not anticipated

Upon this Mr Casby rose up in his list shoes, and with a slow, heavy step (he was of an elephantine build),

made for the door. He had a long wideskirted bottlegreen coat on, and a bottlegreen pair of trousers, and

a bottlegreen waistcoat. The Patriarchs were not dressed in bottlegreen broadcloth, and yet his clothes

He had scarcely left the room, and allowed the ticking to become audible again, when a quick hand turned a

latchkey in the house door, opened it, and shut it. Immediately afterwards, a quick and eager short dark man

came into the room with so much way upon him that he was within a foot of Clennam before he could stop.

'Where's Mr Casby?' asked the short dark man, looking about. 'He will be here directly, if you want him.'

'_I_ want him?' said the short dark man. 'Don't you?' This elicited a word or two of explanation from

Clennam, during the delivery of which the short dark man held his breath and looked at him. He was dressed

in black and rusty iron grey; had jet black beads of eyes; a scrubby little black chin; wiry black hair striking

out from his head in prongs, like forks or hairpins; and a complexion that was very dingy by nature, or very

dirty by art, or a compound of nature and art. He had dirty hands and dirty broken nails, and looked as if he

had been in the coals; he was in a perspiration, and snorted and sniffed and puffed and blew, like a little

'Oh!' said he, when Arthur told him how he came to be there. 'Very well. That's right. If he should ask for

Pancks, will you be so good as to say that Pancks is come in?' And so, with a snort and a puff, he worked out

Now, in the old days at home, certain audacious doubts respecting the last of the Patriarchs, which were

afloat in the air, had, by some forgotten means, come in contact with Arthur's sensorium. He was aware of

motes and specks of suspicion in the atmosphere of that time; seen through which medium, Christopher

Casby was a mere Inn signpost, without any Innan invitation to rest and be thankful, when there was no

place to put up at, and nothing whatever to be thankful for. He knew that some of these specks even

represented Christopher as capable of harbouring designs in 'that head,' and as being a crafty impostor. Other

motes there were which showed him as a heavy, selfish, drifting Booby, who, having stumbled, in the course

of his unwieldy jostlings against other men, on the discovery that to get through life with ease and credit, he

had but to hold his tongue, keep the bald part of his head well polished, and leave his hair alone, had had just

cunning enough to seize the idea and stick to it. It was said that his being townagent to Lord Decimus Tite

Barnacle was referable, not to his having the least business capacity, but to his looking so supremely

benignant that nobody could suppose the property screwed or jobbed under such a man; also, that for similar

reasons he now got more money out of his own wretched lettings, unquestioned, than anybody with a less

nobby and less shining crown could possibly have done. In a word, it was represented (Clennam called to

mind, alone in the ticking parlour) that many people select their models, much as the painters, just now

mentioned, select theirs; and that, whereas in the Royal Academy some evil old ruffian of a Dogstealer will

annually be found embodying all the cardinal virtues, on account of his eyelashes, or his chin, or his legs

(thereby planting thorns of confusion in the breasts of the more observant students of nature), so, in the great

social Exhibition, accessories are often accepted in lieu of the internal character.

Calling these things to mind, and ranging Mr Pancks in a row with them, Arthur Clennam leaned this day to

the opinion, without quite deciding on it, that the last of the Patriarchs was the drifting Booby aforesaid, with

the one idea of keeping the bald part of his head highly polished: and that, much as an unwieldy ship in the

Thames river may sometimes be seen heavily driving with the tide, broadside on, stern first, in its own way

and in the way of everything else, though making a great show of navigation, when all of a sudden, a little

coaly steamtug will bear down upon it, take it in tow, and bustle off with it; similarly the cumbrous

Patriarch had been taken in tow by the snorting Pancks, and was now following in the wake of that dingy

The return of Mr Casby with his daughter Flora, put an end to these meditations. Clennam's eyes no sooner

Most men will be found sufficiently true to themselves to be true to an old idea. It is no proof of an inconstant

mind, but exactly the opposite, when the idea will not bear close comparison with the reality, and the contrast

is a fatal shock to it. Such was Clennam's case. In his youth he had ardently loved this woman, and had

heaped upon her all the lockedup wealth of his affection and imagination. That wealth had been, in his

desert home, like Robinson Crusoe's money; exchangeable with no one, lying idle in the dark to rust, until he

poured it out for her. Ever since that memorable time, though he had, until the night of his arrival, as

completely dismissed her from any association with his Present or Future as if she had been dead (which she

might easily have been for anything he knew), he had kept the old fancy of the Past unchanged, in its old

sacred place. And now, after all, the last of the Patriarchs coolly walked into the parlour, saying in effect, 'Be

Flora, always tall, had grown to be very broad too, and short of breath; but that was not much. Flora, whom

he had left a lily, had become a peony; but that was not much. Flora, who had seemed enchanting in all she

said and thought, was diffuse and silly. That was much. Flora, who had been spoiled and artless long ago,

'I am sure,' giggled Flora, tossing her head with a caricature of her girlish manner, such as a mummer might

have presented at her own funeral, if she had lived and died in classical antiquity, 'I am ashamed to see Mr

Clennam, I am a mere fright, I know he'll find me fearfully changed, I am actually an old woman, it's

He assured her that she was just what he had expected and that time had not stood still with himself.

'Oh! But with a gentleman it's so different and really you look so amazingly well that you have no right to say

anything of the kind, while, as to me, you knowoh!' cried Flora with a little scream, 'I am dreadful!'

The Patriarch, apparently not yet understanding his own part in the drama under representation, glowed with

'But if we talk of not having changed,' said Flora, who, whatever she said, never once came to a full stop,

'look at Papa, is not Papa precisely what he was when you went away, isn't it cruel and unnatural of Papa to

be such a reproach to his own child, if we go on in this way much longer people who don't know us will

'Oh Mr Clennam you insincerest of creatures,' said Flora, 'I perceive already you have not lost your old way

of paying compliments, your old way when you used to pretend to be so sentimentally struck you knowat

least I don't mean that, Ioh I don't know what I mean!' Here Flora tittered confusedly, and gave him one of

The Patriarch, as if he now began to perceive that his part in the piece was to get off the stage as soon as

might be, rose, and went to the door by which Pancks had worked out, hailing that Tug by name. He received

'You mustn't think of going yet,' said FloraArthur had looked at his hat, being in a ludicrous dismay, and

not knowing what to do: 'you could never be so unkind as to think of going, ArthurI mean Mr Arthuror I

suppose Mr Clennam would be far more properbut I am sure I don't know what I am sayingwithout a

word about the dear old days gone for ever, when I come to think of it I dare say it would be much better not

to speak of them and it's highly probable that you have some much more agreeable engagement and pray let

Me be the last person in the world to interfere with it though there was a time, but I am running into nonsense

Was it possible that Flora could have been such a chatterer in the days she referred to? Could there have been

anything like her present disjointed volubility in the fascinations that had captivated him?

'Indeed I have little doubt,' said Flora, running on with astonishing speed, and pointing her conversation with

nothing but commas, and very few of them, 'that you are married to some Chinese lady, being in China so

long and being in business and naturally desirous to settle and extend your connection nothing was more

likely than that you should propose to a Chinese lady and nothing was more natural I am sure than that the

Chinese lady should accept you and think herself very well off too, I only hope she's not a Pagodian

'I am not,' returned Arthur, smiling in spite of himself, 'married to any lady, Flora.'

'Oh good gracious me I hope you never kept yourself a bachelor so long on my account!' tittered Flora; 'but of

course you never did why should you, pray don't answer, I don't know where I'm running to, oh do tell me

something about the Chinese ladies whether their eyes are really so long and narrow always putting me in

mind of motherofpearl fish at cards and do they really wear tails down their back and plaited too or is it

only the men, and when they pull their hair so very tight off their foreheads don't they hurt themselves, and

why do they stick little bells all over their bridges and temples and hats and things or don't they really do it?'

Flora gave him another of her old glances. Instantly she went on again, as if he had spoken in reply for some

'Then it's all true and they really do! good gracious Arthur! pray excuse meold habitMr Clennam far

more properwhat a country to live in for so long a time, and with so many lanterns and umbrellas too how

very dark and wet the climate ought to be and no doubt actually is, and the sums of money that must be made

by those two trades where everybody carries them and hangs them everywhere, the little shoes too and the

In his ridiculous distress, Clennam received another of the old glances without in the least knowing what to

'Dear dear,' said Flora, 'only to think of the changes at home Arthurcannot overcome it, and seems so

natural, Mr Clennam far more propersince you became familiar with the Chinese customs and language

which I am persuaded you speak like a Native if not better for you were always quick and clever though

immensely difficult no doubt, I am sure the tea chests alone would kill me if I tried, such changes ArthurI

am doing it again, seems so natural, most improperas no one could have believed, who could have ever

'Is that your married name?' asked Arthur, struck, in the midst of all this, by a certain warmth of heart that

expressed itself in her tone when she referred, however oddly, to the youthful relation in which they had

'Finching oh yes isn't it a dreadful name, but as Mr F. said when he proposed to me which he did seven times

and handsomely consented I must say to be what he used to call on liking twelve months, after all, he wasn't

answerable for it and couldn't help it could he, Excellent man, not at all like you but excellent man!'

Flora had at last talked herself out of breath for one moment. One moment; for she recovered breath in the act

of raising a minute corner of her pockethandkerchief to her eye, as a tribute to the ghost of the departed Mr

'No one could dispute, ArthurMr Clennamthat it's quite right you should be formally friendly to me

under the altered circumstances and indeed you couldn't be anything else, at least I suppose not you ought to

know, but I can't help recalling that there was a time when things were very different.'

'Flora. I assure you, Flora, I am happy in seeing you once more, and in finding that, like me, you have not

forgotten the old foolish dreams, when we saw all before us in the light of our youth and hope.'

'You don't seem so,' pouted Flora, 'you take it very coolly, but however I know you are disappointed in me, I

suppose the Chinese ladiesMandarinesses if you call them soare the cause or perhaps I am the cause

'Oh I must you know,' said Flora, in a positive tone, 'what nonsense not to, I know I am not what you

In the midst of her rapidity, she had found that out with the quick perception of a cleverer woman. The

inconsistent and profoundly unreasonable way in which she instantly went on, nevertheless, to interweave

their longabandoned boy and girl relations with their present interview, made Clennam feel as if he were

'One remark,' said Flora, giving their conversation, without the slightest notice and to the great terror of

Clennam, the tone of a lovequarrel, 'I wish to make, one explanation I wish to offer, when your Mama came

and made a scene of it with my Papa and when I was called down into the little breakfastroom where they

were looking at one another with your Mama's parasol between them seated on two chairs like mad bulls

'My dear Mrs Finching,' urged Clennam'all so long ago and so long concluded, is it worth while seriously

'I can't Arthur,' returned Flora, 'be denounced as heartless by the whole society of China without setting

myself right when I have the opportunity of doing so, and you must be very well aware that there was Paul

and Virginia which had to be returned and which was returned without note or comment, not that I mean to

say you could have written to me watched as I was but if it had only come back with a red wafer on the cover

I should have known that it meant Come to Pekin Nankeen and What's the third place, barefoot.'

'My dear Mrs Finching, you were not to blame, and I never blamed you. We were both too young, too

dependent and helpless, to do anything but accept our separation.Pray think how long ago,' gently

remonstrated Arthur. 'One more remark,' proceeded Flora with unslackened volubility, 'I wish to make, one

more explanation I wish to offer, for five days I had a cold in the head from crying which I passed entirely in

the back drawingroomthere is the back drawingroom still on the first floor and still at the back of the

house to confirm my wordswhen that dreary period had passed a lull succeeded years rolled on and Mr F.

became acquainted with us at a mutual friend's, he was all attention he called next day he soon began to call

three evenings a week and to send in little things for supper it was not love on Mr F.'s part it was adoration,

'Nothing whatever,' said Arthur, with the cheerfulest readiness, 'but what you did. Let an old friend assure

'One last remark,' proceeded Flora, rejecting commonplace life with a wave of her hand, 'I wish to make, one

last explanation I wish to offer, there was a time ere Mr F. first paid attentions incapable of being mistaken,

but that is past and was not to be, dear Mr Clennam you no longer wear a golden chain you are free I trust

you may be happy, here is Papa who is always tiresome and putting in his nose everywhere where he is not

With these words, and with a hasty gesture fraught with timid cautionsuch a gesture had Clennam's eyes

been familiar with in the old timepoor Flora left herself at eighteen years of age, a long long way behind

Or rather, she left about half of herself at eighteen years of age behind, and grafted the rest on to the relict of

the late Mr F.; thus making a moral mermaid of herself, which her once boylover contemplated with

feelings wherein his sense of the sorrowful and his sense of the comical were curiously blended.

For example. As if there were a secret understanding between herself and Clennam of the most thrilling

nature; as if the first of a train of postchaises and four, extending all the way to Scotland, were at that

moment round the corner; and as if she couldn't (and wouldn't) have walked into the Parish Church with him,

under the shade of the family umbrella, with the Patriarchal blessing on her head, and the perfect concurrence

of all mankind; Flora comforted her soul with agonies of mysterious signalling, expressing dread of

discovery. With the sensation of becoming more and more lightheaded every minute, Clennam saw the

relict of the late Mr F. enjoying herself in the most wonderful manner, by putting herself and him in their old

places, and going through all the old performancesnow, when the stage was dusty, when the scenery was

faded, when the youthful actors were dead, when the orchestra was empty, when the lights were out. And

still, through all this grotesque revival of what he remembered as having once been prettily natural to her, he

could not but feel that it revived at sight of him, and that there was a tender memory in it.

The Patriarch insisted on his staying to dinner, and Flora signalled 'Yes!' Clennam so wished he could have

done more than stay to dinnerso heartily wished he could have found the Flora that had been, or that never

had beenthat he thought the least atonement he could make for the disappointment he almost felt ashamed

of, was to give himself up to the family desire. Therefore, he stayed to dinner.

Pancks dined with them. Pancks steamed out of his little dock at a quarter before six, and bore straight down

for the Patriarch, who happened to be then driving, in an inane manner, through a stagnant account of

'Bleeding Heart Yard?' said Pancks, with a puff and a snort. 'It's a troublesome property. Don't pay you badly,

but rents are very hard to get there. You have more trouble with that one place than with all the places

just as the big ship in tow gets the credit, with most spectators, of being the powerful object, so the Patriarch

'Indeed?' returned Clennam, upon whom this impression was so efficiently made by a mere gleam of the

polished head that he spoke the ship instead of the Tug. 'The people are so poor there?'

'You can't say, you know,' snorted Pancks, taking one of his dirty hands out of his rusty irongrey pockets to

bite his nails, if he could find any, and turning his beads of eyes upon his employer, 'whether they're poor or

not. They say they are, but they all say that. When a man says he's rich, you're generally sure he isn't.

Besides, if they ARE poor, you can't help it. You'd be poor yourself if you didn't get your rents.'

'You're not going to keep open house for all the poor of London,' pursued Pancks. 'You're not going to lodge

'em for nothing. You're not going to open your gates wide and let 'em come free. Not if you know it, you

'If a man takes a room of you at halfacrown a week, and when the week comes round hasn't got the

halfcrown, you say to that man, Why have you got the room, then? If you haven't got the one thing, why

have you got the other? What have you been and done with your money? What do you mean by it? What are

you up to? That's what YOU say to a man of that sort; and if you didn't say it, more shame for you!' Mr

Pancks here made a singular and startling noise, produced by a strong blowing effort in the region of the

'You have some extent of such property about the east and north east here, I believe?' said Clennam,

'Oh, pretty well,' said Pancks. 'You're not particular to east or northeast, any point of the compass will do for

you. What you want is a good investment and a quick return. You take it where you can find it. You ain't nice

There was a fourth and most original figure in the Patriarchal tent, who also appeared before dinner. This was

an amazing little old woman, with a face like a staring wooden doll too cheap for expression, and a stiff

yellow wig perched unevenly on the top of her head, as if the child who owned the doll had driven a tack

through it anywhere, so that it only got fastened on. Another remarkable thing in this little old woman was,

that the same child seemed to have damaged her face in two or three places with some blunt instrument in the

nature of a spoon; her countenance, and particularly the tip of her nose, presenting the phenomena of several

dints, generally answering to the bowl of that article. A further remarkable thing in this little old woman was,

She broke upon the visitor's view under the following circumstances: Flora said when the first dish was being

put on the table, perhaps Mr Clennam might not have heard that Mr F. had left her a legacy? Clennam in

return implied his hope that Mr F. had endowed the wife whom he adored, with the greater part of his worldly

substance, if not with all. Flora said, oh yes, she didn't mean that, Mr F. had made a beautiful will, but he had

left her as a separate legacy, his Aunt. She then went out of the room to fetch the legacy, and, on her return,

The major characteristics discoverable by the stranger in Mr F.'s Aunt, were extreme severity and grim

taciturnity; sometimes interrupted by a propensity to offer remarks in a deep warning voice, which, being

totally uncalled for by anything said by anybody, and traceable to no association of ideas, confounded and

terrified the Mind. Mr F.'s Aunt may have thrown in these observations on some system of her own, and it

may have been ingenious, or even subtle: but the key to it was wanted. The neatlyserved and wellcooked

dinner (for everything about the Patriarchal household promoted quiet digestion) began with some soup,

some fried soles, a butterboat of shrimp sauce, and a dish of potatoes. The conversation still turned on the

receipt of rents. Mr F.'s Aunt, after regarding the company for ten minutes with a malevolent gaze, delivered

'When we lived at Henley, Barnes's gander was stole by tinkers.' Mr Pancks courageously nodded his head

and said, 'All right, ma'am.' But the effect of this mysterious communication upon Clennam was absolutely to

frighten him. And another circumstance invested this old lady with peculiar terrors. Though she was always

The polite and attentive stranger would desire, say, to consult her inclinations on the subject of potatoes. His

expressive action would be hopelessly lost upon her, and what could he do? No man could say, 'Mr F.'s Aunt,

will you permit me?' Every man retired from the spoon, as Clennam did, cowed and baffled.

There was mutton, a steak, and an applepienothing in the remotest way connected with gandersand the

dinner went on like a disenchanted feast, as it truly was. Once upon a time Clennam had sat at that table

taking no heed of anything but Flora; now the principal heed he took of Flora was to observe, against his will,

that she was very fond of porter, that she combined a great deal of sherry with sentiment, and that if she were

a little overgrown, it was upon substantial grounds. The last of the Patriarchs had always been a mighty eater,

and he disposed of an immense quantity of solid food with the benignity of a good soul who was feeding

some one else. Mr Pancks, who was always in a hurry, and who referred at intervals to a little dirty notebook

which he kept beside him (perhaps containing the names of the defaulters he meant to look up by way of

dessert), took in his victuals much as if he were coaling; with a good deal of noise, a good deal of dropping

about, and a puff and a snort occasionally, as if he were nearly ready to steam away.

All through dinner, Flora combined her present appetite for eating and drinking with her past appetite for

romantic love, in a way that made Clennam afraid to lift his eyes from his plate; since he could not look

towards her without receiving some glance of mysterious meaning or warning, as if they were engaged in a

plot. Mr F.'s Aunt sat silently defying him with an aspect of the greatest bitterness, until the removal of the

cloth and the appearance of the decanters, when she originated another observationstruck into the

Flora had just said, 'Mr Clennam, will you give me a glass of port for Mr F.'s Aunt?'

'The Monument near London Bridge,' that lady instantly proclaimed, 'was put up arter the Great Fire of

London; and the Great Fire of London was not the fire in which your uncle George's workshops was burned

Mr Pancks, with his former courage, said, 'Indeed, ma'am? All right!' But appearing to be incensed by

imaginary contradiction, or other illusage, Mr F.'s Aunt, instead of relapsing into silence, made the

She imparted to this sentiment, in itself almost Solomonic, so extremely injurious and personal a character by

levelling it straight at the visitor's head, that it became necessary to lead Mr F.'s Aunt from the room. This

was quietly done by Flora; Mr F.'s Aunt offering no resistance, but inquiring on her way out, 'What he come

When Flora returned, she explained that her legacy was a clever old lady, but was sometimes a little singular,

and 'took dislikes' peculiarities of which Flora seemed to be proud rather than otherwise. As Flora's good

nature shone in the case, Clennam had no fault to find with the old lady for eliciting it, now that he was

relieved from the terrors of her presence; and they took a glass or two of wine in peace. Foreseeing then that

the Pancks would shortly get under weigh, and that the Patriarch would go to sleep, he pleaded the necessity

Meanwhile Flora was murmuring in rapid snatches for his ear, that there was a time and that the past was a

yawning gulf however and that a golden chain no longer bound him and that she revered the memory of the

late Mr F. and that she should be at home tomorrow at halfpast one and that the decrees of Fate were

beyond recall and that she considered nothing so improbable as that he ever walked on the northwest side of

Gray'sInn Gardens at exactly four o'clock in the afternoon. He tried at parting to give his hand in frankness

to the existing Floranot the vanished Flora, or the mermaidbut Flora wouldn't have it, couldn't have it,

was wholly destitute of the power of separating herself and him from their bygone characters. He left the

house miserably enough; and so much more lightheaded than ever, that if it had not been his good fortune to

be towed away, he might, for the first quarter of an hour, have drifted anywhere.

When he began to come to himself, in the cooler air and the absence of Flora, he found Pancks at full speed,

cropping such scanty pasturage of nails as he could find, and snorting at intervals. These, in conjunction with

one hand in his pocket and his roughened hat hind side before, were evidently the conditions under which he

'Yes, it's pretty fresh,' assented Pancks. 'As a stranger you feel the climate more than I do, I dare say. Indeed I

'Yes, I have always some of 'em to look up, or something to look after. But I like business,' said Pancks,

Pancks put the counter question, 'What else?' It packed up, in the smallest compass, a weight that had rested

'That's what I ask our weekly tenants,' said Pancks. 'Some of 'em will pull long faces to me, and say, Poor as

you see us, master, we're always grinding, drudging, toiling, every minute we're awake.

I say to them, What else are you made for? It shuts them up. They haven't a word to answer. What else are

'Here am I,' said Pancks, pursuing his argument with the weekly tenant. 'What else do you suppose I think I

Rattle me out of bed early, set me going, give me as short a time as you like to bolt my meals in, and keep me

at it. Keep me always at it, and I'll keep you always at it, you keep somebody else always at it. There you are

When they had walked a little further in silence, Clennam said: 'Have you no taste for anything, Mr Pancks?'

'I have an inclination to get money, sir,' said Pancks, 'if you will show me how.' He blew off that sound again,

and it occurred to his companion for the first time that it was his way of laughing. He was a singular man in

all respects; he might not have been quite in earnest, but that the short, hard, rapid manner in which he shot

out these cinders of principles, as if it were done by mechanical revolvency, seemed irreconcilable with

'Never read anything but letters and accounts. Never collect anything but advertisements relative to next of

kin. If that's a taste, I have got that. You're not of the Clennams of Cornwall, Mr Clennam?'

'Not that I ever heard of.' 'I know you're not. I asked your mother, sir. She has too much character to let a

'Supposing I had been of the Clennams of Cornwall?' 'You'd have heard of something to your advantage.'

'There's a Cornish property going a begging, sir, and not a Cornish Clennam to have it for the asking,' said

Pancks, taking his note book from his breast pocket and putting it in again. 'I turn off here. I wish you good

'Good night!' said Clennam. But the Tug, suddenly lightened, and untrammelled by having any weight in tow,

They had crossed Smithfield together, and Clennam was left alone at the corner of Barbican. He had no

intention of presenting himself in his mother's dismal room that night, and could not have felt more depressed

and cast away if he had been in a wilderness. He turned slowly down Aldersgate Street, and was pondering

his way along towards Saint Paul's, purposing to come into one of the great thoroughfares for the sake of their

light and life, when a crowd of people flocked towards him on the same pavement, and he stood aside against

a shop to let them pass. As they came up, he made out that they were gathered around a something that was

carried on men's shoulders. He soon saw that it was a litter, hastily made of a shutter or some such thing; and

a recumbent figure upon it, and the scraps of conversation in the crowd, and a muddy bundle carried by one

man, and a muddy hat carried by another, informed him that an accident had occurred. The litter stopped

under a lamp before it had passed him halfadozen paces, for some readjustment of the burden; and, the

'An accident going to the Hospital?' he asked an old man beside him, who stood shaking his head, inviting

'Yes,' said the man, 'along of them Mails. They ought to be prosecuted and fined, them Mails. They come a

racing out of Lad Lane and Wood Street at twelve or fourteen mile a hour, them Mails do. The only wonder

'I don't know!' said the man, 'it an't for the want of a will in them Mails, if he an't.' The speaker having folded

his arms, and set in comfortably to address his depreciation of them Mails to any of the bystanders who

would listen, several voices, out of pure sympathy with the sufferer, confirmed him; one voice saying to

Clennam, 'They're a public nuisance, them Mails, sir;' another, 'I see one on 'em pull up within half a inch of a

boy, last night;' another, 'I see one on 'em go over a cat, sirand it might have been your own mother;' and

all representing, by implication, that if he happened to possess any public influence, he could not use it better

'Why, a native Englishman is put to it every night of his life, to save his life from them Mails,' argued the first

old man; 'and he knows when they're a coming round the corner, to tear him limb from limb. What can you

In the midst of such replies as 'Frenchman, sir,' 'Porteghee, sir,' 'Dutchman, sir,' 'Prooshan, sir,' and other

conflicting testimony, he now heard a feeble voice asking, both in Italian and in French, for water. A general

remark going round, in reply, of 'Ah, poor fellow, he says he'll never get over it; and no wonder!' Clennam

begged to be allowed to pass, as he understood the poor creature. He was immediately handed to the front, to

'First, he wants some water,' said he, looking round. (A dozen good fellows dispersed to get it.) 'Are you

'Yes, sir; yes, yes, yes. It's my leg, it's my leg. But it pleases me to hear the old music, though I am very bad.'

'You are a traveller! Stay! See, the water! Let me give you some.' They had rested the litter on a pile of

paving stones. It was at a convenient height from the ground, and by stooping he could lightly raise the head

with one hand and hold the glass to his lips with the other. A little, muscular, brown man, with black hair and

'Why, see there! I also! Almost as much a stranger here as you, though born here, I came from Marseilles a

little while ago. Don't be cast down.' The face looked up at him imploringly, as he rose from wiping it, and

gently replaced the coat that covered the writhing figure. 'I won't leave you till you shall be well taken care

'Ah! Altro, Altro!' cried the poor little man, in a faintly incredulous tone; and as they took him up, hung out

Arthur Clennam turned; and walking beside the litter, and saying an encouraging word now and then,

accompanied it to the neighbouring hospital of Saint Bartholomew. None of the crowd but the bearers and he

being admitted, the disabled man was soon laid on a table in a cool, methodical way, and carefully examined

by a surgeon who was as near at hand, and as ready to appear as Calamity herself. 'He hardly knows an

'Let us know all about it first,' said the surgeon, continuing his examination with a businesslike delight in it,

After trying the leg with a finger, and two fingers, and one hand and two hands, and over and under, and up

and down, and in this direction and in that, and approvingly remarking on the points of interest to another

gentleman who joined him, the surgeon at last clapped the patient on the shoulder, and said, 'He won't hurt.

He'll do very well. It's difficult enough, but we shall not want him to part with his leg this time.' Which

Clennam interpreted to the patient, who was full of gratitude, and, in his demonstrative way, kissed both the

'Yees,' replied the surgeon, with the thoughtful pleasure of an artist contemplating the work upon his easel.

'Yes, it's enough. There's a compound fracture above the knee, and a dislocation below. They are both of a

beautiful kind.' He gave the patient a friendly clap on the shoulder again, as if he really felt that he was a very

good fellow indeed, and worthy of all commendation for having broken his leg in a manner interesting to

'He'll be at no loss here, then.You have only to bear a little pain like a brave fellow, my friend, and to be

thankful that all goes as well as it does,' he added, in that tongue, 'and you'll walk again to a marvel. Now, let

There was nothing else the matter, and our ribs were sound. Clennam remained until everything possible to

be done had been skilfully and promptly donethe poor belated wanderer in a strange land movingly

besought that favour of himand lingered by the bed to which he was in due time removed, until he had

fallen into a doze. Even then he wrote a few words for him on his card, with a promise to return tomorrow,

and left it to be given to him when he should awake. All these proceedings occupied so long that it struck

eleven o'clock at night as he came out at the Hospital Gate. He had hired a lodging for the present in Covent

Left to himself again, after the solicitude and compassion of his last adventure, he was naturally in a

thoughtful mood. As naturally, he could not walk on thinking for ten minutes without recalling Flora. She

necessarily recalled to him his life, with all its misdirection and little happiness.

When he got to his lodging, he sat down before the dying fire, as he had stood at the window of his old room

looking out upon the blackened forest of chimneys, and turned his gaze back upon the gloomy vista by which

he had come to that stage in his existence. So long, so bare, so blank. No childhood; no youth, except for one

remembrance; that one remembrance proved, only that day, to be a piece of folly.

It was a misfortune to him, trifle as it might have been to another. For, while all that was hard and stern in his

recollection, remained Reality on being provedwas obdurate to the sight and touch, and relaxed nothing of

its old indomitable grimnessthe one tender recollection of his experience would not bear the same test, and

melted away. He had foreseen this, on the former night, when he had dreamed with waking eyes. but he had

He was a dreamer in such wise, because he was a man who had, deep rooted in his nature, a belief in all the

gentle and good things his life had been without. Bred in meanness and hard dealing, this had rescued him to

be a man of honourable mind and open hand. Bred in coldness and severity, this had rescued him to have a

warm and sympathetic heart. Bred in a creed too darkly audacious to pursue, through its process of reserving

the making of man in the image of his Creator to the making of his Creator in the image of an erring man, this

had rescued him to judge not, and in humility to be merciful, and have hope and charity.

And this saved him still from the whimpering weakness and cruel selfishness of holding that because such a

happiness or such a virtue had not come into his little path, or worked well for him, therefore it was not in the

great scheme, but was reducible, when found in appearance, to the basest elements. A disappointed mind he

had, but a mind too firm and healthy for such unwholesome air. Leaving himself in the dark, it could rise into

Therefore, he sat before his dying fire, sorrowful to think upon the way by which he had come to that night,

yet not strewing poison on the way by which other men had come to it. That he should have missed so much,

and at his time of life should look so far about him for any staff to bear him company upon his downward

journey and cheer it, was a just regret. He looked at the fire from which the blaze departed, from which the

afterglow subsided, in which the ashes turned grey, from which they dropped to dust, and thought, 'How soon

To review his life was like descending a green tree in fruit and flower, and seeing all the branches wither and

'From the unhappy suppression of my youngest days, through the rigid and unloving home that followed

them, through my departure, my long exile, my return, my mother's welcome, my intercourse with her since,

down to the afternoon of this day with poor Flora,' said Arthur Clennam, 'what have I found!'

His door was softly opened, and these spoken words startled him, and came as if they were an answer:

Arthur Clennam rose hastily, and saw her standing at the door. This history must sometimes see with Little

Little Dorrit looked into a dim room, which seemed a spacious one to her, and grandly furnished. Courtly

ideas of Covent Garden, as a place with famous coffeehouses, where gentlemen wearing gold laced coats

and swords had quarrelled and fought duels; costly ideas of Covent Garden, as a place where there were

flowers in winter at guineas apiece, pineapples at guineas a pound, and peas at guineas a pint; picturesque

ideas of Covent Garden, as a place where there was a mighty theatre, showing wonderful and beautiful sights

to richlydressed ladies and gentlemen, and which was for ever far beyond the reach of poor Fanny or poor

uncle; desolate ideas of Covent Garden, as having all those arches in it, where the miserable children in rags

among whom she had just now passed, like young rats, slunk and hid, fed on offal, huddled together for

warmth, and were hunted about (look to the rats young and old, all ye Barnacles, for before God they are

eating away our foundations, and will bring the roofs on our heads!); teeming ideas of Covent Garden, as a

place of past and present mystery, romance, abundance, want, beauty, ugliness, fair country gardens, and foul

street gutters; all confused together,made the room dimmer than it was in Little Dorrit's eyes, as they

At first in the chair before the goneout fire, and then turned round wondering to see her, was the gentleman

whom she sought. The brown, grave gentleman, who smiled so pleasantly, who was so frank and considerate

in his manner, and yet in whose earnestness there was something that reminded her of his mother, with the

great difference that she was earnest in asperity and he in gentleness. Now he regarded her with that attentive

and inquiring look before which Little Dorrit's eyes had always fallen, and before which they fell still.

'I said Little Dorrit, sir, on purpose to prepare you. I knew you must be very much surprised.'

Considering her entrance sufficiently prepared for by this mention of her name, Maggy appeared from the

landing outside, on the broad grin. She instantly suppressed that manifestation, however, and became fixedly

'And I have no fire,' said Clennam. 'And you are' He was going to say so lightly clad, but stopped himself

in what would have been a reference to her poverty, saying instead, 'And it is so cold.'

Putting the chair from which he had risen nearer to the grate, he made her sit down in it; and hurriedly

'Your foot is like marble, my child;' he had happened to touch it, while stooping on one knee at his work of

kindling the fire; 'put it nearer the warmth.' Little Dorrit thanked him hastily. It was quite warm, it was very

Little Dorrit was not ashamed of her poor shoes. He knew her story, and it was not that. Little Dorrit had a

misgiving that he might blame her father, if he saw them; that he might think, 'why did he dine today, and

leave this little creature to the mercy of the cold stones!' She had no belief that it would have been a just

reflection; she simply knew, by experience, that such delusions did sometimes present themselves to people.

'Before I say anything else,' Little Dorrit began, sitting before the pale fire, and raising her eyes again to the

face which in its harmonious look of interest, and pity, and protection, she felt to be a mystery far above her

in degree, and almost removed beyond her guessing at; 'may I tell you something, sir?'

'Yes, my child.' A slight shade of distress fell upon her, at his so often calling her a child. She was surprised

that he should see it, or think of such a slight thing; but he said directly: 'I wanted a tender word, and could

think of no other. As you just now gave yourself the name they give you at my mother's, and as that is the

Maggy laughed, and immediately snored. In Little Dorrit's eyes and ears, the uncouth figure and the uncouth

sound were as pleasant as could be. There was a glow of pride in her big child, overspreading her face, when

it again met the eyes of the grave brown gentleman. She wondered what he was thinking of, as he looked at

Maggy and her. She thought what a good father he would be. How, with some such look, he would counsel

'What I was going to tell you, sir,' said Little Dorrit, 'is, that MY brother is at large.'

'And what I was going to tell you, sir,' said Little Dorrit, trembling in all her little figure and in her voice, 'is,

that I am not to know whose generosity released himam never to ask, and am never to be told, and am

He would probably need no thanks, Clennam said. Very likely he would be thankful himself (and with

reason), that he had had the means and chance of doing a little service to her, who well deserved a great one.

'And what I was going to say, sir, is,' said Little Dorrit, trembling more and more, 'that if I knew him, and I

might, I would tell him that he can never, never know how I feel his goodness, and how my good father

would feel it. And what I was going to say, sir, is, that if I knew him, and I mightbut I don't know him and

I must notI know that!I would tell him that I shall never any more lie down to sleep without having

prayed to Heaven to bless him and reward him. And if I knew him, and I might, I would go down on my

knees to him, and take his hand and kiss it and ask him not to draw it away, but to leave itO to leave it for

a momentand let my thankful tears fall on it; for I have no other thanks to give him!'

Little Dorrit had put his hand to her lips, and would have kneeled to him, but he gently prevented her, and

Her eyes, and the tones of her voice, had thanked him far better than she thought. He was not able to say,

quite as composedly as usual, 'There, Little Dorrit, there, there, there! We will suppose that you did know this

person, and that you might do all this, and that it was all done. And now tell me, Who am quite another

personwho am nothing more than the friend who begged you to trust himwhy you are out at midnight,

and what it is that brings you so far through the streets at this late hour, my slight, delicate,' child was on his

'Maggy and I have been tonight,' she answered, subduing herself with the quiet effort that had long been

'And oh ain't it a Ev'nly place,' suddenly interrupted Maggy, who seemed to have the power of going to sleep

and waking up whenever she chose. 'Almost as good as a hospital. Only there ain't no Chicking in it.'

'We went there,' said Little Dorrit, glancing at her charge, 'because I like sometimes to know, of my own

knowledge, that my sister is doing well; and like to see her there, with my own eyes, when neither she nor

Uncle is aware. It is very seldom indeed that I can do that, because when I am not out at work, I am with my

father, and even when I am out at work, I hurry home to him. But I pretend tonight that I am at a party.'

As she made the confession, timidly hesitating, she raised her eyes to the face, and read its expression so

plainly that she answered it. 'Oh no, certainly! I never was at a party in my life.' She paused a little under his

attentive look, and then said, 'I hope there is no harm in it. I could never have been of any use, if I had not

She feared that he was blaming her in his mind for so devising to contrive for them, think for them, and watch

over them, without their knowledge or gratitude; perhaps even with their reproaches for supposed neglect.

But what was really in his mind, was the weak figure with its strong purpose, the thin worn shoes, the

insufficient dress, and the pretence of recreation and enjoyment. He asked where the suppositious party was?

At a place where she worked, answered Little Dorrit, blushing. She had said very little about it; only a few

words to make her father easy. Her father did not believe it to be a grand partyindeed he might suppose

'It is the first night,' said Little Dorrit, 'that I have ever been away from home. And London looks so large, so

barren, and so wild.' In Little Dorrit's eyes, its vastness under the black sky was awful; a tremor passed over

'But this is not,' she added, with the quiet effort again, 'what I have come to trouble you with, sir. My sister's

having found a friend, a lady she has told me of and made me rather anxious about, was the first cause of my

coming away from home. And being away, and coming (on purpose) round by where you lived and seeing a

Not for the first time. No, not for the first time. In Little Dorrit's eyes, the outside of that window had been a

distant star on other nights than this. She had toiled out of her way, tired and troubled, to look up at it, and

wonder about the grave, brown gentleman from so far off, who had spoken to her as a friend and protector.

'There were three things,' said Little Dorrit, 'that I thought I would like to say, if you were alone and I might

'Hush, hush! That is done with, and disposed of. Let us pass to the second,' said Clennam, smiling her

agitation away, making the blaze shine upon her, and putting wine and cake and fruit towards her on the

'I think,' said Little Dorrit'this is the second thing, sirI think Mrs Clennam must have found out my

secret, and must know where I come from and where I go to. Where I live, I mean.'

'Indeed!' returned Clennam quickly. He asked her, after short consideration, why she supposed so.

And why, Clennam asked, as he turned his eyes upon the fire, bent his brows, and considered again; why did

'I have met him twice. Both times near home. Both times at night, when I was going back. Both times I

thought (though that may easily be my mistake), that he hardly looked as if he had met me by accident.' 'Did

'The devil take his head!' mused Clennam, still looking at the fire; 'it's always on one side.' He roused himself

to persuade her to put some wine to her lips, and to touch something to eatit was very difficult, she was so

'Oh, not at all. She is just the same. I wondered whether I had better tell her my history. I wondered whether I

mightI mean, whether you would like me to tell her. I wondered,' said Little Dorrit, looking at him in a

suppliant way, and gradually withdrawing her eyes as he looked at her, 'whether you would advise me what I

'Little Dorrit,' said Clennam; and the phrase had already begun, between these two, to stand for a hundred

gentle phrases, according to the varying tone and connection in which it was used; 'do nothing. I will have

some talk with my old friend, Mrs Affery. Do nothing, Little Dorritexcept refresh yourself with such

'Thank you, I am not hungry. Nor,' said Little Dorrit, as he softly put her glass towards her, 'nor thirsty.I

'We will make her find pockets presently for all there is here,' said Clennam: 'but before we awake her, there

'It will sound strange. I hardly know how to say it. Don't think it unreasonable or ungrateful in me,' said Little

'No, no, no. I am sure it will be natural and right. I am not afraid that I shall put a wrong construction on it,

'You have been so good and thoughtful as to write him a note, saying that you are coming tomorrow?'

'Can you guess,' said Little Dorrit, folding her small hands tight in one another, and looking at him with all

the earnestness of her soul looking steadily out of her eyes, 'what I am going to ask you not to do?'

'I think I can. But I may be wrong.' 'No, you are not wrong,' said Little Dorrit, shaking her head. 'If we should

want it so very, very badly that we cannot do without it, let me ask you for it.'

'Don't encourage him to ask. Don't understand him if he does ask. Don't give it to him. Save him and spare

Clennam saidnot very plainly, seeing those tears glistening in her anxious eyesthat her wish should be

'You don't know what he is,' she said; 'you don't know what he really is. How can you, seeing him there all at

once, dear love, and not gradually, as I have done! You have been so good to us, so delicately and truly good,

that I want him to be better in your eyes than in anybody's. And I cannot bear to think,' cried Little Dorrit,

covering her tears with her hands, 'I cannot bear to think that you of all the world should see him in his only

'Pray,' said Clennam, 'do not be so distressed. Pray, pray, Little Dorrit! This is quite understood now.'

'Thank you, sir. Thank you! I have tried very much to keep myself from saying this; I have thought about it,

days and nights; but when I knew for certain you were coming again, I made up my mind to speak to you.

Not because I am ashamed of him,' she dried her tears quickly, 'but because I know him better than any one

Relieved of this weight, Little Dorrit was nervously anxious to be gone. Maggy being broad awake, and in the

act of distantly gloating over the fruit and cakes with chuckles of anticipation, Clennam made the best

diversion in his power by pouring her out a glass of wine, which she drank in a series of loud smacks; putting

her hand upon her windpipe after every one, and saying, breathless, with her eyes in a prominent state, 'Oh,

ain't it d'licious! Ain't it hospitally!' When she had finished the wine and these encomiums, he charged her to

load her basket (she was never without her basket) with every eatable thing upon the table, and to take

especial care to leave no scrap behind. Maggy's pleasure in doing this and her little mother's pleasure in

seeing Maggy pleased, was as good a turn as circumstances could have given to the late conversation.

'But the gates will have been locked long ago,' said Clennam, suddenly remembering it. 'Where are you

'I am going to Maggy's lodging,' answered Little Dorrit. 'I shall be quite safe, quite well taken care of.'

She was so earnest in the petition, that Clennam felt a delicacy in obtruding himself upon her: the rather,

because he could well understand that Maggy's lodging was of the obscurest sort. 'Come, Maggy,' said Little

'Yes, yes, little mother; we know the way,' chuckled Maggy. And away they went. Little Dorrit turned at the

door to say, 'God bless you!' She said it very softly, but perhaps she may have been as audible abovewho

Arthur Clennam suffered them to pass the corner of the street before he followed at a distance; not with any

idea of encroaching a second time on Little Dorrit's privacy, but to satisfy his mind by seeing her secure in

the neighbourhood to which she was accustomed. So diminutive she looked, so fragile and defenceless

against the bleak damp weather, flitting along in the shuffling shadow of her charge, that he felt, in his

compassion, and in his habit of considering her a child apart from the rest of the rough world, as if he would

In course of time she came into the leading thoroughfare where the Marshalsea was, and then he saw them

slacken their pace, and soon turn down a bystreet. He stopped, felt that he had no right to go further, and

slowly left them. He had no suspicion that they ran any risk of being houseless until morning; had no idea of

But, said Little Dorrit, when they stopped at a poor dwelling all in darkness, and heard no sound on listening

at the door, 'Now, this is a good lodging for you, Maggy, and we must not give offence. Consequently, we

will only knock twice, and not very loud; and if we cannot wake them so, we must walk about till day.'

Once, Little Dorrit knocked with a careful hand, and listened. Twice, Little Dorrit knocked with a careful

hand, and listened. All was close and still. 'Maggy, we must do the best we can, my dear. We must be patient,

It was a chill dark night, with a damp wind blowing, when they came out into the leading street again, and

heard the clocks strike halfpast one. 'In only five hours and a half,' said Little Dorrit, 'we shall be able to go

home.' To speak of home, and to go and look at it, it being so near, was a natural sequence. They went to the

closed gate, and peeped through into the courtyard. 'I hope he is sound asleep,' said Little Dorrit, kissing one

The gate was so familiar, and so like a companion, that they put down Maggy's basket in a corner to serve for

a seat, and keeping close together, rested there for some time. While the street was empty and silent, Little

Dorrit was not afraid; but when she heard a footstep at a distance, or saw a moving shadow among the street

lamps, she was startled, and whispered, 'Maggy, I see some one. Come away!' Maggy would then wake up

more or less fretfully, and they would wander about a little, and come back again.

As long as eating was a novelty and an amusement, Maggy kept up pretty well. But that period going by, she

became querulous about the cold, and shivered and whimpered. 'It will soon be over, dear,' said Little Dorrit

patiently. 'Oh it's all very fine for you, little mother,' returned Maggy, 'but I'm a poor thing, only ten years

old.' At last, in the dead of the night, when the street was very still indeed, Little Dorrit laid the heavy head

upon her bosom, and soothed her to sleep. And thus she sat at the gate, as it were alone; looking up at the

stars, and seeing the clouds pass over them in their wild flightwhich was the dance at Little Dorrit's party.

'If it really was a party!' she thought once, as she sat there. 'If it was light and warm and beautiful, and it was

our house, and my poor dear was its master, and had never been inside these walls.

And if Mr Clennam was one of our visitors, and we were dancing to delightful music, and were all as gay and

lighthearted as ever we could be! I wonder' Such a vista of wonder opened out before her, that she sat

looking up at the stars, quite lost, until Maggy was querulous again, and wanted to get up and walk.

Three o'clock, and halfpast three, and they had passed over London Bridge. They had heard the rush of the

tide against obstacles; and looked down, awed, through the dark vapour on the river; had seen little spots of

lighted water where the bridge lamps were reflected, shining like demon eyes, with a terrible fascination in

them for guilt and misery. They had shrunk past homeless people, lying coiled up in nooks. They had run

from drunkards. They had started from slinking men, whistling and signing to one another at bye corners, or

running away at full speed. Though everywhere the leader and the guide, Little Dorrit, happy for once in her

youthful appearance, feigned to cling to and rely upon Maggy. And more than once some voice, from among

a knot of brawling or prowling figures in their path, had called out to the rest to 'let the woman and the child

So, the woman and the child had gone by, and gone on, and five had sounded from the steeples. They were

walking slowly towards the east, already looking for the first pale streak of day, when a woman came after

She was youngfar too young to be there, Heaven knows!and neither ugly nor wickedlooking. She

spoke coarsely, but with no naturally coarse voice; there was even something musical in its sound. 'What are

'Killing myself! Now I have answered you, answer me. What are you doing with the child?'

The supposed child kept her head drooped down, and kept her form close at Maggy's side.

'Poor thing!' said the woman. 'Have you no feeling, that you keep her out in the cruel streets at such a time as

this? Have you no eyes, that you don't see how delicate and slender she is? Have you no sense (you don't look

as if you had much) that you don't take more pity on this cold and trembling little hand?'

She had stepped across to that side, and held the hand between her own two, chafing it. 'Kiss a poor lost

creature, dear,' she said, bending her face, 'and tell me where's she taking you.'

'Don't mind that!' said Little Dorrit, clasping one of her hands that had suddenly released hers. 'I am not afraid

'You can't do it,' said the woman. 'You are kind and innocent; but you can't look at me out of a child's eyes. I

never should have touched you, but I thought that you were a child.' And with a strange, wild cry, she went

No day yet in the sky, but there was day in the resounding stones of the streets; in the waggons, carts, and

coaches; in the workers going to various occupations; in the opening of early shops; in the traffic at markets;

in the stir of the riverside. There was coming day in the flaring lights, with a feebler colour in them than they

would have had at another time; coming day in the increased sharpness of the air, and the ghastly dying of the

They went back again to the gate, intending to wait there now until it should be opened; but the air was so

raw and cold that Little Dorrit, leading Maggy about in her sleep, kept in motion. Going round by the Church,

'Who's that?' cried a stout old man, who was putting on a nightcap as if he were going to bed in a vault.

This caused her to turn back again in the act of going out, and to present herself and her charge before him.

'We have often seen each other,' said Little Dorrit, recognising the sexton, or the beadle, or the verger, or

'More than that, we've got your birth in our Register, you know; you're one of our curiosities.'

'You don't mean it? And there's another hour good yet! Come into the vestry. You'll find a fire in the vestry,

on account of the painters. I'm waiting for the painters, or I shouldn't be here, you may depend upon it. One

of our curiosities mustn't be cold when we have it in our power to warm her up comfortable. Come along.'

He was a very good old fellow, in his familiar way; and having stirred the vestry fire, he looked round the

shelves of registers for a particular volume. 'Here you are, you see,' he said, taking it down and turning the

leaves. 'Here you'll find yourself, as large as life. Amy, daughter of William and Fanny Dorrit. Born,

Marshalsea Prison, Parish of St George. And we tell people that you have lived there, without so much as a

'Quite true, till last night.' 'Lord!' But his surveying her with an admiring gaze suggested Something else to

him, to wit: 'I am sorry to see, though, that you are faint and tired. Stay a bit. I'll get some cushions out of the

Don't be afraid of not going in to join your father when the gate opens. I'll call you.'

'There you are, you see. Again as large as life. Oh, never mind thanking. I've daughters of my own. And

though they weren't born in the Marshalsea Prison, they might have been, if I had been, in my ways of

carrying on, of your father's breed. Stop a bit. I must put something under the cushion for your head. Here's a

burial volume. just the thing! We have got Mrs Bangham in this book. But what makes these books

interesting to most people is not who's in 'em, but who isn'twho's coming, you know, and when. That's

Commendingly looking back at the pillow he had improvised, he left them to their hour's repose. Maggy was

snoring already, and Little Dorrit was soon fast asleep with her head resting on that sealed book of Fate,

This was Little Dorrit's party. The shame, desertion, wretchedness, and exposure of the great capital; the wet,

the cold, the slow hours, and the swift clouds of the dismal night. This was the party from which Little Dorrit

The debilitated old house in the city, wrapped in its mantle of soot, and leaning heavily on the crutches that

had partaken of its decay and worn out with it, never knew a healthy or a cheerful interval, let what would

betide. If the sun ever touched it, it was but with a ray, and that was gone in half an hour; if the moonlight

ever fell upon it, it was only to put a few patches on its doleful cloak, and make it look more wretched. The

stars, to be sure, coldly watched it when the nights and the smoke were clear enough; and all bad weather

stood by it with a rare fidelity. You should alike find rain, hail, frost, and thaw lingering in that dismal

enclosure when they had vanished from other places; and as to snow, you should see it there for weeks, long

after it had changed from yellow to black, slowly weeping away its grimy life. The place had no other

adherents. As to street noises, the rumbling of wheels in the lane merely rushed in at the gateway in going

past, and rushed out again: making the listening Mistress Affery feel as if she were deaf, and recovered the

sense of hearing by instantaneous flashes. So with whistling, singing, talking, laughing, and all pleasant

human sounds. They leaped the gap in a moment, and went upon their way. The varying light of fire and

candle in Mrs Clennam's room made the greatest change that ever broke the dead monotony of the spot. In

her two long narrow windows, the fire shone sullenly all day, and sullenly all night. On rare occasions it

flashed up passionately, as she did; but for the most part it was suppressed, like her, and preyed upon itself

evenly and slowly. During many hours of the short winter days, however, when it was dusk there early in the

afternoon, changing distortions of herself in her wheeled chair, of Mr Flintwinch with his wry neck, of

Mistress Affery coming and going, would be thrown upon the house wall that was over the gateway, and

would hover there like shadows from a great magic lantern. As the roomridden invalid settled for the night,

these would gradually disappear: Mistress Affery's magnified shadow always flitting about, last, until it

finally glided away into the air, as though she were off upon a witch excursion. Then the solitary light would

burn unchangingly, until it burned pale before the dawn, and at last died under the breath of Mrs Affery, as

Strange, if the little sickroom fire were in effect a beacon fire, summoning some one, and that the most

unlikely some one in the world, to the spot that MUST be come to. Strange, if the little sickroom light were

in effect a watchlight, burning in that place every night until an appointed event should be watched out!

Which of the vast multitude of travellers, under the sun and the stars, climbing the dusty hills and toiling

along the weary plains, journeying by land and journeying by sea, coming and going so strangely, to meet

and to act and react on one another; which of the host may, with no suspicion of the journey's end, be

Time shall show us. The post of honour and the post of shame, the general's station and the drummer's, a

peer's statue in Westminster Abbey and a seaman's hammock in the bosom of the deep, the mitre and the

workhouse, the woolsack and the gallows, the throne and the guillotinethe travellers to all are on the great

high road, but it has wonderful divergencies, and only Time shall show us whither each traveller is bound.

On a wintry afternoon at twilight, Mrs Flintwinch, having been heavy all day, dreamed this dream:

She thought she was in the kitchen getting the kettle ready for tea, and was warming herself with her feet

upon the fender and the skirt of her gown tucked up, before the collapsed fire in the middle of the grate,

bordered on either hand by a deep cold black ravine. She thought that as she sat thus, musing upon the

question whether life was not for some people a rather dull invention, she was frightened by a sudden noise

behind her. She thought that she had been similarly frightened once last week, and that the noise was of a

mysterious kinda sound of rustling and of three or four quick beats like a rapid step; while a shock or

tremble was communicated to her heart, as if the step had shaken the floor, or even as if she had been touched

by some awful hand. She thought that this revived within her certain old fears of hers that the house was

haunted; and that she flew up the kitchen stairs without knowing how she got up, to be nearer company.

Mistress Affery thought that on reaching the hall, she saw the door of her liege lord's office standing open,

and the room empty. That she went to the rippedup window in the little room by the street door to connect

her palpitating heart, through the glass, with living things beyond and outside the haunted house. That she

then saw, on the wall over the gateway, the shadows of the two clever ones in conversation above. That she

then went upstairs with her shoes in her hand, partly to be near the clever ones as a match for most ghosts,

'None of your nonsense with me,' said Mr Flintwinch. 'I won't take it from you.'

Mrs Flintwinch dreamed that she stood behind the door, which was just ajar, and most distinctly heard her

'Flintwinch,' returned Mrs Clennam, in her usual strong low voice, 'there is a demon of anger in you. Guard

'I don't care whether there's one or a dozen,' said Mr Flintwinch, forcibly suggesting in his tone that the higher

number was nearer the mark. 'If there was fifty, they should all say, None of your nonsense with me, I won't

'Don't put words into my mouth that I don't mean,' said Jeremiah, sticking to his figurative expression with

'I dropped down upon you, then, you illconditioned man,' (Jeremiah chuckled at having forced her to adopt

his phrase,) 'for having been needlessly significant to Arthur that morning. I have a right to complain of it as

'I won't have it!' interposed the contradictory Jeremiah, flinging back the concession. 'I did mean it.'

'I suppose I must leave you to speak in soliloquy if you choose,' she replied, after a pause that seemed an

angry one. 'It is useless my addressing myself to a rash and headstrong old man who has a set purpose not to

'Now, I won't take that from you either,' said Jeremiah. 'I have no such purpose. I have told you I did mean it.

'After all, you only restore me my own words,' she said, struggling with her indignation. 'Yes.'

'This is why, then. Because you hadn't cleared his father to him, and you ought to have done it. Because,

'Hold there, Flintwinch!' she cried out in a changed voice: 'you may go a word too far.'

The old man seemed to think so. There was another pause, and he had altered his position in the room, when

'I was going to tell you why it was. Because, before you took your own part, I thought you ought to have

taken the part of Arthur's father. Arthur's father! I had no particular love for Arthur's father. I served Arthur's

father's uncle, in this house, when Arthur's father was not much above mewas poorer as far as his pocket

wentand when his uncle might as soon have left me his heir as have left him. He starved in the parlour, and

I starved in the kitchen; that was the principal difference in our positions; there was not much more than a

flight of breakneck stairs between us. I never took to him in those times; I don't know that I ever took to him

greatly at any time. He was an undecided, irresolute chap, who had everything but his orphan life scared out

of him when he was young. And when he brought you home here, the wife his uncle had named for him, I

didn't need to look at you twice (you were a good looking woman at that time) to know who'd be master.

You have stood of your own strength ever since. Stand of your own strength now. Don't lean against the

'But you had a mind to do it, if I had submitted,' growled Jeremiah, 'and that's why you drop down upon me.

You can't forget that I didn't submit. I suppose you are astonished that I should consider it worth my while to

Hey? It doesn't matter whether you answer or not, because I know you are, and you know you are. Come,

then, I'll tell you how it is. I may be a bit of an oddity in point of temper, but this is my temperI can't let

anybody have entirely their own way. You are a determined woman, and a clever woman; and when you see

your purpose before you, nothing will turn you from it. Who knows that better than I do?'

'Nothing will turn me from it, Flintwinch, when I have justified it to myself. Add that.'

'Justified it to yourself? I said you were the most determined woman on the face of the earth (or I meant to

say so), and if you are determined to justify any object you entertain, of course you'll do it.'

'Man! I justify myself by the authority of these Books,' she cried, with stern emphasis, and appearing from the

'Never mind that,' returned Jeremiah calmly, 'we won't enter into that question at present. However that may

be, you carry out your purposes, and you make everything go down before them. Now, I won't go down

before them. I have been faithful to you, and useful to you, and I am attached to you. But I can't consent, and

I won't consent, and I never did consent, and I never will consent to be lost in you. Swallow up everybody

else, and welcome. The peculiarity of my temper is, ma'am, that I won't be swallowed up alive.'

Perhaps this had Originally been the mainspring of the understanding between them. Descrying thus much of

force of character in Mr Flintwinch, perhaps Mrs Clennam had deemed alliance with him worth her while.

'Unless you drop down upon me again,' returned the persistent Flintwinch, 'and then you must expect to hear

Mistress Affery dreamed that the figure of her lord here began walking up and down the room, as if to cool

his spleen, and that she ran away; but that, as he did not issue forth when she had stood listening and

trembling in the shadowy hall a little time, she crept upstairs again, impelled as before by ghosts and

'Please to light the candle, Flintwinch,' Mrs Clennam was saying, apparently wishing to draw him back into

their usual tone. 'It is nearly time for tea. Little Dorrit is coming, and will find me in the dark.'

Mr Flintwinch lighted the candle briskly, and said as he put it down upon the table:

'What are you going to do with Little Dorrit? Is she to come to work here for ever? To come to tea here for

ever? To come backwards and forwards here, in the same way, for ever?' 'How can you talk about "for ever"

to a maimed creature like me? Are we not all cut down like the grass of the field, and was not I shorn by the

scythe many years ago: since when I have been lying here, waiting to be gathered into the barn?'

'Ay, ay! But since you have been lying herenot near dead nothing like itnumbers of children and

young people, blooming women, strong men, and what not, have been cut down and carried; and still here are

you, you see, not much changed after all. Your time and mine may be a long one yet. When I say for ever, I

mean (though I am not poetical) through all our time.' Mr Flintwinch gave this explanation with great

'So long as Little Dorrit is quiet and industrious, and stands in need of the slight help I can give her, and

deserves it; so long, I suppose, unless she withdraws of her own act, she will continue to come here, I being

'What should there be more than that! What could there be more than that!' she ejaculated in her sternly

Mrs Flintwinch dreamed, that, for the space of a minute or two, they remained looking at each other with the

candle between them, and that she somehow derived an impression that they looked at each other fixedly.

'Do you happen to know, Mrs Clennam,' Affery's liege lord then demanded in a much lower voice, and with

an amount of expression that seemed quite out of proportion to the simple purpose of his words, 'where she

'Would younow, would you like to know?' said Jeremiah with a pounce as if he had sprung upon her.

'If I cared to know, I should know already. Could I not have asked her any day?'

Mr Flintwinch, having expelled a long significant breath said, with his former emphasis, 'For I have

'Wherever she lives,' said Mrs Clennam, speaking in one unmodulated hard voice, and separating her words

as distinctly as if she were reading them off from separate bits of metal that she took up one by one, 'she has

'After all, perhaps you would rather not have known the fact, any how?' said Jeremiah; and he said it with a

'Flintwinch,' said his mistress and partner, flashing into a sudden energy that made Affery start, 'why do you

goad me? Look round this room. If it is any compensation for my long confinement within these narrow

limitsnot that I complain of being afflicted; you know I never complain of thatif it is any compensation

to me for long confinement to this room, that while I am shut up from all pleasant change I am also shut up

from the knowledge of some things that I may prefer to avoid knowing, why should you, of all men, grudge

'Then say no more. Say no more. Let Little Dorrit keep her secret from me, and do you keep it from me also.

Let her come and go, unobserved and unquestioned. Let me suffer, and let me have what alleviation belongs

'I have answered it. So, say no more. Say no more.' Here the sound of the wheeled chair was heard upon the

More afraid of her husband at the moment than of the mysterious sound in the kitchen, Affery crept away as

lightly and as quickly as she could, descended the kitchen stairs almost as rapidly as she had ascended them,

resumed her seat before the fire, tucked up her skirt again, and finally threw her apron over her head. Then

the bell rang once more, and then once more, and then kept on ringing; in despite of which importunate

At last Mr Flintwinch came shuffling down the staircase into the hall, muttering and calling 'Affery woman!'

all the way. Affery still remaining behind her apron, he came stumbling down the kitchen stairs, candle in

'What have you been doing, woman?' inquired Jeremiah. 'You've been rung for fifty times.'

Reminded of her former achievement in that way, Mr Flintwinch held the candle to her head, as if he had

'Don't you know it's her teatime?' he demanded with a vicious grin, and giving one of the legs of Mistress

'Jeremiah? Teatime? I don't know what's come to me. But I got such a dreadful turn, Jeremiah, before I

'Such a strange noise, Jeremiah, and such a curious movement. In the kitchen herejust here.'

Jeremiah held up his light and looked at the blackened ceiling, held down his light and looked at the damp

stone floor, turned round with his light and looked about at the spotted and blotched walls.

Mistress Affery negatived each with a shake of her head. 'No, Jeremiah; I have felt it before. I have felt it

upstairs, and once on the staircase as I was going from her room to ours in the nighta rustle and a sort of

'Affery, my woman,' said Mr Flintwinch grimly, after advancing his nose to that lady's lips as a test for the

detection of spirituous liquors, 'if you don't get tea pretty quick, old woman, you'll become sensible of a rustle

This prediction stimulated Mrs Flintwinch to bestir herself, and to hasten upstairs to Mrs Clennam's

chamber. But, for all that, she now began to entertain a settled conviction that there was something wrong in

the gloomy house. Henceforth, she was never at peace in it after daylight departed; and never went up or

down stairs in the dark without having her apron over her head, lest she should see something.

What with these ghostly apprehensions and her singular dreams, Mrs Flintwinch fell that evening into a

haunted state of mind, from which it may be long before this present narrative descries any trace of her

recovery. In the vagueness and indistinctness of all her new experiences and perceptions, as everything about

her was mysterious to herself she began to be mysterious to others: and became as difficult to be made out to

anybody's satisfaction as she found the house and everything in it difficult to make out to her own.

She had not yet finished preparing Mrs Clennam's tea, when the soft knock came to the door which always

announced Little Dorrit. Mistress Affery looked on at Little Dorrit taking off her homely bonnet in the hall,

and at Mr Flintwinch scraping his jaws and contemplating her in silence, as expecting some wonderful

consequence to ensue which would frighten her out of her five wits or blow them all three to pieces.

After tea there came another knock at the door, announcing Arthur. Mistress Affery went down to let him in,

and he said on entering, 'Affery, I am glad it's you. I want to ask you a question.' Affery immediately replied,

'For goodness sake don't ask me nothing, Arthur! I am frightened out of one half of my life, and dreamed out

of the other. Don't ask me nothing! I don't know which is which, or what is what!'and immediately started

Mistress Affery having no taste for reading, and no sufficient light for needlework in the subdued room,

supposing her to have the inclination, now sat every night in the dimness from which she had momentarily

emerged on the evening of Arthur Clennam's return, occupied with crowds of wild speculations and

suspicions respecting her mistress and her husband and the noises in the house. When the ferocious

devotional exercises were engaged in, these speculations would distract Mistress Affery's eyes towards the

door, as if she expected some dark form to appear at those propitious moments, and make the party one too

Otherwise, Affery never said or did anything to attract the attention of the two clever ones towards her in any

marked degree, except on certain occasions, generally at about the quiet hour towards bedtime, when she

would suddenly dart out of her dim corner, and whisper with a face of terror to Mr Flintwinch, reading the

paper near Mrs Clennam's little table: 'There, jeremiah! Now! What's that noise?'

Then the noise, if there were any, would have ceased, and Mr Flintwinch would snarl, turning upon her as if

she had cut him down that moment against his will, 'Affery, old woman, you shall have a dose, old woman,

The time being come for the renewal of his acquaintance with the Meagles family, Clennam, pursuant to

contract made between himself and Mr Meagles within the precincts of Bleeding Heart Yard, turned his face

on a certain Saturday towards Twickenham, where Mr Meagles had a cottageresidence of his own. The

weather being fine and dry, and any English road abounding in interest for him who had been so long away,

he sent his valise on by the coach, and set out to walk. A walk was in itself a new enjoyment to him, and one

He went by Fulham and Putney, for the pleasure of strolling over the heath. It was bright and shining there;

and when he found himself so far on his road to Twickenham, he found himself a long way on his road to a

number of airier and less substantial destinations. They had risen before him fast, in the healthful exercise and

the pleasant road. It is not easy to walk alone in the country without musing upon something. And he had

plenty of unsettled subjects to meditate upon, though he had been walking to the Land's End.

First, there was the subject seldom absent from his mind, the question, what he was to do henceforth in life;

to what occupation he should devote himself, and in what direction he had best seek it. He was far from rich,

and every day of indecision and inaction made his inheritance a source of greater anxiety to him. As often as

he began to consider how to increase this inheritance, or to lay it by, so often his misgiving that there was

some one with an unsatisfied claim upon his justice, returned; and that alone was a subject to outlast the

longest walk. Again, there was the subject of his relations with his mother, which were now upon an equable

and peaceful but never confidential footing, and whom he saw several times a week. Little Dorrit was a

leading and a constant subject: for the circumstances of his life, united to those of her own story, presented

the little creature to him as the only person between whom and himself there were ties of innocent reliance on

one hand, and affectionate protection on the other; ties of compassion, respect, unselfish interest, gratitude,

and pity. Thinking of her, and of the possibility of her father's release from prison by the unbarring hand of

deaththe only change of circumstance he could foresee that might enable him to be such a friend to her as

he wished to be, by altering her whole manner of life, smoothing her rough road, and giving her a homehe

regarded her, in that perspective, as his adopted daughter, his poor child of the Marshalsea hushed to rest. If

there were a last subject in his thoughts, and it lay towards Twickenham, its form was so indefinite that it was

little more than the pervading atmosphere in which these other subjects floated before him.

He had crossed the heath and was leaving it behind when he gained upon a figure which had been in advance

of him for some time, and which, as he gained upon it, he thought he knew. He derived this impression from

something in the turn of the head, and in the figure's action of consideration, as it went on at a sufficiently

sturdy walk. But when the manfor it was a man's figurepushed his hat up at the back of his head, and

'How do you do, Mr Doyce?' said Clennam, overtaking him. 'I am glad to see you again, and in a healthier

'Ha! Mr Meagles's friend!' exclaimed that public criminal, coming out of some mental combinations he had

been making, and offering his hand. 'I am glad to see you, sir. Will you excuse me if I forget your name?'

'Readily. It's not a celebrated name. It's not Barnacle.' 'No, no,' said Daniel, laughing. 'And now I know what

'I have some hope,' said Arthur, as they walked on together, 'that we may be going to the same place, Mr

They were soon quite intimate, and lightened the way with a variety of conversation. The ingenious culprit

was a man of great modesty and good sense; and, though a plain man, had been too much accustomed to

combine what was original and daring in conception with what was patient and minute in execution, to be by

any means an ordinary man. It was at first difficult to lead him to speak about himself, and he put off Arthur's

advances in that direction by admitting slightly, oh yes, he had done this, and he had done that, and such a

thing was of his making, and such another thing was his discovery, but it was his trade, you see, his trade;

until, as he gradually became assured that his companion had a real interest in his account of himself, he

frankly yielded to it. Then it appeared that he was the son of a northcountry blacksmith, and had originally

been apprenticed by his widowed mother to a lock maker; that he had 'struck out a few little things' at the

lock maker's, which had led to his being released from his indentures with a present, which present had

enabled him to gratify his ardent wish to bind himself to a working engineer, under whom he had laboured

hard, learned hard, and lived hard, seven years. His time being out, he had 'worked in the shop' at weekly

wages seven or eight years more; and had then betaken himself to the banks of the Clyde, where he had

studied, and filed, and hammered, and improved his knowledge, theoretical and practical, for six or seven

years more. There he had had an offer to go to Lyons, which he had accepted; and from Lyons had been

engaged to go to Germany, and in Germany had had an offer to go to St Petersburg, and there had done very

well indeednever better. However, he had naturally felt a preference for his own country, and a wish to

gain distinction there, and to do whatever service he could do, there rather than elsewhere. And so he had

come home. And so at home he had established himself in business, and had invented and executed, and

worked his way on, until, after a dozen years of constant suit and service, he had been enrolled in the Great

British Legion of Honour, the Legion of the Rebuffed of the Circumlocution Office, and had been decorated

with the Great British Order of Merit, the Order of the Disorder of the Barnacles and Stiltstalkings.

'it is much to be regretted,' said Clennam, 'that you ever turned your thoughts that way, Mr Doyce.'

'True, sir, true to a certain extent. But what is a man to do? if he has the misfortune to strike out something

serviceable to the nation, he must follow where it leads him.' 'Hadn't he better let it go?' said Clennam.

'He can't do it,' said Doyce, shaking his head with a thoughtful smile. 'It's not put into his head to be buried.

It's put into his head to be made useful. You hold your life on the condition that to the last you shall struggle

'That is to say,' said Arthur, with a growing admiration of his quiet companion, 'you are not finally

'I have no right to be, if I am,' returned the other. 'The thing is as true as it ever was.'

When they had walked a little way in silence, Clennam, at once to change the direct point of their

conversation and not to change it too abruptly, asked Mr Doyce if he had any partner in his business to

'No,' he returned, 'not at present. I had when I first entered on it, and a good man he was. But he has been

dead some years; and as I could not easily take to the notion of another when I lost him, I bought his share for

myself and have gone on by myself ever since. And here's another thing,' he said, stopping for a moment with

a goodhumoured laugh in his eyes, and laying his closed right hand, with its peculiar suppleness of thumb,

'Why, so the men of business say,' he answered, resuming the walk and laughing outright. 'I don't know why

we unfortunate creatures should be supposed to want common sense, but it is generally taken for granted that

we do. Even the best friend I have in the world, our excellent friend over yonder,' said Doyce, nodding

towards Twickenham, 'extends a sort of protection to me, don't you know, as a man not quite able to take care

Arthur Clennam could not help joining in the goodhumoured laugh, for he recognised the truth of the

'So I find that I must have a partner who is a man of business and not guilty of any inventions,' said Daniel

Doyce, taking off his hat to pass his hand over his forehead, 'if it's only in deference to the current opinion,

and to uphold the credit of the Works. I don't think he'll find that I have been very remiss or confused in my

way of conducting them; but that's for him to saywhoever he isnot for me.' 'You have not chosen him

'No, sir, no. I have only just come to a decision to take one. The fact is, there's more to do than there used to

be, and the Works are enough for me as I grow older. What with the books and correspondence, and foreign

journeys for which a Principal is necessary, I can't do all. I am going to talk over the best way of negotiating

the matter, if I find a spare halfhour between this and Monday morning, with mymy Nurse and protector,'

said Doyce, with laughing eyes again. 'He is a sagacious man in business, and has had a good apprenticeship

After this, they conversed on different subjects until they arrived at their journey's end. A composed and

unobtrusive self sustainment was noticeable in Daniel Doycea calm knowledge that what was true must

remain true, in spite of all the Barnacles in the family ocean, and would be just the truth, and neither more nor

less when even that sea had run drywhich had a kind of greatness in it, though not of the official quality.

As he knew the house well, he conducted Arthur to it by the way that showed it to the best advantage. It was

a charming place (none the worse for being a little eccentric), on the road by the river, and just what the

residence of the Meagles family ought to be. It stood in a garden, no doubt as fresh and beautiful in the May

of the Year as Pet now was in the May of her life; and it was defended by a goodly show of handsome trees

and spreading evergreens, as Pet was by Mr and Mrs Meagles. It was made out of an old brick house, of

which a part had been altogether pulled down, and another part had been changed into the present cottage; so

there was a hale elderly portion, to represent Mr and Mrs Meagles, and a young picturesque, very pretty

portion to represent Pet. There was even the later addition of a conservatory sheltering itself against it,

uncertain of hue in its deepstained glass, and in its more transparent portions flashing to the sun's rays, now

like fire and now like harmless water drops; which might have stood for Tattycoram. Within view was the

peaceful river and the ferryboat, to moralise to all the inmates saying: Young or old, passionate or tranquil,

chafing or content, you, thus runs the current always. Let the heart swell into what discord it will, thus plays

the rippling water on the prow of the ferryboat ever the same tune. Year after year, so much allowance for

the drifting of the boat, so many miles an hour the flowing of the stream, here the rushes, there the lilies,

nothing uncertain or unquiet, upon this road that steadily runs away; while you, upon your flowing road of

The bell at the gate had scarcely sounded when Mr Meagles came out to receive them. Mr Meagles had

scarcely come out, when Mrs Meagles came out. Mrs Meagles had scarcely come out, when Pet came out.

Pet scarcely had come out, when Tattycoram came out. Never had visitors a more hospitable reception.

'Here we are, you see,' said Mr Meagles, 'boxed up, Mr Clennam, within our own homelimits, as if we were

never going to expand that is, travelagain. Not like Marseilles, eh? No allonging and marshonging here!'

'But, Lord bless me!' cried Mr Meagles, rubbing his hands with a relish, 'it was an uncommonly pleasant

thing being in quarantine, wasn't it? Do you know, I have often wished myself back again? We were a capital

This was Mr Meagles's invariable habit. Always to object to everything while he was travelling, and always

'If it was summertime,' said Mr Meagles, 'which I wish it was on your account, and in order that you might

see the place at its best, you would hardly be able to hear yourself speak for birds. Being practical people, we

never allow anybody to scare the birds; and the birds, being practical people too, come about us in myriads.

We are delighted to see you, Clennam (if you'll allow me, I shall drop the Mister); I heartily assure you, we

'I have not had so pleasant a greeting,' said Clennamthen he recalled what Little Dorrit had said to him in

his own room, and faithfully added 'except oncesince we last walked to and fro, looking down at the

'Ah!' returned Mr Meagles. 'Something like a look out, that was, wasn't it? I don't want a military

government, but I shouldn't mind a little allonging and marshongingjust a dash of itin this

Bestowing this eulogium on the retired character of his retreat with a dubious shake of the head, Mr Meagles

led the way into the house. It was just large enough, and no more; was as pretty within as it was without, and

Some traces of the migratory habits of the family were to be observed in the covered frames and furniture,

and wrappedup hangings; but it was easy to see that it was one of Mr Meagles's whims to have the cottage

always kept, in their absence, as if they were always coming back the day after tomorrow. Of articles

collected on his various expeditions, there was such a vast miscellany that it was like the dwelling of an

amiable Corsair. There were antiquities from Central Italy, made by the best modern houses in that

department of industry; bits of mummy from Egypt (and perhaps Birmingham); model gondolas from

Venice; model villages from Switzerland; morsels of tesselated pavement from Herculaneum and Pompeii,

like petrified minced veal; ashes out of tombs, and lava out of Vesuvius; Spanish fans, Spezzian straw hats,

Moorish slippers, Tuscan hairpins, Carrara sculpture, Trastaverini scarves, Genoese velvets and filigree,

Neapolitan coral, Roman cameos, Geneva jewellery, Arab lanterns, rosaries blest all round by the Pope

himself, and an infinite variety of lumber. There were views, like and unlike, of a multitude of places; and

there was one little pictureroom devoted to a few of the regular sticky old Saints, with sinews like whipcord,

hair like Neptune's, wrinkles like tattooing, and such coats of varnish that every holy personage served for a

flytrap, and became what is now called in the vulgar tongue a Catchemalive O. Of these pictorial

acquisitions Mr Meagles spoke in the usual manner. He was no judge, he said, except of what pleased

himself; he had picked them up, dirtcheap, and people had considered them rather fine. One man, who at

any rate ought to know something of the subject, had declared that 'Sage, Reading' (a specially oily old

gentleman in a blanket, with a swan'sdown tippet for a beard, and a web of cracks all over him like rich

piecrust), to be a fine Guercino. As for Sebastian del Piombo there, you would judge for yourself; if it were

not his later manner, the question was, Who was it? Titian, that might or might not beperhaps he had only

touched it. Daniel Doyce said perhaps he hadn't touched it, but Mr Meagles rather declined to overhear the

When he had shown all his spoils, Mr Meagles took them into his own snug room overlooking the lawn,

which was fitted up in part like a dressingroom and in part like an office, and in which, upon a kind of

counterdesk, were a pair of brass scales for weighing gold, and a scoop for shovelling out money.

'Here they are, you see,' said Mr Meagles. 'I stood behind these two articles fiveandthirty years running,

when I no more thought of gadding about than I now think ofstaying at home. When I left the Bank for

I mention it at once, or you might suppose that I sit in my countinghouse (as Pet says I do), like the king in

Clennam's eyes had strayed to a natural picture on the wall, of two pretty little girls with their arms entwined.

'Yes, Clennam,' said Mr Meagles, in a lower voice. 'There they both are. It was taken some seventeen years

'Ah, to be sure! You have never heard any name but Pet. Pet's name is Minnie; her sister's Lillie.'

'Should you have known, Mr Clennam, that one of them was meant for me?' asked Pet herself, now standing

'I might have thought that both of them were meant for you, both are still so like you. Indeed,' said Clennam,

glancing from the fair original to the picture and back, 'I cannot even now say which is not your portrait.'

'D'ye hear that, Mother?' cried Mr Meagles to his wife, who had followed her daughter. 'It's always the same,

The picture happened to be near a lookingglass. As Arthur looked at it again, he saw, by the reflection of the

mirror, Tattycoram stop in passing outside the door, listen to what was going on, and pass away with an

angry and contemptuous frown upon her face, that changed its beauty into ugliness.

'But come!' said Mr Meagles. 'You have had a long walk, and will be glad to get your boots off. As to Daniel

here, I suppose he'd never think of taking his boots off, unless we showed him a boot jack.'

'Oh! You have so many things to think about,' returned Mr Meagles, clapping him on the shoulder, as if his

weakness must not be left to itself on any account. 'Figures, and wheels, and cogs, and levers, and screws,

'In my calling,' said Daniel, amused, 'the greater usually includes the less. But never mind, never mind!

Clennam could not help speculating, as he seated himself in his room by the fire, whether there might be in

the breast of this honest, affectionate, and cordial Mr Meagles, any microscopic portion of the mustardseed

that had sprung up into the great tree of the Circumlocution Office. His curious sense of a general superiority

to Daniel Doyce, which seemed to be founded, not so much on anything in Doyce's personal character as on

the mere fact of his being an originator and a man out of the beaten track of other men, suggested the idea. It

might have occupied him until he went down to dinner an hour afterwards, if he had not had another question

to consider, which had been in his mind so long ago as before he was in quarantine at Marseilles, and which

had now returned to it, and was very urgent with it. No less a question than this: Whether he should allow

He was twice her age. (He changed the leg he had crossed over the other, and tried the calculation again, but

could not bring out the total at less.) He was twice her age. Well! He was young in appearance, young in

health and strength, young in heart. A man was certainly not old at forty; and many men were not in

circumstances to marry, or did not marry, until they had attained that time of life. On the other hand, the

He believed that Mr Meagles was disposed to entertain a ripe regard for him, and he knew that he had a

sincere regard for Mr Meagles and his good wife. He could foresee that to relinquish this beautiful only child,

of whom they were so fond, to any husband, would be a trial of their love which perhaps they never yet had

had the fortitude to contemplate. But the more beautiful and winning and charming she, the nearer they must

always be to the necessity of approaching it. And why not in his favour, as well as in another's?

When he had got so far, it came again into his head that the question was, not what they thought of it, but

Arthur Clennam was a retiring man, with a sense of many deficiencies; and he so exalted the merits of the

beautiful Minnie in his mind, and depressed his own, that when he pinned himself to this point, his hopes

began to fail him. He came to the final resolution, as he made himself ready for dinner, that he would not

There were only five, at a round table, and it was very pleasant indeed. They had so many places and people

to recall, and they were all so easy and cheerful together (Daniel Doyce either sitting out like an amused

spectator at cards, or coming in with some shrewd little experiences of his own, when it happened to be to the

purpose), that they might have been together twenty times, and not have known so much of one another.

'And Miss Wade,' said Mr Meagles, after they had recalled a number of fellowtravellers. 'Has anybody seen

She had brought a little mantle which her young mistress had sent for, and was bending over her, putting it

An impatient glance from Tattycoram seemed, as Clennam saw it, to answer 'With my eyes!' But her only

'What was she doing there I wonder!' said Mr Meagles. 'Not going to it, I should think.'

'Oh, Tatty!' murmured her mistress, 'take your hands away. I feel as if some one else was touching me!'

She said it in a quick involuntary way, but half playfully, and not more petulantly or disagreeably than a

favourite child might have done, who laughed next moment. Tattycoram set her full red lips together, and

crossed her arms upon her bosom. 'Did you wish to know, sir,' she said, looking at Mr Meagles, 'what Miss

'Well, Tattycoram,' returned Mr Meagles, 'since you ask the question, and we are all friends here, perhaps you

'She knew, when we were travelling, where you lived,' said Tattycoram, 'and she had seen me not quitenot

'Not quite in a good temper, Tattycoram?' suggested Mr Meagles, shaking his head at the dark eyes with a

'So she wrote to me to say that if I ever felt myself hurt,' she looked down at her young mistress, 'or found

myself worried,' she looked down at her again, 'I might go to her, and be considerately treated. I was to think

'Tatty,' said her young mistress, putting her hand up over her shoulder that the other might take it, 'Miss Wade

almost frightened me when we parted, and I scarcely like to think of her just now as having been so near me

She might have counted a dozen, when she bent and put her lips to the caressing hand. It patted her cheek, as

'Now there,' said Mr Meagles softly, as he gave a turn to the dumb waiter on his right hand to twirl the sugar

towards himself. 'There's a girl who might be lost and ruined, if she wasn't among practical people. Mother

and I know, solely from being practical, that there are times when that girl's whole nature seems to roughen

itself against seeing us so bound up in Pet. No father and mother were bound up in her, poor soul. I don't like

to think of the way in which that unfortunate child, with all that passion and protest in her, feels when she

hears the Fifth Commandment on a Sunday. I am always inclined to call out, Church, Count

Besides his dumbwaiter, Mr Meagles had two other not dumb waiters in the persons of two parlourmaids

with rosy faces and bright eyes, who were a highly ornamental part of the table decoration. 'And why not, you

see?' said Mr Meagles on this head. 'As I always say to Mother, why not have something pretty to look at, if

you have anything at all?' A certain Mrs Tickit, who was Cook and Housekeeper when the family were at

home, and Housekeeper only when the family were away, completed the establishment. Mr Meagles regretted

that the nature of the duties in which she was engaged, rendered Mrs Tickit unpresentable at present, but

hoped to introduce her to the new visitor tomorrow. She was an important part of the Cottage, he said, and

all his friends knew her. That was her picture up in the corner. When they went away, she always put on the

silkgown and the jetblack row of curls represented in that portrait (her hair was reddishgrey in the

kitchen), established herself in the breakfastroom, put her spectacles between two particular leaves of

Doctor Buchan's Domestic Medicine, and sat looking over the blind all day until they came back again. It was

supposed that no persuasion could be invented which would induce Mrs Tickit to abandon her post at the

blind, however long their absence, or to dispense with the attendance of Dr Buchan; the lucubrations of which

learned practitioner, Mr Meagles implicitly believed she had never yet consulted to the extent of one word in

In the evening they played an oldfashioned rubber; and Pet sat looking over her father's hand, or singing to

herself by fits and starts at the piano. She was a spoilt child; but how could she be otherwise? Who could be

much with so pliable and beautiful a creature, and not yield to her endearing influence? Who could pass an

evening in the house, and not love her for the grace and charm of her very presence in the room? This was

Clennam's reflection, notwithstanding the final conclusion at which he had arrived up stairs.

In making it, he revoked. 'Why, what are you thinking of, my good sir?' asked the astonished Mr Meagles,

As they broke up for the night, Arthur overheard Doyce ask his host if he could give him half an hour's

conversation before breakfast in the morning? The host replying willingly, Arthur lingered behind a moment,

'Mr Meagles,' he said, on their being left alone, 'do you remember when you advised me to go straight to

'Perfectly well.' 'And when you gave me some other good advice which I needed at that time?'

'I won't say what it was worth,' answered Mr Meagles: 'but of course I remember our being very pleasant and

'I have acted on your advice; and having disembarrassed myself of an occupation that was painful to me for

'Now, as I came down today, I found that your friend, Mr Doyce, is looking for a partner in his

businessnot a partner in his mechanical knowledge, but in the ways and means of turning the business

'Just so,' said Mr Meagles, with his hands in his pockets, and with the old business expression of face that had

'Mr Doyce mentioned incidentally, in the course of our conversation, that he was going to take your valuable

advice on the subject of finding such a partner. If you should think our views and opportunities at all likely to

coincide, perhaps you will let him know my available position. I speak, of course, in ignorance of the details,

'No doubt, no doubt,' said Mr Meagles, with the caution belonging to the scales and scoop.

'Just so, just so,' said Mr Meagles, with arithmetical solidity belonging to the scales and scoop.

'And I shall be glad to enter into the subject, provided Mr Doyce responds, and you think well of it. If you

will at present, therefore, allow me to place it in your hands, you will much oblige me.'

'Clennam, I accept the trust with readiness,' said Mr Meagles. 'And without anticipating any of the points

which you, as a man of business, have of course reserved, I am free to say to you that I think something may

come of this. Of one thing you may be perfectly certain. Daniel is an honest man.'

'I am so sure of it that I have promptly made up my mind to speak to you.' 'You must guide him, you know;

you must steer him; you must direct him; he is one of a crotchety sort,' said Mr Meagles, evidently meaning

nothing more than that he did new things and went new ways; 'but he is as honest as the sun, and so good

night!' Clennam went back to his room, sat down again before his fire, and made up his mind that he was glad

he had resolved not to fall in love with Pet. She was so beautiful, so amiable, so apt to receive any true

impression given to her gentle nature and her innocent heart, and make the man who should be so happy as to

communicate it, the most fortunate and enviable of all men, that he was very glad indeed he had come to that

But, as this might have been a reason for coming to the opposite conclusion, he followed out the theme again

'Suppose that a man,' so his thoughts ran, 'who had been of age some twenty years or so; who was a diffident

man, from the circumstances of his youth; who was rather a grave man, from the tenor of his life; who knew

himself to be deficient in many little engaging qualities which he admired in others, from having been long in

a distant region, with nothing softening near him; who had no kind sisters to present to her; who had no

congenial home to make her known in; who was a stranger in the land; who had not a fortune to compensate,

in any measure, for these defects; who had nothing in his favour but his honest love and his general wish to

do rightsuppose such a man were to come to this house, and were to yield to the captivation of this

charming girl, and were to persuade himself that he could hope to win her; what a weakness it would be!'

He softly opened his window, and looked out upon the serene river. Year after year so much allowance for

the drifting of the ferry boat, so many miles an hour the flowing of the stream, here the rushes, there the

Why should he be vexed or sore at heart? It was not his weakness that he had imagined. It was nobody's,

nobody's within his knowledge; why should it trouble him? And yet it did trouble him. And he thoughtwho

has not thought for a moment, sometimes?that it might be better to flow away monotonously, like the

river, and to compound for its insensibility to happiness with its insensibility to pain.

Before breakfast in the morning, Arthur walked out to look about him. As the morning was fine and he had

an hour on his hands, he crossed the river by the ferry, and strolled along a footpath through some meadows.

When he came back to the towingpath, he found the ferryboat on the opposite side, and a gentleman

This gentleman looked barely thirty. He was well dressed, of a sprightly and gay appearance, a wellknit

figure, and a rich dark complexion. As Arthur came over the stile and down to the water's edge, the lounger

glanced at him for a moment, and then resumed his occupation of idly tossing stones into the water with his

foot. There was something in his way of spurning them out of their places with his heel, and getting them into

the required position, that Clennam thought had an air of cruelty in it. Most of us have more or less frequently

derived a similar impression from a man's manner of doing some very little thing: plucking a flower, clearing

The gentleman's thoughts were preoccupied, as his face showed, and he took no notice of a fine

Newfoundland dog, who watched him attentively, and watched every stone too, in its turn, eager to spring

into the river on receiving his master's sign. The ferry boat came over, however, without his receiving any

sign, and when it grounded his master took him by the collar and walked him into it.

'Not this morning,' he said to the dog. 'You won't do for ladies' company, dripping wet. Lie down.'

Clennam followed the man and the dog into the boat, and took his seat. The dog did as he was ordered. The

man remained standing, with his hands in his pockets, and towered between Clennam and the prospect. Man

and dog both jumped lightly out as soon as they touched the other side, and went away. Clennam was glad to

The church clock struck the breakfast hour as he walked up the little lane by which the gardengate was

approached. The moment he pulled the bell a deep loud barking assailed him from within the wall.

'I heard no dog last night,' thought Clennam. The gate was opened by one of the rosy maids, and on the lawn

'Miss Minnie is not down yet, gentlemen,' said the blushing portress, as they all came together in the garden.

'Odd enough, Mr Clennam, that we should have met just now,' said the man. Upon which the dog became

mute. 'Allow me to introduce myselfHenry Gowan. A pretty place this, and looks wonderfully well this

The manner was easy, and the voice agreeable; but still Clennam thought, that if he had not made that

decided resolution to avoid falling in love with Pet, he would have taken a dislike to this Henry Gowan.

'It's new to you, I believe?' said this Gowan, when Arthur had extolled the place. 'Quite new. I made

'Ah! Of course this is not its best aspect. It used to look charming in the spring, before they went away last

But for that resolution so often recalled, Clennam might have wished him in the crater of Mount Etna, in

'I have had the pleasure of seeing it under many circumstances during the last three years, and it'sa

It was (at least it might have been, always excepting for that wise resolution) like his dexterous impudence to

call it a Paradise. He only called it a Paradise because he first saw her coming, and so made her out within her

hearing to be an angel, Confusion to him! And ah! how beaming she looked, and how glad! How she caressed

the dog, and how the dog knew her! How expressive that heightened colour in her face, that fluttered manner,

her downcast eyes, her irresolute happiness! When had Clennam seen her look like this? Not that there was

any reason why he might, could, would, or should have ever seen her look like this, or that he had ever hoped

for himself to see her look like this; but stillwhen had he ever known her do it!

He stood at a little distance from them. This Gowan when he had talked about a Paradise, had gone up to her

and taken her hand. The dog had put his great paws on her arm and laid his head against her dear bosom. She

had laughed and welcomed them, and made far too much of the dog, far, far, too muchthat is to say,

She disengaged herself now, and came to Clennam, and put her hand in his and wished him good morning,

and gracefully made as if she would take his arm and be escorted into the house. To this Gowan had no

There was a passing cloud on Mr Meagles's goodhumoured face when they all three (four, counting the dog,

and he was the most objectionable but one of the party) came in to breakfast. Neither it, nor the touch of

uneasiness on Mrs Meagles as she directed her eyes towards it, was unobserved by Clennam.

'Well, Gowan,' said Mr Meagles, even suppressing a sigh; 'how goes the world with you this morning?'

'Much as usual, sir. Lion and I being determined not to waste anything of our weekly visit, turned out early,

and came over from Kingston, my present headquarters, where I am making a sketch or two.' Then he told

'My mother is quite well, thank you.' (Clennam became inattentive.) 'I have taken the liberty of making an

addition to your family dinnerparty today, which I hope will not be inconvenient to you or to Mr Meagles.

I couldn't very well get out of it,' he explained, turning to the latter. 'The young fellow wrote to propose

himself to me; and as he is well connected, I thought you would not object to my transferring him here.'

'He is one of the Barnacles. Tite Barnacle's son, Clarence Barnacle, who is in his father's Department. I can at

least guarantee that the river shall not suffer from his visit. He won't set it on fire.'

'Aye, aye?' said Meagles. 'A Barnacle is he? We know something of that family, eh, Dan? By George, they

are at the top of the tree, though! Let me see. What relation will this young fellow be to Lord Decimus now?

His Lordship married, in seventeen ninetyseven, Lady Jemima Bilberry, who was the second daughter by

the third marriageno! There I am wrong! That was Lady SeraphinaLady Jemima was the first daughter

by the second marriage of the fifteenth Earl of Stiltstalking with the Honourable Clementina Toozellem. Very

well. Now this young fellow's father married a Stiltstalking and his father married his cousin who was a

The father of that father who married a Barnacle, married a Joddleby.I am getting a little too far back,

'NephewtoLordDecimus,' Mr Meagles luxuriously repeated with his eyes shut, that he might have

nothing to distract him from the full flavour of the genealogical tree. 'By George, you are right, Gowan. So he

'But stop a bit!' said Mr Meagles, opening his eyes with a fresh discovery. 'Then on the mother's side, Lady

'Aye, aye, aye?' said Mr Meagles with much interest. 'Indeed, indeed? We shall be glad to see him. We'll

entertain him as well as we can, in our humble way; and we shall not starve him, I hope, at all events.'

In the beginning of this dialogue, Clennam had expected some great harmless outburst from Mr Meagles, like

that which had made him burst out of the Circumlocution Office, holding Doyce by the collar. But his good

friend had a weakness which none of us need go into the next street to find, and which no amount of

Circumlocution experience could long subdue in him. Clennam looked at Doyce; but Doyce knew all about it

'I am much obliged to you,' said Gowan, to conclude the subject. 'Clarence is a great ass, but he is one of the

It appeared, before the breakfast was over, that everybody whom this Gowan knew was either more or less of

an ass, or more or less of a knave; but was, notwithstanding, the most lovable, the most engaging, the

simplest, truest, kindest, dearest, best fellow that ever lived. The process by which this unvarying result was

attained, whatever the premises, might have been stated by Mr Henry Gowan thus: 'I claim to be always

bookkeeping, with a peculiar nicety, in every man's case, and posting up a careful little account of Good and

Evil with him. I do this so conscientiously, that I am happy to tell you I find the most worthless of men to be

the dearest old fellow too: and am in a condition to make the gratifying report, that there is much less

difference than you are inclined to suppose between an honest man and a scoundrel.' The effect of this

cheering discovery happened to be, that while he seemed to be scrupulously finding good in most men, he did

in reality lower it where it was, and set it up where it was not; but that was its only disagreeable or dangerous

It scarcely seemed, however, to afford Mr Meagles as much satisfaction as the Barnacle genealogy had done.

The cloud that Clennam had never seen upon his face before that morning, frequently overcast it again; and

there was the same shadow of uneasy observation of him on the comely face of his wife. More than once or

twice when Pet caressed the dog, it appeared to Clennam that her father was unhappy in seeing her do it; and,

in one particular instance when Gowan stood on the other side of the dog, and bent his head at the same time,

Arthur fancied that he saw tears rise to Mr Meagles's eyes as he hurried out of the room. It was either the fact

too, or he fancied further, that Pet herself was not insensible to these little incidents; that she tried, with a

more delicate affection than usual, to express to her good father how much she loved him; that it was on this

account that she fell behind the rest, both as they went to church and as they returned from it, and took his

arm. He could not have sworn but that as he walked alone in the garden afterwards, he had an instantaneous

glimpse of her in her father's room, clinging to both her parents with the greatest tenderness, and weeping on

The latter part of the day turning out wet, they were fain to keep the house, look over Mr Meagles's

collection, and beguile the time with conversation. This Gowan had plenty to say for himself, and said it in an

offhand and amusing manner. He appeared to be an artist by profession, and to have been at Rome some

time; yet he had a slight, careless, amateur way with hima perceptible limp, both in his devotion to art and

He applied to Daniel Doyce for help, as they stood together, looking out of window.

'Why, he has sauntered into the Arts at a leisurely PallMall pace,' said Doyce, 'and I doubt if they care to be

Pursuing his inquiries, Clennam found that the Gowan family were a very distant ramification of the

Barnacles; and that the paternal Gowan, originally attached to a legation abroad, had been pensioned off as a

Commissioner of nothing particular somewhere or other, and had died at his post with his drawn salary in his

hand, nobly defending it to the last extremity. In consideration of this eminent public service, the Barnacle

then in power had recommended the Crown to bestow a pension of two or three hundred ayear on his

widow; to which the next Barnacle in power had added certain shady and sedate apartments in the Palaces at

Hampton Court, where the old lady still lived, deploring the degeneracy of the times in company with several

other old ladies of both sexes. Her son, Mr Henry Gowan, inheriting from his father, the Commissioner, that

very questionable help in life, a very small independence, had been difficult to settle; the rather, as public

appointments chanced to be scarce, and his genius, during his earlier manhood, was of that exclusively

agricultural character which applies itself to the cultivation of wild oats. At last he had declared that he would

become a Painter; partly because he had always had an idle knack that way, and partly to grieve the souls of

the Barnaclesinchief who had not provided for him. So it had come to pass successively, first, that several

distinguished ladies had been frightfully shocked; then, that portfolios of his performances had been handed

about o' nights, and declared with ecstasy to be perfect Claudes, perfect Cuyps, perfect phaenomena; then,

that Lord Decimus had bought his picture, and had asked the President and Council to dinner at a blow, and

had said, with his own magnificent gravity, 'Do you know, there appears to me to be really immense merit in

that work?' and, in short, that people of condition had absolutely taken pains to bring him into fashion. But,

somehow, it had all failed. The prejudiced public had stood out against it obstinately. They had determined

not to admire Lord Decimus's picture. They had determined to believe that in every service, except their own,

a man must qualify himself, by striving early and late, and by working heart and soul, might and main. So

now Mr Gowan, like that wornout old coffin which never was Mahomet's nor anybody else's, hung midway

between two points: jaundiced and jealous as to the one he had left: jaundiced and jealous as to the other that

Such was the substance of Clennam's discoveries concerning him, made that rainy Sunday afternoon and

About an hour or so after dinner time, Young Barnacle appeared, attended by his eyeglass; in honour of

whose family connections, Mr Meagles had cashiered the pretty parlourmaids for the day, and had placed on

duty in their stead two dingy men. Young Barnacle was in the last degree amazed and disconcerted at sight of

Arthur, and had murmured involuntarily, 'Look here! upon my soul, you know!' before his presence of mind

Even then, he was obliged to embrace the earliest opportunity of taking his friend into a window, and saying,

'Ecod, sir, he was Pitching into our people the other day in the most tremendous manner. Went up to our

place and Pitched into my father to that extent that it was necessary to order him out. Came back to our

'Ecod, sir,' returned Young Barnacle, 'he said he wanted to know, you know! Pervaded our

The stare of indignant wonder with which Young Barnacle accompanied this disclosure, would have strained

his eyes injuriously but for the opportune relief of dinner. Mr Meagles (who had been extremely solicitous to

know how his uncle and aunt were) begged him to conduct Mrs Meagles to the diningroom. And when he

sat on Mrs Meagles's right hand, Mr Meagles looked as gratified as if his whole family were there.

All the natural charm of the previous day was gone. The eaters of the dinner, like the dinner itself, were

lukewarm, insipid, overdoneand all owing to this poor little dull Young Barnacle. Conversationless at any

time, he was now the victim of a weakness special to the occasion, and solely referable to Clennam. He was

under a pressing and continual necessity of looking at that gentleman, which occasioned his eyeglass to get

into his soup, into his wineglass, into Mrs Meagles's plate, to hang down his back like a bellrope, and be

several times disgracefully restored to his bosom by one of the dingy men. Weakened in mind by his frequent

losses of this instrument, and its determination not to stick in his eye, and more and more enfeebled in

intellect every time he looked at the mysterious Clennam, he applied spoons to his eyes, forks, and other

foreign matters connected with the furniture of the dinnertable. His discovery of these mistakes greatly

increased his difficulties, but never released him from the necessity of looking at Clennam. And whenever

Clennam spoke, this illstarred young man was clearly seized with a dread that he was coming, by some

It may be questioned, therefore, whether any one but Mr Meagles had much enjoyment of the time. Mr

Meagles, however, thoroughly enjoyed Young Barnacle. As a mere flask of the golden water in the tale

became a full fountain when it was poured out, so Mr Meagles seemed to feel that this small spice of

Barnacle imparted to his table the flavour of the whole familytree. In its presence, his frank, fine, genuine

qualities paled; he was not so easy, he was not so natural, he was striving after something that did not belong

to him, he was not himself. What a strange peculiarity on the part of Mr Meagles, and where should we find

At last the wet Sunday wore itself out in a wet night; and Young Barnacle went home in a cab, feebly

smoking; and the objectionable Gowan went away on foot, accompanied by the objectionable dog. Pet had

taken the most amiable pains all day to be friendly with Clennam, but Clennam had been a little reserved

When he had gone to his own room, and had again thrown himself into the chair by the fire, Mr Doyce

knocked at the door, candle in hand, to ask him how and at what hour he proposed returning on the morrow?

After settling this question, he said a word to Mr Doyce about this Gowanwho would have run in his head

Mr Doyce stood, chambercandlestick in hand, the other hand in his pocket, looking hard at the flame of his

candle, with a certain quiet perception in his face that they were going to say something more. 'I thought our

good friend a little changed, and out of spirits, after he came this morning?' said Clennam.

There was a pause on both sides. Mr Doyce, still looking at the flame of his candle, slowly resumed:

'The truth is, he has twice taken his daughter abroad in the hope of separating her from Mr Gowan. He rather

thinks she is disposed to like him, and he has painful doubts (I quite agree with him, as I dare say you do) of

'No. As I am told, certainly not. It has been solicited on the gentleman's part, but none has been made. Since

their recent return, our friend has yielded to a weekly visit, but that is the utmost. Minnie would not deceive

her father and mother. You have travelled with them, and I believe you know what a bond there is among

them, extending even beyond this present life. All that there is between Miss Minnie and Mr Gowan, I have

Mr Doyce wished him Good Night in the tone of a man who had heard a mournful, not to say despairing,

exclamation, and who sought to infuse some encouragement and hope into the mind of the person by whom it

had been uttered. Such tone was probably a part of his oddity, as one of a crotchety band; for how could he

The rain fell heavily on the roof, and pattered on the ground, and dripped among the evergreens and the

leafless branches of the trees. The rain fell heavily, drearily. It was a night of tears.

If Clennam had not decided against falling in love with Pet; if he had had the weakness to do it; if he had,

little by little, persuaded himself to set all the earnestness of his nature, all the might of his hope, and all the

wealth of his matured character, on that cast; if he had done this and found that all was lost; he would have

been, that night, unutterably miserable. As it was As it was, the rain fell heavily, drearily.

Little Dorrit had not attained her twentysecond birthday without finding a lover. Even in the shallow

Marshalsea, the ever young Archer shot off a few featherless arrows now and then from a mouldy bow, and

Little Dorrit's lover, however, was not a Collegian. He was the sentimental son of a turnkey. His father

hoped, in the fulness of time, to leave him the inheritance of an unstained key; and had from his early youth

familiarised him with the duties of his office, and with an ambition to retain the prisonlock in the family.

While the succession was yet in abeyance, he assisted his mother in the conduct of a snug tobacco business

round the corner of Horsemonger Lane (his father being a nonresident turnkey), which could usually

Years agone, when the object of his affections was wont to sit in her little armchair by the high

Lodgefender, Young John (family name, Chivery), a year older than herself, had eyed her with admiring

wonder. When he had played with her in the yard, his favourite game had been to counterfeit locking her up

in corners, and to counterfeit letting her out for real kisses. When he grew tall enough to peep through the

keyhole of the great lock of the main door, he had divers times set down his father's dinner, or supper, to get

on as it might on the outer side thereof, while he stood taking cold in one eye by dint of peeping at her

If Young John had ever slackened in his truth in the less penetrable days of his boyhood, when youth is prone

to wear its boots unlaced and is happily unconscious of digestive organs, he had soon strung it up again and

screwed it tight. At nineteen, his hand had inscribed in chalk on that part of the wall which fronted her

lodgings, on the occasion of her birthday, 'Welcome sweet nursling of the Fairies!' At twentythree, the same

hand falteringly presented cigars on Sundays to the Father of the Marshalsea, and Father of the queen of his

Young John was small of stature, with rather weak legs and very weak light hair. One of his eyes (perhaps the

eye that used to peep through the keyhole) was also weak, and looked larger than the other, as if it couldn't

collect itself. Young John was gentle likewise. But he was great of soul. Poetical, expansive, faithful.

Though too humble before the ruler of his heart to be sanguine, Young John had considered the object of his

attachment in all its lights and shades. Following it out to blissful results, he had descried, without

selfcommendation, a fitness in it. Say things prospered, and they were united. She, the child of the

Marshalsea; he, the lockkeeper. There was a fitness in that. Say he became a resident turnkey. She would

officially succeed to the chamber she had rented so long. There was a beautiful propriety in that. It looked

over the wall, if you stood on tiptoe; and, with a trelliswork of scarlet beans and a canary or so, would

become a very Arbour. There was a charming idea in that. Then, being all in all to one another, there was

even an appropriate grace in the lock. With the world shut out (except that part of it which would be shut in);

with its troubles and disturbances only known to them by hearsay, as they would be described by the pilgrims

tarrying with them on their way to the Insolvent Shrine; with the Arbour above, and the Lodge below; they

would glide down the stream of time, in pastoral domestic happiness. Young John drew tears from his eyes

by finishing the picture with a tombstone in the adjoining churchyard, close against the prison wall, bearing

the following touching inscription: 'Sacred to the Memory Of JOHN CHIVERY, Sixty years Turnkey, and

fifty years Head Turnkey, Of the neighbouring Marshalsea, Who departed this life, universally respected, on

the thirtyfirst of December, One thousand eight hundred and eighty six, Aged eightythree years. Also of

his truly beloved and truly loving wife, AMY, whose maiden name was DORRIT, Who survived his loss not

quite fortyeight hours, And who breathed her last in the Marshalsea aforesaid. There she was born, There

The Chivery parents were not ignorant of their son's attachment indeed it had, on some exceptional

occasions, thrown him into a state of mind that had impelled him to conduct himself with irascibility towards

the customers, and damage the businessbut they, in their turns, had worked it out to desirable conclusions.

Mrs Chivery, a prudent woman, had desired her husband to take notice that their john's prospects of the Lock

would certainly be strengthened by an alliance with Miss Dorrit, who had herself a kind of claim upon the

College and was much respected there. Mrs Chivery had desired her husband to take notice that if, on the one

hand, their John had means and a post of trust, on the other hand, Miss Dorrit had family; and that her (Mrs

Chivery's) sentiment was, that two halves made a whole. Mrs Chivery, speaking as a mother and not as a

diplomatist, had then, from a different point of view, desired her husband to recollect that their John had

never been strong, and that his love had fretted and worrited him enough as it was, without his being driven

to do himself a mischief, as nobody couldn't say he wouldn't be if he was crossed. These arguments had so

powerfully influenced the mind of Mr Chivery, who was a man of few words, that he had on sundry Sunday

mornings, given his boy what he termed 'a lucky touch,' signifying that he considered such commendation of

him to Good Fortune, preparatory to his that day declaring his passion and becoming triumphant. But Young

John had never taken courage to make the declaration; and it was principally on these occasions that he had

returned excited to the tobacco shop, and flown at the customers. In this affair, as in every other, Little Dorrit

herself was the last person considered. Her brother and sister were aware of it, and attained a sort of station

by making a peg of it on which to air the miserably ragged old fiction of the family gentility. Her sister

asserted the family gentility by flouting the poor swain as he loitered about the prison for glimpses of his

dear. Tip asserted the family gentility, and his own, by coming out in the character of the aristocratic brother,

and loftily swaggering in the little skittle ground respecting seizures by the scruff of the neck, which there

were looming probabilities of some gentleman unknown executing on some little puppy not mentioned.

No, no. The Father of the Marshalsea was supposed to know nothing about the matter, of course: his poor

But he took the cigars, on Sundays, and was glad to get them; and sometimes even condescended to walk up

and down the yard with the donor (who was proud and hopeful then), and benignantly to smoke one in his

society. With no less readiness and condescension did he receive attentions from Chivery Senior, who always

relinquished his armchair and newspaper to him, when he came into the Lodge during one of his spells of

duty; and who had even mentioned to him, that, if he would like at any time after dusk quietly to step out into

the forecourt and take a look at the street, there was not much to prevent him. If he did not avail himself of

this latter civility, it was only because he had lost the relish for it; inasmuch as he took everything else he

could get, and would say at times, 'Extremely civil person, Chivery; very attentive man and very respectful.

Young Chivery, too; really almost with a delicate perception of one's position here. A very well conducted

The devoted Young John all this time regarded the family with reverence. He never dreamed of disputing

their pretensions, but did homage to the miserable Mumbo jumbo they paraded. As to resenting any affront

from her brother, he would have felt, even if he had not naturally been of a most pacific disposition, that to

wag his tongue or lift his hand against that sacred gentleman would be an unhallowed act. He was sorry that

his noble mind should take offence; still, he felt the fact to be not incompatible with its nobility, and sought to

propitiate and conciliate that gallant soul. Her father, a gentleman in misfortunea gentleman of a fine spirit

and courtly manners, who always bore with himhe deeply honoured. Her sister he considered somewhat

vain and proud, but a young lady of infinite accomplishments, who could not forget the past. It was an

instinctive testimony to Little Dorrit's worth and difference from all the rest, that the poor young fellow

The tobacco business round the corner of Horsemonger Lane was carried out in a rural establishment one

story high, which had the benefit of the air from the yards of Horsemonger Lane jail, and the advantage of a

retired walk under the wall of that pleasant establishment. The business was of too modest a character to

support a lifesize Highlander, but it maintained a little one on a bracket on the doorpost, who looked like a

fallen Cherub that had found it necessary to take to a kilt. From the portal thus decorated, one Sunday after an

early dinner of baked viands, Young John issued forth on his usual Sunday errand; not emptyhanded, but

with his offering of cigars. He was neatly attired in a plumcoloured coat, with as large a collar of black

velvet as his figure could carry; a silken waistcoat, bedecked with golden sprigs; a chaste neckerchief much

in vogue at that day, representing a preserve of lilac pheasants on a buff ground; pantaloons so highly

decorated with sidestripes that each leg was a threestringed lute; and a hat of state very high and hard.

When the prudent Mrs Chivery perceived that in addition to these adornments her John carried a pair of white

kid gloves, and a cane like a little fingerpost, surmounted by an ivory hand marshalling him the way that he

should go; and when she saw him, in this heavy marching order, turn the corner to the right; she remarked to

Mr Chivery, who was at home at the time, that she thought she knew which way the wind blew.

The Collegians were entertaining a considerable number of visitors that Sunday afternoon, and their Father

kept his room for the purpose of receiving presentations. After making the tour of the yard, Little Dorrit's

lover with a hurried heart went upstairs, and knocked with his knuckles at the Father's door.

'Come in, come in!' said a gracious voice. The Father's voice, her father's, the Marshalsea's father's. He was

seated in his black velvet cap, with his newspaper, threeandsixpence accidentally left on the table, and two

'Eh?' The Father of the Marshalsea always lifted up his eyebrows at this point, and became amiably distraught

'Oh!' (For the moment, excessively surprised.) 'Thank you, Young John, thank you. But really, I am afraid I

am too No? Well then, I will say no more about it. Put them on the mantelshelf, if you please, Young John.

'Thank you, sir, I am sure Miss;' here Young John turned the great hat round and round upon his lefthand,

like a slowly twirling mousecage; 'Miss Amy quite well, sir?' 'Yes, John, yes; very well. She is out.' 'Indeed,

'Yes, John. Miss Amy is gone for an airing. My young people all go out a good deal. But at their time of life,

'An airing. An airing. Yes.' He was blandly tapping his fingers on the table, and casting his eyes up at the

window. 'Amy has gone for an airing on the Iron Bridge. She has become quite partial to the Iron Bridge of

late, and seems to like to walk there better than anywhere.' He returned to conversation. 'Your father is not on

'No, sir, he comes on later in the afternoon.' Another twirl of the great hat, and then Young John said, rising,

'So soon? Good day, Young John. Nay, nay,' with the utmost condescension, 'never mind your glove, John.

Highly gratified by the kindness of his reception, Young John descended the staircase. On his way down he

met some Collegians bringing up visitors to be presented, and at that moment Mr Dorrit happened to call over

the banisters with particular distinctness, 'Much obliged to you for your little testimonial, John!'

Little Dorrit's lover very soon laid down his penny on the tollplate of the Iron Bridge, and came upon it

looking about him for the wellknown and wellbeloved figure. At first he feared she was not there; but as

he walked on towards the Middlesex side, he saw her standing still, looking at the water. She was absorbed in

thought, and he wondered what she might be thinking about. There were the piles of city roofs and chimneys,

more free from smoke than on weekdays; and there were the distant masts and steeples. Perhaps she was

Little Dorrit mused so long, and was so entirely preoccupied, that although her lover stood quiet for what he

thought was a long time, and twice or thrice retired and came back again to the former spot, still she did not

move. So, in the end, he made up his mind to go on, and seem to come upon her casually in passing, and

speak to her. The place was quiet, and now or never was the time to speak to her.

He walked on, and she did not appear to hear his steps until he was close upon her. When he said 'Miss

Dorrit!' she started and fell back from him, with an expression in her face of fright and something like dislike

that caused him unutterable dismay. She had often avoided him beforealways, indeed, for a long, long

while. She had turned away and glided off so often when she had seen him coming toward her, that the

unfortunate Young John could not think it accidental. But he had hoped that it might be shyness, her retiring

character, her foreknowledge of the state of his heart, anything short of aversion. Now, that momentary look

had said, 'You, of all people! I would rather have seen any one on earth than you!'

It was but a momentary look, inasmuch as she checked it, and said in her soft little voice, 'Oh, Mr John! Is it

you?' But she felt what it had been, as he felt what it had been; and they stood looking at one another equally

'Miss Amy, I took the liberty of walking this way, because Mr Dorrit chanced to mention, when I called upon

She caused him more dismay than before by suddenly murmuring, 'O father, father!' in a heartrending tone,

'Miss Amy, I hope I don't give you any uneasiness by naming Mr Dorrit. I assure you I found him very well

and in the best of Spirits, and he showed me even more than his usual kindness; being so very kind as to say

To the inexpressible consternation of her lover, Little Dorrit, with her hands to her averted face, and rocking

herself where she stood as if she were in pain, murmured, 'O father, how can you! O dear, dear father, how

The poor fellow stood gazing at her, overflowing with sympathy, but not knowing what to make of this, until,

having taken out her handkerchief and put it to her still averted face, she hurried away. At first he remained

'Miss Amy, pray! Will you have the goodness to stop a moment? Miss Amy, if it comes to that, let ME go. I

shall go out of my senses, if I have to think that I have driven you away like this.'

His trembling voice and unfeigned earnestness brought Little Dorrit to a stop. 'Oh, I don't know what to do,'

To Young John, who had never seen her bereft of her quiet self command, who had seen her from her

infancy ever so reliable and selfsuppressed, there was a shock in her distress, and in having to associate

himself with it as its cause, that shook him from his great hat to the pavement. He felt it necessary to explain

himself. He might be misunderstoodsupposed to mean something, or to have done something, that had

never entered into his imagination. He begged her to hear him explain himself, as the greatest favour she

'Miss Amy, I know very well that your family is far above mine. It were vain to conceal it. There never was a

Chivery a gentleman that ever I heard of, and I will not commit the meanness of making a false

representation on a subject so momentous. Miss Amy, I know very well that your highsouled brother, and

likewise your spirited sister, spurn me from a height. What I have to do is to respect them, to wish to be

admitted to their friendship, to look up at the eminence on which they are placed from my lowlier

stationfor, whether viewed as tobacco or viewed as the lock, I well know it is lowlyand ever wish them

There really was a genuineness in the poor fellow, and a contrast between the hardness of his hat and the

softness of his heart (albeit, perhaps, of his head, too), that was moving. Little Dorrit entreated him to

disparage neither himself nor his station, and, above all things, to divest himself of any idea that she supposed

'Miss Amy,' he then stammered, 'I have had for a long time ages they seem to meRevolving agesa

Little Dorrit involuntarily started from his side again, with the faintest shadow of her former look; conquering

'May IMiss Amy, I but ask the question humblymay I say it? I have been so unlucky already in giving

you pain without having any such intentions, before the holy Heavens! that there is no fear of my saying it

unless I have your leave. I can be miserable alone, I can be cut up by myself, why should I also make

miserable and cut up one that I would fling myself off that parapet to give half a moment's joy to! Not that

The mournfulness of his spirits, and the gorgeousness of his appearance, might have made him ridiculous, but

that his delicacy made him respectable. Little Dorrit learnt from it what to do.

'If you please, John Chivery,' she returned, trembling, but in a quiet way, 'since you are so considerate as to

'But perhaps you will let me, instead, say something to you. I want to say it earnestly, and with as plain a

meaning as it is possible to express. When you think of us, JohnI mean my brother, and sister, and

medon't think of us as being any different from the rest; for, whatever we once were (which I hardly know)

we ceased to be long ago, and never can be any more. It will be much better for you, and much better for

Young John dolefully protested that he would try to bear it in mind, and would be heartily glad to do

'As to me,' said Little Dorrit, 'think as little of me as you can; the less, the better. When you think of me at all,

John, let it only be as the child you have seen grow up in the prison with one set of duties always occupying

her; as a weak, retired, contented, unprotected girl. I particularly want you to remember, that when I come

He would try to do anything she wished. But why did Miss Amy so much want him to remember that?

'Because,' returned Little Dorrit, 'I know I can then quite trust you not to forget today, and not to say any

more to me. You are so generous that I know I can trust to you for that; and I do and I always will. I am going

to show you, at once, that I fully trust you. I like this place where we are speaking better than any place I

know;' her slight colour had faded, but her lover thought he saw it coming back just then; 'and I may be often

here. I know it is only necessary for me to tell you so, to be quite sure that you will never come here again in

She might rely upon it, said Young John. He was a miserable wretch, but her word was more than a law for

'And goodbye, John,' said Little Dorrit. 'And I hope you will have a good wife one day, and be a happy man.

As she held out her hand to him with these words, the heart that was under the waistcoat of sprigsmere

slopwork, if the truth must be knownswelled to the size of the heart of a gentleman; and the poor

'Oh, don't cry,' said Little Dorrit piteously. 'Don't, don't! Goodbye, John. God bless you!'

And so he left her: first observing that she sat down on the corner of a seat, and not only rested her little hand

upon the rough wall, but laid her face against it too, as if her head were heavy, and her mind were sad. It was

an affecting illustration of the fallacy of human projects, to behold her lover, with the great hat pulled over

his eyes, the velvet collar turned up as if it rained, the plumcoloured coat buttoned to conceal the silken

waistcoat of golden sprigs, and the little directionpost pointing inexorably home, creeping along by the

worst backstreets, and composing, as he went, the following new inscription for a tombstone in St George's

'Here lie the mortal remains Of JOHN CHIVERY, Never anything worth mentioning, Who died about the

end of the year one thousand eight hundred and twentysix, Of a broken heart, Requesting with his last

breath that the word AMY might be inscribed over his ashes, which was accordingly directed to be done, By

The brothers William and Frederick Dorrit, walking up and down the Collegeyardof course on the

aristocratic or Pump side, for the Father made it a point of his state to be chary of going among his children

on the Poor side, except on Sunday mornings, Christmas Days, and other occasions of ceremony, in the

observance whereof he was very punctual, and at which times he laid his hand upon the heads of their infants,

and blessed those young insolvents with a benignity that was highly edifyingthe brothers, walking up and

down the Collegeyard together, were a memorable sight. Frederick the free, was so humbled, bowed,

withered, and faded; William the bond, was so courtly, condescending, and benevolently conscious of a

position; that in this regard only, if in no other, the brothers were a spectacle to wonder at.

They walked up and down the yard on the evening of Little Dorrit's Sunday interview with her lover on the

Iron Bridge. The cares of state were over for that day, the Drawing Room had been well attended, several

new presentations had taken place, the threeand sixpence accidentally left on the table had accidentally

increased to twelve shillings, and the Father of the Marshalsea refreshed himself with a whiff of cigar. As he

walked up and down, affably accommodating his step to the shuffle of his brother, not proud in his

superiority, but considerate of that poor creature, bearing with him, and breathing toleration of his infirmities

in every little puff of smoke that issued from his lips and aspired to get over the spiked wall, he was a sight to

His brother Frederick of the dim eye, palsied hand, bent form, and groping mind, submissively shuffled at his

side, accepting his patronage as he accepted every incident of the labyrinthian world in which he had got lost.

He held the usual screwed bit of whitey brown paper in his hand, from which he ever and again unscrewed a

spare pinch of snuff. That falteringly taken, he would glance at his brother not unadmiringly, put his hands

behind him, and shuffle on so at his side until he took another pinch, or stood still to look about

himperchance suddenly missing his clarionet. The College visitors were melting away as the shades of

night drew on, but the yard was still pretty full, the Collegians being mostly out, seeing their friends to the

Lodge. As the brothers paced the yard, William the bond looked about him to receive salutes, returned them

by graciously lifting off his hat, and, with an engaging air, prevented Frederick the free from running against

the company, or being jostled against the wall. The Collegians as a body were not easily impressible, but

even they, according to their various ways of wondering, appeared to find in the two brothers a sight to

'You are a little low this evening, Frederick,' said the Father of the Marshalsea. 'Anything the matter?'

'The matter?' He stared for a moment, and then dropped his head and eyes again. 'No, William, no. Nothing is

'Aye, aye!' said the old man hurriedly. 'But I can't be. I can't be. Don't talk so. That's all over.'

The Father of the Marshalsea glanced at a passing Collegian with whom he was on friendly terms, as who

should say, 'An enfeebled old man, this; but he is my brother, sir, my brother, and the voice of Nature is

potent!' and steered his brother clear of the handle of the pump by the threadbare sleeve. Nothing would have

been wanting to the perfection of his character as a fraternal guide, philosopher and friend, if he had only

'I think, William,' said the object of his affectionate consideration, 'that I am tired, and will go home to bed.'

'My dear Frederick,' returned the other, 'don't let me detain you; don't sacrifice your inclination to me.'

'Late hours, and a heated atmosphere, and years, I suppose,' said Frederick, 'weaken me.'

'My dear Frederick,' returned the Father of the Marshalsea, 'do you think you are sufficiently careful of

yourself? Do you think your habits are as precise and methodical asshall I say as mine are? Not to revert

again to that little eccentricity which I mentioned just now, I doubt if you take air and exercise enough,

Frederick. Here is the parade, always at your service. Why not use it more regularly than you do?'

'But it is of no use saying yes, yes, my dear Frederick,' the Father of the Marshalsea in his mild wisdom

persisted, 'unless you act on that assent. Consider my case, Frederick. I am a kind of example. Necessity and

time have taught me what to do. At certain stated hours of the day, you will find me on the parade, in my

room, in the Lodge, reading the paper, receiving company, eating and drinking. I have impressed upon Amy

during many years, that I must have my meals (for instance) punctually. Amy has grown up in a sense of the

The brother only sighed again, as he plodded dreamily along, 'Hah! Yes, yes, yes, yes.'

'My dear fellow,' said the Father of the Marshalsea, laying his hand upon his shoulder, and mildly rallying

himmildly, because of his weakness, poor dear soul; 'you said that before, and it does not express much,

Frederick, even if it means much. I wish I could rouse you, my good Frederick; you want to be roused.'

'Yes, William, yes. No doubt,' returned the other, lifting his dim eyes to his face. 'But I am not like you.'

The Father of the Marshalsea said, with a shrug of modest self depreciation, 'Oh! You might be like me, my

dear Frederick; you might be, if you chose!' and forbore, in the magnanimity of his strength, to press his

There was a great deal of leavetaking going on in corners, as was usual on Sunday nights; and here and

there in the dark, some poor woman, wife or mother, was weeping with a new Collegian. The time had been

when the Father himself had wept, in the shades of that yard, as his own poor wife had wept. But it was many

years ago; and now he was like a passenger aboard ship in a long voyage, who has recovered from

seasickness, and is impatient of that weakness in the fresher passengers taken aboard at the last port. He was

inclined to remonstrate, and to express his opinion that people who couldn't get on without crying, had no

business there. In manner, if not in words, he always testified his displeasure at these interruptions of the

general harmony; and it was so well understood, that delinquents usually withdrew if they were aware of him.

On this Sunday evening, he accompanied his brother to the gate with an air of endurance and clemency; being

in a bland temper and graciously disposed to overlook the tears. In the flaring gaslight of the Lodge, several

Collegians were basking; some taking leave of visitors, and some who had no visitors, watching the frequent

turning of the key, and conversing with one another and with Mr Chivery. The paternal entrance made a

sensation of course; and Mr Chivery, touching his hat (in a short manner though) with his key, hoped he

Mr Chivery said in a low growl, 'Oh! he was all right.' Which was his general way of acknowledging

'I had a visit from Young John today, Chivery. And very smart he looked, I assure you.'

So Mr Chivery had heard. Mr Chivery must confess, however, that his wish was that the boy didn't lay out so

much money upon it. For what did it bring him in? It only brought him in wexation. And he could get that

'Yes, Chivery, my brother is going home to bed. He is tired, and not quite well. Take care, Frederick, take

Shaking hands with his brother, and touching his greasy hat to the company in the Lodge, Frederick slowly

shuffled out of the door which Mr Chivery unlocked for him. The Father of the Marshalsea showed the

'Be so kind as to keep the door open a moment, Chivery, that I may see him go along the passage and down

the steps. Take care, Frederick! (He is very infirm.) Mind the steps! (He is so very absent.) Be careful how

you cross, Frederick. (I really don't like the notion of his going wandering at large, he is so extremely liable

With these words, and with a face expressive of many uneasy doubts and much anxious guardianship, he

turned his regards upon the assembled company in the Lodge: so plainly indicating that his brother was to be

pitied for not being under lock and key, that an opinion to that effect went round among the Collegians

But he did not receive it with unqualified assent; on the contrary, he said, No, gentlemen, no; let them not

misunderstand him. His brother Frederick was much broken, no doubt, and it might be more comfortable to

himself (the Father of the Marshalsea) to know that he was safe within the walls. Still, it must be remembered

that to support an existence there during many years, required a certain combination of qualitieshe did not

say high qualities, but qualitiesmoral qualities. Now, had his brother Frederick that peculiar union of

qualities? Gentlemen, he was a most excellent man, a most gentle, tender, and estimable man, with the

simplicity of a child; but would he, though unsuited for most other places, do for that place? No; he said

confidently, no! And, he said, Heaven forbid that Frederick should be there in any other character than in his

present voluntary character! Gentlemen, whoever came to that College, to remain there a length of time, must

have strength of character to go through a good deal and to come out of a good deal. Was his beloved brother

Frederick that man? No. They saw him, even as it was, crushed. Misfortune crushed him. He had not power

of recoil enough, not elasticity enough, to be a long time in such a place, and yet preserve his selfrespect

and feel conscious that he was a gentleman. Frederick had not (if he might use the expression) Power enough

to see in any delicate little attentions andand Testimonials that he might under such circumstances

receive, the goodness of human nature, the fine spirit animating the Collegians as a community, and at the

same time no degradation to himself, and no depreciation of his claims as a gentleman. Gentlemen, God bless

Such was the homily with which he improved and pointed the occasion to the company in the Lodge before

turning into the sallow yard again, and going with his own poor shabby dignity past the Collegian in the

dressinggown who had no coat, and past the Collegian in the seaside slippers who had no shoes, and past

the stout greengrocer Collegian in the corduroy kneebreeches who had no cares, and past the lean clerk

Collegian in buttonless black who had no hopes, up his own poor shabby staircase to his own poor shabby

There, the table was laid for his supper, and his old grey gown was ready for him on his chairback at the

fire. His daughter put her little prayerbook in her pockethad she been praying for pity on all prisoners and

Uncle had gone home, then? she asked @ as she changed his coat and gave him his black velvet cap. Yes,

uncle had gone home. Had her father enjoyed his walk? Why, not much, Amy; not much. No! Did he not feel

As she stood behind him, leaning over his chair so lovingly, he looked with downcast eyes at the fire. An

uneasiness stole over him that was like a touch of shame; and when he spoke, as he presently did, it was in an

'Something, Ihem!I don't know what, has gone wrong with Chivery. He is notha!not nearly so

obliging and attentive as usual tonight. Ithem!it's a little thing, but it puts me out, my love. It's

impossible to forget,' turning his hands over and over and looking closely at them, 'thathem!that in such

a life as mine, I am unfortunately dependent on these men for something every hour in the day.'

Her arm was on his shoulder, but she did not look in his face while he spoke. Bending her head she looked

'Ihem!I can't think, Amy, what has given Chivery offence. He is generally soso very attentive and

respectful. And tonight he was quitequite short with me. Other people there too! Why, good Heaven! if I

was to lose the support and recognition of Chivery and his brother officers, I might starve to death here.'

While he spoke, he was opening and shutting his hands like valves; so conscious all the time of that touch of

'Iha!I can't think what it's owing to. I am sure I cannot imagine what the cause of it is. There was a

certain Jackson here once, a turnkey of the name of Jackson (I don't think you can remember him, my dear,

you were very young), andhem!and he had abrother, and thisyoung brother paid his addresses

toat least, did not go so far as to pay his addresses tobut admired respectfully admiredthenot

daughter, the sisterof one of us; a rather distinguished Collegian; I may say, very much so. His name was

Captain Martin; and he consulted me on the question whether It was necessary that his

daughtersistershould hazard offending the turnkey brother by being tooha!too plain with the other

brother. Captain Martin was a gentleman and a man of honour, and I put it to him first to give me hishis

own opinion. Captain Martin (highly respected in the army) then unhesitatingly said that it appeared to him

that hishem!sister was not called upon to understand the young man too distinctly, and that she might

lead him onI am doubtful whether "lead him on" was Captain Martin's exact expression: indeed I think he

said tolerate himon her father'sI should say, brother'saccount. I hardly know how I have strayed into

this story. I suppose it has been through being unable to account for Chivery; but as to the connection

His voice died away, as if she could not bear the pain of hearing him, and her hand had gradually crept to his

lips. For a little while there was a dead silence and stillness; and he remained shrunk in his chair, and she

His supper was cooking in a saucepan on the fire, and, when she moved, it was to make it ready for him on

the table. He took his usual seat, she took hers, and he began his meal. They did not, as yet, look at one

another. By little and little he began; laying down his knife and fork with a noise, taking things up sharply,

biting at his bread as if he were offended with it, and in other similar ways showing that he was out of sorts.

At length he pushed his plate from him, and spoke aloud; with the strangest inconsistency.

'What does it matter whether I eat or starve? What does it matter whether such a blighted life as mine comes

to an end, now, next week, or next year? What am I worth to anyone? A poor prisoner, fed on alms and

'Father, father!' As he rose she went on her knees to him, and held up her hands to him.

'Amy,' he went on in a suppressed voice, trembling violently, and looking at her as wildly as if he had gone

mad. 'I tell you, if you could see me as your mother saw me, you wouldn't believe it to be the creature you

have only looked at through the bars of this cage. I was young, I was accomplished, I was goodlooking, I

was independentby God I was, child!and people sought me out, and envied me. Envied me!'

'Dear father!' She tried to take down the shaking arm that he flourished in the air, but he resisted, and put her

'If I had but a picture of myself in those days, though it was ever so ill done, you would be proud of it, you

would be proud of it. But I have no such thing. Now, let me be a warning! Let no man,' he cried, looking

haggardly about, 'fail to preserve at least that little of the times of his prosperity and respect. Let his children

have that clue to what he was. Unless my face, when I am dead, subsides into the long departed lookthey

'O despise me, despise me! Look away from me, don't listen to me, stop me, blush for me, cry for meeven

you, Amy! Do it, do it! I do it to myself! I am hardened now, I have sunk too low to care long even for that.'

'Dear father, loved father, darling of my heart!' She was clinging to him with her arms, and she got him to

drop into his chair again, and caught at the raised arm, and tried to put it round her neck.

'Let it lie there, father. Look at me, father, kiss me, father! Only think of me, father, for one little moment!'

Still he went on in the same wild way, though it was gradually breaking down into a miserable whining.

'And yet I have some respect here. I have made some stand against it. I am not quite trodden down. Go out

and ask who is the chief person in the place. They'll tell you it's your father. Go out and ask who is never

trifled with, and who is always treated with some delicacy. They'll say, your father. Go out and ask what

funeral here (it must be here, I know it can be nowhere else) will make more talk, and perhaps more grief,

than any that has ever gone out at the gate. They'll say your father's. Well then. Amy! Amy! Is your father so

universally despised? Is there nothing to redeem him? Will you have nothing to remember him by but his ruin

and decay? Will you be able to have no affection for him when he is gone, poor castaway, gone?'

He burst into tears of maudlin pity for himself, and at length suffering her to embrace him and take charge of

him, let his grey head rest against her cheek, and bewailed his wretchedness. Presently he changed the subject

of his lamentations, and clasping his hands about her as she embraced him, cried, O Amy, his motherless,

forlorn child! O the days that he had seen her careful and laborious for him! Then he reverted to himself, and

weakly told her how much better she would have loved him if she had known him in his vanished character,

and how he would have married her to a gentleman who should have been proud of her as his daughter, and

how (at which he cried again) she should first have ridden at his fatherly side on her own horse, and how the

crowd (by which he meant in effect the people who had given him the twelve shillings he then had in his

Thus, now boasting, now despairing, in either fit a captive with the jailrot upon him, and the impurity of his

prison worn into the grain of his soul, he revealed his degenerate state to his affectionate child. No one else

ever beheld him in the details of his humiliation. Little recked the Collegians who were laughing in their

rooms over his late address in the Lodge, what a serious picture they had in their obscure gallery of the

There was a classical daughter onceperhapswho ministered to her father in his prison as her mother had

ministered to her. Little Dorrit, though of the unheroic modern stock and mere English, did much more, in

comforting her father's wasted heart upon her innocent breast, and turning to it a fountain of love and fidelity

She soothed him; asked him for his forgiveness if she had been, or seemed to have been, undutiful; told him,

Heaven knows truly, that she could not honour him more if he were the favourite of Fortune and the whole

world acknowledged him. When his tears were dried, and he sobbed in his weakness no longer, and was free

from that touch of shame, and had recovered his usual bearing, she prepared the remains of his supper afresh,

and, sitting by his side, rejoiced to see him eat and drink. For now he sat in his black velvet cap and old grey

gown, magnanimous again; and would have comported himself towards any Collegian who might have

looked in to ask his advice, like a great moral Lord Chesterfield, or Master of the ethical ceremonies of the

To keep his attention engaged, she talked with him about his wardrobe; when he was pleased to say, that Yes,

indeed, those shirts she proposed would be exceedingly acceptable, for those he had were worn out, and,

being readymade, had never fitted him. Being conversational, and in a reasonable flow of spirits, he then

invited her attention to his coat as it hung behind the door: remarking that the Father of the place would set an

indifferent example to his children, already disposed to be slovenly, if he went among them out at elbows. He

was jocular, too, as to the heeling of his shoes; but became grave on the subject of his cravat, and promised

While he smoked out his cigar in peace, she made his bed, and put the small room in order for his repose.

Being weary then, owing to the advanced hour and his emotions, he came out of his chair to bless her and

wish her Good night. All this time he had never once thought of HER dress, her shoes, her need of anything.

No other person upon earth, save herself, could have been so unmindful of her wants.

But her gentle breast had been so deeply wounded by what she had seen of him that she was unwilling to

leave him alone, lest he should lament and despair again. 'Father, dear, I am not tired; let me come back

'Don't think of me, my dear,' he said, giving her his kind permission fully. 'Come back by all means.'

He seemed to be dozing when she returned, and she put the low fire together very softly lest she should

'Amy, my child, come here. I want to say a word to you.' He raised himself a little in his low bed, as she

kneeled beside it to bring her face near him; and put his hand between hers. O! Both the private father and the

'My love, you have had a life of hardship here. No companions, no recreations, many cares I am afraid?'

'You know my position, Amy. I have not been able to do much for you; but all I have been able to do, I have

'I am in the twentythird year of my life here,' he said, with a catch in his breath that was not so much a sob

as an irrepressible sound of selfapproval, the momentary outburst of a noble consciousness. 'It is all I could

do for my childrenI have done it. Amy, my love, you are by far the best loved of the three; I have had you

principally in my mindwhatever I have done for your sake, my dear child, I have done freely and without

Only the wisdom that holds the clue to all hearts and all mysteries, can surely know to what extent a man,

especially a man brought down as this man had been, can impose upon himself. Enough, for the present

place, that he lay down with wet eyelashes, serene, in a manner majestic, after bestowing his life of

degradation as a sort of portion on the devoted child upon whom its miseries had fallen so heavily, and whose

That child had no doubts, asked herself no question, for she was but too content to see him with a lustre

round his head. Poor dear, good dear, truest, kindest, dearest, were the only words she had for him, as she

She never left him all that night. As if she had done him a wrong which her tenderness could hardly repair,

she sat by him in his sleep, at times softly kissing him with suspended breath, and calling him in a whisper by

some endearing name. At times she stood aside so as not to intercept the low firelight, and, watching him

when it fell upon his sleeping face, wondered did he look now at all as he had looked when he was

prosperous and happy; as he had so touched her by imagining that he might look once more in that awful

time. At the thought of that time, she kneeled beside his bed again, and prayed, 'O spare his life! O save him

to me! O look down upon my dear, longsuffering, unfortunate, much changed, dear dear father!'

Not until the morning came to protect him and encourage him, did she give him a last kiss and leave the small

room. When she had stolen downstairs, and along the empty yard, and had crept up to her own high garret,

the smokeless housetops and the distant country hills were discernible over the wall in the clear morning. As

she gently opened the window, and looked eastward down the prison yard, the spikes upon the wall were

tipped with red, then made a sullen purple pattern on the sun as it came flaming up into the heavens. The

spikes had never looked so sharp and cruel, nor the bars so heavy, nor the prison space so gloomy and

contracted. She thought of the sunrise on rolling rivers, of the sunrise on wide seas, of the sunrise on rich

landscapes, of the sunrise on great forests where the birds were waking and the trees were rustling; and she

looked down into the living grave on which the sun had risen, with her father in it threeandtwenty years,

and said, in a burst of sorrow and compassion, 'No, no, I have never seen him in my life!'

If Young John Chivery had had the inclination and the power to write a satire on family pride, he would have

had no need to go for an avenging illustration out of the family of his beloved. He would have found it amply

in that gallant brother and that dainty sister, so steeped in mean experiences, and so loftily conscious of the

family name; so ready to beg or borrow from the poorest, to eat of anybody's bread, spend anybody's money,

drink from anybody's cup and break it afterwards. To have painted the sordid facts of their lives, and they

throughout invoking the death's head apparition of the family gentility to come and scare their benefactors,

Tip had turned his liberty to hopeful account by becoming a billiardmarker. He had troubled himself so little

as to the means of his release, that Clennam scarcely needed to have been at the pains of impressing the mind

of Mr Plornish on that subject. Whoever had paid him the compliment, he very readily accepted the

compliment with HIS compliments, and there was an end of it. Issuing forth from the gate on these easy

terms, he became a billiardmarker; and now occasionally looked in at the little skittleground in a green

Newmarket coat (secondhand), with a shining collar and bright buttons (new), and drank the beer of the

One solid stationary point in the looseness of this gentleman's character was, that he respected and admired

his sister Amy. The feeling had never induced him to spare her a moment's uneasiness, or to put himself to

any restraint or inconvenience on her account; but with that Marshalsea taint upon his love, he loved her. The

same rank Marshalsea flavour was to be recognised in his distinctly perceiving that she sacrificed her life to

When this spirited young man and his sister had begun systematically to produce the family skeleton for the

overawing of the College, this narrative cannot precisely state. Probably at about the period when they began

to dine on the College charity. It is certain that the more reduced and necessitous they were, the more

pompously the skeleton emerged from its tomb; and that when there was anything particularly shabby in the

Little Dorrit was late on the Monday morning, for her father slept late, and afterwards there was his breakfast

to prepare and his room to arrange. She had no engagement to go out to work, however, and therefore stayed

with him until, with Maggy's help, she had put everything right about him, and had seen him off upon his

She then got on her bonnet and went out, having been anxious to get out much sooner. There was, as usual, a

cessation of the small talk in the Lodge as she passed through it; and a Collegian who had come in on

Saturday night, received the intimation from the elbow of a more seasoned Collegian, 'Look out. Here she is!'

She wanted to see her sister, but when she got round to Mr Cripples's, she found that both her sister and her

uncle had gone to the theatre where they were engaged. Having taken thought of this probability by the way,

and having settled that in such case she would follow them, she set off afresh for the theatre, which was on

Little Dorrit was almost as ignorant of the ways of theatres as of the ways of gold mines, and when she was

directed to a furtive sort of door, with a curious upallnight air about it, that appeared to be ashamed of

itself and to be hiding in an alley, she hesitated to approach it; being further deterred by the sight of some

halfdozen closeshaved gentlemen with their hats very strangely on, who were lounging about the door,

looking not at all unlike Collegians. On her applying to them, reassured by this resemblance, for a direction

to Miss Dorrit, they made way for her to enter a dark hallit was more like a great grim lamp gone out than

anything elsewhere she could hear the distant playing of music and the sound of dancing feet. A man so

much in want of airing that he had a blue mould upon him, sat watching this dark place from a hole in a

corner, like a spider; and he told her that he would send a message up to Miss Dorrit by the first lady or

gentleman who went through. The first lady who went through had a roll of music, half in her muff and half

out of it, and was in such a tumbled condition altogether, that it seemed as if it would be an act of kindness to

iron her. But as she was very goodnatured, and said, 'Come with me; I'll soon find Miss Dorrit for you,'

Miss Dorrit's sister went with her, drawing nearer and nearer at every step she took in the darkness to the

At last they came into a maze of dust, where a quantity of people were tumbling over one another, and where

there was such a confusion of unaccountable shapes of beams, bulkheads, brick walls, ropes, and rollers, and

such a mixing of gaslight and daylight, that they seemed to have got on the wrong side of the pattern of the

universe. Little Dorrit, left to herself, and knocked against by somebody every moment, was quite

'I wanted to see you, Fanny dear; and as I am going out all day to morrow, and knew you might be engaged

'But the idea, Amy, of YOU coming behind! I never did!' As her sister said this in no very cordial tone of

welcome, she conducted her to a more open part of the maze, where various golden chairs and tables were

heaped together, and where a number of young ladies were sitting on anything they could find, chattering. All

these young ladies wanted ironing, and all had a curious way of looking everywhere while they chattered.

just as the sisters arrived here, a monotonous boy in a Scotch cap put his head round a beam on the left, and

said, 'Less noise there, ladies!' and disappeared. Immediately after which, a sprightly gentleman with a

quantity of long black hair looked round a beam on the right, and said, 'Less noise there, darlings!' and also

'The notion of you among professionals, Amy, is really the last thing I could have conceived!' said her sister.

'I don't know. The lady who told you I was here, was so good as to bring me in.'

'Like you quiet little things! You can make your way anywhere, I believe. I couldn't have managed it, Amy,

It was the family custom to lay it down as family law, that she was a plain domestic little creature, without

the great and sage experience of the rest. This family fiction was the family assertion of itself against her

'Well! And what have you got on your mind, Amy? Of course you have got something on your mind about

me?' said Fanny. She spoke as if her sister, between two and three years her junior, were her prejudiced

'It is not much; but since you told me of the lady who gave you the bracelet, Fanny'

The monotonous boy put his head round the beam on the left, and said, 'Look out there, ladies!' and

disappeared. The sprightly gentleman with the black hair as suddenly put his head round the beam on the

right, and said, 'Look out there, darlings!' and also disappeared. Thereupon all the young ladies rose and

'Since you told me a lady had given you the bracelet you showed me, Fanny, I have not been quite easy on

your account, and indeed want to know a little more if you will confide more to me.'

'Now, ladies!' said the boy in the Scotch cap. 'Now, darlings!' said the gentleman with the black hair. They

were every one gone in a moment, and the music and the dancing feet were heard again.

Little Dorrit sat down in a golden chair, made quite giddy by these rapid interruptions. Her sister and the rest

were a long time gone; and during their absence a voice (it appeared to be that of the gentleman with the

black hair) was continually calling out through the music, 'One, two, three, four, five, sixgo! One, two,

three, four, five, sixgo! Steady, darlings! One, two, three, four, five, sixgo!' Ultimately the voice

stopped, and they all came back again, more or less out of breath, folding themselves in their shawls, and

making ready for the streets. 'Stop a moment, Amy, and let them get away before us,' whispered Fanny. They

were soon left alone; nothing more important happening, in the meantime, than the boy looking round his old

beam, and saying, 'Everybody at eleven tomorrow, ladies!' and the gentleman with the black hair looking

round his old beam, and saying, 'Everybody at eleven tomorrow, darlings!' each in his own accustomed

When they were alone, something was rolled up or by other means got out of the way, and there was a great

empty well before them, looking down into the depths of which Fanny said, 'Now, uncle!' Little Dorrit, as her

eyes became used to the darkness, faintly made him out at the bottom of the well, in an obscure corner by

The old man looked as if the remote high gallery windows, with their little strip of sky, might have been the

point of his better fortunes, from which he had descended, until he had gradually sunk down below there to

the bottom. He had been in that place six nights a week for many years, but had never been observed to raise

his eyes above his musicbook, and was confidently believed to have never seen a play. There were legends

in the place that he did not so much as know the popular heroes and heroines by sight, and that the low

comedian had 'mugged' at him in his richest manner fifty nights for a wager, and he had shown no trace of

consciousness. The carpenters had a joke to the effect that he was dead without being aware of it; and the

frequenters of the pit supposed him to pass his whole life, night and day, and Sunday and all, in the orchestra.

They had tried him a few times with pinches of snuff offered over the rails, and he had always responded to

this attention with a momentary waking up of manner that had the pale phantom of a gentleman in it: beyond

this he never, on any occasion, had any other part in what was going on than the part written out for the

clarionet; in private life, where there was no part for the clarionet, he had no part at all. Some said he was

poor, some said he was a wealthy miser; but he said nothing, never lifted up his bowed head, never varied his

shuffling gait by getting his springless foot from the ground. Though expecting now to be summoned by his

niece, he did not hear her until she had spoken to him three or four times; nor was he at all surprised by the

presence of two nieces instead of one, but merely said in his tremulous voice, 'I am coming, I am coming!'

'And so, Amy,' said her sister, when the three together passed out at the door that had such a shamefaced

consciousness of being different from other doors: the uncle instinctively taking Amy's arm as the arm to be

She was pretty, and conscious, and rather flaunting; and the condescension with which she put aside the

superiority of her charms, and of her worldly experience, and addressed her sister on almost equal terms, had

'So you are, so you are, and you are the best of Amys. If I am ever a little provoking, I am sure you'll consider

what a thing it is to occupy my position and feel a consciousness of being superior to it. I shouldn't care,' said

the Daughter of the Father of the Marshalsea, 'if the others were not so common. None of them have come

Little Dorrit mildly looked at the speaker, but did not interrupt her. Fanny took out her handkerchief, and

rather angrily wiped her eyes. 'I was not born where you were, you know, Amy, and perhaps that makes a

difference. My dear child, when we get rid of Uncle, you shall know all about it. We'll drop him at the cook's

They walked on with him until they came to a dirty shop window in a dirty street, which was made almost

opaque by the steam of hot meats, vegetables, and puddings. But glimpses were to be caught of a roast leg of

pork bursting into tears of sage and onion in a metal reservoir full of gravy, of an unctuous piece of roast beef

and blisterous Yorkshire pudding, bubbling hot in a similar receptacle, of a stuffed fillet of veal in rapid cut,

of a ham in a perspiration with the pace it was going at, of a shallow tank of baked potatoes glued together by

their own richness, of a truss or two of boiled greens, and other substantial delicacies. Within, were a few

wooden partitions, behind which such customers as found it more convenient to take away their dinners in

stomachs than in their hands, Packed their purchases in solitude. Fanny opening her reticule, as they surveyed

these things, produced from that repository a shilling and handed it to Uncle. Uncle, after not looking at it a

little while, divined its object, and muttering 'Dinner? Ha! Yes, yes, yes!' slowly vanished from them into the

'Now, Amy,' said her sister, 'come with me, if you are not too tired to walk to Harley Street, Cavendish

The air with which she threw off this distinguished address and the toss she gave to her new bonnet (which

was more gauzy than serviceable), made her sister wonder; however, she expressed her readiness to go to

Harley Street, and thither they directed their steps. Arrived at that grand destination, Fanny singled out the

handsomest house, and knocking at the door, inquired for Mrs Merdle. The footman who opened the door,

although he had powder on his head and was backed up by two other footmen likewise powdered, not only

admitted Mrs Merdle to be at home, but asked Fanny to walk in. Fanny walked in, taking her sister with her;

and they went up stairs with powder going before and powder stopping behind, and were left in a spacious

semicircular drawingroom, one of several drawingrooms, where there was a parrot on the outside of a

golden cage holding on by its beak, with its scaly legs in the air, and putting itself into many strange

upsidedown postures. This peculiarity has been observed in birds of quite another feather, climbing upon

The room was far more splendid than anything Little Dorrit had ever imagined, and would have been

splendid and costly in any eyes. She looked in amazement at her sister and would have asked a question, but

that Fanny with a warning frown pointed to a curtained doorway of communication with another room. The

curtain shook next moment, and a lady, raising it with a heavily ringed hand, dropped it behind her again as

The lady was not young and fresh from the hand of Nature, but was young and fresh from the hand of her

maid. She had large unfeeling handsome eyes, and dark unfeeling handsome hair, and a broad unfeeling

handsome bosom, and was made the most of in every particular. Either because she had a cold, or because it

suited her face, she wore a rich white fillet tied over her head and under her chin. And if ever there were an

unfeeling handsome chin that looked as if, for certain, it had never been, in familiar parlance, 'chucked' by the

'I am glad to see your sister, Miss Dorrit. I did not remember that you had a sister.'

'Ah!' Mrs Merdle curled the little finger of her left hand as who should say, 'I have caught you. I know you

didn't!' All her action was usually with her left hand because her hands were not a pair; and left being much

the whiter and plumper of the two. Then she added: 'Sit down,' and composed herself voluptuously, in a nest

'Also professional?' said Mrs Merdle, looking at Little Dorrit through an eyeglass.

Fanny answered No. 'No,' said Mrs Merdle, dropping her glass. 'Has not a professional air. Very pleasant; but

'My sister, ma'am,' said Fanny, in whom there was a singular mixture of deference and hardihood, 'has been

asking me to tell her, as between sisters, how I came to have the honour of knowing you. And as I had

engaged to call upon you once more, I thought I might take the liberty of bringing her with me, when perhaps

you would tell her. I wish her to know, and perhaps you will tell her?' 'Do you think, at your sister's age'

'Society,' said Mrs Merdle, with another curve of her little finger, 'is so difficult to explain to young persons

(indeed is so difficult to explain to most persons), that I am glad to hear that.

I wish Society was not so arbitrary, I wish it was not so exacting Bird, be quiet!'

The parrot had given a most piercing shriek, as if its name were Society and it asserted its right to its

'But,' resumed Mrs Merdle, 'we must take it as we find it. We know it is hollow and conventional and worldly

and very shocking, but unless we are Savages in the Tropical seas (I should have been charmed to be one

myselfmost delightful life and perfect climate, I am told), we must consult it. It is the common lot. Mr

Merdle is a most extensive merchant, his transactions are on the vastest scale, his wealth and influence are

The parrot had shrieked another shriek; and it filled up the sentence so expressively that Mrs Merdle was

'Since your sister begs that I would terminate our personal acquaintance,' she began again, addressing Little

Dorrit, 'by relating the circumstances that are much to her credit, I cannot object to comply with her request, I

am sure. I have a son (I was first married extremely young) of two or threeandtwenty.'

'A son of two or threeandtwenty. He is a little gay, a thing Society is accustomed to in young men, and he

is very impressible. Perhaps he inherits that misfortune. I am very impressible myself, by nature. The weakest

She said all this, and everything else, as coldly as a woman of snow; quite forgetting the sisters except at odd

times, and apparently addressing some abstraction of Society; for whose behoof, too, she occasionally

'So he is very impressible. Not a misfortune in our natural state I dare say, but we are not in a natural state.

Much to be lamented, no doubt, particularly by myself, who am a child of nature if I could but show it; but so

it is. Society suppresses us and dominates us Bird, be quiet!' The parrot had broken into a violent fit of

laughter, after twisting divers bars of his cage with his crooked bill, and licking them with his black tongue.

'It is quite unnecessary to say to a person of your good sense, wide range of experience, and cultivated

feeling,' said Mrs Merdle from her nest of crimson and goldand there put up her glass to refresh her

memory as to whom she was addressing,'that the stage sometimes has a fascination for young men of that

class of character. In saying the stage, I mean the people on it of the female sex. Therefore, when I heard that

my son was supposed to be fascinated by a dancer, I knew what that usually meant in Society, and confided

in her being a dancer at the Opera, where young men moving in Society are usually fascinated.'

She passed her white hands over one another, observant of the sisters now; and the rings upon her fingers

'As your sister will tell you, when I found what the theatre was I was much surprised and much distressed.

But when I found that your sister, by rejecting my son's advances (I must add, in an unexpected manner), had

brought him to the point of proposing marriage, my feelings were of the profoundest anguishacute.' She

'In a distracted condition, which only a mothermoving in Societycan be susceptible of, I determined to

go myself to the theatre, and represent my state of mind to the dancer. I made myself known to your sister. I

found her, to my surprise, in many respects different from my expectations; and certainly in none more so,

than in meeting me withwhat shall I saya sort of family assertion on her own part?' Mrs Merdle smiled.

'I told you, ma'am,' said Fanny, with a heightening colour, 'that although you found me in that situation, I was

so far above the rest, that I considered my family as good as your son's; and that I had a brother who,

knowing the circumstances, would be of the same opinion, and would not consider such a connection any

'Miss Dorrit,' said Mrs Merdle, after frostily looking at her through her glass, 'precisely what I was on the

point of telling your sister, in pursuance of your request. Much obliged to you for recalling it so accurately

and anticipating me. I immediately,' addressing Little Dorrit, '(for I am the creature of impulse), took a

bracelet from my arm, and begged your sister to let me clasp it on hers, in token of the delight I had in our

being able to approach the subject so far on a common footing.' (This was perfectly true, the lady having

bought a cheap and showy article on her way to the interview, with a general eye to bribery.)

'And I told you, Mrs Merdle,' said Fanny, 'that we might be unfortunate, but we are not common.'

'And I told you, Mrs Merdle,' said Fanny, 'that if you spoke to me of the superiority of your son's standing in

Society, it was barely possible that you rather deceived yourself in your suppositions about my origin; and

that my father's standing, even in the Society in which he now moved (what that was, was best known to

'There is very little to tell,' said Mrs Merdle, reviewing the breadth of bosom which seemed essential to her

having room enough to be unfeeling in, 'but it is to your sister's credit. I pointed out to your sister the plain

state of the case; the impossibility of the Society in which we moved recognising the Society in which she

movedthough charming, I have no doubt; the immense disadvantage at which she would consequently

place the family she had so high an opinion of, upon which we should find ourselves compelled to look down

with contempt, and from which (socially speaking) we should feel obliged to recoil with abhorrence. In short,

'Let my sister know, if you please, Mrs Merdle,' Fanny pouted, with a toss of her gauzy bonnet, 'that I had

already had the honour of telling your son that I wished to have nothing whatever to say to him.'

'Well, Miss Dorrit,' assented Mrs Merdle, 'perhaps I might have mentioned that before. If I did not think of it,

perhaps it was because my mind reverted to the apprehensions I had at the time that he might persevere and

I also mentioned to your sisterI again address the non professional Miss Dorritthat my son would have

nothing in the event of such a marriage, and would be an absolute beggar. (I mention that merely as a fact

which is part of the narrative, and not as supposing it to have influenced your sister, except in the prudent and

legitimate way in which, constituted as our artificial system is, we must all be influenced by such

considerations.) Finally, after some high words and high spirit on the part of your sister, we came to the

complete understanding that there was no danger; and your sister was so obliging as to allow me to present

'Also,' said Mrs Merdle, 'as to promise to give me the present pleasure of a closing interview, and of parting

with her on the best of terms. On which occasion,' added Mrs Merdle, quitting her nest, and putting

something in Fanny's hand, 'Miss Dorrit will permit me to say Farewell with best wishes in my own dull

The sisters rose at the same time, and they all stood near the cage of the parrot, as he tore at a clawfull of

biscuit and spat it out, seemed to mock them with a pompous dance of his body without moving his feet, and

suddenly turned himself upside down and trailed himself all over the outside of his golden cage, with the aid

'Adieu, Miss Dorrit, with best wishes,' said Mrs Merdle. 'If we could only come to a Millennium, or

something of that sort, I for one might have the pleasure of knowing a number of charming and talented

persons from whom I am at present excluded. A more primitive state of society would be delicious to me.

There used to be a poem when I learnt lessons, something about Lo the poor Indians whose something mind!

If a few thousand persons moving in Society, could only go and be Indians, I would put my name down

directly; but as, moving in Society, we can't be Indians, unfortunatelyGood morning!'

They came downstairs with powder before them and powder behind, the elder sister haughty and the

younger sister humbled, and were shut out into unpowdered Harley Street, Cavendish Square.

'Well?' said Fanny, when they had gone a little way without speaking. 'Have you nothing to say, Amy?'

'Oh, I don't know what to say!' she answered, distressed. 'You didn't like this young man, Fanny?'

'I am so sorrydon't be hurtbut, since you ask me what I have to say, I am so very sorry, Fanny, that you

'You little Fool!' returned her sister, shaking her with the sharp pull she gave her arm. 'Have you no spirit at

all? But that's just the way! You have no selfrespect, you have no becoming pride. just as you allow yourself

to be followed about by a contemptible little Chivery of a thing,' with the scornfullest emphasis, 'you would

'You do what you can for them!' repeated Fanny, walking her on very fast. 'Would you let a woman like this,

whom you could see, if you had any experience of anything, to be as false and insolent as a woman can

'No, Fanny, I am sure.' 'Then make her pay for it, you mean little thing. What else can you make her do?

Make her pay for it, you stupid child; and do your family some credit with the money!'

They spoke no more all the way back to the lodging where Fanny and her uncle lived. When they arrived

there, they found the old man practising his clarionet in the dolefullest manner in a corner of the room. Fanny

had a composite meal to make, of chops, and porter, and tea; and indignantly pretended to prepare it for

herself, though her sister did all that in quiet reality. When at last Fanny sat down to eat and drink, she threw

the table implements about and was angry with her bread, much as her father had been last night.

'If you despise me,' she said, bursting into vehement tears, 'because I am a dancer, why did you put me in the

It was your doing. You would have me stoop as low as the ground before this Mrs Merdle, and let her say

what she liked and do what she liked, and hold us all in contempt, and tell me so to my face. Because I am a

'And Tip, too, poor fellow. She is to disparage him just as much as she likes, without any checkI suppose

because he has been in the law, and the docks, and different things. Why, it was your doing, Amy. You might

All this time the uncle was dolefully blowing his clarionet in the corner, sometimes taking it an inch or so

from his mouth for a moment while he stopped to gaze at them, with a vague impression that somebody had

'And your father, your poor father, Amy. Because he is not free to show himself and to speak for himself, you

would let such people insult him with impunity. If you don't feel for yourself because you go out to work, you

might at least feel for him, I should think, knowing what he has undergone so long.'

The remembrance of last night added a barbed point to it. She said nothing in reply, but turned her chair from

the table towards the fire. Uncle, after making one more pause, blew a dismal wail and went on again.

Fanny was passionate with the teacups and the bread as long as her passion lasted, and then protested that

she was the wretchedest girl in the world, and she wished she was dead. After that, her crying became

remorseful, and she got up and put her arms round her sister. Little Dorrit tried to stop her from saying

anything, but she answered that she would, she must! Thereupon she said again, and again, 'I beg your

pardon, Amy,' and 'Forgive me, Amy,' almost as passionately as she had said what she regretted.

'But indeed, indeed, Amy,' she resumed when they were seated in sisterly accord side by side, 'I hope and I

think you would have seen this differently, if you had known a little more of Society.'

'You see, while you have been domestic and resignedly shut up there, Amy,' pursued her sister, gradually

beginning to patronise, 'I have been out, moving more in Society, and may have been getting proud and

'And while you have been thinking of the dinner or the clothes, I may have been thinking, you know, of the

'Especially as we know,' said Fanny, 'that there certainly is a tone in the place to which you have been so true,

which does belong to it, and which does make it different from other aspects of Society. So kiss me once

again, Amy dear, and we will agree that we may both be right, and that you are a tranquil, domestic, home

The clarionet had been lamenting most pathetically during this dialogue, but was cut short now by Fanny's

announcement that it was time to go; which she conveyed to her uncle by shutting up his scrap of music, and

Little Dorrit parted from them at the door, and hastened back to the Marshalsea. It fell dark there sooner than

elsewhere, and going into it that evening was like going into a deep trench. The shadow of the wall was on

every object. Not least upon the figure in the old grey gown and the black velvet cap, as it turned towards her

'Why not upon me too!' thought Little Dorrit, with the door Yet in her hand. 'It was not unreasonable in

Upon that establishment of state, the Merdle establishment in Harley Street, Cavendish Square, there was the

shadow of no more common wall than the fronts of other establishments of state on the opposite side of the

street. Like unexceptionable Society, the opposing rows of houses in Harley Street were very grim with one

another. Indeed, the mansions and their inhabitants were so much alike in that respect, that the people were

often to be found drawn up on opposite sides of dinnertables, in the shade of their own loftiness, staring at

Everybody knows how like the street the two dinnerrows of people who take their stand by the street will

be. The expressionless uniform twenty houses, all to be knocked at and rung at in the same form, all

approachable by the same dull steps, all fended off by the same pattern of railing, all with the same

impracticable fire escapes, the same inconvenient fixtures in their heads, and everything without exception

to be taken at a high valuationwho has not dined with these? The house so drearily out of repair, the

occasional bowwindow, the stuccoed house, the newlyfronted house, the corner house with nothing but

angular rooms, the house with the blinds always down, the house with the hatchment always up, the house

where the collector has called for one quarter of an Idea, and found nobody at homewho has not dined with

these? The house that nobody will take, and is to be had a bargainwho does not know her? The showy

house that was taken for life by the disappointed gentleman, and which does not suit him at allwho is

Harley Street, Cavendish Square, was more than aware of Mr and Mrs Merdle. Intruders there were in Harley

Street, of whom it was not aware; but Mr and Mrs Merdle it delighted to honour. Society was aware of Mr

Mr Merdle was immensely rich; a man of prodigious enterprise; a Midas without the ears, who turned all he

touched to gold. He was in everything good, from banking to building. He was in Parliament, of course. He

was in the City, necessarily. He was Chairman of this, Trustee of that, President of the other. The weightiest

of men had said to projectors, 'Now, what name have you got? Have you got Merdle?' And, the reply being in

This great and fortunate man had provided that extensive bosom which required so much room to be

unfeeling enough in, with a nest of crimson and gold some fifteen years before. It was not a bosom to repose

upon, but it was a capital bosom to hang jewels upon. Mr Merdle wanted something to hang jewels upon, and

he bought it for the purpose. Storr and Mortimer might have married on the same speculation.

Like all his other speculations, it was sound and successful. The jewels showed to the richest advantage. The

bosom moving in Society with the jewels displayed upon it, attracted general admiration. Society approving,

Mr Merdle was satisfied. He was the most disinterested of men,did everything for Society, and got as little

That is to say, it may be supposed that he got all he wanted, otherwise with unlimited wealth he would have

got it. But his desire was to the utmost to satisfy Society (whatever that was), and take up all its drafts upon

him for tribute. He did not shine in company; he had not very much to say for himself; he was a reserved

man, with a broad, overhanging, watchful head, that particular kind of dull red colour in his cheeks which is

rather stale than fresh, and a somewhat uneasy expression about his coat cuffs, as if they were in his

confidence, and had reasons for being anxious to hide his hands. In the little he said, he was a pleasant man

enough; plain, emphatic about public and private confidence, and tenacious of the utmost deference being

shown by every one, in all things, to Society. In this same Society (if that were it which came to his dinners,

and to Mrs Merdle's receptions and concerts), he hardly seemed to enjoy himself much, and was mostly to be

found against walls and behind doors. Also when he went out to it, instead of its coming home to him, he

seemed a little fatigued, and upon the whole rather more disposed for bed; but he was always cultivating it

nevertheless, and always moving in itand always laying out money on it with the greatest liberality.

Mrs Merdle's first husband had been a colonel, under whose auspices the bosom had entered into competition

with the snows of North America, and had come off at little disadvantage in point of whiteness, and at none

in point of coldness. The colonel's son was Mrs Merdle's only child. He was of a chuckleheaded, high

shouldered make, with a general appearance of being, not so much a young man as a swelled boy. He had

given so few signs of reason, that a byword went among his companions that his brain had been frozen up in

a mighty frost which prevailed at St john's, New Brunswick, at the period of his birth there, and had never

thawed from that hour. Another byword represented him as having in his infancy, through the negligence of

a nurse, fallen out of a high window on his head, which had been heard by responsible witnesses to crack. It

is probable that both these representations were of ex post facto origin; the young gentleman (whose

expressive name was Sparkler) being monomaniacal in offering marriage to all manner of undesirable young

ladies, and in remarking of every successive young lady to whom he tendered a matrimonial proposal that she

A soninlaw with these limited talents, might have been a clog upon another man; but Mr Merdle did not

want a soninlaw for himself; he wanted a soninlaw for Society. Mr Sparkler having been in the Guards,

and being in the habit of frequenting all the races, and all the lounges, and all the parties, and being well

known, Society was satisfied with its soninlaw. This happy result Mr Merdle would have considered well

attained, though Mr Sparkler had been a more expensive article. And he did not get Mr Sparkler by any

means cheap for Society, even as it was. There was a dinner giving in the Harley Street establishment, while

Little Dorrit was stitching at her father's new shirts by his side that night; and there were magnates from the

Court and magnates from the City, magnates from the Commons and magnates from the Lords, magnates

from the bench and magnates from the bar, Bishop magnates, Treasury magnates, Horse Guard magnates,

Admiralty magnates,all the magnates that keep us going, and sometimes trip us up.

'I am told,' said Bishop magnate to Horse Guards, 'that Mr Merdle has made another enormous hit. They say a

Bar, handling his persuasive double eyeglass, was by no means clear but that it might be four. It was one of

those happy strokes of calculation and combination, the result of which it was difficult to estimate. It was one

of those instances of a comprehensive grasp, associated with habitual luck and characteristic boldness, of

which an age presented us but few. But here was Brother Bellows, who had been in the great Bank case, and

who could probably tell us more. What did Brother Bellows put this new success at?

Brother Bellows was on his way to make his bow to the bosom, and could only tell them in passing that he

had heard it stated, with great appearance of truth, as being worth, from first to last, halfamillion of money.

Admiralty said Mr Merdle was a wonderful man, Treasury said he was a new power in the country, and

would be able to buy up the whole House of Commons. Bishop said he was glad to think that this wealth

flowed into the coffers of a gentleman who was always disposed to maintain the best interests of Society.

Mr Merdle himself was usually late on these occasions, as a man still detained in the clutch of giant

enterprises when other men had shaken off their dwarfs for the day. On this occasion, he was the last arrival.

Treasury said Merdle's work punished him a little. Bishop said he was glad to think that this wealth flowed

Powder! There was so much Powder in waiting, that it flavoured the dinner. Pulverous particles got into the

dishes, and Society's meats had a seasoning of firstrate footmen. Mr Merdle took down a countess who was

secluded somewhere in the core of an immense dress, to which she was in the proportion of the heart to the

overgrown cabbage. If so low a simile may be admitted, the dress went down the staircase like a richly

brocaded Jack in the Green, and nobody knew what sort of small person carried it.

Society had everything it could want, and could not want, for dinner. It had everything to look at, and

everything to eat, and everything to drink. It is to be hoped it enjoyed itself; for Mr Merdle's own share of the

repast might have been paid for with eighteenpence. Mrs Merdle was magnificent. The chief butler was the

next magnificent institution of the day. He was the stateliest man in the company. He did nothing, but he

looked on as few other men could have done. He was Mr Merdle's last gift to Society. Mr Merdle didn't want

him, and was put out of countenance when the great creature looked at him; but inappeasable Society would

The invisible countess carried out the Green at the usual stage of the entertainment, and the file of beauty was

Bar fell into discussion with Horse Guards concerning courts martial. Brothers Bellows and Bench struck

in. Other magnates paired off. Mr Merdle sat silent, and looked at the tablecloth. Sometimes a magnate

addressed him, to turn the stream of his own particular discussion towards him; but Mr Merdle seldom gave

much attention to it, or did more than rouse himself from his calculations and pass the wine.

When they rose, so many of the magnates had something to say to Mr Merdle individually that he held little

Treasury hoped he might venture to congratulate one of England's worldfamed capitalists and

merchantprinces (he had turned that original sentiment in the house a few times, and it came easy to him) on

a new achievement. To extend the triumphs of such men was to extend the triumphs and resources of the

nation; and Treasury felthe gave Mr Merdle to understandpatriotic on the subject.

'Thank you, my lord,' said Mr Merdle; 'thank you. I accept your congratulations with pride, and I am glad you

'Why, I don't unreservedly approve, my dear Mr Merdle. Because,' smiling Treasury turned him by the arm

towards the sideboard and spoke banteringly, 'it never can be worth your while to come among us and help

'No, no,' said Treasury, 'that is not the light in which one so distinguished for practical knowledge and great

foresight, can be expected to regard it. If we should ever be happily enabled, by accidentally possessing the

control over circumstances, to propose to one so eminent toto come among us, and give us the weight of

his influence, knowledge, and character, we could only propose it to him as a duty. In fact, as a duty that he

Mr Merdle intimated that Society was the apple of his eye, and that its claims were paramount to every other

consideration. Treasury moved on, and Bar came up. Bar, with his little insinuating jury droop, and fingering

his persuasive double eyeglass, hoped he might be excused if he mentioned to one of the greatest converters

of the root of all evil into the root of all good, who had for a long time reflected a shining lustre on the annals

even of our commercial countryif he mentioned, disinterestedly, and as, what we lawyers called in our

pedantic way, amicus curiae, a fact that had come by accident within his knowledge. He had been required to

look over the title of a very considerable estate in one of the eastern counties lying, in fact, for Mr Merdle

knew we lawyers loved to be particular, on the borders of two of the eastern counties. Now, the title was

perfectly sound, and the estate was to be purchased by one who had the command ofMoney (jury droop

and persuasive eyeglass), on remarkably advantageous terms. This had come to Bar's knowledge only that

day, and it had occurred to him, 'I shall have the honour of dining with my esteemed friend Mr Merdle this

evening, and, strictly between ourselves, I will mention the opportunity.' Such a purchase would involve not

only a great legitimate political influence, but some halfdozen church presentations of considerable annual

value. Now, that Mr Merdle was already at no loss to discover means of occupying even his capital, and of

fully employing even his active and vigorous intellect, Bar well knew: but he would venture to suggest that

the question arose in his mind, whether one who had deservedly gained so high a position and so European a

reputation did not owe itwe would not say to himself, but we would say to Society, to possess himself of

such influences as these; and to exercise themwe would not say for his own, or for his party's, but we

Mr Merdle again expressed himself as wholly devoted to that object of his constant consideration, and Bar

took his persuasive eye glass up the grand staircase. Bishop then came undesignedly sidling in the direction

Surely the goods of this world, it occurred in an accidental way to Bishop to remark, could scarcely be

directed into happier channels than when they accumulated under the magic touch of the wise and sagacious,

who, while they knew the just value of riches (Bishop tried here to look as if he were rather poor himself),

were aware of their importance, judiciously governed and rightly distributed, to the welfare of our brethren at

Mr Merdle with humility expressed his conviction that Bishop couldn't mean him, and with inconsistency

Bishop thenjauntily stepping out a little with his wellshaped right leg, as though he said to Mr Merdle

Whether it had occurred to his good friend, that Society might not unreasonably hope that one so blest in his

undertakings, and whose example on his pedestal was so influential with it, would shed a little money in the

Mr Merdle signifying that the idea should have his best attention, Bishop put another case:

Whether his good friend had at all interested himself in the proceedings of our Combined Additional

Endowed Dignitaries Committee, and whether it had occurred to him that to shed a little money in that

Society looked to such men as his good friend to do such things. It was not that HE looked to them, but that

just as it was not Our Committee who wanted the Additional Endowed Dignitaries, but it was Society that

was in a state of the most agonising uneasiness of mind until it got them. He begged to assure his good friend

that he was extremely sensible of his good friend's regard on all occasions for the best interests of Society;

and he considered that he was at once consulting those interests and expressing the feeling of Society, when

he wished him continued prosperity, continued increase of riches, and continued things in general.

Bishop then betook himself upstairs, and the other magnates gradually floated up after him until there was

no one left below but Mr Merdle. That gentleman, after looking at the tablecloth until the soul of the chief

butler glowed with a noble resentment, went slowly up after the rest, and became of no account in the stream

of people on the grand staircase. Mrs Merdle was at home, the best of the jewels were hung out to be seen,

Society got what it came for, Mr Merdle drank twopennyworth of tea in a corner and got more than he

Among the evening magnates was a famous physician, who knew everybody, and whom everybody knew.

On entering at the door, he came upon Mr Merdle drinking his tea in a corner, and touched him on the arm.

'A pity I didn't see you this morning. Pray come to me tomorrow, or let me come to you. '

'Well!' he replied. 'I will come tomorrow as I drive by.' Bar and Bishop had both been bystanders during this

short dialogue, and as Mr Merdle was swept away by the crowd, they made their remarks upon it to the

Physician. Bar said, there was a certain point of mental strain beyond which no man could go; that the point

varied with various textures of brain and peculiarities of constitution, as he had had occasion to notice in

several of his learned brothers; but the point of endurance passed by a line's breadth, depression and

dyspepsia ensued. Not to intrude on the sacred mysteries of medicine, he took it, now (with the jury droop

and persuasive eyeglass), that this was Merdle's case? Bishop said that when he was a young man, and had

fallen for a brief space into the habit of writing sermons on Saturdays, a habit which all young sons of the

church should sedulously avoid, he had frequently been sensible of a depression, arising as he supposed from

an over taxed intellect, upon which the yolk of a newlaid egg, beaten up by the good woman in whose

house he at that time lodged, with a glass of sound sherry, nutmeg, and powdered sugar acted like a charm.

Without presuming to offer so simple a remedy to the consideration of so profound a professor of the great

healing art, he would venture to inquire whether the strain, being by way of intricate calculations, the spirits

might not (humanly speaking) be restored to their tone by a gentle and yet generous stimulant?

'Yes,' said the physician, 'yes, you are both right. But I may as well tell you that I can find nothing the matter

with Mr Merdle. He has the constitution of a rhinoceros, the digestion of an ostrich, and the concentration of

an oyster. As to nerves, Mr Merdle is of a cool temperament, and not a sensitive man: is about as

invulnerable, I should say, as Achilles. How such a man should suppose himself unwell without reason, you

may think strange. But I have found nothing the matter with him. He may have some deep seated recondite

There was no shadow of Mr Merdle's complaint on the bosom now displaying precious stones in rivalry with

many similar superb jewelstands; there was no shadow of Mr Merdle's complaint on young Sparkler

hovering about the rooms, monomaniacally seeking any sufficiently ineligible young lady with no nonsense

about her; there was no shadow of Mr Merdle's complaint on the Barnacles and Stiltstalkings, of whom whole

colonies were present; or on any of the company. Even on himself, its shadow was faint enough as he moved

Mr Merdle's complaint. Society and he had so much to do with one another in all things else, that it is hard to

imagine his complaint, if he had one, being solely his own affair. Had he that deepseated recondite

complaint, and did any doctor find it out? Patience. in the meantime, the shadow of the Marshalsea wall was

a real darkening influence, and could be seen on the Dorrit Family at any stage of the sun's course.

Mr Clennam did not increase in favour with the Father of the Marshalsea in the ratio of his increasing visits.

His obtuseness on the great Testimonial question was not calculated to awaken admiration in the paternal

breast, but had rather a tendency to give offence in that sensitive quarter, and to be regarded as a positive

shortcoming in point of gentlemanly feeling. An impression of disappointment, occasioned by the discovery

that Mr Clennam scarcely possessed that delicacy for which, in the confidence of his nature, he had been

inclined to give him credit, began to darken the fatherly mind in connection with that gentleman. The father

went so far as to say, in his private family circle, that he feared Mr Clennam was not a man of high instincts.

He was happy, he observed, in his public capacity as leader and representative of the College, to receive Mr

Clennam when he called to pay his respects; but he didn't find that he got on with him personally. There

appeared to be something (he didn't know what it was) wanting in him. Howbeit, the father did not fail in any

outward show of politeness, but, on the contrary, honoured him with much attention; perhaps cherishing the

hope that, although not a man of a sufficiently brilliant and spontaneous turn of mind to repeat his former

testimonial unsolicited, it might still be within the compass of his nature to bear the part of a responsive

In the threefold capacity, of the gentleman from outside who had been accidentally locked in on the night of

his first appearance, of the gentleman from outside who had inquired into the affairs of the Father of the

Marshalsea with the stupendous idea of getting him out, and of the gentleman from outside who took an

He was not surprised by the attentions he received from Mr Chivery when that officer was on the lock, for he

made little distinction between Mr Chivery's politeness and that of the other turnkeys. It was on one particular

afternoon that Mr Chivery surprised him all at once, and stood forth from his companions in bold relief.

Mr Chivery, by some artful exercise of his power of clearing the Lodge, had contrived to rid it of all

sauntering Collegians; so that Clennam, coming out of the prison, should find him on duty alone.

'(Private) I ask your pardon, sir,' said Mr Chivery in a secret manner; 'but which way might you be going?'

'I am going over the Bridge.' He saw in Mr Chivery, with some astonishment, quite an Allegory of Silence, as

'(Private) I ask your pardon again,' said Mr Chivery, 'but could you go round by Horsemonger Lane? Could

you by any means find time to look in at that address?' handing him a little card, printed for circulation

among the connection of Chivery and Co., Tobacconists, Importers of pure Havannah Cigars, Bengal

'(Private) It an't tobacco business,' said Mr Chivery. 'The truth is, it's my wife. She's wishful to say a word to

you, sir, upon a point respectingyes,' said Mr Chivery, answering Clennam's look of apprehension with a

'Thank you, sir. Much obliged. It an't above ten minutes out of your way. Please to ask for Mrs Chivery!'

These instructions, Mr Chivery, who had already let him out, cautiously called through a little slide in the

outer door, which he could draw back from within for the inspection of visitors when it pleased him.

Arthur Clennam, with the card in his hand, betook himself to the address set forth upon it, and speedily

arrived there. It was a very small establishment, wherein a decent woman sat behind the counter working at

her needle. Little jars of tobacco, little boxes of cigars, a little assortment of pipes, a little jar or two of snuff,

and a little instrument like a shoeing horn for serving it out, composed the retail stock in trade.

Arthur mentioned his name, and his having promised to call, on the solicitation of Mr Chivery. About

something relating to Miss Dorrit, he believed. Mrs Chivery at once laid aside her work, rose up from her seat

With these mysterious words, she preceded the visitor into a little parlour behind the shop, with a little

window in it commanding a very little dull backyard. In this yard a wash of sheets and tablecloths tried (in

vain, for want of air) to get itself dried on a line or two; and among those flapping articles was sitting in a

chair, like the last mariner left alive on the deck of a damp ship without the power of furling the sails, a little

'It's the only change he takes,' said Mrs Chivery, shaking her head afresh. 'He won't go out, even in the

backyard, when there's no linen; but when there's linen to keep the neighbours' eyes off, he'll sit there,

hours. Hours he will. Says he feels as if it was groves!' Mrs Chivery shook her head again, put her apron in a

motherly way to her eyes, and reconducted her visitor into the regions of the business.

'Please to take a seat, sir,' said Mrs Chivery. 'Miss Dorrit is the matter with Our John, sir; he's a breaking his

heart for her, and I would wish to take the liberty to ask how it's to be made good to his parents when bust?'

Mrs Chivery, who was a comfortablelooking woman much respected about Horsemonger Lane for her

feelings and her conversation, uttered this speech with fell composure, and immediately afterwards began

'Sir,' said she in continuation, 'you are acquainted with the family, and have interested yourself with the

family, and are influential with the family. If you can promote views calculated to make two young people

happy, let me, for Our john's sake, and for both their sakes, implore you so to do!'

'I have been so habituated,' returned Arthur, at a loss, 'during the short time I have known her, to consider

Little I have been so habituated to consider Miss Dorrit in a light altogether removed from that in which

you present her to me, that you quite take me by surprise. Does she know your son?'

'Oh! bless you, sir,' said Mrs Chivery, with a sort of triumphant shiver, 'she never could have seen him on a

Sunday without knowing he was that. His cane alone would have told it long ago, if nothing else had. Young

men like John don't take to ivory hands a pinting, for nothing. How did I first know it myself? Similarly.'

'Sir,' said Mrs Chivery, 'sure and certain as in this house I am. I see my son go out with my own eyes when in

this house I was, and I see my son come in with my own eyes when in this house I was, and I know he done

it!' Mrs Chivery derived a surprising force of emphasis from the foregoing circumstantiality and repetition.

'May I ask you how he came to fall into the desponding state which causes you so much uneasiness?'

'That,' said Mrs Chivery, 'took place on that same day when to this house I see that John with these eyes

return. Never been himself in this house since. Never was like what he has been since, not from the hour

when to this house seven year ago me and his father, as tenants by the quarter, came!' An effect in the nature

of an affidavit was gained from this speech by Mrs Chivery's peculiar power of construction. 'May I venture

'You may,' said Mrs Chivery, 'and I will give it to you in honour and in word as true as in this shop I stand.

Our John has every one's good word and every one's good wish. He played with her as a child when in that

yard a child she played. He has known her ever since. He went out upon the Sunday afternoon when in this

very parlour he had dined, and met her, with appointment or without appointment; which, I do not pretend to

say. He made his offer to her. Her brother and sister is high in their views, and against Our John. Her father is

all for himself in his views and against sharing her with any one. Under which circumstances she has

answered Our John, "No, John, I cannot have you, I cannot have any husband, it is not my intentions ever to

become a wife, it is my intentions to be always a sacrifice, farewell, find another worthy of you, and forget

me!" This is the way in which she is doomed to be a constant slave to them that are not worthy that a constant

slave she unto them should be. This is the way in which Our John has come to find no pleasure but in taking

cold among the linen, and in showing in that yard, as in that yard I have myself shown you, a brokendown

ruin that goes home to his mother's heart!' Here the good woman pointed to the little window, whence her son

might be seen sitting disconsolate in the tuneless groves; and again shook her head and wiped her eyes, and

besought him, for the united sakes of both the young people, to exercise his influence towards the bright

She was so confident in her exposition of the case, and it was so undeniably founded on correct premises in

so far as the relative positions of Little Dorrit and her family were concerned, that Clennam could not feel

positive on the other side. He had come to attach to Little Dorrit an interest so peculiaran interest that

removed her from, while it grew out of, the common and coarse things surrounding herthat he found it

disappointing, disagreeable, almost painful, to suppose her in love with young Mr Chivery in the backyard,

or any such person. On the other hand, he reasoned with himself that she was just as good and just as true in

love with him, as not in love with him; and that to make a kind of domesticated fairy of her, on the penalty of

isolation at heart from the only people she knew, would be but a weakness of his own fancy, and not a kind

one. Still, her youthful and ethereal appearance, her timid manner, the charm of her sensitive voice and eyes,

the very many respects in which she had interested him out of her own individuality, and the strong

difference between herself and those about her, were not in unison, and were determined not to be in unison,

He told the worthy Mrs Chivery, after turning these things over in his mindhe did that, indeed, while she

was yet speakingthat he might be relied upon to do his utmost at all times to promote the happiness of

Miss Dorrit, and to further the wishes of her heart if it were in his power to do so, and if he could discover

what they were. At the same time he cautioned her against assumptions and appearances; enjoined strict

silence and secrecy, lest Miss Dorrit should be made unhappy; and particularly advised her to endeavour to

win her son's confidence and so to make quite sure of the state of the case. Mrs Chivery considered the latter

precaution superfluous, but said she would try. She shook her head as if she had not derived all the comfort

she had fondly expected from this interview, but thanked him nevertheless for the trouble he had kindly

The crowd in the street jostling the crowd in his mind, and the two crowds making a confusion, he avoided

London Bridge, and turned off in the quieter direction of the Iron Bridge. He had scarcely set foot upon it,

when he saw Little Dorrit walking on before him. It was a pleasant day, with a light breeze blowing, and she

seemed to have that minute come there for air. He had left her in her father's room within an hour.

It was a timely chance, favourable to his wish of observing her face and manner when no one else was by. He

'I did not expect any. But when I heard a step, I thought it sounded like yours.'

They walked together, and she recovered her confiding manner with him, and looked up in his face as she

'It is so strange. Perhaps you can hardly understand it. I sometimes have a sensation as if it was almost

'To see the river, and so much sky, and so many objects, and such change and motion. Then to go back, you

'Ah yes! But going back, you must remember that you take with you the spirit and influence of such things to

'Do I? I hope I may! I am afraid you fancy too much, sir, and make me out too powerful. If you were in

prison, could I bring such comfort to you?' 'Yes, Little Dorrit, I am sure of it.'

He gathered from a tremor on her lip, and a passing shadow of great agitation on her face, that her mind was

with her father. He remained silent for a few moments, that she might regain her composure. The Little

Dorrit, trembling on his arm, was less in unison than ever with Mrs Chivery's theory, and yet was not

irreconcilable with a new fancy which sprung up within him, that there might be some one else in the

They turned, and Clennam said, Here was Maggy coming! Little Dorrit looked up, surprised, and they

confronted Maggy, who brought herself at sight of them to a dead stop. She had been trotting along, so

preoccupied and busy that she had not recognised them until they turned upon her. She was now in a moment

'So I would, Little Mother, only he wouldn't let me. If he takes and sends me out I must go. If he takes and

says, "Maggy, you hurry away and back with that letter, and you shall have a sixpence if the answer's a good

'un," I must take it. Lor, Little Mother, what's a poor thing of ten year old to do? And if Mr Tipif he

happens to be a coming in as I come out, and if he says "Where are you going, Maggy?" and if I says, "I'm a

going So and So," and if he says, "I'll have a Try too," and if he goes into the George and writes a letter and if

he gives it me and says, "Take that one to the same place, and if the answer's a good 'un I'll give you a

Arthur read, in Little Dorrit's downcast eyes, to whom she foresaw that the letters were addressed.

'I'm a going So and So. There! That's where I am a going to,' said Maggy. 'I'm a going So and So. It ain't you,

Little Mother, that's got anything to do with itit's you, you know,' said Maggy, addressing Arthur. 'You'd

'We will not be so particular as that, Maggy. Give them me here,' said Clennam in a low voice.

'Well, then, come across the road,' answered Maggy in a very loud whisper. 'Little Mother wasn't to know

nothing of it, and she would never have known nothing of it if you had only gone So and So, instead of

bothering and loitering about. It ain't my fault. I must do what I am told. They ought to be ashamed of

Clennam crossed to the other side, and hurriedly opened the letters. That from the father mentioned that most

unexpectedly finding himself in the novel position of having been disappointed of a remittance from the City

on which he had confidently counted, he took up his pen, being restrained by the unhappy circumstance of his

incarceration during threeandtwenty years (doubly underlined), from coming himself, as he would

otherwise certainly have donetook up his pen to entreat Mr Clennam to advance him the sum of Three

Pounds Ten Shillings upon his I.O.U., which he begged to enclose. That from the son set forth that Mr

Clennam would, he knew, be gratified to hear that he had at length obtained permanent employment of a

highly satisfactory nature, accompanied with every prospect of complete success in life; but that the

temporary inability of his employer to pay him his arrears of salary to that date (in which condition said

employer had appealed to that generous forbearance in which he trusted he should never be wanting towards

a fellowcreature), combined with the fraudulent conduct of a false friend and the present high price of

provisions, had reduced him to the verge of ruin, unless he could by a quarter before six that evening raise the

sum of eight pounds. This sum, Mr Clennam would be happy to learn, he had, through the promptitude of

several friends who had a lively confidence in his probity, already raised, with the exception of a trifling

balance of one pound seventeen and fourpence; the loan of which balance, for the period of one month,

These letters Clennam answered with the aid of his pencil and pocketbook, on the spot; sending the father

what he asked for, and excusing himself from compliance with the demand of the son. He then commissioned

Maggy to return with his replies, and gave her the shilling of which the failure of her supplemental enterprise

When he rejoined Little Dorrit, and they had begun walking as before, she said all at once:

'Don't be distressed,' said Clennam, 'I have answered the letters. They were nothing. You know what they

'But I am afraid,' she returned, 'to leave him, I am afraid to leave any of them. When I am gone, they

'It was a very innocent commission that she undertook, poor thing. And in keeping it secret from you, she

'Yes, I hope so, I hope so. But I had better go home! It was but the other day that my sister told me I had

become so used to the prison that I had its tone and character. It must be so. I am sure it must be when I see

these things. My place is there. I am better there. it is unfeeling in me to be here, when I can do the least thing

The agonised way in which she poured this out, as if it burst of itself from her suppressed heart, made it

'Don't call it home, my child!' he entreated. 'It is always painful to me to hear you call it home.'

'But it is home! What else can I call home? Why should I ever forget it for a single moment?'

'I hope not, O I hope not! But it is better for me to stay there; much better, much more dutiful, much happier.

Please don't go with me, let me go by myself. Goodbye, God bless you. Thank you, thank you.'

He felt that it was better to respect her entreaty, and did not move while her slight form went quickly away

from him. When it had fluttered out of sight, he turned his face towards the water and stood thinking.

She would have been distressed at any time by this discovery of the letters; but so much so, and in that

When she had seen her father begging with his threadbare disguise on, when she had entreated him not to

give her father money, she had been distressed, but not like this. Something had made her keenly and

additionally sensitive just now. Now, was there some one in the hopeless unattainable distance? Or had the

suspicion been brought into his mind, by his own associations of the troubled river running beneath the

bridge with the same river higher up, its changeless tune upon the prow of the ferryboat, so many miles an

hour the peaceful flowing of the stream, here the rushes, there the lilies, nothing uncertain or unquiet?

He thought of his poor child, Little Dorrit, for a long time there; he thought of her going home; he thought of

her in the night; he thought of her when the day came round again. And the poor child Little Dorrit thought of

Mr Meagles bestirred himself with such prompt activity in the matter of the negotiation with Daniel Doyce

which Clennam had entrusted to him, that he soon brought it into business train, and called on Clennam at

nine o'clock one morning to make his report. 'Doyce is highly gratified by your good opinion,' he opened the

business by saying, 'and desires nothing so much as that you should examine the affairs of the Works for

yourself, and entirely understand them. He has handed me the keys of all his books and papershere they

are jingling in this pocketand the only charge he has given me is "Let Mr Clennam have the means of

putting himself on a perfect equality with me as to knowing whatever I know. If it should come to nothing

after all, he will respect my confidence. Unless I was sure of that to begin with, I should have nothing to do

with him." And there, you see,' said Mr Meagles, 'you have Daniel Doyce all over.'

'Oh, yes, to be sure. Not a doubt of it. Odd, but very honourable. Very odd though. Now, would you believe,

Clennam,' said Mr Meagles, with a hearty enjoyment of his friend's eccentricity, 'that I had a whole morning

'A whole morning in Bleeding Heart Yard, before I could induce him to pursue the subject at all?'

'How was that, my friend? I no sooner mentioned your name in connection with it than he declared off.'

'I no sooner mentioned your name, Clennam, than he said, "That will never do!" What did he mean by that? I

asked him. No matter, Meagles; that would never do. Why would it never do? You'll hardly believe it,

Clennam,' said Mr Meagles, laughing within himself, 'but it came out that it would never do, because you and

he, walking down to Twickenham together, had glided into a friendly conversation in the course of which he

had referred to his intention of taking a partner, supposing at the time that you were as firmly and finally

settled as St Paul's Cathedral. "Whereas," says he, "Mr Clennam might now believe, if I entertained his

proposition, that I had a sinister and designing motive in what was open free speech. Which I can't bear," says

'Of course you would,' interrupted Mr Meagles, 'and so I told him. But it took a morning to scale that wall;

and I doubt if any other man than myself (he likes me of old) could have got his leg over it. Well, Clennam.

This businesslike obstacle surmounted, he then stipulated that before resuming with you I should look over

the books and form my own opinion. I looked over the books, and formed my own opinion. "Is it, on the

whole, for, or against?" says he. "For," says I. "Then," says he, "you may now, my good friend, give Mr

Clennam the means of forming his opinion. To enable him to do which, without bias and with perfect

freedom, I shall go out of town for a week." And he's gone,' said Mr Meagles; that's the rich conclusion of the

'Leaving me,' said Clennam, 'with a high sense, I must say, of his candour and his'

It was not exactly the word on Clennam's lips, but he forbore to interrupt his goodhumoured friend.

'And now,' added Mr Meagles, 'you can begin to look into matters as soon as you think proper. I have

undertaken to explain where you may want explanation, but to be strictly impartial, and to do nothing more.'

They began their perquisitions in Bleeding Heart Yard that same forenoon. Little peculiarities were easily to

be detected by experienced eyes in Mr Doyce's way of managing his affairs, but they almost always involved

some ingenious simplification of a difficulty, and some plain road to the desired end. That his papers were in

arrear, and that he stood in need of assistance to develop the capacity of his business, was clear enough; but

all the results of his undertakings during many years were distinctly set forth, and were ascertainable with

ease. Nothing had been done for the purposes of the pending investigation; everything was in its genuine

working dress, and in a certain honest rugged order. The calculations and entries, in his own hand, of which

there were many, were bluntly written, and with no very neat precision; but were always plain and directed

straight to the purpose. It occurred to Arthur that a far more elaborate and taking show of businesssuch as

the records of the Circumlocution Office made perhapsmight be far less serviceable, as being meant to be

Three or four days of steady application tendered him master of all the facts it was essential to become

acquainted with. Mr Meagles was at hand the whole time, always ready to illuminate any dim place with the

bright little safetylamp belonging to the scales and scoop. Between them they agreed upon the sum it would

be fair to offer for the purchase of a halfshare in the business, and then Mr Meagles unsealed a paper in

which Daniel Doyce had noted the amount at which he valued it; which was even something less. Thus, when

'And I may now avow, Mr Clennam,' said he, with a cordial shake of the hand, 'that if I had looked high and

'And I say of both of you,' added Mr Meagles, 'that you are well matched. You keep him in check, Clennam,

'You may call it so, if you likeand each of you will be a right hand to the other. Here's my own right hand

The purchase was completed within a month. It left Arthur in possession of private personal means not

exceeding a few hundred pounds; but it opened to him an active and promising career. The three friends

dined together on the auspicious occasion; the factory and the factory wives and children made holiday and

dined too; even Bleeding Heart Yard dined and was full of meat. Two months had barely gone by in all, when

Bleeding Heart Yard had become so familiar with shortcommons again, that the treat was forgotten there;

when nothing seemed new in the partnership but the paint of the inscription on the doorposts, DOYCE AND

CLENNAM; when it appeared even to Clennam himself, that he had had the affairs of the firm in his mind

The little countinghouse reserved for his own occupation, was a room of wood and glass at the end of a long

low workshop, filled with benches, and vices, and tools, and straps, and wheels; which, when they were in

gear with the steamengine, went tearing round as though they had a suicidal mission to grind the business to

dust and tear the factory to pieces. A communication of great trap doors in the floor and roof with the

workshop above and the workshop below, made a shaft of light in this perspective, which brought to

Clennam's mind the child's old picturebook, where similar rays were the witnesses of Abel's murder. The

noises were sufficiently removed and shut out from the countinghouse to blend into a busy hum,

interspersed with periodical clinks and thumps. The patient figures at work were swarthy with the filings of

iron and steel that danced on every bench and bubbled up through every chink in the planking. The workshop

was arrived at by a step ladder from the outer yard below, where it served as a shelter for the large

grindstone where tools were sharpened. The whole had at once a fanciful and practical air in Clennam's eyes,

which was a welcome change; and, as often as he raised them from his first work of getting the array of

business documents into perfect order, he glanced at these things with a feeling of pleasure in his pursuit that

Raising his eyes thus one day, he was surprised to see a bonnet labouring up the stepladder. The unusual

apparition was followed by another bonnet. He then perceived that the first bonnet was on the head of Mr F.'s

Aunt, and that the second bonnet was on the head of Flora, who seemed to have propelled her legacy up the

steep ascent with considerable difficulty. Though not altogether enraptured at the sight of these visitors,

Clennam lost no time in opening the countinghouse door, and extricating them from the workshop; a rescue

which was rendered the more necessary by Mr F.'s Aunt already stumbling over some impediment, and

'Good gracious, Arthur,I should say Mr Clennam, far more proper the climb we have had to get up here

and how ever to get down again without a fireescape and Mr F.'s Aunt slipping through the steps and

bruised all over and you in the machinery and foundry way too only think, and never told us!'

Thus, Flora, out of breath. Meanwhile, Mr F.'s Aunt rubbed her esteemed insteps with her umbrella, and

'Most unkind never to have come back to see us since that day, though naturally it was not to be expected that

there should be any attraction at our house and you were much more pleasantly engaged, that's pretty certain,

and is she fair or dark blue eyes or black I wonder, not that I expect that she should be anything but a perfect

contrast to me in all particulars for I am a disappointment as I very well know and you are quite right to be

devoted no doubt though what I am saying Arthur never mind I hardly know myself Good gracious!'

By this time he had placed chairs for them in the countinghouse. As Flora dropped into hers, she bestowed

'And to think of Doyce and Clennam, and who Doyce can be,' said Flora; 'delightful man no doubt and

married perhaps or perhaps a daughter, now has he really? then one understands the partnership and sees it

all, don't tell me anything about it for I know I have no claim to ask the question the golden chain that once

Flora put her hand tenderly on his, and gave him another of the youthful glances.

'Dear Arthurforce of habit, Mr Clennam every way more delicate and adapted to existing

circumstancesI must beg to be excused for taking the liberty of this intrusion but I thought I might so far

presume upon old times for ever faded never more to bloom as to call with Mr F.'s Aunt to congratulate and

offer best wishes, A great deal superior to China not to be denied and much nearer though higher up!'

'I am very happy to see you,' said Clennam, 'and I thank you, Flora, very much for your kind remembrance.'

'More than I can say myself at any rate,' returned Flora, 'for I might have been dead and buried twenty distinct

times over and no doubt whatever should have been before you had genuinely remembered Me or anything

like it in spite of which one last remark I wish to make, one last explanation I wish to offer'

'Flora, is it worth troubling yourself afresh to enter into explanations? I assure you none are needed. I am

A diversion was occasioned here, by Mr F.'s Aunt making the following inexorable and awful statement:

With such mortal hostility towards the human race did she discharge this missile, that Clennam was quite at a

loss how to defend himself; the rather as he had been already perplexed in his mind by the honour of a visit

from this venerable lady, when it was plain she held him in the utmost abhorrence. He could not but look at

her with disconcertment, as she sat breathing bitterness and scorn, and staring leagues away. Flora, however,

received the remark as if it had been of a most apposite and agreeable nature; approvingly observing aloud

that Mr F.'s Aunt had a great deal of spirit. Stimulated either by this compliment, or by her burning

indignation, that illustrious woman then added, 'Let him meet it if he can!' And, with a rigid movement of her

stony reticule (an appendage of great size and of a fossil appearance), indicated that Clennam was the

'One last remark,' resumed Flora, 'I was going to say I wish to make one last explanation I wish to offer, Mr

F.'s Aunt and myself would not have intruded on business hours Mr F. having been in business and though

the wine trade still business is equally business call it what you will and business habits are just the same as

witness Mr F. himself who had his slippers always on the mat at ten minutes before six in the afternoon and

his boots inside the fender at ten minutes before eight in the morning to the moment in all weathers light or

darkwould not therefore have intruded without a motive which being kindly meant it may be hoped will be

kindly taken Arthur, Mr Clennam far more proper, even Doyce and Clennam probably more businesslike.'

'Pray say nothing in the way of apology,' Arthur entreated. 'You are always welcome.'

'Very polite of you to say so Arthurcannot remember Mr Clennam until the word is out, such is the habit of

times for ever fled, and so true it is that oft in the stilly night ere slumber's chain has bound people, fond

memory brings the light of other days around peoplevery polite but more polite than true I am afraid, for to

go into the machinery business without so much as sending a line or a card to papaI don't say me though

there was a time but that is past and stern reality has now my gracious never minddoes not look like it you

Even Flora's commas seemed to have fled on this occasion; she was so much more disjointed and voluble

'Though indeed,' she hurried on, 'nothing else is to be expected and why should it be expected and if it's not to

be expected why should it be, and I am far from blaming you or any one, When your mama and my papa

worried us to death and severed the golden bowlI mean bond but I dare say you know what I mean and if

you don't you don't lose much and care just as little I will venture to addwhen they severed the golden

bond that bound us and threw us into fits of crying on the sofa nearly choked at least myself everything was

changed and in giving my hand to Mr F. I know I did so with my eyes open but he was so very unsettled and

in such low spirits that he had distractedly alluded to the river if not oil of something from the chemist's and I

'It's perfectly clear you think so,' returned Flora, 'for you take it very coolly, if I hadn't known it to be China I

should have guessed myself the Polar regions, dear Mr Clennam you are right however and I cannot blame

you but as to Doyce and Clennam papa's property being about here we heard it from Pancks and but for him

'What nonsense not to say it ArthurDoyce and Clennameasier and less trying to me than Mr

'Ah!' said Flora, tossing her head. 'I dare say!' and she gave him another of the old looks. 'However when

Pancks told us I made up my mind that Mr F.'s Aunt and I would come and call because when papawhich

was before thathappened to mention her name to me and to say that you were interested in her I said at the

moment Good gracious why not have her here then when there's anything to do instead of putting it out.'

'When you say Her,' observed Clennam, by this time pretty well bewildered, 'do you mean Mr F.'s'

'My goodness, ArthurDoyce and Clennam really easier to me with old remembranceswho ever heard of

'Going out by the day! Do you speak of Little Dorrit?' 'Why yes of course,' returned Flora; 'and of all the

strangest names I ever heard the strangest, like a place down in the country with a turnpike, or a favourite

pony or a puppy or a bird or something from a seedshop to be put in a garden or a flowerpot and come up

'Then, Flora,' said Arthur, with a sudden interest in the conversation, 'Mr Casby was so kind as to mention

'Oh you know what papa is,' rejoined Flora, 'and how aggravatingly he sits looking beautiful and turning his

thumbs over and over one another till he makes one giddy if one keeps one's eyes upon him, he said when we

were talking of youI don't know who began the subject Arthur (Doyce and Clennam) but I am sure it

wasn't me, at least I hope not but you really must excuse my confessing more on that point.'

'You are very ready,' pouted Flora, coming to a sudden stop in a captivating bashfulness, 'that I must admit,

Papa said you had spoken of her in an earnest way and I said what I have told you and that's all.'

'Except that when Pancks told us of your having embarked in this business and with difficulty persuaded us

that it was really you I said to Mr F.'s Aunt then we would come and ask you if it would be agreeable to all

parties that she should be engaged at our house when required for I know she often goes to your mama's and I

know that your mama has a very touchy temper ArthurDoyce and Clennam or I never might have

Poor Flora rejoined with a plain sincerity which became her better than her youngest glances, that she was

glad he thought so. She said it with so much heart that Clennam would have given a great deal to buy his old

'I think, Flora,' he said, 'that the employment you can give Little Dorrit, and the kindness you can show

'I am sure of itwill be a great assistance and support to her. I do not feel that I have the right to tell you

what I know of her, for I acquired the knowledge confidentially, and under circumstances that bind me to

silence. But I have an interest in the little creature, and a respect for her that I cannot express to you. Her life

has been one of such trial and devotion, and such quiet goodness, as you can scarcely imagine. I can hardly

think of her, far less speak of her, without feeling moved. Let that feeling represent what I could tell you, and

Once more he put out his hand frankly to poor Flora; once more poor Flora couldn't accept it frankly, found it

worth nothing openly, must make the old intrigue and mystery of it. As much to her own enjoyment as to his

dismay, she covered it with a corner of her shawl as she took it. Then, looking towards the glass front of the

countinghouse, and seeing two figures approaching, she cried with infinite relish, 'Papa! Hush, Arthur, for

Mercy's sake!' and tottered back to her chair with an amazing imitation of being in danger of swooning, in the

The Patriarch, meanwhile, came inanely beaming towards the countinghouse in the wake of Pancks. Pancks

opened the door for him, towed him in, and retired to his own moorings in a corner.

'I heard from Flora,' said the Patriarch with his benevolent smile, 'that she was coming to call, coming to call.

The benign wisdom he infused into this declaration (not of itself profound), by means of his blue eyes, his

shining head, and his long white hair, was most impressive. It seemed worth putting down among the noblest

sentiments enunciated by the best of men. Also, when he said to Clennam, seating himself in the proffered

chair, 'And you are in a new business, Mr Clennam? I wish you well, sir, I wish you well!' he seemed to have

'Mrs Finching has been telling me, sir,' said Arthur, after making his acknowledgments; the relict of the late

Mr F. meanwhile protesting, with a gesture, against his use of that respectable name; 'that she hopes

occasionally to employ the young needlewoman you recommended to my mother. For which I have been

The Patriarch turning his head in a lumbering way towards Pancks, that assistant put up the notebook in

'You didn't recommend her, you know,' said Pancks; 'how could you? You knew nothing about her, you

didn't. The name was mentioned to you, and you passed it on. That's what YOU did.'

'Well!' said Clennam. 'As she justifies any recommendation, it is much the same thing.'

'You are glad she turns out well,' said Pancks, 'but it wouldn't have been your fault if she had turned out ill.

The credit's not yours as it is, and the blame wouldn't have been yours as it might have been. You gave no

guarantee. You knew nothing about her.' 'You are not acquainted, then,' said Arthur, hazarding a random

'Acquainted with any of her family?' returned Pancks. 'How should you be acquainted with any of her family?

You never heard of 'em. You can't be acquainted with people you never heard of, can you? You should think

All this time the Patriarch sat serenely smiling; nodding or shaking his head benevolently, as the case

'As to being a reference,' said Pancks, 'you know, in a general way, what being a reference means. It's all your

eye, that is! Look at your tenants down the Yard here. They'd all be references for one another, if you'd let

'em. What would be the good of letting 'em? It's no satisfaction to be done by two men instead of one. One's

enough. A person who can't pay, gets another person who can't pay, to guarantee that he can pay. Like a

person with two wooden legs getting another person with two wooden legs, to guarantee that he has got two

natural legs. It don't make either of them able to do a walking match. And four wooden legs are more

troublesome to you than two, when you don't want any.' Mr Pancks concluded by blowing off that steam of

A momentary silence that ensued was broken by Mr F.'s Aunt, who had been sitting upright in a cataleptic

state since her last public remark. She now underwent a violent twitch, calculated to produce a startling effect

'You can't make a head and brains out of a brass knob with nothing in it. You couldn't do it when your Uncle

Mr Pancks was not slow to reply, with his usual calmness, 'Indeed, ma'am! Bless my soul! I'm surprised to

hear it.' Despite his presence of mind, however, the speech of Mr F.'s Aunt produced a depressing effect on

the little assembly; firstly, because it was impossible to disguise that Clennam's unoffending head was the

particular temple of reason depreciated; and secondly, because nobody ever knew on these occasions whose

Uncle George was referred to, or what spectral presence might be invoked under that appellation.

Therefore Flora said, though still not without a certain boastfulness and triumph in her legacy, that Mr F.'s

Aunt was 'very lively today, and she thought they had better go.' But Mr F.'s Aunt proved so lively as to

take the suggestion in unexpected dudgeon and declare that she would not go; adding, with several injurious

expressions, that if 'He'too evidently meaning Clennamwanted to get rid of her, 'let him chuck her out of

In this dilemma, Mr Pancks, whose resources appeared equal to any emergency in the Patriarchal waters,

slipped on his hat, slipped out at the countinghouse door, and slipped in again a moment afterwards with an

artificial freshness upon him, as if he had been in the country for some weeks. 'Why, bless my heart, ma'am!'

How do you do, ma'am? You are looking charming today! I am delighted to see you. Favour me with your

arm, ma'am; we'll have a little walk together, you and me, if you'll honour me with your company.' And so

escorted Mr F.'s Aunt down the private staircase of the countinghouse with great gallantry and success. The

patriarchal Mr Casby then rose with the air of having done it himself, and blandly followed: leaving his

daughter, as she followed in her turn, to remark to her former lover in a distracted whisper (which she very

much enjoyed), that they had drained the cup of life to the dregs; and further to hint mysteriously that the late

Alone again, Clennam became a prey to his old doubts in reference to his mother and Little Dorrit, and

revolved the old thoughts and suspicions. They were all in his mind, blending themselves with the duties he

was mechanically discharging, when a shadow on his papers caused him to look up for the cause. The cause

was Mr Pancks. With his hat thrown back upon his ears as if his wiry prongs of hair had darted up like

springs and cast it off, with his jetblack beads of eyes inquisitively sharp, with the fingers of his right hand

in his mouth that he might bite the nails, and with the fingers of his left hand in reserve in his pocket for

another course, Mr Pancks cast his shadow through the glass upon the books and papers.

Mr Pancks asked, with a little inquiring twist of his head, if he might come in again? Clennam replied with a

nod of his head in the affirmative. Mr Pancks worked his way in, came alongside the desk, made himself fast

'I am so unfortunate as to have awakened a strong animosity in the breast of that lady,' said Clennam. 'Do you

He took out his notebook, opened it, shut it, dropped it into his hat, which was beside him on the desk, and

looked in at it as it lay at the bottom of the hat: all with a great appearance of consideration.

'Yes, sir; yes, I want it of you,' said Pancks, 'if I can persuade you to furnish it. A, B, C, D. DA, DE, DI, DO.

Mr Pancks blew off his peculiar noise again, and fell to at his righthand nails. Arthur looked searchingly at

'Whatever you can and will tell me.' This comprehensive summary of his desires was not discharged without

'This is a singular visit, Mr Pancks. It strikes me as rather extraordinary that you should come, with such an

'It may be all extraordinary together,' returned Pancks. 'It may be out of the ordinary course, and yet be

business. In short, it is business. I am a man of business. What business have I in this present world, except to

With his former doubt whether this dry hard personage were quite in earnest, Clennam again turned his eyes

attentively upon his face. It was as scrubby and dingy as ever, and as eager and quick as ever, and he could

see nothing lurking in it that was at all expressive of a latent mockery that had seemed to strike upon his ear

'Now,' said Pancks, 'to put this business on its own footing, it's not my proprietor's.'

Pancks nodded. 'My proprietor. Put a case. Say, at my proprietor's I hear namename of young person Mr

Clennam wants to serve. Say, name first mentioned to my proprietor by Plornish in the Yard. Say, I go to

Plornish. Say, I ask Plornish as a matter of business for information. Say, Plornish, though six weeks in arrear

to my proprietor, declines. Say, Mrs Plornish declines. Say, both refer to Mr Clennam. Put the case.' 'Well?'

With those prongs of hair sticking up all over his head, and his breath coming and going very hard and short,

the busy Pancks fell back a step (in Tug metaphor, took half a turn astern) as if to show his dingy hull

complete, then forged ahead again, and directed his quick glance by turns into his hat where his notebook

'Mr Pancks, not to trespass on your grounds of mystery, I will be as plain with you as I can. Let me ask two

'All right!' said Pancks, holding up his dirty forefinger with his broken nail. 'I see! "What's your motive?"'

'Motive,' said Pancks, 'good. Nothing to do with my proprietor; not stateable at present, ridiculous to state at

Desiring to serve young person, name of Dorrit,' said Pancks, with his forefinger still up as a caution. 'Better

Mr Pancks fished up his notebook before the question was put, and buttoning it with care in an inner

breastpocket, and looking straight at Clennam all the time, replied with a pause and a puff, 'I want

Clennam could not withhold a smile, as the panting little steam tug, so useful to that unwieldy ship, the

Casby, waited on and watched him as if it were seeking an opportunity of running in and rifling him of all he

wanted before he could resist its manoeuvres; though there was that in Mr Pancks's eagerness, too, which

awakened many wondering speculations in his mind. After a little consideration, he resolved to supply Mr

Pancks with such leading information as it was in his power to impart him; well knowing that Mr Pancks, if

he failed in his present research, was pretty sure to find other means of getting it.

He, therefore, first requesting Mr Pancks to remember his voluntary declaration that his proprietor had no

part in the disclosure, and that his own intentions were good (two declarations which that coaly little

gentleman with the greatest ardour repeated), openly told him that as to the Dorrit lineage or former place of

habitation, he had no information to communicate, and that his knowledge of the family did not extend

beyond the fact that it appeared to be now reduced to five members; namely, to two brothers, of whom one

was single, and one a widower with three children. The ages of the whole family he made known to Mr

Pancks, as nearly as he could guess at them; and finally he described to him the position of the Father of the

Marshalsea, and the course of time and events through which he had become invested with that character. To

all this, Mr Pancks, snorting and blowing in a more and more portentous manner as he became more

interested, listened with great attention; appearing to derive the most agreeable sensations from the painfullest

parts of the narrative, and particularly to be quite charmed by the account of William Dorrit's long

'In conclusion, Mr Pancks,' said Arthur, 'I have but to say this. I have reasons beyond a personal regard for

speaking as little as I can of the Dorrit family, particularly at my mother's house' (Mr Pancks nodded), 'and

'So devoted a man of business as yourself has a perfect understanding of a fair bargain. I wish to make a fair

bargain with you, that you shall enlighten me concerning the Dorrit family when you have it in your power,

as I have enlightened you. It may not give you a very flattering idea of my business habits, that I failed to

make my terms beforehand,' continued Clennam; 'but I prefer to make them a point of honour. I have seen so

much business done on sharp principles that, to tell you the truth, Mr Pancks, I am tired of them.'

Mr Pancks laughed. 'It's a bargain, sir,' said he. 'You shall find me stick to it.'

After that, he stood a little while looking at Clennam, and biting his ten nails all round; evidently while he

fixed in his mind what he had been told, and went over it carefully, before the means of supplying a gap in

his memory should be no longer at hand. 'It's all right,' he said at last, 'and now I'll wish you good day, as it's

'When he can pay, sir,' replied Pancks. 'Take all you can get, and keep back all you can't be forced to give up.

That's business. The lame foreigner with the stick wants a top room down the Yard. Is he good for it?'

'That's enough. What I must have of Bleeding Heart Yard,' said Pancks, making a note of the case in his

book, 'is my bond. I want my bond, you see. Pay up, or produce your property! That's the watchword down

the Yard. The lame foreigner with the stick represented that you sent him; but he could represent (as far as

that goes) that the Great Mogul sent him. He has been in the hospital, I believe?'

'It's pauperising a man, sir, I have been shown, to let him into a hospital?' said Pancks. And again blew off

Mr Pancks, being by that time quite ready for a start, got under steam in a moment, and, without any other

signal or ceremony, was snorting down the stepladder and working into Bleeding Heart Yard, before he

Throughout the remainder of the day, Bleeding Heart Yard was in consternation, as the grim Pancks cruised

in it; haranguing the inhabitants on their backslidings in respect of payment, demanding his bond, breathing

notices to quit and executions, running down defaulters, sending a swell of terror on before him, and leaving

it in his wake. Knots of people, impelled by a fatal attraction, lurked outside any house in which he was

known to be, listening for fragments of his discourses to the inmates; and, when he was rumoured to be

coming down the stairs, often could not disperse so quickly but that he would be prematurely in among them,

demanding their own arrears, and rooting them to the spot. Throughout the remainder of the day, Mr Pancks's

What were they up to? and What did they mean by it? sounded all over the Yard. Mr Pancks wouldn't hear of

excuses, wouldn't hear of complaints, wouldn't hear of repairs, wouldn't hear of anything but unconditional

money down. Perspiring and puffing and darting about in eccentric directions, and becoming hotter and

dingier every moment, he lashed the tide of the yard into a most agitated and turbid state. It had not settled

down into calm water again full two hours after he had been seen fuming away on the horizon at the top of

There were several small assemblages of the Bleeding Hearts at the popular points of meeting in the Yard

that night, among whom it was universally agreed that Mr Pancks was a hard man to have to do with; and that

it was much to be regretted, so it was, that a gentleman like Mr Casby should put his rents in his hands, and

never know him in his true light. For (said the Bleeding Hearts), if a gentleman with that head of hair and

them eyes took his rents into his own hands, ma'am, there would be none of this worriting and wearing, and

At which identical evening hour and minute, the Patriarchwho had floated serenely through the Yard in the

forenoon before the harrying began, with the express design of getting up this trustfulness in his shining

bumps and silken locksat which identical hour and minute, that firstrate humbug of a thousand guns was

heavily floundering in the little Dock of his exhausted Tug at home, and was saying, as he turned his thumbs:

'A very bad day's work, Pancks, very bad day's work. It seems to me, sir, and I must insist on making this

observation forcibly in justice to myself, that you ought to have got much more money, much more money.'

Little Dorrit received a call that same evening from Mr Plornish, who, having intimated that he wished to

speak to her privately, in a series of coughs so very noticeable as to favour the idea that her father, as

regarded her seamstress occupation, was an illustration of the axiom that there are no such stoneblind men

as those who will not see, obtained an audience with her on the common staircase outside the door.

'There's been a lady at our place today, Miss Dorrit,' Plornish growled, 'and another one along with her as is

a old wixen if ever I met with such. The way she snapped a person's head off, dear me!'

The mild Plornish was at first quite unable to get his mind away from Mr F.'s Aunt. 'For,' said he, to excuse

At length, by a great effort, he detached himself from the subject sufficiently to observe:

'But she's neither here nor there just at present. The other lady, she's Mr Casby's daughter; and if Mr Casby

an't well off, none better, it an't through any fault of Pancks. For, as to Pancks, he does, he really does, he

Mr Plornish, after his usual manner, was a little obscure, but conscientiously emphatic.

'And what she come to our place for,' he pursued, 'was to leave word that if Miss Dorrit would step up to that

cardwhich it's Mr Casby's house that is, and Pancks he has a office at the back, where he really does,

beyond beliefshe would be glad for to engage her. She was a old and a dear friend, she said particular, of

Mr Clennam, and hoped for to prove herself a useful friend to his friend. Them was her words. Wishing to

know whether Miss Dorrit could come tomorrow morning, I said I would see you, Miss, and inquire, and

'I can go tomorrow, thank you,' said Little Dorrit. 'This is very kind of you, but you are always kind.'

Mr Plornish, with a modest disavowal of his merits, opened the room door for her readmission, and followed

her in with such an exceedingly bald pretence of not having been out at all, that her father might have

observed it without being very suspicious. In his affable unconsciousness, however, he took no heed.

Plornish, after a little conversation, in which he blended his former duty as a Collegian with his present

privilege as a humble outside friend, qualified again by his low estate as a plasterer, took his leave; making

the tour of the prison before he left, and looking on at a game of skittles with the mixed feelings of an old

inhabitant who had his private reasons for believing that it might be his destiny to come back again.

Early in the morning, Little Dorrit, leaving Maggy in high domestic trust, set off for the Patriarchal tent. She

went by the Iron Bridge, though it cost her a penny, and walked more slowly in that part of her journey than

in any other. At five minutes before eight her hand was on the Patriarchal knocker, which was quite as high

She gave Mrs Finching's card to the young woman who opened the door, and the young woman told her that

'Miss Flora'Flora having, on her return to the parental roof, reinvested herself with the title under which

she had lived therewas not yet out of her bedroom, but she was to please to walk up into Miss Flora's

sittingroom. She walked up into Miss Flora's sittingroom, as in duty bound, and there found a

breakfasttable comfortably laid for two, with a supplementary tray upon it laid for one. The young woman,

disappearing for a few moments, returned to say that she was to please to take a chair by the fire, and to take

off her bonnet and make herself at home. But Little Dorrit, being bashful, and not used to make herself at

home on such occasions, felt at a loss how to do it; so she was still sitting near the door with her bonnet on,

Flora was so sorry to have kept her waiting, and good gracious why did she sit out there in the cold when she

had expected to find her by the fire reading the paper, and hadn't that heedless girl given her the message

then, and had she really been in her bonnet all this time, and pray for goodness sake let Flora take it off! Flora

taking it off in the bestnatured manner in the world, was so struck with the face disclosed, that she said,

'Why, what a good little thing you are, my dear!' and pressed her face between her hands like the gentlest of

It was the word and the action of a moment. Little Dorrit had hardly time to think how kind it was, when

Flora dashed at the breakfasttable full of business, and plunged over head and ears into loquacity.

'Really so sorry that I should happen to be late on this morning of all mornings because my intention and my

wish was to be ready to meet you when you came in and to say that any one that interested Arthur Clennam

half so much must interest me and that I gave you the heartiest welcome and was so glad, instead of which

they never called me and there I still am snoring I dare say if the truth was known and if you don't like either

cold fowl or hot boiled ham which many people don't I dare say besides Jews and theirs are scruples of

conscience which we must all respect though I must say I wish they had them equally strong when they sell

us false articles for real that certainly ain't worth the money I shall be quite vexed,' said Flora.

Little Dorrit thanked her, and said, shyly, breadandbutter and tea was all she usually

'Oh nonsense my dear child I can never hear of that,' said Flora, turning on the urn in the most reckless

manner, and making herself wink by splashing hot water into her eyes as she bent down to look into the

teapot. 'You are coming here on the footing of a friend and companion you know if you will let me take that

liberty and I should be ashamed of myself indeed if you could come here upon any other, besides which

'You turn so pale you have walked too far before breakfast and I dare say live a great way off and ought to

have had a ride,' said Flora, 'dear dear is there anything that would do you good?'

'Indeed I am quite well, ma'am. I thank you again and again, but I am quite well.'

'Then take your tea at once I beg,' said Flora, 'and this wing of fowl and bit of ham, don't mind me or wait for

me, because I always carry in this tray myself to Mr F.'s Aunt who breakfasts in bed and a charming old lady

too and very clever, Portrait of Mr F. behind the door and very like though too much forehead and as to a

pillar with a marble pavement and balustrades and a mountain, I never saw him near it nor not likely in the

Little Dorrit glanced at the portrait, very imperfectly following the references to that work of art.

'Mr F. was so devoted to me that he never could bear me out of his sight,' said Flora, 'though of course I am

unable to say how long that might have lasted if he hadn't been cut short while I was a new broom, worthy

Little Dorrit glanced at the portrait again. The artist had given it a head that would have been, in an

intellectual point of view, topheavy for Shakespeare. 'Romance, however,' Flora went on, busily arranging

Mr F.'s Aunt's toast, 'as I openly said to Mr F. when he proposed to me and you will be surprised to hear that

he proposed seven times once in a hackneycoach once in a boat once in a pew once on a donkey at

Tunbridge Wells and the rest on his knees, Romance was fled with the early days of Arthur Clennam, our

parents tore us asunder we became marble and stern reality usurped the throne, Mr F. said very much to his

credit that he was perfectly aware of it and even preferred that state of things accordingly the word was

spoken the fiat went forth and such is life you see my dear and yet we do not break but bend, pray make a

She disappeared, leaving Little Dorrit to ponder over the meaning of her scattered words. She soon came

'You see, my dear,' said Flora, measuring out a spoonful or two of some brown liquid that smelt like brandy,

and putting it into her tea, 'I am obliged to be careful to follow the directions of my medical man though the

flavour is anything but agreeable being a poor creature and it may be have never recovered the shock

received in youth from too much giving way to crying in the next room when separated from Arthur, have

As soon as Little Dorrit comprehended that she had been asked this questionfor which time was necessary,

the galloping pace of her new patroness having left her far behindshe answered that she had known Mr

'To be sure you couldn't have known him before unless you had been in China or had corresponded neither of

which is likely,' returned Flora, 'for travellingpeople usually get more or less mahogany and you are not at

all so and as to corresponding what about? that's very true unless tea, so it was at his mother's was it really

that you knew him first, highly sensible and firm but dreadfully severeought to be the mother of the man in

'Really? I am sure I am glad to hear it because as Arthur's mother it's naturally pleasant to my feelings to have

a better opinion of her than I had before, though what she thinks of me when I run on as I am certain to do

and she sits glowering at me like Fate in a gocartshocking comparison reallyinvalid and not her

'Shall I find my work anywhere, ma'am?' asked Little Dorrit, looking timidly about; 'can I get it?'

'You industrious little fairy,' returned Flora, taking, in another cup of tea, another of the doses prescribed by

her medical man, 'there's not the slightest hurry and it's better that we should begin by being confidential

about our mutual friendtoo cold a word for me at least I don't mean that, very proper expression mutual

friendthan become through mere formalities not you but me like the Spartan boy with the fox biting him,

which I hope you'll excuse my bringing up for of all the tiresome boys that will go tumbling into every sort of

Little Dorrit, her face very pale, sat down again to listen. 'Hadn't I better work the while?' she asked. 'I can

Her earnestness was so expressive of her being uneasy without her work, that Flora answered, 'Well my dear

whatever you like best,' and produced a basket of white handkerchiefs. Little Dorrit gladly put it by her side,

Flora put her feet upon the fender, and settled herself for a thorough good romantic disclosure. She started off

at score, tossing her head, sighing in the most demonstrative manner, making a great deal of use of her

eyebrows, and occasionally, but not often, glancing at the quiet face that bent over the work.

'You must know my dear,' said Flora, 'but that I have no doubt you know already not only because I have

already thrown it out in a general way but because I feel I carry it stamped in burning what's his names upon

my brow that before I was introduced to the late Mr F. I had been engaged to Arthur ClennamMr Clennam

in public where reserve is necessary Arthur herewe were all in all to one another it was the morning of life

it was bliss it was frenzy it was everything else of that sort in the highest degree, when rent asunder we turned

to stone in which capacity Arthur went to China and I became the statue bride of the late Mr F.'

'To paint,' said she, 'the emotions of that morning when all was marble within and Mr F.'s Aunt followed in a

glasscoach which it stands to reason must have been in shameful repair or it never could have broken down

two streets from the house and Mr F.'s Aunt brought home like the fifth of November in a rushbottomed

chair I will not attempt, suffice it to say that the hollow form of breakfast took place in the diningroom

downstairs that papa partaking too freely of pickled salmon was ill for weeks and that Mr F. and myself went

upon a continental tour to Calais where the people fought for us on the pier until they separated us though not

The statue bride, hardly pausing for breath, went on, with the greatest complacency, in a rambling manner

'I will draw a veil over that dreamy life, Mr F. was in good spirits his appetite was good he liked the cookery

he considered the wine weak but palatable and all was well, we returned to the immediate neighbourhood of

Number Thirty Little Gosling Street London Docks and settled down, ere we had yet fully detected the

housemaid in selling the feathers out of the spare bed Gout flying upwards soared with Mr F. to another

'I revere the memory of Mr F. as an estimable man and most indulgent husband, only necessary to mention

Asparagus and it appeared or to hint at any little delicate thing to drink and it came like magic in a pint bottle

it was not ecstasy but it was comfort, I returned to papa's roof and lived secluded if not happy during some

years until one day papa came smoothly blundering in and said that Arthur Clennam awaited me below, I

went below and found him ask me not what I found him except that he was still unmarried still unchanged!'

The dark mystery with which Flora now enshrouded herself might have stopped other fingers than the nimble

They worked on without pause, and the busy head bent over them watching the stitches.

'Ask me not,' said Flora, 'if I love him still or if he still loves me or what the end is to be or when, we are

surrounded by watchful eyes and it may be that we are destined to pine asunder it may be never more to be

reunited not a word not a breath not a look to betray us all must be secret as the tomb wonder not therefore

that even if I should seem comparatively cold to Arthur or Arthur should seem comparatively cold to me we

All of which Flora said with so much headlong vehemence as if she really believed it. There is not much

doubt that when she worked herself into full mermaid condition, she did actually believe whatever she said in

'Hush!' repeated Flora, 'I have now told you all, confidence is established between us hush, for Arthur's sake I

will always be a friend to you my dear girl and in Arthur's name you may always rely upon me.'

The nimble fingers laid aside the work, and the little figure rose and kissed her hand. 'You are very cold,' said

Flora, changing to her own natural kindhearted manner, and gaining greatly by the change. 'Don't work

'It is only that I feel a little overcome by your kindness, and by Mr Clennam's kindness in confiding me to

'Well really my dear,' said Flora, who had a decided tendency to be always honest when she gave herself time

to think about it, 'it's as well to leave that alone now, for I couldn't undertake to say after all, but it doesn't

'I have always been strong enough to do what I want to do, and I shall be quite well directly,' returned Little

Dorrit, with a faint smile. 'You have overpowered me with gratitude, that's all. If I keep near the window for a

Flora opened a window, sat her in a chair by it, and considerately retired to her former place. It was a windy

day, and the air stirring on Little Dorrit's face soon brightened it. In a very few minutes she returned to her

Quietly pursuing her task, she asked Flora if Mr Clennam had told her where she lived? When Flora replied

in the negative, Little Dorrit said that she understood why he had been so delicate, but that she felt sure he

would approve of her confiding her secret to Flora, and that she would therefore do so now with Flora's

permission. Receiving an encouraging answer, she condensed the narrative of her life into a few scanty words

about herself and a glowing eulogy upon her father; and Flora took it all in with a natural tenderness that

When dinnertime came, Flora drew the arm of her new charge through hers, and led her downstairs, and

presented her to the Patriarch and Mr Pancks, who were already in the diningroom waiting to begin. (Mr F.'s

Aunt was, for the time, laid up in ordinary in her chamber.) By those gentlemen she was received according

to their characters; the Patriarch appearing to do her some inestimable service in saying that he was glad to

see her, glad to see her; and Mr Pancks blowing off his favourite sound as a salute.

In that new presence she would have been bashful enough under any circumstances, and particularly under

Flora's insisting on her drinking a glass of wine and eating of the best that was there; but her constraint was

greatly increased by Mr Pancks. The demeanour of that gentleman at first suggested to her mind that he might

be a taker of likenesses, so intently did he look at her, and so frequently did he glance at the little notebook

by his side. Observing that he made no sketch, however, and that he talked about business only, she began to

have suspicions that he represented some creditor of her father's, the balance due to whom was noted in that

pocket volume. Regarded from this point of view Mr Pancks's puffings expressed injury and impatience, and

But here again she was undeceived by anomalous and incongruous conduct on the part of Mr Pancks himself.

She had left the table half an hour, and was at work alone. Flora had 'gone to lie down' in the next room,

concurrently with which retirement a smell of something to drink had broken out in the house. The Patriarch

was fast asleep, with his philanthropic mouth open under a yellow pockethandkerchief in the diningroom.

'Busy, I see,' observed Mr Pancks, stealing into the room by inches. 'What are those now, Miss Dorrit?'

'Are they, though!' said Pancks. 'I shouldn't have thought it.' Not in the least looking at them, but looking at

Little Dorrit. 'Perhaps you wonder who I am. Shall I tell you? I am a fortune teller.'

'I belong body and soul to my proprietor,' said Pancks; 'you saw my proprietor having his dinner below. But I

do a little in the other way, sometimes; privately, very privately, Miss Dorrit.'

'I wish you'd show me the palm of your hand,' said Pancks. 'I should like to have a look at it. Don't let me be

troublesome.' He was so far troublesome that he was not at all wanted there, but she laid her work in her lap

'Years of toil, eh?' said Pancks, softly, touching it with his blunt forefinger. 'But what else are we made for?

Nothing. Hallo!' looking into the lines. 'What's this with bars? It's a College! And what's this with a grey

gown and a black velvet cap? it's a father! And what's this with a clarionet? It's an uncle! And what's this in

dancingshoes? It's a sister! And what's this straggling about in an idle sort of a way? It's a brother! And

what's this thinking for 'em all? Why, this is you, Miss Dorrit!' Her eyes met his as she looked up

wonderingly into his face, and she thought that although his were sharp eyes, he was a brighter and

gentlerlooking man than she had supposed at dinner. His eyes were on her hand again directly, and her

'Now, the deuce is in it,' muttered Pancks, tracing out a line in her hand with his clumsy finger, 'if this isn't

He carried his finger slowly down to the wrist, and round the wrist, and affected to look at the back of the

Releasing the hand by slow degrees, he drew all his fingers through his prongs of hair, so that they stood up

in their most portentous manner; and repeated slowly, 'Remember what I say, Miss Dorrit. You shall live to

She could not help showing that she was much surprised, if it were only by his knowing so much about her.

More surprised than before, and a little more frightened, she looked to him for an explanation of his last

'Not that,' said Pancks, making, with great seriousness, an imitation of a surprised look and manner that

appeared to be unintentionally grotesque. 'Don't do that. Never on seeing me, no matter when, no matter

where. I am nobody. Don't take on to mind me. Don't mention me. Take no notice. Will you agree, Miss

'Because I am a fortuneteller. Pancks the gipsy. I haven't told you so much of your fortune yet, Miss Dorrit,

as to tell you what's behind me on that little hand. I have told you you shall live to see. Is it agreed, Miss

'To take no notice of me away from here, unless I take on first. Not to mind me when I come and go. It's very

easy. I am no loss, I am not handsome, I am not good company, I am only my proprietors grubber. You need

do no more than think, "Ah! Pancks the gipsy at his fortunetellinghe'll tell the rest of my fortune one

'Yees,' faltered Little Dorrit, whom he greatly confused, 'I suppose so, while you do no harm.'

'Good!' Mr Pancks glanced at the wall of the adjoining room, and stooped forward. 'Honest creature, woman

of capital points, but heedless and a loose talker, Miss Dorrit.' With that he rubbed his hands as if the

interview had been very satisfactory to him, panted away to the door, and urbanely nodded himself out again.

If Little Dorrit were beyond measure perplexed by this curious conduct on the part of her new acquaintance,

and by finding herself involved in this singular treaty, her perplexity was not diminished by ensuing

circumstances. Besides that Mr Pancks took every opportunity afforded him in Mr Casby's house of

significantly glancing at her and snorting at herwhich was not much, after what he had done alreadyhe

began to pervade her daily life. She saw him in the street, constantly. When she went to Mr Casby's, he was

always there. When she went to Mrs Clennam's, he came there on any pretence, as if to keep her in his sight.

A week had not gone by, when she found him to her astonishment in the Lodge one night, conversing with

the turnkey on duty, and to all appearance one of his familiar companions. Her next surprise was to find him

equally at his ease within the prison; to hear of his presenting himself among the visitors at her father's

Sunday levee; to see him arm in arm with a Collegiate friend about the yard; to learn, from Fame, that he had

greatly distinguished himself one evening at the social club that held its meetings in the Snuggery, by

addressing a speech to the members of the institution, singing a song, and treating the company to five

gallons of alereport madly added a bushel of shrimps. The effect on Mr Plornish of such of these

phenomena as he became an eyewitness of in his faithful visits, made an impression on Little Dorrit only

second to that produced by the phenomena themselves. They seemed to gag and bind him. He could only

stare, and sometimes weakly mutter that it wouldn't be believed down Bleeding Heart Yard that this was

Pancks; but he never said a word more, or made a sign more, even to Little Dorrit.

Mr Pancks crowned his mysteries by making himself acquainted with Tip in some unknown manner, and

taking a Sunday saunter into the College on that gentleman's arm. Throughout he never took any notice of

Little Dorrit, save once or twice when he happened to come close to her and there was no one very near; on

which occasions, he said in passing, with a friendly look and a puff of encouragement, 'Pancks the

Little Dorrit worked and strove as usual, wondering at all this, but keeping her wonder, as she had from her

earliest years kept many heavier loads, in her own breast. A change had stolen, and was stealing yet, over the

patient heart. Every day found her something more retiring than the day before. To pass in and out of the

prison unnoticed, and elsewhere to be overlooked and forgotten, were, for herself, her chief desires.

To her own room too, strangely assorted room for her delicate youth and character, she was glad to retreat as

often as she could without desertion of any duty. There were afternoon times when she was unemployed,

when visitors dropped in to play a hand at cards with her father, when she could be spared and was better

away. Then she would flit along the yard, climb the scores of stairs that led to her room, and take her seat at

the window. Many combinations did those spikes upon the wall assume, many light shapes did the strong

iron weave itself into, many golden touches fell upon the rust, while Little Dorrit sat there musing. New zig

zags sprung into the cruel pattern sometimes, when she saw it through a burst of tears; but beautified or

hardened still, always over it and under it and through it, she was fain to look in her solitude, seeing

A garret, and a Marshalsea garret without compromise, was Little Dorrit's room. Beautifully kept, it was ugly

in itself, and had little but cleanliness and air to set it off; for what embellishment she had ever been able to

buy, had gone to her father's room. Howbeit, for this poor place she showed an increasing love; and to sit in it

Insomuch, that on a certain afternoon during the Pancks mysteries, when she was seated at her window, and

heard Maggy's wellknown step coming up the stairs, she was very much disturbed by the apprehension of

being summoned away. As Maggy's step came higher up and nearer, she trembled and faltered; and it was as

'Please, Little Mother,' said Maggy, panting for breath, 'you must come down and see him. He's here.'

'Who, o' course Mr Clennam. He's in your father's room, and he says to me, Maggy, will you be so kind and

'I am not very well, Maggy. I had better not go. I am going to lie down. See! I lie down now, to ease my head.

'Well, it an't very polite though, Little Mother,' said the staring Maggy, 'to turn your face away, neither!'

Maggy was very susceptible to personal slights, and very ingenious in inventing them. 'Putting both your

hands afore your face too!' she went on. 'If you can't bear the looks of a poor thing, it would be better to tell

her so at once, and not go and shut her out like that, hurting her feelings and breaking her heart at ten year

'Well, and if you cry to ease your head, Little Mother, let me cry too. Don't go and have all the crying to

yourself,' expostulated Maggy, 'that an't not being greedy.' And immediately began to blubber.

It was with some difficulty that she could be induced to go back with the excuse; but the promise of being

told a storyof old her great delighton condition that she concentrated her faculties upon the errand and

left her little mistress to herself for an hour longer, combined with a misgiving on Maggy's part that she had

left her good temper at the bottom of the staircase, prevailed. So away she went, muttering her message all

'He was very sorry, I can tell you,' she announced, 'and wanted to send a doctor. And he's coming again

tomorrow he is and I don't think he'll have a good sleep tonight along o' hearing about your head, Little

'But it's all over nowall over for good, Maggy. And my head is much better and cooler, and I am quite

Her great staring child tenderly embraced her; and having smoothed her hair, and bathed her forehead and

eyes with cold water (offices in which her awkward hands became skilful), hugged her again, exulted in her

brighter looks, and stationed her in her chair by the window. Over against this chair, Maggy, with apoplectic

exertions that were not at all required, dragged the box which was her seat on storytelling occasions, sat

down upon it, hugged her own knees, and said, with a voracious appetite for stories, and with widelyopened

'Oh, let's have a princess,' said Maggy, 'and let her be a reg'lar one. Beyond all belief, you know!'

Little Dorrit considered for a moment; and with a rather sad smile upon her face, which was flushed by the

'Maggy, there was once upon a time a fine King, and he had everything he could wish for, and a great deal

more. He had gold and silver, diamonds and rubies, riches of every kind. He had palaces, and he had'

'Hospitals,' interposed Maggy, still nursing her knees. 'Let him have hospitals, because they're so comfortable.

'This King had a daughter, who was the wisest and most beautiful Princess that ever was seen. When she was

a child she understood all her lessons before her masters taught them to her; and when she was grown up, she

was the wonder of the world. Now, near the Palace where this Princess lived, there was a cottage in which

'The Princess passed the cottage nearly every day, and whenever she went by in her beautiful carriage, she

saw the poor tiny woman spinning at her wheel, and she looked at the tiny woman, and the tiny woman

looked at her. So, one day she stopped the coachman a little way from the cottage, and got out and walked on

and peeped in at the door, and there, as usual, was the tiny woman spinning at her wheel, and she looked at

'Like trying to stare one another out,' said Maggy. 'Please go on, Little Mother.'

'The Princess was such a wonderful Princess that she had the power of knowing secrets, and she said to the

tiny woman, Why do you keep it there? This showed her directly that the Princess knew why she lived all

alone by herself spinning at her wheel, and she kneeled down at the Princess's feet, and asked her never to

betray her. So the Princess said, I never will betray you. Let me see it. So the tiny woman closed the shutter

of the cottage window and fastened the door, and trembling from head to foot for fear that any one should

'Lor!' said Maggy. 'It was the shadow of Some one who had gone by long before: of Some one who had gone

on far away quite out of reach, never, never to come back. It was bright to look at; and when the tiny woman

showed it to the Princess, she was proud of it with all her heart, as a great, great treasure. When the Princess

had considered it a little while, she said to the tiny woman, And you keep watch over this every day? And she

cast down her eyes, and whispered, Yes. Then the Princess said, Remind me why. To which the other replied,

that no one so good and kind had ever passed that way, and that was why in the beginning. She said, too, that

nobody missed it, that nobody was the worse for it, that Some one had gone on, to those who were expecting

'Had gone on to those who were expecting him, and that this remembrance was stolen or kept back from

nobody. The Princess made answer, Ah! But when the cottager died it would be discovered there. The tiny

woman told her No; when that time came, it would sink quietly into her own grave, and would never be

'The Princess was very much astonished to hear this, as you may suppose, Maggy.' ('And well she might be,'

'So she resolved to watch the tiny woman, and see what came of it. Every day she drove in her beautiful

carriage by the cottagedoor, and there she saw the tiny woman always alone by herself spinning at her

wheel, and she looked at the tiny woman, and the tiny woman looked at her. At last one day the wheel was

still, and the tiny woman was not to be seen. When the Princess made inquiries why the wheel had stopped,

and where the tiny woman was, she was informed that the wheel had stopped because there was nobody to

('They ought to have took her to the Hospital,' said Maggy, and then she'd have got over it.')

'The Princess, after crying a very little for the loss of the tiny woman, dried her eyes and got out of her

carriage at the place where she had stopped it before, and went to the cottage and peeped in at the door. There

was nobody to look at her now, and nobody for her to look at, so she went in at once to search for the

treasured shadow. But there was no sign of it to be found anywhere; and then she knew that the tiny woman

had told her the truth, and that it would never give anybody any trouble, and that it had sunk quietly into her

The sunset flush was so bright on Little Dorrit's face when she came thus to the end of her story, that she

'I don't know,' said Little Dorrit. 'But it would have been just the same if she had been ever so old.'

'Would it raly!' said Maggy. 'Well, I suppose it would though.' And sat staring and ruminating.

She sat so long with her eyes wide open, that at length Little Dorrit, to entice her from her box, rose and

looked out of window. As she glanced down into the yard, she saw Pancks come in and leer up with the

'Who's he, Little Mother?' said Maggy. She had joined her at the window and was leaning on her shoulder. 'I

'I have heard him called a fortuneteller,' said Little Dorrit. 'But I doubt if he could tell many people even

Little Dorrit, looking musingly down into the dark valley of the prison, shook her head.

'No,' said Little Dorrit, with the sunset very bright upon her. 'But let us come away from the window.'

The private residence of Mr Pancks was in Pentonville, where he lodged on the secondfloor of a

professional gentleman in an extremely small way, who had an innerdoor within the street door, poised on a

spring and starting open with a click like a trap; and who wrote up in the fanlight, RUGG, GENERAL

This scroll, majestic in its severe simplicity, illuminated a little slip of front garden abutting on the thirsty

highroad, where a few of the dustiest of leaves hung their dismal heads and led a life of choking. A

professor of writing occupied the first floor, and enlivened the garden railings with glasscases containing

choice examples of what his pupils had been before six lessons and while the whole of his young family

shook the table, and what they had become after six lessons when the young family was under restraint. The

tenancy of Mr Pancks was limited to one airy bedroom; he covenanting and agreeing with Mr Rugg his

landlord, that in consideration of a certain scale of payments accurately defined, and on certain verbal notice

duly given, he should be at liberty to elect to share the Sunday breakfast, dinner, tea, or supper, or each or any

or all of those repasts or meals of Mr and Miss Rugg (his daughter) in the backparlour.

Miss Rugg was a lady of a little property which she had acquired, together with much distinction in the

neighbourhood, by having her heart severely lacerated and her feelings mangled by a middleaged baker

resident in the vicinity, against whom she had, by the agency of Mr Rugg, found it necessary to proceed at

law to recover damages for a breach of promise of marriage. The baker having been, by the counsel for Miss

Rugg, witheringly denounced on that occasion up to the full amount of twenty guineas, at the rate of about

eighteen pence an epithet, and having been cast in corresponding damages, still suffered occasional

persecution from the youth of Pentonville. But Miss Rugg, environed by the majesty of the law, and having

In the society of Mr Rugg, who had a round white visage, as if all his blushes had been drawn out of him long

ago, and who had a ragged yellow head like a wornout hearth broom; and in the society of Miss Rugg, who

had little nankeen spots, like shirt buttons, all over her face, and whose own yellow tresses were rather

scrubby than luxuriant; Mr Pancks had usually dined on Sundays for some few years, and had twice a week,

or so, enjoyed an evening collation of bread, Dutch cheese, and porter. Mr Pancks was one of the very few

marriageable men for whom Miss Rugg had no terrors, the argument with which he reassured himself being

twofold; that is to say, firstly, 'that it wouldn't do twice,' and secondly, 'that he wasn't worth it.' Fortified

Up to this time, Mr Pancks had transacted little or no business at his quarters in Pentonville, except in the

sleeping line; but now that he had become a fortuneteller, he was often closeted after midnight with Mr

Rugg in his little frontparlour office, and even after those untimely hours, burnt tallow in his bedroom.

Though his duties as his proprietor's grubber were in no wise lessened; and though that service bore no

greater resemblance to a bed of roses than was to be discovered in its many thorns; some new branch of

industry made a constant demand upon him. When he cast off the Patriarch at night, it was only to take an

The advance from a personal acquaintance with the elder Mr Chivery to an introduction to his amiable wife

and disconsolate son, may have been easy; but easy or not, Mr Pancks soon made it. He nestled in the bosom

of the tobacco business within a week or two after his first appearance in the College, and particularly

addressed himself to the cultivation of a good understanding with Young John. In this endeavour he so

prospered as to lure that pining shepherd forth from the groves, and tempt him to undertake mysterious

missions; on which he began to disappear at uncertain intervals for as long a space as two or three days

together. The prudent Mrs Chivery, who wondered greatly at this change, would have protested against it as

detrimental to the Highland typification on the doorpost but for two forcible reasons; one, that her John was

roused to take strong interest in the business which these starts were supposed to advanceand this she held

to be good for his drooping spirits; the other, that Mr Pancks confidentially agreed to pay her, for the

occupation of her son's time, at the handsome rate of seven and sixpence per day. The proposal originated

with himself, and was couched in the pithy terms, 'If your John is weak enough, ma'am, not to take it, that is

no reason why you should be, don't you see? So, quite between ourselves, ma'am, business being business,

What Mr Chivery thought of these things, or how much or how little he knew about them, was never gathered

from himself. It has been already remarked that he was a man of few words; and it may be here observed that

he had imbibed a professional habit of locking everything up. He locked himself up as carefully as he locked

up the Marshalsea debtors. Even his custom of bolting his meals may have been a part of an uniform whole;

but there is no question, that, as to all other purposes, he kept his mouth as he kept the Marshalsea door. He

never opened it without occasion. When it was necessary to let anything out, he opened it a little way, held it

Even as he would be sparing of his trouble at the Marshalsea door, and would keep a visitor who wanted to

go out, waiting for a few moments if he saw another visitor coming down the yard, so that one turn of the key

should suffice for both, similarly he would often reserve a remark if he perceived another on its way to his

lips, and would deliver himself of the two together. As to any key to his inner knowledge being to be found in

his face, the Marshalsea key was as legible as an index to the individual characters and histories upon which

That Mr Pancks should be moved to invite any one to dinner at Pentonville, was an unprecedented fact in his

calendar. But he invited Young John to dinner, and even brought him within range of the dangerous (because

expensive) fascinations of Miss Rugg. The banquet was appointed for a Sunday, and Miss Rugg with her own

hands stuffed a leg of mutton with oysters on the occasion, and sent it to the baker'snot THE baker's but an

opposition establishment. Provision of oranges, apples, and nuts was also made. And rum was brought home

by Mr Pancks on Saturday night, to gladden the visitor's heart. The store of creature comforts was not the

chief part of the visitor's reception. Its special feature was a foregone family confidence and sympathy. When

Young John appeared at halfpast one without the ivory hand and waistcoat of golden sprigs, the sun shorn

of his beams by disastrous clouds, Mr Pancks presented him to the yellowhaired Ruggs as the young man he

had so often mentioned who loved Miss Dorrit. 'I am glad,' said Mr Rugg, challenging him specially in that

character, 'to have the distinguished gratification of making your acquaintance, sir. Your feelings do you

honour. You are young; may you never outlive your feelings! If I was to outlive my own feelings, sir,' said

Mr Rugg, who was a man of many words, and was considered to possess a remarkably good address; 'if I was

to outlive my own feelings, I'd leave fifty pound in my will to the man who would put me out of existence.'

'My daughter, sir,' said Mr Rugg. 'Anastatia, you are no stranger to the state of this young man's affections.

My daughter has had her trials, sir'Mr Rugg might have used the word more pointedly in the singular

Young John, almost overwhelmed by the touching nature of this greeting, professed himself to that effect.

'What I envy you, sir, is,' said Mr Rugg, 'allow me to take your hatwe are rather short of pegsI'll put it in

the corner, nobody will tread on it thereWhat I envy you, sir, is the luxury of your own feelings. I belong

Young John replied, with acknowledgments, that he only hoped he did what was right, and what showed how

entirely he was devoted to Miss Dorrit. He wished to be unselfish; and he hoped he was. He wished to do

anything as laid in his power to serve Miss Dorrit, altogether putting himself out of sight; and he hoped he

'Sir,' said Mr Rugg, taking him by the hand, 'you are a young man that it does one good to come across. You

are a young man that I should like to put in the witnessbox, to humanise the minds of the legal profession. I

hope you have brought your appetite with you, and intend to play a good knife and fork?'

Mr Rugg drew him a little apart. 'My daughter's case, sir,' said he, 'at the time when, in vindication of her

outraged feelings and her sex, she became the plaintiff in Rugg and Bawkins. I suppose I could have put it in

evidence, Mr Chivery, if I had thought it worth my while, that the amount of solid sustenance my daughter

consumed at that period did not exceed ten ounces per week.' 'I think I go a little beyond that, sir,' returned

'But in your case there's no fiend in human form,' said Mr Rugg, with argumentative smile and action of

No fiend in human form!' 'No, sir, certainly,' Young John added with simplicity, 'I should be very sorry if

'The sentiment,' said Mr Rugg, 'is what I should have expected from your known principles. It would affect

my daughter greatly, sir, if she heard it. As I perceive the mutton, I am glad she didn't hear it. Mr Pancks, on

this occasion, pray face me. My dear, face Mr Chivery. For what we are going to receive, may we (and Miss

But for a grave waggishness in Mr Rugg's manner of delivering this introduction to the feast, it might have

appeared that Miss Dorrit was expected to be one of the company. Pancks recognised the sally in his usual

way, and took in his provender in his usual way. Miss Rugg, perhaps making up some of her arrears, likewise

took very kindly to the mutton, and it rapidly diminished to the bone. A breadandbutter pudding entirely

disappeared, and a considerable amount of cheese and radishes vanished by the same means. Then came the

Then also, and before the broaching of the rum and water, came Mr Pancks's notebook. The ensuing

business proceedings were brief but curious, and rather in the nature of a conspiracy. Mr Pancks looked over

his notebook, which was now getting full, studiously; and picked out little extracts, which he wrote on

separate slips of paper on the table; Mr Rugg, in the meanwhile, looking at him with close attention, and

Young John losing his uncollected eye in mists of meditation. When Mr Pancks, who supported the character

of chief conspirator, had completed his extracts, he looked them over, corrected them, put up his notebook,

'Then perhaps,' pursued Pancks, 'you'll be so obliging, John Chivery?' Young John assenting, Pancks dealt

'There's a Church in London; I may as well take that. And a Family Bible; I may as well take that, too. That's

two to me. Two to me,' repeated Pancks, breathing hard over his cards. 'Here's a Clerk at Durham for you,

John, and an old seafaring gentleman at Dunstable for you, Mr Rugg. Two to me, was it? Yes, two to me.

Here's a Stone; three to me. And a Stillborn Baby; four to me. And all, for the present, told.' When he had

thus disposed of his cards, all being done very quietly and in a suppressed tone, Mr Pancks puffed his way

into his own breastpocket and tugged out a canvas bag; from which, with a sparing hand, he told forth

money for travelling expenses in two little portions. 'Cash goes out fast,' he said anxiously, as he pushed a

'I can only assure you, Mr Pancks,' said Young John, 'that I deeply regret my circumstances being such that I

can't afford to pay my own charges, or that it's not advisable to allow me the time necessary for my doing the

distances on foot; because nothing would give me greater satisfaction than to walk myself off my legs

This young man's disinterestedness appeared so very ludicrous in the eyes of Miss Rugg, that she was obliged

to effect a precipitate retirement from the company, and to sit upon the stairs until she had had her laugh out.

Meanwhile Mr Pancks, looking, not without some pity, at Young John, slowly and thoughtfully twisted up

his canvas bag as if he were wringing its neck. The lady, returning as he restored it to his pocket, mixed rum

and water for the party, not forgetting her fair self, and handed to every one his glass. When all were

supplied, Mr Rugg rose, and silently holding out his glass at arm's length above the centre of the table, by that

gesture invited the other three to add theirs, and to unite in a general conspiratorial clink. The ceremony was

effective up to a certain point, and would have been wholly so throughout, if Miss Rugg, as she raised her

glass to her lips in completion of it, had not happened to look at Young John; when she was again so

overcome by the contemptible comicality of his disinterestedness as to splutter some ambrosial drops of rum

Such was the dinner without precedent, given by Pancks at Pentonville; and such was the busy and strange

life Pancks led. The only waking moments at which he appeared to relax from his cares, and to recreate

himself by going anywhere or saying anything without a pervading object, were when he showed a dawning

The foreigner, by name John Baptist Cavallettothey called him Mr Baptist in the Yardwas such a

chirping, easy, hopeful little fellow, that his attraction for Pancks was probably in the force of contrast.

Solitary, weak, and scantily acquainted with the most necessary words of the only language in which he could

communicate with the people about him, he went with the stream of his fortunes, in a brisk way that was new

in those parts. With little to eat, and less to drink, and nothing to wear but what he wore upon him, or had

brought tied up in one of the smallest bundles that ever were seen, he put as bright a face upon it as if he were

in the most flourishing circumstances when he first hobbled up and down the Yard, humbly propitiating the

It was uphill work for a foreigner, lame or sound, to make his way with the Bleeding Hearts. In the first place,

they were vaguely persuaded that every foreigner had a knife about him; in the second, they held it to be a

sound constitutional national axiom that he ought to go home to his own country. They never thought of

inquiring how many of their own countrymen would be returned upon their hands from divers parts of the

world, if the principle were generally recognised; they considered it particularly and peculiarly British. In the

third place, they had a notion that it was a sort of Divine visitation upon a foreigner that he was not an

Englishman, and that all kinds of calamities happened to his country because it did things that England did

not, and did not do things that England did. In this belief, to be sure, they had long been carefully trained by

the Barnacles and Stiltstalkings, who were always proclaiming to them, officially, that no country which

failed to submit itself to those two large families could possibly hope to be under the protection of

Providence; and who, when they believed it, disparaged them in private as the most prejudiced people under

This, therefore, might be called a political position of the Bleeding Hearts; but they entertained other

objections to having foreigners in the Yard. They believed that foreigners were always badly off; and though

they were as ill off themselves as they could desire to be, that did not diminish the force of the objection.

They believed that foreigners were dragooned and bayoneted; and though they certainly got their own skulls

promptly fractured if they showed any illhumour, still it was with a blunt instrument, and that didn't count.

They believed that foreigners were always immoral; and though they had an occasional assize at home, and

now and then a divorce case or so, that had nothing to do with it. They believed that foreigners had no

independent spirit, as never being escorted to the poll in droves by Lord Decimus Tite Barnacle, with colours

flying and the tune of Rule Britannia playing. Not to be tedious, they had many other beliefs of a similar

Against these obstacles, the lame foreigner with the stick had to make head as well as he could; not

absolutely singlehanded, because Mr Arthur Clennam had recommended him to the Plornishes (he lived at

the top of the same house), but still at heavy odds. However, the Bleeding Hearts were kind hearts; and when

they saw the little fellow cheerily limping about with a goodhumoured face, doing no harm, drawing no

knives, committing no outrageous immoralities, living chiefly on farinaceous and milk diet, and playing with

Mrs Plornish's children of an evening, they began to think that although he could never hope to be an

Englishman, still it would be hard to visit that affliction on his head. They began to accommodate themselves

to his level, calling him 'Mr Baptist,' but treating him like a baby, and laughing immoderately at his lively

gestures and his childish Englishmore, because he didn't mind it, and laughed too. They spoke to him in

very loud voices as if he were stone deaf. They constructed sentences, by way of teaching him the language

in its purity, such as were addressed by the savages to Captain Cook, or by Friday to Robinson Crusoe. Mrs

Plornish was particularly ingenious in this art; and attained so much celebrity for saying 'Me ope you leg well

soon,' that it was considered in the Yard but a very short remove indeed from speaking Italian. Even Mrs

Plornish herself began to think that she had a natural call towards that language. As he became more popular,

household objects were brought into requisition for his instruction in a copious vocabulary; and whenever he

appeared in the Yard ladies would fly out at their doors crying 'Mr Baptistteapot!' 'Mr

Baptistdustpan!' 'Mr Baptistflourdredger!' 'Mr Baptistcoffeebiggin!' At the same time exhibiting

those articles, and penetrating him with a sense of the appalling difficulties of the AngloSaxon tongue.

It was in this stage of his progress, and in about the third week of his occupation, that Mr Pancks's fancy

became attracted by the little man. Mounting to his attic, attended by Mrs Plornish as interpreter, he found Mr

Baptist with no furniture but his bed on the ground, a table, and a chair, carving with the aid of a few simple

He had his money ready, folded in a scrap of paper, and laughingly handed it in; then with a free action,

threw out as many fingers of his right hand as there were shillings, and made a cut crosswise in the air for an

'Oh!' said Mr Pancks, watching him, wonderingly. 'That's it, is it? You're a quick customer. It's all right. I

Mrs Plornish here interposed with great condescension, and explained to Mr Baptist. 'E please. E glad get

The little man smiled and nodded. His bright face seemed uncommonly attractive to Mr Pancks. 'How's he

'Oh, he's a deal better, sir,' said Mrs Plornish. 'We expect next week he'll be able to leave off his stick

entirely.' (The opportunity being too favourable to be lost, Mrs Plornish displayed her great accomplishment

'He's a merry fellow, too,' said Mr Pancks, admiring him as if he were a mechanical toy. 'How does he live?'

'Why, sir,' rejoined Mrs Plornish, 'he turns out to have quite a power of carving them flowers that you see him

at now.' (Mr Baptist, watching their faces as they spoke, held up his work. Mrs Plornish interpreted in her

'Can he live by that?' asked Mr Pancks. 'He can live on very little, sir, and it is expected as he will be able, in

time, to make a very good living. Mr Clennam got it him to do, and gives him odd jobs besides in at the

'And what does he do with himself, now, when he ain't hard at it?' said Mr Pancks.

'Why, not much as yet, sir, on accounts I suppose of not being able to walk much; but he goes about the Yard,

and he chats without particular understanding or being understood, and he plays with the children, and he sits

in the sunhe'll sit down anywhere, as if it was an armchairand he'll sing, and he'll laugh!'

'Laugh!' echoed Mr Pancks. 'He looks to me as if every tooth in his head was always laughing.'

'But whenever he gets to the top of the steps at t'other end of the Yard,' said Mrs Plornish, 'he'll peep out in

the curiousest way! So that some of us thinks he's peeping out towards where his own country is, and some of

us thinks he's looking for somebody he don't want to see, and some of us don't know what to think.'

Mr Baptist seemed to have a general understanding of what she said; or perhaps his quickness caught and

applied her slight action of peeping. In any case he closed his eyes and tossed his head with the air of a man

who had sufficient reasons for what he did, and said in his own tongue, it didn't matter. Altro!

'Is it?' said Pancks. 'Why, then Altro to you, old chap. Good afternoon. Altro!'

Mr Baptist in his vivacious way repeating the word several times, Mr Pancks in his duller way gave it him

back once. From that time it became a frequent custom with Pancks the gipsy, as he went home jaded at

night, to pass round by Bleeding Heart Yard, go quietly up the stairs, look in at Mr Baptist's door, and,

finding him in his room, to say, 'Hallo, old chap! Altro!' To which Mr Baptist would reply with innumerable

bright nods and smiles, 'Altro, signore, altro, altro, altro!' After this highly condensed conversation, Mr

If Arthur Clennam had not arrived at that wise decision firmly to restrain himself from loving Pet, he would

have lived on in a state of much perplexity, involving difficult struggles with his own heart. Not the least of

these would have been a contention, always waging within it, between a tendency to dislike Mr Henry

Gowan, if not to regard him with positive repugnance, and a whisper that the inclination was unworthy. A

generous nature is not prone to strong aversions, and is slow to admit them even dispassionately; but when it

finds illwill gaining upon it, and can discern betweenwhiles that its origin is not dispassionate, such a

Therefore Mr Henry Gowan would have clouded Clennam's mind, and would have been far oftener present to

it than more agreeable persons and subjects but for the great prudence of his decision aforesaid. As it was, Mr

Gowan seemed transferred to Daniel Doyce's mind; at all events, it so happened that it usually fell to Mr

Doyce's turn, rather than to Clennam's, to speak of him in the friendly conversations they held together. These

were of frequent occurrence now; as the two partners shared a portion of a roomy house in one of the grave

oldfashioned City streets, lying not far from the Bank of England, by London Wall.

Mr Doyce had been to Twickenham to pass the day. Clennam had excused himself. Mr Doyce was just come

home. He put in his head at the door of Clennam's sittingroom to say Good night.

'I saw you were reading,' returned Doyce, as he entered, 'and thought you might not care to be disturbed.'

But for the notable resolution he had made, Clennam really might not have known what he had been reading;

really might not have had his eyes upon the book for an hour past, though it lay open before him. He shut it

Daniel had an old workmanlike habit of carrying his pocket handkerchief in his hat. He took it out and

wiped his forehead with it, slowly repeating, 'They are all well. Miss Minnie looking particularly well, I

'There were five of us,' returned his partner. 'There was What's hisname. He was there.' 'Who is he?' said

'As I mentioned, you may remember,' said Daniel Doyce, 'he is always there on Sunday.'

Daniel Doyce, still wiping his forehead, ploddingly repeated. 'Yes. He was there, he was there. Oh yes, he

'Quite so,' assented his partner. 'More attached to the dog than I am to the man.'

There was a gap in the conversation, which Clennam devoted to winding up his watch.

'Perhaps you are a little hasty in your judgment,' he said. 'Our judgmentsI am supposing a general case'

'Are so liable to be influenced by many considerations, which, almost without our knowing it, are unfair, that

'Gowan,' quietly said Doyce, upon whom the utterance of the name almost always devolved.

'Is young and handsome, easy and quick, has talent, and has seen a good deal of various kinds of life. It might

'Not difficult for me, I think, Clennam,' returned his partner. 'I see him bringing present anxiety, and, I fear,

future sorrow, into my old friend's house. I see him wearing deeper lines into my old friend's face, the nearer

he draws to, and the oftener he looks at, the face of his daughter. In short, I see him with a net about the

pretty and affectionate creature whom he will never make happy.' 'We don't know,' said Clennam, almost in

'We don't know,' returned his partner, 'that the earth will last another hundred years, but we think it highly

'Well, well!' said Clennam, 'we must be hopeful, and we must at least try to be, if not generous (which, in this

case, we have no opportunity of being), just. We will not disparage this gentleman, because he is successful

in his addresses to the beautiful object of his ambition; and we will not question her natural right to bestow

'Maybe, my friend,' said Doyce. 'Maybe also, that she is too young and petted, too confiding and

'Therefore, in a word,' said Clennam, 'we should make up our minds that it is not worthy of us to say any ill

of Mr Gowan. It would be a poor thing to gratify a prejudice against him. And I resolve, for my part, not to

'I am not quite so sure of myself, and therefore I reserve my privilege of objecting to him,' returned the other.

'But, if I am not sure of myself, I am sure of you, Clennam, and I know what an upright man you are, and

how much to be respected. Good night, MY friend and partner!' He shook his hand in saying this, as if there

had been something serious at the bottom of their conversation; and they separated.

By this time they had visited the family on several occasions, and had always observed that even a passing

allusion to Mr Henry Gowan when he was not among them, brought back the cloud which had obscured Mr

Meagles's sunshine on the morning of the chance encounter at the Ferry. If Clennam had ever admitted the

forbidden passion into his breast, this period might have been a period of real trial; under the actual

Equally, if his heart had given entertainment to that prohibited guest, his silent fighting of his way through

the mental condition of this period might have been a little meritorious. In the constant effort not to be

betrayed into a new phase of the besetting sin of his experience, the pursuit of selfish objects by low and

small means, and to hold instead to some high principle of honour and generosity, there might have been a

little merit. In the resolution not even to avoid Mr Meagles's house, lest, in the selfish sparing of himself, he

should bring any slight distress upon the daughter through making her the cause of an estrangement which he

believed the father would regret, there might have been a little merit. In the modest truthfulness of always

keeping in view the greater equality of Mr Gowan's years and the greater attractions of his person and

manner, there might have been a little merit. In doing all this and much more, in a perfectly unaffected way

and with a manful and composed constancy, while the pain within him (peculiar as his life and history) was

very sharp, there might have been some quiet strength of character. But, after the resolution he had made, of

course he could have no such merits as these; and such a state of mind was nobody'snobody's.

Mr Gowan made it no concern of his whether it was nobody's or somebody's. He preserved his perfect

serenity of manner on all occasions, as if the possibility of Clennam's presuming to have debated the great

question were too distant and ridiculous to be imagined. He had always an affability to bestow on Clennam

and an ease to treat him with, which might of itself (in the supposititious case of his not having taken that

'I quite regret you were not with us yesterday,' said Mr Henry Gowan, calling on Clennam the next morning.

'By Jove, he is the finest creature!' said Gowan. 'So fresh, so green, trusts in such wonderful things!'

Here was one of the many little rough points that had a tendency to grate on Clennam's hearing. He put it

'He is charming! To see him mooning along to that time of life, laying down nothing by the way and picking

up nothing by the way, is delightful. It warms a man. So unspoilt, so simple, such a good soul! Upon my life

Mr Clennam, one feels desperately worldly and wicked in comparison with such an innocent creature. I speak

'Thank you for the compliment,' said Clennam, ill at ease; 'you are too, I hope?'

'So so,' rejoined the other. 'To be candid with you, tolerably. I am not a great impostor. Buy one of my

pictures, and I assure you, in confidence, it will not be worth the money. Buy one of another man'sany

great professor who beats me hollowand the chances are that the more you give him, the more he'll impose

'Painters, writers, patriots, all the rest who have stands in the market. Give almost any man I know ten

pounds, and he will impose upon you to a corresponding extent; a thousand poundsto a corresponding

extent; ten thousand poundsto a corresponding extent. So great the success, so great the imposition. But

what a capital world it is!' cried Gowan with warm enthusiasm. 'What a jolly, excellent, lovable world it is!'

'I had rather thought,' said Clennam, 'that the principle you mention was chiefly acted on by'

'Ah! Don't be hard upon the Barnacles,' said Gowan, laughing afresh, 'they are darling fellows! Even poor

little Clarence, the born idiot of the family, is the most agreeable and most endearing blockhead! And by

'And after all,' cried Gowan, with that characteristic balancing of his which reduced everything in the wide

world to the same light weight, 'though I can't deny that the Circumlocution Office may ultimately shipwreck

everybody and everything, still, that will probably not be in our timeand it's a school for gentlemen.'

'It's a very dangerous, unsatisfactory, and expensive school to the people who pay to keep the pupils there, I

'Ah! You are a terrible fellow,' returned Gowan, airily. 'I can understand how you have frightened that little

donkey, Clarence, the most estimable of mooncalves (I really love him) nearly out of his wits. But enough

of him, and of all the rest of them. I want to present you to my mother, Mr Clennam. Pray do me the favour to

In nobody's state of mind, there was nothing Clennam would have desired less, or would have been more at a

'My mother lives in a most primitive manner down in that dreary redbrick dungeon at Hampton Court,' said

Gowan. 'If you would make your own appointment, suggest your own day for permitting me to take you there

to dinner, you would be bored and she would be charmed. Really that's the state of the case.'

What could Clennam say after this? His retiring character included a great deal that was simple in the best

sense, because unpractised and unused; and in his simplicity and modesty, he could only say that he was

happy to place himself at Mr Gowan's disposal. Accordingly he said it, and the day was fixed. And a dreaded

day it was on his part, and a very unwelcome day when it came and they went down to Hampton Court

The venerable inhabitants of that venerable pile seemed, in those times, to be encamped there like a sort of

civilised gipsies. There was a temporary air about their establishments, as if they were going away the

moment they could get anything better; there was also a dissatisfied air about themselves, as if they took it

very ill that they had not already got something much better. Genteel blinds and makeshifts were more or less

observable as soon as their doors were opened; screens not half high enough, which made diningrooms out

of arched passages, and warded off obscure corners where footboys slept at nights with their heads among the

knives and forks; curtains which called upon you to believe that they didn't hide anything; panes of glass

which requested you not to see them; many objects of various forms, feigning to have no connection with

their guilty secret, a bed; disguised traps in walls, which were clearly coalcellars; affectations of no

thoroughfares, which were evidently doors to little kitchens. Mental reservations and artful mysteries grew

out of these things. Callers looking steadily into the eyes of their receivers, pretended not to smell cooking

three feet off; people, confronting closets accidentally left open, pretended not to see bottles; visitors with

their heads against a partition of thin canvas, and a page and a young female at high words on the other side,

made believe to be sitting in a primeval silence. There was no end to the small social accommodationbills of

this nature which the gipsies of gentility were constantly drawing upon, and accepting for, one another.

Some of these Bohemians were of an irritable temperament, as constantly soured and vexed by two mental

trials: the first, the consciousness that they had never got enough out of the public; the second, the

consciousness that the public were admitted into the building. Under the latter great wrong, a few suffered

dreadfullyparticularly on Sundays, when they had for some time expected the earth to open and swallow

the public up; but which desirable event had not yet occurred, in consequence of some reprehensible laxity in

Mrs Gowan's door was attended by a family servant of several years' standing, who had his own crow to

pluck with the public concerning a situation in the PostOffice which he had been for some time expecting,

and to which he was not yet appointed. He perfectly knew that the public could never have got him in, but he

grimly gratified himself with the idea that the public kept him out. Under the influence of this injury (and

perhaps of some little straitness and irregularity in the matter of wages), he had grown neglectful of his

person and morose in mind; and now beholding in Clennam one of the degraded body of his oppressors,

received him with ignominy. Mrs Gowan, however, received him with condescension. He found her a courtly

old lady, formerly a Beauty, and still sufficiently well favoured to have dispensed with the powder on her

nose and a certain impossible bloom under each eye. She was a little lofty with him; so was another old lady,

darkbrowed and highnosed, and who must have had something real about her or she could not have

existed, but it was certainly not her hair or her teeth or her figure or her complexion; so was a grey old

gentleman of dignified and sullen appearance; both of whom had come to dinner. But, as they had all been in

the British Embassy way in sundry parts of the earth, and as a British Embassy cannot better establish a

character with the Circumlocution Office than by treating its compatriots with illimitable contempt (else it

would become like the Embassies of other countries), Clennam felt that on the whole they let him off lightly.

The dignified old gentleman turned out to be Lord Lancaster Stiltstalking, who had been maintained by the

Circumlocution Office for many years as a representative of the Britannic Majesty abroad.

This noble Refrigerator had iced several European courts in his time, and had done it with such complete

success that the very name of Englishman yet struck cold to the stomachs of foreigners who had the

distinguished honour of remembering him at a distance of a quarter of a century.

He was now in retirement, and hence (in a ponderous white cravat, like a stiff snowdrift) was so obliging as

to shade the dinner. There was a whisper of the pervading Bohemian character in the nomadic nature of the

service and its curious races of plates and dishes; but the noble Refrigerator, infinitely better than plate or

porcelain, made it superb. He shaded the dinner, cooled the wines, chilled the gravy, and blighted the

There was only one other person in the room: a microscopically small footboy, who waited on the malevolent

man who hadn't got into the PostOffice. Even this youth, if his jacket could have been unbuttoned and his

heart laid bare, would have been seen, as a distant adherent of the Barnacle family, already to aspire to a

Mrs Gowan with a gentle melancholy upon her, occasioned by her son's being reduced to court the swinish

public as a follower of the low Arts, instead of asserting his birthright and putting a ring through its nose as

an acknowledged Barnacle, headed the conversation at dinner on the evil days. It was then that Clennam

'If John Barnacle,' said Mrs Gowan, after the degeneracy of the times had been fully ascertained, 'if John

Barnacle had but abandoned his most unfortunate idea of conciliating the mob, all would have been well, and

I think the country would have been preserved.' The old lady with the high nose assented; but added that if

Augustus Stiltstalking had in a general way ordered the cavalry out with instructions to charge, she thought

The noble Refrigerator assented; but added that if William Barnacle and Tudor Stiltstalking, when they came

over to one another and formed their evermemorable coalition, had boldly muzzled the newspapers, and

rendered it penal for any Editorperson to presume to discuss the conduct of any appointed authority abroad

It was agreed that the country (another word for the Barnacles and Stiltstalkings) wanted preserving, but how

it came to want preserving was not so clear. It was only clear that the question was all about John Barnacle,

Augustus Stiltstalking, William Barnacle and Tudor Stiltstalking, Tom, Dick, or Harry Barnacle or

Stiltstalking, because there was nobody else but mob. And this was the feature of the conversation which

impressed Clennam, as a man not used to it, very disagreeably: making him doubt if it were quite right to sit

there, silently hearing a great nation narrowed to such little bounds. Remembering, however, that in the

Parliamentary debates, whether on the life of that nation's body or the life of its soul, the question was usually

all about and between John Barnacle, Augustus Stiltstalking, William Barnacle and Tudor Stiltstalking, Tom,

Dick, or Harry Barnacle or Stiltstalking, and nobody else; he said nothing on the part of mob, bethinking

Mr Henry Gowan seemed to have a malicious pleasure in playing off the three talkers against each other, and

in seeing Clennam startled by what they said. Having as supreme a contempt for the class that had thrown

him off as for the class that had not taken him on, he had no personal disquiet in anything that passed. His

healthy state of mind appeared even to derive a gratification from Clennam's position of embarrassment and

isolation among the good company; and if Clennam had been in that condition with which Nobody was

incessantly contending, he would have suspected it, and would have struggled with the suspicion as a

In the course of a couple of hours the noble Refrigerator, at no time less than a hundred years behind the

period, got about five centuries in arrears, and delivered solemn political oracles appropriate to that epoch. He

finished by freezing a cup of tea for his own drinking, and retiring at his lowest temperature. Then Mrs

Gowan, who had been accustomed in her days of a vacant arm chair beside her to which to summon state to

retain her devoted slaves, one by one, for short audiences as marks of her especial favour, invited Clennam

with a turn of her fan to approach the presence. He obeyed, and took the tripod recently vacated by Lord

'Mr Clennam,' said Mrs Gowan, 'apart from the happiness I have in becoming known to you, though in this

odiously inconvenient place a mere barrackthere is a subject on which I am dying to speak to you. It is

the subject in connection with which my son first had, I believe, the pleasure of cultivating your

Clennam inclined his head, as a generally suitable reply to what he did not yet quite understand.

In nobody's difficulties, he would have found it very difficult to answer; very difficult indeed to smile, and

'Oh! You know!' she returned. 'This flame of Henry's. This unfortunate fancy. There! If it is a point of honour

'Men are so often mistaken on those points,' returned Mrs Gowan, shaking her head, 'that I candidly confess

to you I feel anything but sure of it, even now; though it is something to have Henry corroborated with so

The phrase would have given nobody mortal offence. Clennam replied, 'Excuse me, I doubt if I understand

'Picked the people up,' said Mrs Gowan, tapping the sticks of her closed fan (a large green one, which she

used as a handscreen) on her little table. 'Came upon them. Found them out. Stumbled UP against them.'

'I really cannot say,' said Clennam, 'where my friend Mr Meagles first presented Mr Henry Gowan to his

'I am pretty sure he picked her up at Rome; but never mind where somewhere. Now (this is entirely

'Really, ma'am,' returned Clennam, 'I am so undoubtedly plebeian myself, that I do not feel qualified to

'Very neat!' said Mrs Gowan, coolly unfurling her screen. 'Very happy! From which I infer that you secretly

'That's comforting, and I hope you may be right. Did Henry tell me you had travelled with them?' 'I travelled

with my friend Mr Meagles, and his wife and daughter, during some months.' (Nobody's heart might have

'Really comforting, because you must have had a large experience of them. You see, Mr Clennam, this thing

has been going on for a long time, and I find no improvement in it. Therefore to have the opportunity of

speaking to one so well informed about it as yourself, is an immense relief to me. Quite a boon. Quite a

'Pardon me,' returned Clennam, 'but I am not in Mr Henry Gowan's confidence. I am far from being so well

informed as you suppose me to be. Your mistake makes my position a very delicate one. No word on this

Mrs Gowan glanced at the other end of the room, where her son was playing ecarte on a sofa, with the old

'Not in his confidence? No,' said Mrs Gowan. 'No word has passed between you? No. That I can imagine. But

there are unexpressed confidences, Mr Clennam; and as you have been together intimately among these

people, I cannot doubt that a confidence of that sort exists in the present case. Perhaps you have heard that I

have suffered the keenest distress of mind from Henry's having taken to a pursuit whichwell!' shrugging

her shoulders, 'a very respectable pursuit, I dare say, and some artists are, as artists, quite superior persons;

still, we never yet in our family have gone beyond an Amateur, and it is a pardonable weakness to feel a

As Mrs Gowan broke off to heave a sigh, Clennam, however resolute to be magnanimous, could not keep

down the thought that there was mighty little danger of the family's ever going beyond an Amateur, even as it

'Henry,' the mother resumed, 'is selfwilled and resolute; and as these people naturally strain every nerve to

catch him, I can entertain very little hope, Mr Clennam, that the thing will be broken off. I apprehend the

girl's fortune will be very small; Henry might have done much better; there is scarcely anything to

compensate for the connection: still, he acts for himself; and if I find no improvement within a short time, I

see no other course than to resign myself and make the best of these people. I am infinitely obliged to you for

what you have told me.' As she shrugged her shoulders, Clennam stiffly bowed again. With an uneasy flush

upon his face, and hesitation in his manner, he then said in a still lower tone than he had adopted yet:

'Mrs Gowan, I scarcely know how to acquit myself of what I feel to be a duty, and yet I must ask you for your

kind consideration in attempting to discharge it. A misconception on your part, a very great misconception if

I may venture to call it so, seems to require setting right. You have supposed Mr Meagles and his family to

'Every nerve,' repeated Mrs Gowan, looking at him in calm obstinacy, with her green fan between her face

'Now that is so far,' said Arthur, 'from being the case, that I know Mr Meagles to be unhappy in this matter;

and to have interposed all reasonable obstacles with the hope of putting an end to it.'

Mrs Gowan shut up her great green fan, tapped him on the arm with it, and tapped her smiling lips. 'Why, of

'Why, don't I know my son, and don't I know that this is exactly the way to hold him?' said Mrs Gowan,

contemptuously; 'and do not these Miggles people know it, at least as well as I? Oh, shrewd people, Mr

Clennam: evidently people of business! I believe Miggles belonged to a Bank. It ought to have been a very

profitable Bank, if he had much to do with its management. This is very well done, indeed.'

It made such a painful impression upon him to hear her talking in this haughty tone, and to see her patting her

contemptuous lips with her fan, that he said very earnestly, 'Believe me, ma'am, this is unjust, a perfectly

'Suspicion?' repeated Mrs Gowan. 'Not suspicion, Mr Clennam, Certainty. It is very knowingly done indeed,

and seems to have taken YOU in completely.' She laughed; and again sat tapping her lips with her fan, and

tossing her head, as if she added, 'Don't tell me. I know such people will do anything for the honour of such

At this opportune moment, the cards were thrown up, and Mr Henry Gowan came across the room saying,

'Mother, if you can spare Mr Clennam for this time, we have a long way to go, and it's getting late.' Mr

Clennam thereupon rose, as he had no choice but to do; and Mrs Gowan showed him, to the last, the same

'You have had a portentously long audience of my mother,' said Gowan, as the door closed upon them. 'I

They had a little open phaeton for the journey, and were soon in it on the road home. Gowan, driving, lighted

a cigar; Clennam declined one. Do what he would, he fell into such a mood of abstraction that Gowan said

again, 'I am very much afraid my mother has bored you?' To which he roused himself to answer, 'Not at all!'

In that state of mind which rendered nobody uneasy, his thoughtfulness would have turned principally on the

man at his side. He would have thought of the morning when he first saw him rooting out the stones with his

heel, and would have asked himself, 'Does he jerk me out of the path in the same careless, cruel way?' He

would have thought, had this introduction to his mother been brought about by him because he knew what

she would say, and that he could thus place his position before a rival and loftily warn him off, without

himself reposing a word of confidence in him? He would have thought, even if there were no such design as

that, had he brought him there to play with his repressed emotions, and torment him? The current of these

meditations would have been stayed sometimes by a rush of shame, bearing a remonstrance to himself from

his own open nature, representing that to shelter such suspicions, even for the passing moment, was not to

hold the high, unenvious course he had resolved to keep. At those times, the striving within him would have

been hardest; and looking up and catching Gowan's eyes, he would have started as if he had done him an

Then, looking at the dark road and its uncertain objects, he would have gradually trailed off again into

thinking, 'Where are we driving, he and I, I wonder, on the darker road of life? How will it be with us, and

with her, in the obscure distance?' Thinking of her, he would have been troubled anew with a reproachful

misgiving that it was not even loyal to her to dislike him, and that in being so easily prejudiced against him

'You are evidently out of spirits,' said Gowan; 'I am very much afraid my mother must have bored you

A frequently recurring doubt, whether Mr Pancks's desire to collect information relative to the Dorrit family

could have any possible bearing on the misgivings he had imparted to his mother on his return from his long

exile, caused Arthur Clennam much uneasiness at this period. What Mr Pancks already knew about the Dorrit

family, what more he really wanted to find out, and why he should trouble his busy head about them at all,

were questions that often perplexed him. Mr Pancks was not a man to waste his time and trouble in

researches prompted by idle curiosity. That he had a specific object Clennam could not doubt. And whether

the attainment of that object by Mr Pancks's industry might bring to light, in some untimely way, secret

reasons which had induced his mother to take Little Dorrit by the hand, was a serious speculation.

Not that he ever wavered either in his desire or his determination to repair a wrong that had been done in his

father's time, should a wrong come to light, and be reparable. The shadow of a supposed act of injustice,

which had hung over him since his father's death, was so vague and formless that it might be the result of a

reality widely remote from his idea of it. But, if his apprehensions should prove to be well founded, he was

ready at any moment to lay down all he had, and begin the world anew. As the fierce dark teaching of his

childhood had never sunk into his heart, so that first article in his code of morals was, that he must begin, in

practical humility, with looking well to his feet on Earth, and that he could never mount on wings of words to

Heaven. Duty on earth, restitution on earth, action on earth; these first, as the first steep steps upward. Strait

was the gate and narrow was the way; far straiter and narrower than the broad high road paved with vain

professions and vain repetitions, motes from other men's eyes and liberal delivery of others to the

No. It was not a selfish fear or hesitation that rendered him uneasy, but a mistrust lest Pancks might not

observe his part of the understanding between them, and, making any discovery, might take some course

upon it without imparting it to him. On the other hand, when he recalled his conversation with Pancks, and

the little reason he had to suppose that there was any likelihood of that strange personage being on that track

at all, there were times when he wondered that he made so much of it. Labouring in this sea, as all barks

The removal of Little Dorrit herself from their customary association, did not mend the matter. She was so

much out, and so much in her own room, that he began to miss her and to find a blank in her place. He had

written to her to inquire if she were better, and she had written back, very gratefully and earnestly telling him

not to be uneasy on her behalf, for she was quite well; but he had not seen her, for what, in their intercourse,

He returned home one evening from an interview with her father, who had mentioned that she was out

visitingwhich was what he always said when she was hard at work to buy his supperand found Mr

Meagles in an excited state walking up and down his room. On his opening the door, Mr Meagles stopped,

'Wouldn't count fiveandtwenty, sir; couldn't be got to do it; stopped at eight, and took herself off.'

'Never to come back,' said Mr Meagles, shaking his head. 'You don't know that girl's passionate and proud

character. A team of horses couldn't draw her back now; the bolts and bars of the old Bastille couldn't keep

'As to how it happened, it's not so easy to relate: because you must have the unfortunate temperament of the

poor impetuous girl herself, before you can fully understand it. But it came about in this way. Pet and Mother

and I have been having a good deal of talk together of late. I'll not disguise from you, Clennam, that those

conversations have not been of as bright a kind as I could wish; they have referred to our going away again.

'An object,' said Mr Meagles, after a moment's pause, 'that I will not disguise from you, either, Clennam.

There's an inclination on the part of my dear child which I am sorry for. Perhaps you guess the person. Henry

'Well!' said Mr Meagles, with a heavy sigh, 'I wish to God you had never had to hear it. However, so it is.

Mother and I have done all we could to get the better of it, Clennam. We have tried tender advice, we have

tried time, we have tried absence. As yet, of no use. Our late conversations have been upon the subject of

going away for another year at least, in order that there might be an entire separation and breaking off for that

term. Upon that question, Pet has been unhappy, and therefore Mother and I have been unhappy.' Clennam

'Well!' continued Mr Meagles in an apologetic way, 'I admit as a practical man, and I am sure Mother would

admit as a practical woman, that we do, in families, magnify our troubles and make mountains of our

molehills in a way that is calculated to be rather trying to people who look onto mere outsiders, you know,

Still, Pet's happiness or unhappiness is quite a life or death question with us; and we may be excused, I hope,

for making much of it. At all events, it might have been borne by Tattycoram. Now, don't you think so?'

'I do indeed think so,' returned Clennam, in most emphatic recognition of this very moderate expectation.

'No, sir,' said Mr Meagles, shaking his head ruefully. 'She couldn't stand it. The chafing and firing of that girl,

the wearing and tearing of that girl within her own breast, has been such that I have softly said to her again

and again in passing her, 'Fiveandtwenty, Tattycoram, fiveandtwenty!" I heartily wish she could have

gone on counting fiveandtwenty day and night, and then it wouldn't have happened.'

Mr Meagles with a despondent countenance in which the goodness of his heart was even more expressed than

in his times of cheerfulness and gaiety, stroked his face down from his forehead to his chin, and shook his

'I said to Mother (not that it was necessary, for she would have thought it all for herself), we are practical

people, my dear, and we know her story; we see in this unhappy girl some reflection of what was raging in

her mother's heart before ever such a creature as this poor thing was in the world; we'll gloss her temper over,

Mother, we won't notice it at present, my dear, we'll take advantage of some better disposition in her another

time. So we said nothing. But, do what we would, it seems as if it was to be; she broke out violently one

'If you ask me Why,' said Mr Meagles, a little disturbed by the question, for he was far more intent on

softening her case than the family's, 'I can only refer you to what I have just repeated as having been pretty

near my words to Mother. As to How, we had said Good night to Pet in her presence (very affectionately, I

must allow), and she had attended Pet upstairsyou remember she was her maid. Perhaps Pet, having been

out of sorts, may have been a little more inconsiderate than usual in requiring services of her: but I don't

'Thank you, Clennam,' said Mr Meagles, shaking him by the hand; 'you have often seen them together. Well!

We presently heard this unfortunate Tattycoram loud and angry, and before we could ask what was the

matter, Pet came back in a tremble, saying she was frightened of her. Close after her came Tattycoram in a

flaming rage. "I hate you all three," says she, stamping her foot at us. "I am bursting with hate of the whole

'I?' said Mr Meagles, with a plain good faith that might have commanded the belief of Mrs Gowan herself. 'I

Mr Meagles again stroked his face and shook his head, with an air of profound regret.

'She was so used to do it, Clennam, that even then, such a picture of passion as you never saw, she stopped

short, looked me full in the face, and counted (as I made out) to eight. But she couldn't control herself to go

any further. There she broke down, poor thing, and gave the other seventeen to the four winds. Then it all

burst out. She detested us, she was miserable with us, she couldn't bear it, she wouldn't bear it, she was

determined to go away. She was younger than her young mistress, and would she remain to see her always

held up as the only creature who was young and interesting, and to be cherished and loved? No. She wouldn't,

she wouldn't, she wouldn't! What did we think she, Tattycoram, might have been if she had been caressed and

cared for in her childhood, like her young mistress? As good as her? Ah! Perhaps fifty times as good. When

we pretended to be so fond of one another, we exulted over her; that was what we did; we exulted over her

and shamed her. And all in the house did the same. They talked about their fathers and mothers, and brothers

and sisters; they liked to drag them up before her face. There was Mrs Tickit, only yesterday, when her little

grandchild was with her, had been amused by the child's trying to call her (Tattycoram) by the wretched

name we gave her; and had laughed at the name. Why, who didn't; and who were we that we should have a

right to name her like a dog or a cat? But she didn't care. She would take no more benefits from us; she would

fling us her name back again, and she would go. She would leave us that minute, nobody should stop her, and

Mr Meagles had recited all this with such a vivid remembrance of his original, that he was almost as flushed

'Ah, well!' he said, wiping his face. 'It was of no use trying reason then, with that vehement panting creature

(Heaven knows what her mother's story must have been); so I quietly told her that she should not go at that

late hour of night, and I gave her MY hand and took her to her room, and locked the house doors. But she

'No more,' returned Mr Meagles. 'I have been hunting about all day. She must have gone very early and very

'Stay! You want,' said Clennam, after a moment's reflection, 'to see her? I assume that?'

'Yes, assuredly; I want to give her another chance; Mother and Pet want to give her another chance; come!

You yourself,' said Mr Meagles, persuasively, as if the provocation to be angry were not his own at all, 'want

'It would be strange and hard indeed if I did not,' said Clennam, 'when you are all so forgiving. What I was

'I have. I did not think of her until I had pervaded the whole of our neighbourhood, and I don't know that I

should have done so then but for finding Mother and Pet, when I went home, full of the idea that Tattycoram

must have gone to her. Then, of course, I recalled what she said that day at dinner when you were first with

'To tell you the truth,' returned Mr Meagles, 'it's because I have an addled jumble of a notion on that subject

that you found me waiting here. There is one of those odd impressions in my house, which do mysteriously

get into houses sometimes, which nobody seems to have picked up in a distinct form from anybody, and yet

which everybody seems to have got hold of loosely from somebody and let go again, that she lives, or was

living, thereabouts.' Mr Meagles handed him a slip of paper, on which was written the name of one of the dull

'No number, my dear Clennam?' returned his friend. 'No anything! The very name of the street may have

been floating in the air; for, as I tell you, none of my people can say where they got it from. However, it's

worth an inquiry; and as I would rather make it in company than alone, and as you too were a

fellowtraveller of that immovable woman's, I thought perhaps' Clennam finished the sentence for him by

It was now summertime; a grey, hot, dusty evening. They rode to the top of Oxford Street, and there

alighting, dived in among the great streets of melancholy stateliness, and the little streets that try to be as

stately and succeed in being more melancholy, of which there is a labyrinth near Park Lane. Wildernesses of

corner houses, with barbarous old porticoes and appurtenances; horrors that came into existence under some

wrongheaded person in some wrongheaded time, still demanding the blind admiration of all ensuing

generations and determined to do so until they tumbled down; frowned upon the twilight. Parasite little

tenements, with the cramp in their whole frame, from the dwarf halldoor on the giant model of His Grace's

in the Square to the squeezed window of the boudoir commanding the dunghills in the Mews, made the

evening doleful. Rickety dwellings of undoubted fashion, but of a capacity to hold nothing comfortably

except a dismal smell, looked like the last result of the great mansions' breeding inandin; and, where their

little supplementary bows and balconies were supported on thin iron columns, seemed to be scrofulously

Here and there a Hatchment, with the whole science of Heraldry in it, loomed down upon the street, like an

Archbishop discoursing on Vanity. The shops, few in number, made no show; for popular opinion was as

nothing to them. The pastrycook knew who was on his books, and in that knowledge could be calm, with a

few glass cylinders of dowager peppermintdrops in his window, and halfa dozen ancient specimens of

currantjelly. A few oranges formed the greengrocer's whole concession to the vulgar mind. A single basket

made of moss, once containing plovers' eggs, held all that the poulterer had to say to the rabble. Everybody in

those streets seemed (which is always the case at that hour and season) to be gone out to dinner, and nobody

seemed to be giving the dinners they had gone to. On the doorsteps there were lounging footmen with bright

particoloured plumage and white polls, like an extinct race of monstrous birds; and butlers, solitary men of

recluse demeanour, each of whom appeared distrustful of all other butlers. The roll of carriages in the Park

was done for the day; the street lamps were lighting; and wicked little grooms in the tightest fitting garments,

with twists in their legs answering to the twists in their minds, hung about in pairs, chewing straws and

exchanging fraudulent secrets. The spotted dogs who went out with the carriages, and who were so associated

with splendid equipages that it looked like a condescension in those animals to come out without them,

accompanied helpers to and fro on messages. Here and there was a retiring publichouse which did not

require to be supported on the shoulders of the people, and where gentlemen out of livery were not much

This last discovery was made by the two friends in pursuing their inquiries. Nothing was there, or anywhere,

known of such a person as Miss Wade, in connection with the street they sought. It was one of the parasite

streets; long, regular, narrow, dull and gloomy; like a brick and mortar funeral. They inquired at several little

area gates, where a dejected youth stood spiking his chin on the summit of a precipitous little shoot of

wooden steps, but could gain no information. They walked up the street on one side of the way, and down it

on the other, what time two vociferous news sellers, announcing an extraordinary event that had never

happened and never would happen, pitched their hoarse voices into the secret chambers; but nothing came of

it. At length they stood at the corner from which they had begun, and it had fallen quite dark, and they were

It happened that in the street they had several times passed a dingy house, apparently empty, with bills in the

windows, announcing that it was to let. The bills, as a variety in the funeral procession, almost amounted to a

decoration. Perhaps because they kept the house separated in his mind, or perhaps because Mr Meagles and

himself had twice agreed in passing, 'It is clear she don't live there,' Clennam now proposed that they should

go back and try that house before finally going away. Mr Meagles agreed, and back they went.

'Empty,' said Mr Meagles, listening. 'Once more,' said Clennam, and knocked again. After that knock they

The confined entrance was so dark that it was impossible to make out distinctly what kind of person opened

the door; but it appeared to be an old woman. 'Excuse our troubling you,' said Clennam. 'Pray can you tell us

where Miss Wade lives?' The voice in the darkness unexpectedly replied, 'Lives here.'

After another delay, 'I suppose she is,' said the voice abruptly; 'you had better come in, and I'll ask.'

They 'were summarily shut into the close black house; and the figure rustling away, and speaking from a

higher level, said, 'Come up, if you please; you can't tumble over anything.' They groped their way upstairs

towards a faint light, which proved to be the light of the street shining through a window; and the figure left

'Odd enough,' assented Clennam in the same tone, 'but we have succeeded; that's the main point. Here's a

The light was a lamp, and the bearer was an old woman: very dirty, very wrinkled and dry. 'She's at home,'

she said (and the voice was the same that had spoken before); 'she'll come directly.' Having set the lamp

down on the table, the old woman dusted her hands on her apron, which she might have done for ever without

The lady whom they had come to see, if she were the present occupant of the house, appeared to have taken

up her quarters there as she might have established herself in an Eastern caravanserai. A small square of

carpet in the middle of the room, a few articles of furniture that evidently did not belong to the room, and a

disorder of trunks and travelling articles, formed the whole of her surroundings. Under some former regular

inhabitant, the stifling little apartment had broken out into a pierglass and a gilt table; but the gilding was as

faded as last year's flowers, and the glass was so clouded that it seemed to hold in magic preservation all the

fogs and bad weather it had ever reflected. The visitors had had a minute or two to look about them, when the

She was exactly the same as when they had parted. just as handsome, just as scornful, just as repressed. She

manifested no surprise in seeing them, nor any other emotion. She requested them to be seated; and declining

'I apprehend,' she said, 'that I know the cause of your favouring me with this visit. We may come to it at

'Miss Wade,' said Mr Meagles, 'will you be so kind as to say whether you know anything of her?'

'Then, ma'am,' said Mr Meagles, 'allow me to make known to you that I shall be happy to have her back, and

that my wife and daughter will be happy to have her back. She has been with us a long time: we don't forget

'You hope to know how to make allowances?' she returned, in a level, measured voice. 'For what?'

'I think my friend would say, Miss Wade,' Arthur Clennam interposed, seeing Mr Meagles rather at a loss,

'for the passionate sense that sometimes comes upon the poor girl, of being at a disadvantage. Which

The lady broke into a smile as she turned her eyes upon him. 'Indeed?' was all she answered.

She stood by the table so perfectly composed and still after this acknowledgment of his remark that Mr

Meagles stared at her under a sort of fascination, and could not even look to Clennam to make another move.

After waiting, awkwardly enough, for some moments, Arthur said: 'Perhaps it would be well if Mr Meagles

'That is easily done,' said she. 'Come here, child.' She had opened a door while saying this, and now led the

girl in by the hand. It was very curious to see them standing together: the girl with her disengaged fingers

plaiting the bosom of her dress, half irresolutely, half passionately; Miss Wade with her composed face

attentively regarding her, and suggesting to an observer, with extraordinary force, in her composure itself (as

a veil will suggest the form it covers), the unquenchable passion of her own nature.

'See here,' she said, in the same level way as before. 'Here is your patron, your master. He is willing to take

you back, my dear, if you are sensible of the favour and choose to go. You can be, again, a foil to his pretty

daughter, a slave to her pleasant wilfulness, and a toy in the house showing the goodness of the family. You

can have your droll name again, playfully pointing you out and setting you apart, as it is right that you should

be pointed out and set apart. (Your birth, you know; you must not forget your birth.) You can again be shown

to this gentleman's daughter, Harriet, and kept before her, as a living reminder of her own superiority and her

gracious condescension. You can recover all these advantages and many more of the same kind which I dare

say start up in your memory while I speak, and which you lose in taking refuge with meyou can recover

them all by telling these gentlemen how humbled and penitent you are, and by going back to them to be

The girl who, under the influence of these words, had gradually risen in anger and heightened in colour,

answered, raising her lustrous black eyes for the moment, and clenching her hand upon the folds it had been

Miss Wade, still standing at her side holding her hand, looked quietly round and said with a smile,

Poor Mr Meagles's inexpressible consternation in hearing his motives and actions so perverted, had prevented

him from interposing any word until now; but now he regained the power of speech.

'Tattycoram,' said he, 'for I'll call you by that name still, my good girl, conscious that I meant nothing but

'I don't!' said she, looking up again, and almost rending herself with the same busy hand.

'No, not now, perhaps,' said Mr Meagles; 'not with that lady's eyes so intent upon you, Tattycoram,' she

glanced at them for a moment, 'and that power over you, which we see she exercises; not now, perhaps, but at

another time. Tattycoram, I'll not ask that lady whether she believes what she has said, even in the anger and

ill blood in which I and my friend here equally know she has spoken, though she subdues herself, with a

determination that any one who has once seen her is not likely to forget. I'll not ask you, with your

remembrance of my house and all belonging to it, whether you believe it. I'll only say that you have no

profession to make to me or mine, and no forgiveness to entreat; and that all in the world that I ask you to do,

She looked at him for an instant, and then said frowningly, 'I won't. Miss Wade, take me away, please.'

The contention that raged within her had no softening in it now; it was wholly between passionate defiance

and stubborn defiance. Her rich colour, her quick blood, her rapid breath, were all setting themselves against

the opportunity of retracing their steps. 'I won't. I won't. I won't!' she repeated in a low, thick voice. 'I'd be

Miss Wade, who had released her hold, laid her hand protectingly on the girl's neck for a moment, and then

said, looking round with her former smile and speaking exactly in her former tone, 'Gentlemen! What do you

'Oh, Tattycoram, Tattycoram!' cried Mr Meagles, adjuring her besides with an earnest hand. 'Hear that lady's

voice, look at that lady's face, consider what is in that lady's heart, and think what a future lies before you.

My child, whatever you may think, that lady's influence over youastonishing to us, and I should hardly go

too far in saying terrible to us to seeis founded in passion fiercer than yours, and temper more violent than

'I am alone here, gentlemen,' observed Miss Wade, with no change of voice or manner. 'Say anything you

'Politeness must yield to this misguided girl, ma'am,' said Mr Meagles, 'at her present pass; though I hope not

altogether to dismiss it, even with the injury you do her so strongly before me. Excuse me for reminding you

in her hearingI must say itthat you were a mystery to all of us, and had nothing in common with any of

us when she unfortunately fell in your way. I don't know what you are, but you don't hide, can't hide, what a

dark spirit you have within you. If it should happen that you are a woman, who, from whatever cause, has a

perverted delight in making a sisterwoman as wretched as she is (I am old enough to have heard of such), I

'Gentlemen!' said Miss Wade, calmly. 'When you have concludedMr Clennam, perhaps you will induce

'Not without another effort,' said Mr Meagles, stoutly. 'Tattycoram, my poor dear girl, count

fiveandtwenty.' 'Do not reject the hope, the certainty, this kind man offers you,' said Clennam in a low

'I won't! Miss Wade,' said the girl, with her bosom swelling high, and speaking with her hand held to her

'Tattycoram,' said Mr Meagles. 'Once more yet! The only thing I ask of you in the world, my child! Count

She put her hands tightly over her ears, confusedly tumbling down her bright black hair in the vehemence of

the action, and turned her face resolutely to the wall. Miss Wade, who had watched her under this final appeal

with that strange attentive smile, and that repressing hand upon her own bosom with which she had watched

her in her struggle at Marseilles, then put her arm about her waist as if she took possession of her for

And there was a visible triumph in her face when she turned it to dismiss the visitors.

'As it is the last time I shall have the honour,' she said, 'and as you have spoken of not knowing what I am,

and also of the foundation of my influence here, you may now know that it is founded in a common cause.

What your broken plaything is as to birth, I am. She has no name, I have no name. Her wrong is my wrong. I

This was addressed to Mr Meagles, who sorrowfully went out. As Clennam followed, she said to him, with

the same external composure and in the same level voice, but with a smile that is only seen on cruel faces: a

very faint smile, lifting the nostril, scarcely touching the lips, and not breaking away gradually, but instantly

'I hope the wife of your dear friend Mr Gowan, may be happy in the contrast of her extraction to this girl's

Not resting satisfied with the endeavours he had made to recover his lost charge, Mr Meagles addressed a

letter of remonstrance, breathing nothing but goodwill, not only to her, but to Miss Wade too. No answer

coming to these epistles, or to another written to the stubborn girl by the hand of her late young mistress,

which might have melted her if anything could (all three letters were returned weeks afterwards as having

been refused at the house door), he deputed Mrs Meagles to make the experiment of a personal interview.

That worthy lady being unable to obtain one, and being steadfastly denied admission, Mr Meagles besought

Arthur to essay once more what he could do. All that came of his compliance was, his discovery that the

empty house was left in charge of the old woman, that Miss Wade was gone, that the waifs and strays of

furniture were gone, and that the old woman would accept any number of halfcrowns and thank the donor

kindly, but had no information whatever to exchange for those coins, beyond constantly offering for perusal a

memorandum relative to fixtures, which the house agent's young man had left in the hall.

Unwilling, even under this discomfiture, to resign the ingrate and leave her hopeless, in case of her better

dispositions obtaining the mastery over the darker side of her character, Mr Meagles, for six successive days,

published a discreetly covert advertisement in the morning papers, to the effect that if a certain young person

who had lately left home without reflection, would at any time apply to his address at Twickenham,

everything would be as it had been before, and no reproaches need be apprehended. The unexpected

consequences of this notification suggested to the dismayed Mr Meagles for the first time that some hundreds

of young persons must be leaving their homes without reflection every day; for shoals of wrong young people

came down to Twickenham, who, not finding themselves received with enthusiasm, generally demanded

compensation by way of damages, in addition to coachhire there and back. Nor were these the only

uninvited clients whom the advertisement produced. The swarm of beggingletter writers, who would seem

to be always watching eagerly for any hook, however small, to hang a letter upon, wrote to say that having

seen the advertisement, they were induced to apply with confidence for various sums, ranging from ten

shillings to fifty pounds: not because they knew anything about the young person, but because they felt that

to part with those donations would greatly relieve the advertiser's mind. Several projectors, likewise, availed

themselves of the same opportunity to correspond with Mr Meagles; as, for example, to apprise him that their

attention having been called to the advertisement by a friend, they begged to state that if they should ever

hear anything of the young person, they would not fail to make it known to him immediately, and that in the

meantime if he would oblige them with the funds necessary for bringing to perfection a certain entirely novel

Mr Meagles and his family, under these combined discouragements, had begun reluctantly to give up

Tattycoram as irrecoverable, when the new and active firm of Doyce and Clennam, in their private capacities,

went down on a Saturday to stay at the cottage until Monday. The senior partner took the coach, and the

A tranquil summer sunset shone upon him as he approached the end of his walk, and passed through the

meadows by the river side. He had that sense of peace, and of being lightened of a weight of care, which

country quiet awakens in the breasts of dwellers in towns. Everything within his view was lovely and placid.

The rich foliage of the trees, the luxuriant grass diversified with wild flowers, the little green islands in the

river, the beds of rushes, the waterlilies floating on the surface of the stream, the distant voices in boats

borne musically towards him on the ripple of the water and the evening air, were all expressive of rest. In the

occasional leap of a fish, or dip of an oar, or twittering of a bird not yet at roost, or distant barking of a dog,

or lowing of a cowin all such sounds, there was the prevailing breath of rest, which seemed to encompass

him in every scent that sweetened the fragrant air. The long lines of red and gold in the sky, and the glorious

track of the descending sun, were all divinely calm. Upon the purple treetops far away, and on the green

height near at hand up which the shades were slowly creeping, there was an equal hush. Between the real

landscape and its shadow in the water, there was no division; both were so untroubled and clear, and, while

so fraught with solemn mystery of life and death, so hopefully reassuring to the gazer's soothed heart,

Clennam had stopped, not for the first time by many times, to look about him and suffer what he saw to sink

into his soul, as the shadows, looked at, seemed to sink deeper and deeper into the water. He was slowly

resuming his way, when he saw a figure in the path before him which he had, perhaps, already associated

Minnie was there, alone. She had some roses in her hand, and seemed to have stood still on seeing him,

waiting for him. Her face was towards him, and she appeared to have been coming from the opposite

direction. There was a flutter in her manner, which Clennam had never seen in it before; and as he came near

her, it entered his mind all at once that she was there of a set purpose to speak to him.

She gave him her hand, and said, 'You wonder to see me here by myself? But the evening is so lovely, I have

strolled further than I meant at first. I thought it likely I might meet you, and that made me more confident.

As Clennam said that it was his favourite way, he felt her hand falter on his arm, and saw the roses shake.

'Will you let me give you one, Mr Clennam? I gathered them as I came out of the garden. Indeed, I almost

gathered them for you, thinking it so likely I might meet you. Mr Doyce arrived more than an hour ago, and

His own hand shook, as he accepted a rose or two from hers and thanked her. They were now by an avenue of

trees. Whether they turned into it on his movement or on hers matters little. He never knew how that was.

'It is very grave here,' said Clennam, 'but very pleasant at this hour. Passing along this deep shade, and out at

that arch of light at the other end, we come upon the ferry and the cottage by the best approach, I think.' In

her simple gardenhat and her light summer dress, with her rich brown hair naturally clustering about her,

and her wonderful eyes raised to his for a moment with a look in which regard for him and trustfulness in him

were strikingly blended with a kind of timid sorrow for him, she was so beautiful that it was well for his

peaceor ill for his peace, he did not quite know whichthat he had made that vigorous resolution he had

She broke a momentary silence by inquiring if he knew that papa had been thinking of another tour abroad?

He said he had heard it mentioned. She broke another momentary silence by adding, with some hesitation,

'Mr Clennam,' she said, hesitating more timidly yet, and speaking so low that he bent his head to hear her. 'I

should very much like to give you my confidence, if you would not mind having the goodness to receive it. I

should have very much liked to have given it to you long ago, becauseI felt that you were becoming so

'How can I be otherwise than proud of it at any time! Pray give it to me. Pray trust me.'

'I could never have been afraid of trusting you,' she returned, raising her eyes frankly to his face. 'I think I

would have done so some time ago, if I had known how. But I scarcely know how, even now.'

'Mr Gowan,' said Arthur Clennam, 'has reason to be very happy. God bless his wife and him!'

She wept, as she tried to thank him. He reassured her, took her hand as it lay with the trembling roses in it on

his arm, took the remaining roses from it, and put it to his lips. At that time, it seemed to him, he first finally

resigned the dying hope that had flickered in nobody's heart so much to its pain and trouble; and from that

time he became in his own eyes, as to any similar hope or prospect, a very much older man who had done

He put the roses in his breast and they walked on for a little while, slowly and silently, under the umbrageous

trees. Then he asked her, in a voice of cheerful kindness, was there anything else that she would say to him as

her friend and her father's friend, many years older than herself; was there any trust she would repose in him,

any service she would ask of him, any little aid to her happiness that she could give him the lasting

She was going to answer, when she was so touched by some little hidden sorrow or sympathywhat could it

have been?that she said, bursting into tears again: 'O Mr Clennam! Good, generous, Mr Clennam, pray tell

After clasping both her hands upon his arm, and looking confidentially up into his face, with some hurried

words to the effect that she thanked him from her heart (as she did, if it be the source of earnestness), she

gradually composed herself, with now and then a word of encouragement from him, as they walked on slowly

'And, now, Minnie Gowan,' at length said Clennam, smiling; 'will you ask me nothing?'

'You know how I am loved at home, and how I love home. You can hardly think it perhaps, dear Mr

Clennam,' she spoke with great agitation, 'seeing me going from it of my own free will and choice, but I do so

'No, no. But it is strange, even to me, that loving it so much and being so much beloved in it, I can bear to

'My dear girl,' said Clennam, 'it is in the natural progress and change of time. All homes are left so.'

'Yes, I know; but all homes are not left with such a blank in them as there will be in mine when I am gone.

Not that there is any scarcity of far better and more endearing and more accomplished girls than I am; not that

Pet's affectionate heart was overcharged, and she sobbed while she pictured what would happen.

'I know what a change papa will feel at first, and I know that at first I cannot be to him anything like what I

have been these many years. And it is then, Mr Clennam, then more than at any time, that I beg and entreat

you to remember him, and sometimes to keep him company when you can spare a little while; and to tell him

that you know I was fonder of him when I left him, than I ever was in all my life. For there is nobodyhe

told me so himself when he talked to me this very daythere is nobody he likes so well as you, or trusts so

A clue to what had passed between the father and daughter dropped like a heavy stone into the well of

Clennam's heart, and swelled the water to his eyes. He said, cheerily, but not quite so cheerily as he tried to

'If I do not speak of mama,' said Pet, more moved by, and more pretty in, her innocent grief, than Clennam

could trust himself even to considerfor which reason he counted the trees between them and the fading

light as they slowly diminished in number'it is because mama will understand me better in this action, and

will feel my loss in a different way, and will look forward in a different manner. But you know what a dear,

'And, dear Mr Clennam,' said Minnie, 'because papa and one whom I need not name, do not fully appreciate

and understand one another yet, as they will byandby; and because it will be the duty, and the pride, and

pleasure of my new life, to draw them to a better knowledge of one another, and to be a happiness to one

another, and to be proud of one another, and to love one another, both loving me so dearly; oh, as you are a

kind, true man! when I am first separated from home (I am going a long distance away), try to reconcile papa

to him a little more, and use your great influence to keep him before papa's mind free from prejudice and in

Poor Pet! Selfdeceived, mistaken child! When were such changes ever made in men's natural relations to

one another: when was such reconcilement of ingrain differences ever effected! It has been tried many times

by other daughters, Minnie; it has never succeeded; nothing has ever come of it but failure.

So Clennam thought. So he did not say; it was too late. He bound himself to do all she asked, and she knew

They were now at the last tree in the avenue. She stopped, and withdrew her arm. Speaking to him with her

eyes lifted up to his, and with the hand that had lately rested on his sleeve trembling by touching one of the

'Dear Mr Clennam, in my happinessfor I am happy, though you have seen me cryingI cannot bear to

leave any cloud between us. If you have anything to forgive me (not anything that I have wilfully done, but

any trouble I may have caused you without meaning it, or having it in my power to help it), forgive me

He stooped to meet the guileless face that met his without shrinking. He kissed it, and answered, Heaven

knew that he had nothing to forgive. As he stooped to meet the innocent face once again, she whispered,

'Goodbye!' and he repeated it. It was taking leave of all his old hopesall nobody's old restless doubts.

They came out of the avenue next moment, arminarm as they had entered it: and the trees seemed to close

The voices of Mr and Mrs Meagles and Doyce were audible directly, speaking near the garden gate. Hearing

Pet's name among them, Clennam called out, 'She is here, with me.' There was some little wondering and

laughing until they came up; but as soon as they had all come together, it ceased, and Pet glided away.

Mr Meagles, Doyce, and Clennam, without speaking, walked up and down on the brink of the river, in the

light of the rising moon, for a few minutes; and then Doyce lingered behind, and went into the house. Mr

Meagles and Clennam walked up and down together for a few minutes more without speaking, until at length

'Arthur,' said he, using that familiar address for the first time in their communication, 'do you remember my

telling you, as we walked up and down one hot morning, looking over the harbour at Marseilles, that Pet's

baby sister who was dead seemed to Mother and me to have grown as she had grown, and changed as she had

'You remember my saying that our thoughts had never been able to separate those twin sisters, and that, in

'Arthur,' said Mr Meagles, much subdued, 'I carry that fancy further tonight. I feel tonight, my dear fellow,

as if you had loved my dead child very tenderly, and had lost her when she was like what Pet is now.'

Mr Meagles fell away, and he was left alone. When he had walked on the river's brink in the peaceful

moonlight for some half an hour, he put his hand in his breast and tenderly took out the handful of roses.

Perhaps he put them to his heart, perhaps he put them to his lips, but certainly he bent down on the shore and

gently launched them on the flowing river. Pale and unreal in the moonlight, the river floated them away. The

lights were bright within doors when he entered, and the faces on which they shone, his own face not

excepted, were soon quietly cheerful. They talked of many subjects (his partner never had had such a ready

store to draw upon for the beguiling of the time), and so to bed, and to sleep. While the flowers, pale and

unreal in the moonlight, floated away upon the river; and thus do greater things that once were in our breasts,

The house in the city preserved its heavy dulness through all these transactions, and the invalid within it

turned the same unvarying round of life. Morning, noon, and night, morning, noon, and night, each recurring

with its accompanying monotony, always the same reluctant return of the same sequences of machinery, like

The wheeled chair had its associated remembrances and reveries, one may suppose, as every place that is

made the station of a human being has. Pictures of demolished streets and altered houses, as they formerly

were when the occupant of the chair was familiar with them, images of people as they too used to be, with

little or no allowance made for the lapse of time since they were seen; of these, there must have been many in

the long routine of gloomy days. To stop the clock of busy existence at the hour when we were personally

sequestered from it, to suppose mankind stricken motionless when we were brought to a standstill, to be

unable to measure the changes beyond our view by any larger standard than the shrunken one of our own

uniform and contracted existence, is the infirmity of many invalids, and the mental unhealthiness of almost

What scenes and actors the stern woman most reviewed, as she sat from season to season in her one dark

room, none knew but herself. Mr Flintwinch, with his wry presence brought to bear upon her daily like some

eccentric mechanical force, would perhaps have screwed it out of her, if there had been less resistance in her;

but she was too strong for him. So far as Mistress Affery was concerned, to regard her liegelord and her

disabled mistress with a face of blank wonder, to go about the house after dark with her apron over her head,

always to listen for the strange noises and sometimes to hear them, and never to emerge from her ghostly,

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 countinghouses, 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

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

Little Dorrit had finished a long day's work in Mrs Clennam's room, and was neatly gathering up her shreds

and odds and ends before going home. Mr Pancks, whom Affery had just shown in, was addressing an

inquiry to Mrs Clennam on the subject of her health, coupled with the remark that, 'happening to find himself

in that direction,' he had looked in to inquire, on behalf of his proprietor, how she found herself. Mrs

'Mr Casby knows,' said she, 'that I am not subject to changes. The change that I await here is the great

'Indeed, ma'am?' returned Mr Pancks, with a wandering eye towards the figure of the little seamstress on her

knee picking threads and fraying of her work from the carpet. 'You look nicely, ma'am.'

'I bear what I have to bear,' she answered. 'Do you what you have to do.' 'Thank you, ma'am,' said Mr Pancks,

'Why, yes, ma'am,' said Pancks, 'rather so lately; I have lately been round this way a good deal, owing to one

thing and another.' 'Beg Mr Casby and his daughter not to trouble themselves, by deputy, about me. When

they wish to see me, they know I am here to see them. They have no need to trouble themselves to send. You

have no need to trouble yourself to come.' 'Not the least trouble, ma'am,' said Mr Pancks. 'You really are

The dismissal, and its accompanying finger pointed straight at the door, was so curt and direct that Mr Pancks

did not see his way to prolong his visit. He stirred up his hair with his sprightliest expression, glanced at the

little figure again, said 'Good evening, ma 'am; don't come down, Mrs Affery, I know the road to the door,'

and steamed out. Mrs Clennam, her chin resting on her hand, followed him with attentive and darkly

Slowly and thoughtfully, Mrs Clennam's eyes turned from the door by which Pancks had gone out, to Little

Dorrit, rising from the carpet. With her chin drooping more heavily on her hand, and her eyes vigilant and

lowering, the sick woman sat looking at her until she attracted her attention. Little Dorrit coloured under such

'Little Dorrit,' she said, when she at last broke silence, 'what do you know of that man?'

'I don't know anything of him, ma'am, except that I have seen him about, and that he has spoken to me.'

'I don't understand what he has said, he is so strange. But nothing rough or disagreeable.'

'I have fancied so,' said Little Dorrit. 'But why he should come here or anywhere for that, ma'am, I can't

Mrs Clennam cast her eyes towards the ground, and with her strong, set face, as intent upon a subject in her

mind as it had lately been upon the form that seemed to pass out of her view, sat absorbed. Some minutes

elapsed before she came out of this thoughtfulness, and resumed her hard composure.

Little Dorrit in the meanwhile had been waiting to go, but afraid to disturb her by moving. She now ventured

to leave the spot where she had been standing since she had risen, and to pass gently round by the wheeled

Mrs Clennam put out her hand, and laid it on her arm. Little Dorrit, confused under the touch, stood faltering.

Perhaps some momentary recollection of the story of the Princess may have been in her mind.

'Meaning,' said Mrs Clennam, with her unbent finger again pointing to the door, 'that man?'

'No ma'am.' Little Dorrit earnestly shook her head. 'Oh no! No one at all like him, or belonging to him.'

'Well!' said Mrs Clennam, almost smiling. 'It is no affair of mine. I ask, because I take an interest in you; and

because I believe I was your friend when you had no other who could serve you. Is that so?'

'Yes, ma'am; indeed it is. I have been here many a time when, but for you and the work you gave me, we

'We,' repeated Mrs Clennam, looking towards the watch, once her dead husband's, which always lay upon her

'Only father and I, now. I mean, only father and I to keep regularly out of what we get.'

'Have you undergone many privations? You and your father and who else there may be of you?' asked Mrs

Clennam, speaking deliberately, and meditatively turning the watch over and over.

'Sometimes it has been rather hard to live,' said Little Dorrit, in her soft voice, and timid uncomplaining way;

'That's well said!' Mrs Clennam quickly returned. 'That's the truth! You are a good, thoughtful girl. You are a

'It is only natural to be that. There is no merit in being that,' said Little Dorrit. 'I am indeed.' Mrs Clennam,

with a gentleness of which the dreaming Affery had never dreamed her to be capable, drew down the face of

her little seamstress, and kissed her on the forehead. 'Now go, Little Dorrit,' said she,'or you will be late, poor

In all the dreams Mistress Affery had been piling up since she first became devoted to the pursuit, she had

dreamed nothing more astonishing than this. Her head ached with the idea that she would find the other

clever one kissing Little Dorrit next, and then the two clever ones embracing each other and dissolving into

tears of tenderness for all mankind. The idea quite stunned her, as she attended the light footsteps down the

On opening it to let Little Dorrit out, she found Mr Pancks, instead of having gone his way, as in any less

wonderful place and among less wonderful phenomena he might have been reasonably expected to do,

The moment he saw Little Dorrit, he passed her briskly, said with his finger to his nose (as Mrs Affery

distinctly heard), 'Pancks the gipsy, fortunetelling,' and went away. 'Lord save us, here's a gipsy and a

fortuneteller in it now!' cried Mistress Affery. 'What next! She stood at the open door, staggering herself

with this enigma, on a rainy, thundery evening. The clouds were flying fast, and the wind was coming up in

gusts, banging some neighbouring shutters that had broken loose, twirling the rusty chimneycowls and

weathercocks, and rushing round and round a confined adjacent churchyard as if it had a mind to blow the

dead citizens out of their graves. The low thunder, muttering in all quarters of the sky at once, seemed to

threaten vengeance for this attempted desecration, and to mutter, 'Let them rest! Let them rest!'

Mistress Affery, whose fear of thunder and lightning was only to be equalled by her dread of the haunted

house with a premature and preternatural darkness in it, stood undecided whether to go in or not, until the

question was settled for her by the door blowing upon her in a violent gust of wind and shutting her out.

'What's to be done now, what's to be done now!' cried Mistress Affery, wringing her hands in this last uneasy

dream of all; 'when she's all alone by herself inside, and can no more come down to open it than the

In this dilemma, Mistress Affery, with her apron as a hood to keep the rain off, ran crying up and down the

solitary paved enclosure several times. Why she should then stoop down and look in at the keyhole of the

door as if an eye would open it, it would be difficult to say; but it is none the less what most people would

From this posture she started up suddenly, with a half scream, feeling something on her shoulder. It was the

The man was dressed like a traveller, in a foraging cap with fur about it, and a heap of cloak. He looked like a

foreigner. He had a quantity of hair and moustachejet black, except at the shaggy ends, where it had a tinge

of redand a high hook nose. He laughed at Mistress Affery's start and cry; and as he laughed, his

'And the dismal evening, andand everything,' said Affery. 'And here! The wind has been and blown the

'Hah!' said the gentleman, who took that very coolly. 'Indeed! Do you know such a name as Clennam about

'Lord bless us, I should think I did, I should think I did!' cried Affery, exasperated into a new wringing of

'Where!' cried Affery, goaded into another inspection of the keyhole. 'Where but here in this house? And she's

all alone in her room, and lost the use of her limbs and can't stir to help herself or me, and t'other clever one's

out, and Lord forgive me!' cried Affery, driven into a frantic dance by these accumulated considerations, 'if I

Taking a warmer view of the matter now that it concerned himself, the gentleman stepped back to glance at

the house, and his eye soon rested on the long narrow window of the little room near the hall door.

'Where may the lady be who has lost the use of her limbs, madam?' he inquired, with that peculiar smile

'Hah! I am of a fair size, but could not have the honour of presenting myself in that room without a ladder.

Now, madam, frankly frankness is a part of my charactershall I open the door for you?'

'Yes, bless you, sir, for a dear creetur, and do it at once,' cried Affery, 'for she may be acalling to me at this

very present minute, or may be setting herself a fire and burning herself to death, or there's no knowing what

'Stay, my good madam!' He restrained her impatience with a smooth white hand. 'Businesshours, I

'Let me make, then, a fair proposal. Fairness is a part of my character. I am just landed from the packetboat,

He showed her that his cloak was very wet, and that his boots were saturated with water; she had previously

observed that he was dishevelled and sallow, as if from a rough voyage, and so chilled that he could not keep

his teeth from chattering. 'I am just landed from the packetboat, madam, and have been delayed by the

weather: the infernal weather! In consequence of this, madam, some necessary business that I should

otherwise have transacted here within the regular hours (necessary business because money business), still

remains to be done. Now, if you will fetch any authorised neighbouring somebody to do it in return for my

opening the door, I'll open the door. If this arrangement should be objectionable, I'll' and with the same

Mistress Affery, heartily glad to effect the proposed compromise, gave in her willing adhesion to it. The

gentleman at once requested her to do him the favour of holding his cloak, took a short run at the narrow

window, made a leap at the sill, clung his way up the bricks, and in a moment had his hand at the sash,

raising it. His eyes looked so very sinister, as he put his leg into the room and glanced round at Mistress

Affery, that she thought with a sudden coldness, if he were to go straight upstairs to murder the invalid,

Happily he had no such purpose; for he reappeared, in a moment, at the house door. 'Now, my dear madam,'

he said, as he took back his cloak and threw it on, 'if you have the goodness towhat the Devil's that!'

The strangest of sounds. Evidently close at hand from the peculiar shock it communicated to the air, yet

subdued as if it were far off. A tremble, a rumble, and a fall of some light dry matter.

'I don't know what it is, but I've heard the like of it over and over again,' said Affery, who had caught his arm.

He could hardly be a very brave man, even she thought in her dreamy start and fright, for his trembling lips

'Bah! Nothing! Now, my dear madam, I think you spoke of some clever personage. Will you be so good as to

confront me with that genius?' He held the door in his hand, as though he were quite ready to shut her out

'And don't you stir from here, or speak if she calls, while I run round the corner.'

Affery had so vivid a fear of his going stealthily upstairs the moment her back was turned, that after

hurrying out of sight, she returned to the gateway to peep at him. Seeing him still on the threshold, more out

of the house than in it, as if he had no love for darkness and no desire to probe its mysteries, she flew into the

next street, and sent a message into the tavern to Mr Flintwinch, who came out directly. The two returning

togetherthe lady in advance, and Mr Flintwinch coming up briskly behind, animated with the hope of

shaking her before she could get housed saw the gentleman standing in the same place in the dark, and

heard the strong voice of Mrs Clennam calling from her room, 'Who is it? What is it? Why does no one

When Mr and Mrs Flintwinch panted up to the door of the old house in the twilight, Jeremiah within a second

of Affery, the stranger started back. 'Death of my soul!' he exclaimed. 'Why, how did you get here?'

Mr Flintwinch, to whom these words were spoken, repaid the stranger's wonder in full. He gazed at him with

blank astonishment; he looked over his own shoulder, as expecting to see some one he had not been aware of

standing behind him; he gazed at the stranger again, speechlessly, at a loss to know what he meant; he looked

to his wife for explanation; receiving none, he pounced upon her, and shook her with such heartiness that he

shook her cap off her head, saying between his teeth, with grim raillery, as he did it, 'Affery, my woman, you

must have a dose, my woman! This is some of your tricks! You have been dreaming again, mistress. What's it

about? Who is it? What does it mean! Speak out or be choked! It's the only choice I'll give you.'

Supposing Mistress Affery to have any power of election at the moment, her choice was decidedly to be

choked; for she answered not a syllable to this adjuration, but, with her bare head wagging violently

backwards and forwards, resigned herself to her punishment. The stranger, however, picking up her cap with

'Permit me,' said he, laying his hand on the shoulder of Jeremiah, who stopped and released his victim.

'Thank you. Excuse me. Husband and wife I know, from this playfulness. Haha! Always agreeable to see that

relation playfully maintained. Listen! May I suggest that somebody upstairs, in the dark, is becoming

This reference to Mrs Clennam's voice reminded Mr Flintwinch to step into the hall and call up the staircase.

'It's all right, I am here, Affery is coming with your light.' Then he said to the latter flustered woman, who

was putting her cap on, 'Get out with you, and get upstairs!' and then turned to the stranger and said to him,

'I am afraid,' said the stranger, 'I must be so troublesome as to propose a candle.'

'True,' assented Jeremiah. 'I was going to do so. Please to stand where you are while I get one.'

The visitor was standing in the doorway, but turned a little into the gloom of the house as Mr Flintwinch

turned, and pursued him with his eyes into the little room, where he groped about for a phosphorus box.

When he found it, it was damp, or otherwise out of order; and match after match that he struck into it lighted

sufficiently to throw a dull glare about his groping face, and to sprinkle his hands with pale little spots of fire,

but not sufficiently to light the candle. The stranger, taking advantage of this fitful illumination of his visage,

looked intently and wonderingly at him. Jeremiah, when he at last lighted the candle, knew he had been doing

this, by seeing the last shade of a lowering watchfulness clear away from his face, as it broke into the

'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 countinghouse. It's all right, I tell you!' petulantly breaking off to answer the

voice upstairs, still unsatisfied, though Affery was there, speaking in persuasive tones. 'Don't I tell you it's

'Timorous?' said Mr Flintwinch, turning his head to retort, as he went before with the candle. 'More

'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,

'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.

Jeremiah stood in his favourite attitude. The smiling Mr Blandois, opening his cloak to get his hand to a

breastpocket, paused to say, with a laugh in his glittering eyes, which it occurred to Mr Flintwinch were too

'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 duskfor 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 characterstill, however, uncommonly like.'

'Indeed?' said Jeremiah, perversely. 'But I have not received any letter of advice from anywhere respecting

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 breastpocket, 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.'

Mr Flintwinch took the letter, and read, under date of Paris, 'We have to present to you, on behalf of a highly

esteemed correspondent of our Firm, M. Blandois, of this city,' 'Such facilities as he may require and such

attentions as may lie in your power,' 'Also have to add that if you will honour M. Blandois' drafts at sight to

'Very good, sir,' said Mr Flintwinch. 'Take a chair. To the extent of anything that our House can dowe are

in a retired, old fashioned, steady way of business, sirwe shall be happy to render you our best assistance.

I observe, from the date of this, that we could not yet be advised of it. Probably you came over with the

'That I came over with the delayed mail, sir,' returned Mr Blandois, passing his white hand down his

highhooked nose, 'I know to the cost of my head and stomach: the detestable and intolerable weather having

racked them both. You see me in the plight in which I came out of the packet within this halfhour. I ought to

have been here hours ago, and then I should not have to apologise permit me to apologisefor presenting

myself so unreasonably, and frighteningno, bythebye, you said not frightening; permit me to apologise

Swagger and an air of authorised condescension do so much, that Mr Flintwinch had already begun to think

this a highly gentlemanly personage. Not the less unyielding with him on that account, he scraped his chin

and said, what could he have the honour of doing for Mr Blandois tonight, out of business hours?

'Faith!' returned that gentleman, shrugging his cloaked shoulders, 'I must change, and eat and drink, and be

lodged somewhere. Have the kindness to advise me, a total stranger, where, and money is a matter of perfect

indifference until tomorrow. The nearer the place, the better. Next door, if that's all.'

Mr Flintwinch was slowly beginning, 'For a gentleman of your habits, there is not in this immediate

'So much for my habits! my dear sir,' snapping his fingers. 'A citizen of the world has no habits. That I am, in

my poor way, a gentleman, by Heaven! I will not deny, but I have no unaccommodating prejudiced habits. A

clean room, a hot dish for dinner, and a bottle of not absolutely poisonous wine, are all I want tonight. But I

'There is,' said Mr Flintwinch, with more than his usual deliberation, as he met, for a moment, Mr Blandois'

shining eyes, which were restless; 'there is a coffeehouse and tavern close here, which, so far, I can

'I dispense with style!' said Mr Blandois, waving his hand. 'Do me the honour to show me the house, and

introduce me there (if I am not too troublesome), and I shall be infinitely obliged.' Mr Flintwinch, upon this,

looked up his hat, and lighted Mr Blandois across the hall again. As he put the candle on a bracket, where the

dark old panelling almost served as an extinguisher for it, he bethought himself of going up to tell the invalid

that he would not be absent five minutes. 'Oblige me,' said the visitor, on his saying so, 'by presenting my

card of visit. Do me the favour to add that I shall be happy to wait on Mrs Clennam, to offer my personal

compliments, and to apologise for having occasioned any agitation in this tranquil corner, if it should suit her

convenience to endure the presence of a stranger for a few minutes, after he shall have changed his wet

Jeremiah made all despatch, and said, on his return, 'She'll be glad to see you, sir; but, being conscious that

her sick room has no attractions, wishes me to say that she won't hold you to your offer, in case you should

'To think better of it,' returned the gallant Blandois, 'would be to slight a lady; to slight a lady would be to be

deficient in chivalry towards the sex; and chivalry towards the sex is a part of my character!' Thus expressing

himself, he threw the draggled skirt of his cloak over his shoulder, and accompanied Mr Flintwinch to the

tavern; taking up on the road a porter who was waiting with his portmanteau on the outer side of the gateway.

The house was kept in a homely manner, and the condescension of Mr Blandois was infinite. It seemed to fill

to inconvenience the little bar in which the widow landlady and her two daughters received him; it was much

too big for the narrow wainscoted room with a bagatelleboard in it, that was first proposed for his reception;

it perfectly swamped the little private holiday sitting room of the family, which was finally given up to him.

Here, in dry clothes and scented linen, with sleeked hair, a great ring on each forefinger and a massive show

of watchchain, Mr Blandois waiting for his dinner, lolling on a windowseat with his knees drawn up,

looked (for all the difference in the setting of the jewel) fearfully and wonderfully like a certain Monsieur

Rigaud who had once so waited for his breakfast, lying on the stone ledge of the iron grating of a cell in a

His greed at dinner, too, was closely in keeping with the greed of Monsieur Rigaud at breakfast. His

avaricious manner of collecting all the eatables about him, and devouring some with his eyes while devouring

others with his jaws, was the same manner. His utter disregard of other people, as shown in his way of tossing

the little womanly toys of furniture about, flinging favourite cushions under his boots for a softer rest, and

crushing delicate coverings with his big body and his great black head, had the same brute selfishness at the

bottom of it. The softly moving hands that were so busy among the dishes had the old wicked facility of the

hands that had clung to the bars. And when he could eat no more, and sat sucking his delicate fingers one by

one and wiping them on a cloth, there wanted nothing but the substitution of vineleaves to finish the picture.

On this man, with his moustache going up and his nose coming down in that most evil of smiles, and with his

surface eyes looking as if they belonged to his dyed hair, and had had their natural power of reflecting light

stopped by some similar process, Nature, always true, and never working in vain, had set the mark, Beware!

It was not her fault, if the warning were fruitless. She is never to blame in any such instance.

Mr Blandois, having finished his repast and cleaned his fingers, took a cigar from his pocket, and, lying on

the windowseat again, smoked it out at his leisure, occasionally apostrophising the smoke as it parted from

'Blandois, you shall turn the tables on society, my little child. Haha! Holy blue, you have begun well,

Blandois! At a pinch, an excellent master in English or French; a man for the bosom of families! You have a

quick perception, you have humour, you have ease, you have insinuating manners, you have a good

appearance; in effect, you are a gentleman! A gentleman you shall live, my small boy, and a gentleman you

shall die. You shall win, however the game goes. They shall all confess your merit, Blandois. You shall

subdue the society which has grievously wronged you, to your own high spirit. Death of my soul! You are

To such soothing murmurs did this gentleman smoke out his cigar and drink out his bottle of wine. Both

being finished, he shook himself into a sitting attitude; and with the concluding serious apostrophe, 'Hold,

then! Blandois, you ingenious one, have all your wits about you!' arose and went back to the house of

He was received at the door by Mistress Affery, who, under instructions from her lord, had lighted up two

candles in the hall and a third on the staircase, and who conducted him to Mrs Clennam's room. Tea was

prepared there, and such little company arrangements had been made as usually attended the reception of

expected visitors. They were slight on the greatest occasion, never extending beyond the production of the

China teaservice, and the covering of the bed with a sober and sad drapery. For the rest, there was the

bierlike sofa with the block upon it, and the figure in the widow's dress, as if attired for execution; the fire

topped by the mound of damped ashes; the grate with its second little mound of ashes; the kettle and the

Mr Flintwinch presented the gentleman commended to the consideration of Clennam and Co. Mrs Clennam,

who had the letter lying before her, bent her head and requested him to sit. They looked very closely at one

another. That was but natural curiosity. 'I thank you, sir, for thinking of a disabled woman like me. Few who

come here on business have any remembrance to bestow on one so removed from observation. It would be

idle to expect that they should have. Out of sight, out of mind. While I am grateful for the exception, I don't

Mr Blandois, in his most gentlemanly manner, was afraid he had disturbed her by unhappily presenting

himself at such an unconscionable time. For which he had already offered his best apologies to Mrhe

Mr Blandois was Mr Flintwinch's most obedient humble servant. He entreated Mr Flintwinch to receive the

'My husband being dead,' said Mrs Clennam, 'and my son preferring another pursuit, our old House has no

'What do you call yourself?' was the surly demand of that gentleman. 'You have the head of two men.'

'My sex disqualifies me,' she proceeded with merely a slight turn of her eyes in jeremiah's direction, 'from

taking a responsible part in the business, even if I had the ability; and therefore Mr Flintwinch combines my

interest with his own, and conducts it. It is not what it used to be; but some of our old friends (principally the

writers of this letter) have the kindness not to forget us, and we retain the power of doing what they entrust to

us as efficiently as we ever did. This however is not interesting to you. You are English, sir?'

'Faith, madam, no; I am neither born nor bred in England. In effect, I am of no country,' said Mr Blandois,

'Madam,' said Mr Blandois, with an ugly fall of his eyebrows, 'I adore your sex, but I am not marriednever

Mistress Affery, who stood at the table near him, pouring out the tea, happened in her dreamy state to look at

him as he said these words, and to fancy that she caught an expression in his eyes which attracted her own

eyes so that she could not get them away. The effect of this fancy was to keep her staring at him with the tea

pot in her hand, not only to her own great uneasiness, but manifestly to his, too; and, through them both, to

Mrs Clennam's and Mr Flintwinch's. Thus a few ghostly moments supervened, when they were all confusedly

'I don't know,' said Mistress Affery, with her disengaged left hand extended towards the visitor. 'It ain't me.

'What does this good woman mean?' cried Mr Blandois, turning white, hot, and slowly rising with a look of

such deadly wrath that it contrasted surprisingly with the slight force of his words. 'How is it possible to

'It's NOT possible,' said Mr Flintwinch, screwing himself rapidly in that direction. 'She don't know what she

means. She's an idiot, a wanderer in her mind. She shall have a dose, she shall have such a dose! Get along

with you, my woman,' he added in her ear, 'get along with you, while you know you're Affery, and before

Mistress Affery, sensible of the danger in which her identity stood, relinquished the teapot as her husband

seized it, put her apron over her head, and in a twinkling vanished. The visitor gradually broke into a smile,

'You'll excuse her, Mr Blandois,' said Jeremiah, pouring out the tea himself, 'she's failing and breaking up;

'Thank you, no tea for me.Pardon my observing it, but that's a very remarkable watch!'

The teatable was drawn up near the sofa, with a small interval between it and Mrs Clennam's own particular

table. Mr Blandois in his gallantry had risen to hand that lady her tea (her dish of toast was already there), and

it was in placing the cup conveniently within her reach that the watch, lying before her as it always did,

'May I be permitted? Thank you. A fine oldfashioned watch,' he said, taking it in his hand. 'Heavy for use,

but massive and genuine. I have a partiality for everything genuine. Such as I am, I am genuine myself. Hah!

A gentleman's watch with two cases in the old fashion. May I remove it from the outer case? Thank you.

Aye? An old silk watchlining, worked with beads! I have often seen these among old Dutch people and

'They are oldfashioned, too,' said Mrs Clennam. 'Very. But this is not so old as the watch, I think?'

'Extraordinary how they used to complicate these cyphers!' remarked Mr Blandois, glancing up with his own

Mr Flintwinch, who had been observantly pausing all this time with a cup of tea in his hand, and his mouth

open ready to swallow the contents, began to do so: always entirely filling his mouth before he emptied it at a

'D. N. F. was some tender, lovely, fascinating faircreature, I make no doubt,' observed Mr Blandois, as he

snapped on the case again. 'I adore her memory on the assumption. Unfortunately for my peace of mind, I

adore but too readily. It may be a vice, it may be a virtue, but adoration of female beauty and merit

Mr Flintwinch had by this time poured himself out another cup of tea, which he was swallowing in gulps as

'You may be heartfree here, sir,' she returned to Mr Blandois. 'Those letters are not intended, I believe, for

'And naturally,' said Mr Blandois, replacing the watch and stepping backward to his former chair, 'you do not

Mr Flintwinch, finishing his tea, not only took a longer gulp than he had taken yet, but made his succeeding

pause under new circumstances: that is to say, with his head thrown back and his cup held still at his lips,

while his eyes were still directed at the invalid. She had that force of face, and that concentrated air of

collecting her firmness or obstinacy, which represented in her case what would have been gesture and action

in another, as she replied with her deliberate strength of speech: 'No, sir, I do not forget. To lead a life as

monotonous as mine has been during many years, is not the way to forget. To lead a life of selfcorrection is

not the way to forget. To be sensible of having (as we all have, every one of us, all the children of Adam!)

offences to expiate and peace to make, does not justify the desire to forget. Therefore I have long dismissed

Mr Flintwinch, who had latterly been shaking the sediment at the bottom of his teacup, round and round,

here gulped it down, and putting the cup in the teatray, as done with, turned his eyes upon Mr Blandois as if

'All expressed, madam,' said Mr Blandois, with his smoothest bow and his white hand on his breast, 'by the

word "naturally," which I am proud to have had sufficient apprehension and appreciation (but without

'Pardon me, sir,' she returned, 'if I doubt the likelihood of a gentleman of pleasure, and change, and

'If I doubt the likelihood of such a character quite comprehending what belongs to mine in my

circumstances. Not to obtrude doctrine upon you,' she looked at the rigid pile of hard pale books before her,

'(for you go your own way, and the consequences are on your own head), I will say this much: that I shape

my course by pilots, strictly by proved and tried pilots, under whom I cannot be shipwreckedcan not

beand that if I were unmindful of the admonition conveyed in those three letters, I should not be half as

It was curious how she seized the occasion to argue with some invisible opponent. Perhaps with her own

'If I forgot my ignorances in my life of health and freedom, I might complain of the life to which I am now

condemned. I never do; I never have done. If I forgot that this scene, the Earth, is expressly meant to be a

scene of gloom, and hardship, and dark trial, for the creatures who are made out of its dust, I might have

some tenderness for its vanities. But I have no such tenderness. If I did not know that we are, every one, the

subject (most justly the subject) of a wrath that must be satisfied, and against which mere actions are nothing,

I might repine at the difference between me, imprisoned here, and the people who pass that gateway yonder.

But I take it as a grace and favour to be elected to make the satisfaction I am making here, to know what I

know for certain here, and to work out what I have worked out here. My affliction might otherwise have had

no meaning to me. Hence I would forget, and I do forget, nothing. Hence I am contented, and say it is better

with me than with millions.' As she spoke these words, she put her hand upon the watch, and restored it to the

precise spot on her little table which it always occupied. With her touch lingering upon it, she sat for some

Mr Blandois, during this exposition, had been strictly attentive, keeping his eyes fastened on the lady, and

thoughtfully stroking his moustache with his two hands. Mr Flintwinch had been a little fidgety, and now

'There, there, there!' said he. 'That is quite understood, Mrs Clennam, and you have spoken piously and well.

Mr Blandois, I suspect, is not of a pious cast.' 'On the contrary, sir!' that gentleman protested, snapping his

fingers. 'Your pardon! It's a part of my character. I am sensitive, ardent, conscientious, and imaginative. A

sensitive, ardent, conscientious, and imaginative man, Mr Flintwinch, must be that, or nothing!'

There was an inkling of suspicion in Mr Flintwinch's face that he might be nothing, as he swaggered out of

his chair (it was characteristic of this man, as it is of all men similarly marked, that whatever he did, he

overdid, though it were sometimes by only a hairsbreadth), and approached to take his leave of Mrs Clennam.

'With what will appear to you the egotism of a sick old woman, sir,' she then said, 'though really through your

accidental allusion, I have been led away into the subject of myself and my infirmities. Being so considerate

as to visit me, I hope you will be likewise so considerate as to overlook that. Don't compliment me, if you

please.' For he was evidently going to do it. 'Mr Flintwinch will be happy to render you any service, and I

Mr Blandois thanked her, and kissed his hand several times. 'This is an old room,' he remarked, with a sudden

sprightliness of manner, looking round when he got near the door, 'I have been so interested that I have not

'It is a genuine old house,' said Mrs Clennam, with her frozen smile. 'A place of no pretensions, but a piece of

'Faith!' cried the visitor. 'If Mr Flintwinch would do me the favour to take me through the rooms on my way

out, he could hardly oblige me more. An old house is a weakness with me. I have many weaknesses, but none

greater. I love and study the picturesque in all its varieties. I have been called picturesque myself. It is no

merit to be picturesqueI have greater merits, perhapsbut I may be, by an accident. Sympathy,

'I tell you beforehand, Mr Blandois, that you'll find it very dingy and very bare,' said Jeremiah, taking up the

candle. 'It's not worth your looking at.'But Mr Blandois, smiting him in a friendly manner on the back, only

laughed; so the said Blandois kissed his hand again to Mrs Clennam, and they went out of the room together.

'You don't care to go upstairs?' said Jeremiah, on the landing. 'On the contrary, Mr Flintwinch; if not

Mr Flintwinch, therefore, wormed himself up the staircase, and Mr Blandois followed close. They ascended

to the great garret bed room which Arthur had occupied on the night of his return. 'There, Mr Blandois!' said

Jeremiah, showing it, 'I hope you may think that worth coming so high to see. I confess I don't.'

Mr Blandois being enraptured, they walked through other garrets and passages, and came down the staircase

again. By this time Mr Flintwinch had remarked that he never found the visitor looking at any room, after

throwing one quick glance around, but always found the visitor looking at him, Mr Flintwinch. With this

discovery in his thoughts, he turned about on the staircase for another experiment. He met his eyes directly;

and on the instant of their fixing one another, the visitor, with that ugly play of nose and moustache, laughed

(as he had done at every similar moment since they left Mrs Clennam's chamber) a diabolically silent laugh.

As a much shorter man than the visitor, Mr Flintwinch was at the physical disadvantage of being thus

disagreeably leered at from a height; and as he went first down the staircase, and was usually a step or two

lower than the other, this disadvantage was at the time increased. He postponed looking at Mr Blandois again

until this accidental inequality was removed by their having entered the late Mr Clennam's room. But, then

'A most admirable old house,' smiled Mr Blandois. 'So mysterious. Do you never hear any haunted noises

'Not,' said Mr Flintwinch, grimly screwing himself at his questioner, 'not any that introduce themselves under

'Mr Clennam, deceased. Her husband.' 'Former owner of the remarkable watch, perhaps?' said the visitor.

Mr Flintwinch, who had cast his eyes towards the portrait, twisted himself about again, and again found

himself the subject of the same look and smile. 'Yes, Mr Blandois,' he replied tartly. 'It was his, and his

uncle's before him, and Lord knows who before him; and that's all I can tell you of its pedigree.'

'Yes, sir,' said Jeremiah, twisting himself at the visitor again, as he did during the whole of this dialogue, like

some screw machine that fell short of its grip; for the other never changed, and he always felt obliged to

retreat a little. 'She is a remarkable woman. Great fortitudegreat strength of mind.'

Mr Blandois shook his right forefinger towards the sick room, and his left forefinger towards the portrait, and

then, putting his arms akimbo and striding his legs wide apart, stood smiling down at Mr Flintwinch with the

'As happy as most other married people, I suppose,' returned Mr Flintwinch. 'I can't say. I don't know. There

'I say,' replied Mr Flintwinch, upon whom he had swelled himself so suddenly that Mr Flintwinch found his

face almost brushed by the dilated chest. 'I say there are secrets in all families.'

'So there are,' cried the other, clapping him on both shoulders, and rolling him backwards and forwards.

'Haha! you are right. So there are! Secrets! Holy Blue! There are the devil's own secrets in some families, Mr

Flintwinch!' With that, after clapping Mr Flintwinch on both shoulders several times, as if in a friendly and

humorous way he were rallying him on a joke he had made, he threw up his arms, threw back his head,

hooked his hands together behind it, and burst into a roar of laughter. It was in vain for Mr Flintwinch to try

'But, favour me with the candle a moment,' he said, when he had done. 'Let us have a look at the husband of

the remarkable lady. Hah!' holding up the light at arm's length. 'A decided expression of face here too, though

not of the same character. Looks as if he were saying, what is itDo Not Forgetdoes he not, Mr

As he returned the candle, he looked at him once more; and then, leisurely strolling out with him into the hall,

declared it to be a charming old house indeed, and one which had so greatly pleased him that he would not

have missed inspecting it for a hundred pounds. Throughout these singular freedoms on the part of Mr

Blandois, which involved a general alteration in his demeanour, making it much coarser and rougher, much

more violent and audacious than before, Mr Flintwinch, whose leathern face was not liable to many changes,

preserved its immobility intact. Beyond now appearing perhaps, to have been left hanging a trifle too long

before that friendly operation of cutting down, he outwardly maintained an equable composure. They had

brought their survey to a close in the little room at the side of the hall, and he stood there, eyeing Mr

'I am glad you are so well satisfied, sir,' was his calm remark. 'I didn't expect it. You seem to be quite in good

'In admirable spirits,' returned Blandois. 'Word of honour! never more refreshed in spirits. Do you ever have

'I am not sure that I know what you mean by the term, sir,' replied that gentleman.

'Say, in this case, Mr Flintwinch, undefined anticipations of pleasure to come.'

'I can't say I'm sensible of such a sensation at present,' returned Mr Flintwinch with the utmost gravity. 'If I

'Now I,' said Blandois, 'I, my son, have a presentiment tonight that we shall be well acquainted. Do you find

'Nno,' returned Mr Flintwinch, deliberately inquiring of himself. 'I can't say I do.'

'I have a strong presentiment that we shall become intimately acquainted.You have no feeling of that sort

Mr Blandois, taking him by both shoulders again, rolled him about a little in his former merry way, then drew

his arm through his own, and invited him to come off and drink a bottle of wine like a dear deep old dog as he

Without a moment's indecision, Mr Flintwinch accepted the invitation, and they went out to the quarters

where the traveller was lodged, through a heavy rain which had rattled on the windows, roofs, and

pavements, ever since nightfall. The thunder and lightning had long ago passed over, but the rain was furious.

On their arrival at Mr Blandois' room, a bottle of port wine was ordered by that gallant gentleman; who

(crushing every pretty thing he could collect, in the soft disposition of his dainty figure) coiled himself upon

the windowseat, while Mr Flintwinch took a chair opposite to him, with the table between them. Mr

Blandois proposed having the largest glasses in the house, to which Mr Flintwinch assented. The bumpers

filled, Mr Blandois, with a roystering gaiety, clinked the top of his glass against the bottom of Mr

Flintwinch's, and the bottom of his glass against the top of Mr Flintwinch's, and drank to the intimate

Mr Flintwinch gravely pledged him, and drank all the wine he could get, and said nothing. As often as Mr

Blandois clinked glasses (which was at every replenishment), Mr Flintwinch stolidly did his part of the

clinking, and would have stolidly done his companion's part of the wine as well as his own: being, except in

In short, Mr Blandois found that to pour port wine into the reticent Flintwinch was, not to open him but to

shut him up. Moreover, he had the appearance of a perfect ability to go on all night; or, if occasion were, all

next day and all next night; whereas Mr Blandois soon grew indistinctly conscious of swaggering too fiercely

and boastfully. He therefore terminated the entertainment at the end of the third bottle.

'You will draw upon us tomorrow, sir,' said Mr Flintwinch, with a businesslike face at parting.

'My Cabbage,' returned the other, taking him by the collar with both hands, 'I'll draw upon you; have no fear.

Adieu, my Flintwinch. Receive at parting;' here he gave him a southern embrace, and kissed him soundly on

both cheeks; 'the word of a gentleman! By a thousand Thunders, you shall see me again!'

He did not present himself next day, though the letter of advice came duly to hand. Inquiring after him at

night, Mr Flintwinch found, with surprise, that he had paid his bill and gone back to the Continent by way of

Calais. Nevertheless, Jeremiah scraped out of his cogitating face a lively conviction that Mr Blandois would

Anybody may pass, any day, in the thronged thoroughfares of the metropolis, some meagre, wrinkled, yellow

old man (who might be supposed to have dropped from the stars, if there were any star in the Heavens dull

enough to be suspected of casting off so feeble a spark), creeping along with a scared air, as though

bewildered and a little frightened by the noise and bustle. This old man is always a little old man. If he were

ever a big old man, he has shrunk into a little old man; if he were always a little old man, he has dwindled

into a less old man. His coat is a colour, and cut, that never was the mode anywhere, at any period. Clearly, it

was not made for him, or for any individual mortal. Some wholesale contractor measured Fate for five

thousand coats of such quality, and Fate has lent this old coat to this old man, as one of a long unfinished line

of many old men. It has always large dull metal buttons, similar to no other buttons. This old man wears a

hat, a thumbed and napless and yet an obdurate hat, which has never adapted itself to the shape of his poor

head. His coarse shirt and his coarse neckcloth have no more individuality than his coat and hat; they have

the same character of not being hisof not being anybody's. Yet this old man wears these clothes with a

certain unaccustomed air of being dressed and elaborated for the public ways; as though he passed the greater

part of his time in a nightcap and gown. And so, like the country mouse in the second year of a famine, come

to see the town mouse, and timidly threading his way to the townmouse's lodging through a city of cats, this

Sometimes, on holidays towards evening, he will be seen to walk with a slightly increased infirmity, and his

old eyes will glimmer with a moist and marshy light. Then the little old man is drunk. A very small measure

will overset him; he may be bowled off his unsteady legs with a halfpint pot. Some pitying acquaintance

chance acquaintance very oftenhas warmed up his weakness with a treat of beer, and the consequence will

be the lapse of a longer time than usual before he shall pass again. For the little old man is going home to the

Workhouse; and on his good behaviour they do not let him out often (though methinks they might,

considering the few years he has before him to go out in, under the sun); and on his bad behaviour they shut

him up closer than ever in a grove of two score and nineteen more old men, every one of whom smells of all

Mrs Plornish's father,a poor little reedy piping old gentleman, like a wornout bird; who had been in what

he called the music binding business, and met with great misfortunes, and who had seldom been able to

make his way, or to see it or to pay it, or to do anything at all with it but find it no thoroughfare,had retired

of his own accord to the Workhouse which was appointed by law to be the Good Samaritan of his district

(without the twopence, which was bad political economy), on the settlement of that execution which had

carried Mr Plornish to the Marshalsea College. Previous to his soninlaw's difficulties coming to that head,

Old Nandy (he was always so called in his legal Retreat, but he was Old Mr Nandy among the Bleeding

Hearts) had sat in a corner of the Plornish fireside, and taken his bite and sup out of the Plornish cupboard.

He still hoped to resume that domestic position when Fortune should smile upon his soninlaw; in the

meantime, while she preserved an immovable countenance, he was, and resolved to remain, one of these little

But no poverty in him, and no coat on him that never was the mode, and no Old Men's Ward for his

dwellingplace, could quench his daughter's admiration. Mrs Plornish was as proud of her father's talents as

she could possibly have been if they had made him Lord Chancellor. She had as firm a belief in the sweetness

and propriety of his manners as she could possibly have had if he had been Lord Chamberlain. The poor little

old man knew some pale and vapid little songs, long out of date, about Chloe, and Phyllis, and Strephon

being wounded by the son of Venus; and for Mrs Plornish there was no such music at the Opera as the small

internal flutterings and chirpings wherein he would discharge himself of these ditties, like a weak, little,

broken barrelorgan, ground by a baby. On his 'days out,' those flecks of light in his flat vista of pollard old

men,' it was at once Mrs Plornish's delight and sorrow, when he was strong with meat, and had taken his full

halfpennyworth of porter, to say, 'Sing us a song, Father.' Then he would give them Chloe, and if he were in

pretty good spirits, Phyllis alsoStrephon he had hardly been up to since he went into retirementand then

would Mrs Plornish declare she did believe there never was such a singer as Father, and wipe her eyes.

If he had come from Court on these occasions, nay, if he had been the noble Refrigerator come home

triumphantly from a foreign court to be presented and promoted on his last tremendous failure, Mrs Plornish

could not have handed him with greater elevation about Bleeding Heart Yard. 'Here's Father,' she would say,

presenting him to a neighbour. 'Father will soon be home with us for good, now. Ain't Father looking well?

Father's a sweeter singer than ever; you'd never have forgotten it, if you'd aheard him just now.'

As to Mr Plornish, he had married these articles of belief in marrying Mr Nandy's daughter, and only

wondered how it was that so gifted an old gentleman had not made a fortune. This he attributed, after much

reflection, to his musical genius not having been scientifically developed in his youth. 'For why,' argued Mr

Plornish, 'why go abinding music when you've got it in yourself? That's where it is, I consider.'

Old Nandy had a patron: one patron. He had a patron who in a certain sumptuous wayan apologetic way,

as if he constantly took an admiring audience to witness that he really could not help being more free with

this old fellow than they might have expected, on account of his simplicity and povertywas mightily good

to him. Old Nandy had been several times to the Marshalsea College, communicating with his soninlaw

during his short durance there; and had happily acquired to himself, and had by degrees and in course of time

Mr Dorrit was in the habit of receiving this old man as if the old man held of him in vassalage under some

feudal tenure. He made little treats and teas for him, as if he came in with his homage from some outlying

It seemed as if there were moments when he could by no means have sworn but that the old man was an

ancient retainer of his, who had been meritoriously faithful. When he mentioned him, he spoke of him

casually as his old pensioner. He had a wonderful satisfaction in seeing him, and in commenting on his

decayed condition after he was gone. It appeared to him amazing that he could hold up his head at all, poor

creature. 'In the Workhouse, sir, the Union; no privacy, no visitors, no station, no respect, no speciality. Most

It was Old Nandy's birthday, and they let him out. He said nothing about its being his birthday, or they might

have kept him in; for such old men should not be born. He passed along the streets as usual to Bleeding Heart

Yard, and had his dinner with his daughter and soninlaw, and gave them Phyllis. He had hardly concluded,

'Miss Dorrit,' said Mrs Plornish, 'here's Father! Ain't he looking nice? And such voice he's in!'

Little Dorrit gave him her hand, and smilingly said she had not seen him this long time.

'No, they're rather hard on poor Father,' said Mrs Plornish with a lengthening face, 'and don't let him have half

as much change and fresh air as would benefit him. But he'll soon be home for good, now. Won't you,

Here Mr Plornish delivered himself of an oration which he invariably made, word for word the same, on all

'John Edward Nandy. Sir. While there's a ounce of wittles or drink of any sort in this present roof, you're fully

welcome to your share on it. While there's a handful of fire or a mouthful of bed in this present roof, you're

If so be as there should be nothing in this present roof, you should be as welcome to your share on it as if it

was something, much or little. And this is what I mean and so I don't deceive you, and consequently which is

To this lucid address, which Mr Plornish always delivered as if he had composed it (as no doubt he had) with

'I thank you kindly, Thomas, and I know your intentions well, which is the same I thank you kindly for. But

no, Thomas. Until such times as it's not to take it out of your children's mouths, which take it is, and call it by

what name you will it do remain and equally deprive, though may they come, and too soon they can not

Mrs Plornish, who had been turning her face a little away with a corner of her apron in her hand, brought

herself back to the conversation again by telling Miss Dorrit that Father was going over the water to pay his

Her answer was, 'I am going straight home, and if he will come with me I shall be so glad to take care of

himso glad,' said Little Dorrit, always thoughtful of the feelings of the weak, 'of his company.'

'There, Father!' cried Mrs Plornish. 'Ain't you a gay young man to be going for a walk along with Miss

Dorrit! Let me tie your neck handkerchief into a regular good bow, for you're a regular beau yourself,

With this filial joke his daughter smartened him up, and gave him a loving hug, and stood at the door with her

weak child in her arms, and her strong child tumbling down the steps, looking after her little old father as he

They walked at a slow pace, and Little Dorrit took him by the Iron Bridge and sat him down there for a rest,

and they looked over at the water and talked about the shipping, and the old man mentioned what he would

do if he had a ship full of gold coming home to him (his plan was to take a noble lodging for the Plornishes

and himself at a Tea Gardens, and live there all the rest of their lives, attended on by the waiter), and it was a

special birthday of the old man. They were within five minutes of their destination, when, at the corner of her

'Why, good gracious me, Amy!' cried that young lady starting. 'You never mean it!'

'Well! I could have believed a great deal of you,' returned the young lady with burning indignation, 'but I

'Oh! Don't Fanny me, you mean little thing, don't! The idea of coming along the open streets, in the broad

light of day, with a Pauper!' (firing off the last word as if it were a ball from an airgun). 'O Fanny!'

'I tell you not to Fanny me, for I'll not submit to it! I never knew such a thing. The way in which you are

resolved and determined to disgrace us on all occasions, is really infamous. You bad little thing!'

'Does it disgrace anybody,' said Little Dorrit, very gently, 'to take care of this poor old man?'

'Yes, miss,' returned her sister, 'and you ought to know it does. And you do know it does, and you do it

because you know it does. The principal pleasure of your life is to remind your family of their misfortunes.

And the next great pleasure of your existence is to keep low company. But, however, if you have no sense of

decency, I have. You'll please to allow me to go on the other side of the way, unmolested.'

With this, she bounced across to the opposite pavement. The old disgrace, who had been deferentially bowing

a pace or two off (for Little Dorrit had let his arm go in her wonder, when Fanny began), and who had been

hustled and cursed by impatient passengers for stopping the way, rejoined his companion, rather giddy, and

said, 'I hope nothing's wrong with your honoured father, Miss? I hope there's nothing the matter in the

'No, no,' returned Little Dorrit. 'No, thank you. Give me your arm again, Mr Nandy. We shall soon be there

So she talked to him as she had talked before, and they came to the Lodge and found Mr Chivery on the lock,

and went in. Now, it happened that the Father of the Marshalsea was sauntering towards the Lodge at the

moment when they were coming out of it, entering the prison arm in arm. As the spectacle of their approach

met his view, he displayed the utmost agitation and despondency of mind; andaltogether regardless of Old

Nandy, who, making his reverence, stood with his hat in his hand, as he always did in that gracious

Leaving the old unfortunate, whom in an evil hour she had taken under her protection, with a hurried promise

to return to him directly, Little Dorrit hastened after her father, and, on the staircase, found Fanny following

her, and flouncing up with offended dignity. The three came into the room almost together; and the Father sat

'Of course,' said Fanny. 'Very proper. Poor, afflicted Pa! Now, I hope you believe me, Miss?'

'What is it, father?' cried Little Dorrit, bending over him. 'Have I made you unhappy, father? Not I, I hope!'

'You hope, indeed! I dare say! Oh, you'Fanny paused for a sufficiently strong expression'you

He stopped these angry reproaches with a wave of his hand, and sobbed out, raising his face and shaking his

melancholy head at his younger daughter, 'Amy, I know that you are innocent in intention. But you have cut

me to the soul.' 'Innocent in intention!' the implacable Fanny struck in. 'Stuff in intention! Low in intention!

'Father!' cried Little Dorrit, pale and trembling. 'I am very sorry. Pray forgive me. Tell me how it is, that I

'How it is, you prevaricating little piece of goods!' cried Fanny. 'You know how it is. I have told you already,

'Hush! Amy,' said the father, passing his pockethandkerchief several times across his face, and then

grasping it convulsively in the hand that dropped across his knee, 'I have done what I could to keep you select

here; I have done what I could to retain you a position here. I may have succeeded; I may not. You may know

it; you may not. I give no opinion. I have endured everything here but humiliation. That I have happily been

Here his convulsive grasp unclosed itself, and he put his pocket handkerchief to his eyes again. Little Dorrit,

on the ground beside him, with her imploring hand upon his arm, watched him remorsefully. Coming out of

'Humiliation I have happily been spared until this day. Through all my troubles there has been thatSpirit in

myself, and that that submission to it, if I may use the term, in those about me, which has spared

'Of course! How could it be otherwise?' exclaimed the irrepressible Fanny. 'Careering and prancing about

'But, dear father,' cried Little Dorrit, 'I don't justify myself for having wounded your dear heartno! Heaven

knows I don't!' She clasped her hands in quite an agony of distress. 'I do nothing but beg and pray you to be

comforted and overlook it. But if I had not known that you were kind to the old man yourself, and took much

notice of him, and were always glad to see him, I would not have come here with him, father, I would not,

indeed. What I have been so unhappy as to do, I have done in mistake. I would not wilfully bring a tear to

your eyes, dear love!' said Little Dorrit, her heart wellnigh broken, 'for anything the world could give me, or

Fanny, with a partly angry and partly repentant sob, began to cry herself, and to sayas this young lady

always said when she was half in passion and half out of it, half spiteful with herself and half spiteful with

The Father of the Marshalsea in the meantime took his younger daughter to his breast, and patted her head.

'There, there! Say no more, Amy, say no more, my child. I will forget it as soon as I can. I,' with hysterical

cheerfulness, 'I shall soon be able to dismiss it. It is perfectly true, my dear, that I am always glad to see

my old pensioneras such, as such and that I dohaextend as much protection and kindness to the

humthe bruised reedI trust I may so call him without improprietyas in my circumstances, I can. It is

quite true that this is the case, my dear child. At the same time, I preserve in doing this, if I mayhaif I

may use the expressionSpirit. Becoming Spirit. And there are some things which are,' he stopped to sob,

It is not that I have seen my good Amy attentive, andha condescending to my old pensionerit is not

that that hurts me. It is, if I am to close the painful subject by being explicit, that I have seen my child, my

own child, my own daughter, coming into this College out of the public streetssmiling! smiling!arm in

This reference to the coat of no cut and no time, the unfortunate gentleman gasped forth, in a scarcely audible

voice, and with his clenched pockethandkerchief raised in the air. His excited feelings might have found

some further painful utterance, but for a knock at the door, which had been already twice repeated, and to

which Fanny (still wishing herself dead, and indeed now going so far as to add, buried) cried 'Come in!'

'Ah, Young John!' said the Father, in an altered and calmed voice. 'What is it, Young John?'

'A letter for you, sir, being left in the Lodge just this minute, and a message with it, I thought, happening to

be there myself, sir, I would bring it to your room.' The speaker's attention was much distracted by the piteous

'The letter is from Mr Clennam, sirit's the answerand the message was, sir, that Mr Clennam also sent

his compliments, and word that he would do himself the pleasure of calling this afternoon, hoping to see you,

'Oh!' As the Father glanced into the letter (there was a banknote in it), he reddened a little, and patted Amy

on the head afresh. 'Thank you, Young John. Quite right. Much obliged to you for your attention. No one

'Thank you, sir, she's not quite as well as we could wishin fact, we none of us are, except fatherbut she's

pretty well, sir.' 'Say we sent our remembrances, will you? Say kind remembrances, if you please, Young

'Thank you, sir, I will.' And Mr Chivery junior went his way, having spontaneously composed on the spot an

entirely new epitaph for himself, to the effect that Here lay the body of John Chivery, Who, Having at such a

date, Beheld the idol of his life, In grief and tears, And feeling unable to bear the harrowing spectacle,

Immediately repaired to the abode of his inconsolable parents, And terminated his existence by his own rash

'There, there, Amy!' said the Father, when Young John had closed the door, 'let us say no more about it.' The

last few minutes had improved his spirits remarkably, and he was quite lightsome. 'Where is my old

pensioner all this while? We must not leave him by himself any longer, or he will begin to suppose he is not

'If you wouldn't mind, father,' said Little Dorrit, trying to bring her sobbing to a close.

There! Cheer up, Amy. Don't be uneasy about me. I am quite myself again, my love, quite myself. Go to your

room, Amy, and make yourself look comfortable and pleasant to receive Mr Clennam.'

'I would rather stay in my own room, Father,' returned Little Dorrit, finding it more difficult than before to

'Oh, fie, fie, my dear, that's folly. Mr Clennam is a very gentlemanly manvery gentlemanly. A little

reserved at times; but I will say extremely gentlemanly. I couldn't think of your not being here to receive Mr

Clennam, my dear, especially this afternoon. So go and freshen yourself up, Amy; go and freshen yourself

Thus directed, Little Dorrit dutifully rose and obeyed: only pausing for a moment as she went out of the

room, to give her sister a kiss of reconciliation. Upon which, that young lady, feeling much harassed in her

mind, and having for the time worn out the wish with which she generally relieved it, conceived and executed

the brilliant idea of wishing Old Nandy dead, rather than that he should come bothering there like a

The Father of the Marshalsea, even humming a tune, and wearing his black velvet cap a little on one side, so

much improved were his spirits, went down into the yard, and found his old pensioner standing there hat in

hand just within the gate, as he had stood all this time. 'Come, Nandy!' said he, with great suavity. 'Come

upstairs, Nandy; you know the way; why don't you come upstairs?' He went the length, on this occasion, of

giving him his hand and saying, 'How are you, Nandy? Are you pretty well?' To which that vocalist returned,

'I thank you, honoured sir, I am all the better for seeing your honour.' As they went along the yard, the Father

of the Marshalsea presented him to a Collegian of recent date. 'An old acquaintance of mine, sir, an old

pensioner.' And then said, 'Be covered, my good Nandy; put your hat on,' with great consideration.

His patronage did not stop here; for he charged Maggy to get the tea ready, and instructed her to buy certain

teacakes, fresh butter, eggs, cold ham, and shrimps: to purchase which collation he gave her a banknote for

ten pounds, laying strict injunctions on her to be careful of the change. These preparations were in an

advanced stage of progress, and his daughter Amy had come back with her work, when Clennam presented

'Amy, my love, you know Mr Clennam even better than I have the happiness of doing. Fanny, my dear, you

are acquainted with Mr Clennam.' Fanny acknowledged him haughtily; the position she tacitly took up in all

such cases being that there was a vast conspiracy to insult the family by not understanding it, or sufficiently

'This, Mr Clennam, you must know, is an old pensioner of mine, Old Nandy, a very faithful old man.' (He

always spoke of him as an object of great antiquity, but he was two or three years younger than himself.) 'Let

me see. You know Plornish, I think? I think my daughter Amy has mentioned to me that you know poor

'I hope I shall come to know them through knowing him,' said Arthur, secretly pitying the bowed and

'It is a holiday with him, and he comes to see his old friends, who are always glad to see him,' observed the

By this time Maggy, quietly assisted by her Little Mother, had spread the board, and the repast was ready. It

being hot weather and the prison very close, the window was as wide open as it could be pushed. 'If Maggy

will spread that newspaper on the window sill, my dear,' remarked the Father complacently and in a half

whisper to Little Dorrit, 'my old pensioner can have his tea there, while we are having ours.'

So, with a gulf between him and the good company of about a foot in width, standard measure, Mrs Plornish's

father was handsomely regaled. Clennam had never seen anything like his magnanimous protection by that

other Father, he of the Marshalsea; and was lost in the contemplation of its many wonders.

The most striking of these was perhaps the relishing manner in which he remarked on the pensioner's

infirmities and failings, as if he were a gracious Keeper making a running commentary on the decline of the

'Not ready for more ham yet, Nandy? Why, how slow you are! (His last teeth,' he explained to the company,

At another time, he said, 'No shrimps, Nandy?' and on his not instantly replying, observed, ('His hearing is

At another time he asked him, 'Do you walk much, Nandy, about the yard within the walls of that place of

'No, to be sure,' he assented. 'Very natural.' Then he privately informed the circle ('Legs going.')

Once he asked the pensioner, in that general clemency which asked him anything to keep him afloat, how old

'John Edward,' said the pensioner, slowly laying down his knife and fork to consider. 'How old, sir? Let me

'John Edward, sir? Well, I really forget. I couldn't say at this minute, sir, whether it's two and two months, or

'Don't distress yourself by worrying your mind about it,' he returned, with infinite forbearance. ('Faculties

The more of these discoveries that he persuaded himself he made in the pensioner, the better he appeared to

like him; and when he got out of his chair after tea to bid the pensioner goodbye, on his intimating that he

feared, honoured sir, his time was running out, he made himself look as erect and strong as possible.

'We don't call this a shilling, Nandy, you know,' he said, putting one in his hand. 'We call it tobacco.'

'Honoured sir, I thank you. It shall buy tobacco. My thanks and duty to Miss Amy and Miss Fanny. I wish

'And mind you don't forget us, you know, Nandy,' said the Father. 'You must come again, mind, whenever

you have an afternoon. You must not come out without seeing us, or we shall be jealous. Good night, Nandy.

Be very careful how you descend the stairs, Nandy; they are rather uneven and worn.' With that he stood on

the landing, watching the old man down: and when he came into the room again, said, with a solemn

satisfaction on him, 'A melancholy sight that, Mr Clennam, though one has the consolation of knowing that

he doesn't feel it himself. The poor old fellow is a dismal wreck. Spirit broken and

As Clennam had a purpose in remaining, he said what he could responsive to these sentiments, and stood at

the window with their enunciator, while Maggy and her Little Mother washed the tea service and cleared it

away. He noticed that his companion stood at the window with the air of an affable and accessible Sovereign,

and that, when any of his people in the yard below looked up, his recognition of their salutes just stopped

When Little Dorrit had her work on the table, and Maggy hers on the bedstead, Fanny fell to tying her bonnet

as a preliminary to her departure. Arthur, still having his purpose, still remained. At this time the door

opened, without any notice, and Mr Tip came in. He kissed Amy as she started up to meet him, nodded to

Fanny, nodded to his father, gloomed on the visitor without further recognition, and sat down.

'Yes, I see, Amy. If you refer to the presence of any visitor you have hereI say, if you refer to that,'

answered Tip, jerking his head with emphasis towards his shoulder nearest Clennam, 'I see!'

'That's all I say. And I suppose,' added the lofty young man, after a moment's pause, 'that visitor will

understand me, when I say that's all I say. In short, I suppose the visitor will understand that he hasn't used

'I do not understand that,' observed the obnoxious personage referred to with tranquillity.

'No? Why, then, to make it clearer to you, sir, I beg to let you know that when I address what I call a

properlyworded appeal, and an urgent appeal, and a delicate appeal, to an individual, for a small temporary

accommodation, easily within his powereasily within his power, mind!and when that individual writes

back word to me that he begs to be excused, I consider that he doesn't treat me like a gentleman.'

The Father of the Marshalsea, who had surveyed his son in silence, no sooner heard this sentiment, than he

'Now, don't ask me how I dare, father, because that's bosh. As to the fact of the line of conduct I choose to

adopt towards the individual present, you ought to be proud of my showing a proper spirit.'

'A proper spirit?' said the Father. 'Yes, a proper spirit; a becoming spirit. Is it come to this that my son teaches

'Now, don't let us bother about it, father, or have any row on the subject. I have fully made up my mind that

the individual present has not treated me like a gentleman. And there's an end of it.'

'But there is not an end of it, sir,' returned the Father. 'But there shall not be an end of it. You have made up

'Because,' returned the Father, in a great heat, 'you had no right to make up your mind to what is monstrous,

to what ishaimmoral, to what ishumparricidal. No, Mr Clennam, I beg, sir. Don't ask me to desist;

there is ahuma general principle involved here, which rises even above considerations

ofhahospitality. I object to the assertion made by my son. IhaI personally repel it.'

'What is it to me, sir? I have ahuma spirit, sir, that will not endure it. I,' he took out his

pockethandkerchief again and dabbed his face. 'I am outraged and insulted by it. Let me suppose the case

that I myself may at a certain timehaor times, have made ahuman appeal, and a properlyworded

appeal, and a delicate appeal, and an urgent appeal to some individual for a small temporary accommodation.

Let me suppose that that accommodation could have been easily extended, and was not extended, and that

that individual informed me that he begged to be excused. Am I to be told by my own son, that I therefore

His daughter Amy gently tried to calm him, but he would not on any account be calmed. He said his spirit

Was he to be told that, he wished to know again, by his own son on his own hearth, to his own face? Was that

'You are putting it on yourself, father, and getting into all this injury of your own accord!' said the young

gentleman morosely. 'What I have made up my mind about has nothing to do with you. What I said had

'I reply it has everything to do with me,' returned the Father. 'I point out to you, sir, with indignation,

thathumtheha delicacy and peculiarity of your father's position should strike you dumb, sir, if

nothing else should, in laying down suchha such unnatural principles. Besides; if you are not filial, sir,

if you discard that duty, you are at leasthumnot a Christian? Are youhaan Atheist? And is it

Christian, let me ask you, to stigmatise and denounce an individual for begging to be excused this time, when

the same individual mayharespond with the required accommodation next time? Is it the part of a

Christian not tohumnot to try him again?' He had worked himself into quite a religious glow and

'I see precious well,' said Mr Tip, rising, 'that I shall get no sensible or fair argument here tonight, and so the

best thing I can do is to cut. Good night, Amy. Don't be vexed. I am very sorry it happens here, and you here,

upon my soul I am; but I can't altogether part with my spirit, even for your sake, old girl.'

With those words he put on his hat and went out, accompanied by Miss Fanny; who did not consider it

spirited on her part to take leave of Clennam with any less opposing demonstration than a stare, importing

When they were gone, the Father of the Marshalsea was at first inclined to sink into despondency again, and

would have done so, but that a gentleman opportunely came up within a minute or two to attend him to the

Snuggery. It was the gentleman Clennam had seen on the night of his own accidental detention there, who

had that impalpable grievance about the misappropriated Fund on which the Marshal was supposed to batten.

He presented himself as deputation to escort the Father to the Chair, it being an occasion on which he had

promised to preside over the assembled Collegians in the enjoyment of a little Harmony.

'Such, you see, Mr Clennam,' said the Father, 'are the incongruities of my position here. But a public duty! No

Clennam besought him not to delay a moment. 'Amy, my dear, if you can persuade Mr Clennam to stay

longer, I can leave the honours of our poor apology for an establishment with confidence in your hands, and

perhaps you may do something towards erasing from Mr Clennam's mind thehauntoward and

Clennam assured him that it had made no impression on his mind, and therefore required no erasure.

'My dear sir,' said the Father, with a removal of his black cap and a grasp of Clennam's hand, combining to

express the safe receipt of his note and enclosure that afternoon, 'Heaven ever bless you!'

So, at last, Clennam's purpose in remaining was attained, and he could speak to Little Dorrit with nobody by.

Maggy sat at her work in her great white cap with its quantity of opaque frilling hiding what profile she had

(she had none to spare), and her serviceable eye brought to bear upon her occupation, on the window side of

the room. What with her flapping cap, and what with her unserviceable eye, she was quite partitioned off

from her Little Mother, whose seat was opposite the window. The tread and shuffle of feet on the pavement

of the yard had much diminished since the taking of the Chair, the tide of Collegians having set strongly in

the direction of Harmony. Some few who had no music in their souls, or no money in their pockets, dawdled

about; and the old spectacle of the visitorwife and the depressed unseasoned prisoner still lingered in

corners, as broken cobwebs and such unsightly discomforts draggle in corners of other places. It was the

quietest time the College knew, saving the night hours when the Collegians took the benefit of the act of

sleep. The occasional rattle of applause upon the tables of the Snuggery, denoted the successful termination

of a morsel of Harmony; or the responsive acceptance, by the united children, of some toast or sentiment

offered to them by their Father. Occasionally, a vocal strain more sonorous than the generality informed the

listener that some boastful bass was in blue water, or in the hunting field, or with the reindeer, or on the

mountain, or among the heather; but the Marshal of the Marshalsea knew better, and had got him hard and

As Arthur Clennam moved to sit down by the side of Little Dorrit, she trembled so that she had much ado to

hold her needle. Clennam gently put his hand upon her work, and said, 'Dear Little Dorrit, let me lay it down.'

She yielded it to him, and he put it aside. Her hands were then nervously clasping together, but he took one of

'But I heard only today,' said Clennam, 'by mere accident, of your having been with those good people close

'II don't know. Or rather, I thought you might be busy too. You generally are now, are you not?'

He saw her trembling little form and her downcast face, and the eyes that drooped the moment they were

The trembling was now quite beyond her control. Softly withdrawing her hand, and laying it in her other

She burst into tears. Maggy looked round of a sudden, and stared for at least a minute; but did not interpose.

'I cannot bear,' he said then, 'to see you weep; but I hope this is a relief to an overcharged heart.'

'Well, well! I feared you would think too much of what passed here just now. It is of no moment; not the

least. I am only unfortunate to have come in the way. Let it go by with these tears. It is not worth one of

them. One of them? Such an idle thing should be repeated, with my glad consent, fifty times a day, to save

She had taken courage now, and answered, far more in her usual manner, 'You are so good! But even if there

was nothing else in it to be sorry for and ashamed of, it is such a bad return to you'

'Hush!' said Clennam, smiling and touching her lips with his hand. 'Forgetfulness in you who remember so

many and so much, would be new indeed. Shall I remind you that I am not, and that I never was, anything but

'I try to do so, or I should have broken the promise just now, when my mistaken brother was here. You will

consider his bringingup in this place, and will not judge him hardly, poor fellow, I know!' In raising her eyes

with these words, she observed his face more nearly than she had done yet, and said, with a quick change of

It fell to Clennam now, to be not quite certain how to answer. He said in reply:

Do I show it so plainly? I ought to have more fortitude and self command than that. I thought I had. I must

He never thought that she saw in him what no one else could see. He never thought that in the whole world

there were no other eyes that looked upon him with the same light and strength as hers.

'But it brings me to something that I wish to say,' he continued, 'and therefore I will not quarrel even with my

own face for telling tales and being unfaithful to me. Besides, it is a privilege and pleasure to confide in my

Little Dorrit. Let me confess then, that, forgetting how grave I was, and how old I was, and how the time for

such things had gone by me with the many years of sameness and little happiness that made up my long life

far away, without marking itthat, forgetting all this, I fancied I loved some one.'

'I never quite thought so,' said Little Dorrit, more to herself than him. 'I did wonder at it a little.'

'Well!' said Clennam, abiding by the feeling that had fallen on him in the avenue on the night of the roses, the

feeling that he was an older man, who had done with that tender part of life, 'I found out my mistake, and I

thought about it a littlein short, a good dealand got wiser. Being wiser, I counted up my years and

considered what I am, and looked back, and looked forward, and found that I should soon be grey. I found

that I had climbed the hill, and passed the level ground upon the top, and was descending quickly.'

If he had known the sharpness of the pain he caused the patient heart, in speaking thus! While doing it, too,

'I found that the day when any such thing would have been graceful in me, or good in me, or hopeful or

happy for me or any one in connection with me, was gone, and would never shine again.'

O! If he had known, if he had known! If he could have seen the dagger in his hand, and the cruel wounds it

'All that is over, and I have turned my face from it. Why do I speak of this to Little Dorrit? Why do I show

you, my child, the space of years that there is between us, and recall to you that I have passed, by the amount

'Because you trust me, I hope. Because you know that nothing can touch you without touching me; that

nothing can make you happy or unhappy, but it must make me, who am so grateful to you, the same.'

He heard the thrill in her voice, he saw her earnest face, he saw her clear true eyes, he saw the quickened

bosom that would have joyfully thrown itself before him to receive a mortal wound directed at his breast,

with the dying cry, 'I love him!' and the remotest suspicion of the truth never dawned upon his mind. No. He

saw the devoted little creature with her worn shoes, in her common dress, in her jailhome; a slender child in

body, a strong heroine in soul; and the light of her domestic story made all else dark to him.

'For those reasons assuredly, Little Dorrit, but for another too. So far removed, so different, and so much

older, I am the better fitted for your friend and adviser. I mean, I am the more easily to be trusted; and any

little constraint that you might feel with another, may vanish before me. Why have you kept so retired from

'I am better here. My place and use are here. I am much better here,' said Little Dorrit, faintly.

'So you said that day upon the bridge. I thought of it much afterwards. Have you no secret you could entrust

They had been speaking in low voices; more because it was natural to what they said to adopt that tone, than

with any care to reserve it from Maggy at her work. All of a sudden Maggy stared again, and this time spoke:

'If you an't got no secret of your own to tell him, tell him that about the Princess. She had a secret, you know.'

'The Princess had a secret?' said Clennam, in some surprise. 'What Princess was that, Maggy?'

'Lor! How you do go and bother a gal of ten,' said Maggy, 'catching the poor thing up in that way. Whoever

'No, I didn't. How could I, when it was her as wanted to find it out? It was the little woman as had the secret,

and she was always a spinning at her wheel. And so she says to her, why do you keep it there? And so the

t'other one says to her, no I don't; and so the t'other one says to her, yes you do; and then they both goes to the

cupboard, and there it is. And she wouldn't go into the Hospital, and so she died. You know, Little Mother;

Arthur looked at Little Dorrit for help to comprehend this, and was struck by seeing her so timid and red. But,

when she told him that it was only a Fairy Tale she had one day made up for Maggy, and that there was

nothing in it which she wouldn't be ashamed to tell again to anybody else, even if she could remember it, he

However, he returned to his own subject by first entreating her to see him oftener, and to remember that it

was impossible to have a stronger interest in her welfare than he had, or to be more set upon promoting it

than he was. When she answered fervently, she well knew that, she never forgot it, he touched upon his

'Little Dorrit,' he said, taking her hand again, and speaking lower than he had spoken yet, so that even Maggy

in the small room could not hear him, 'another word. I have wanted very much to say this to you; I have tried

for opportunities. Don't mind me, who, for the matter of years, might be your father or your uncle. Always

think of me as quite an old man. I know that all your devotion centres in this room, and that nothing to the

last will ever tempt you away from the duties you discharge here. If I were not sure of it, I should, before

now, have implored you, and implored your father, to let me make some provision for you in a more suitable

place. But you may have an interestI will not say, now, though even that might bemay have, at another

time, an interest in some one else; an interest not incompatible with your affection here.'

'No. No. No.' She shook her head, after each slow repetition of the word, with an air of quiet desolation that

he remembered long afterwards. The time came when he remembered it well, long afterwards, within those

'But, if it ever should be, tell me so, my dear child. Entrust the truth to me, point out the object of such an

interest to me, and I will try with all the zeal, and honour, and friendship and respect that I feel for you, good

'O thank you, thank you! But, O no, O no, O no!' She said this, looking at him with her workworn hands

'I press for no confidence now. I only ask you to repose unhesitating trust in me.'

'Then you will trust me fully? Will have no secret unhappiness, or anxiety, concealed from me?'

'When I lie down tonight, and my thoughts come backas they will, for they do every night, even when I

have not seen youto this sad place, I may believe that there is no grief beyond this room, now, and its usual

She seemed to catch at these wordsthat he remembered, too, long afterwardsand said, more brightly,

The crazy staircase, usually not slow to give notice when any one was coming up or down, here creaked

under a quick tread, and a further sound was heard upon it, as if a little steamengine with more steam than it

knew what to do with, were working towards the room. As it approached, which it did very rapidly, it

laboured with increased energy; and, after knocking at the door, it sounded as if it were stooping down and

Before Maggy could open the door, Mr Pancks, opening it from without, stood without a hat and with his

bare head in the wildest condition, looking at Clennam and Little Dorrit, over her shoulder.

He had a lighted cigar in his hand, and brought with him airs of ale and tobacco smoke.

'Pancks the gipsy,' he observed out of breath, 'fortunetelling.' He stood dingily smiling, and breathing hard at

them, with a most curious air; as if, instead of being his proprietor's grubber, he were the triumphant

proprietor of the Marshalsea, the Marshal, all the turnkeys, and all the Collegians. In his great self

satisfaction he put his cigar to his lips (being evidently no smoker), and took such a pull at it, with his right

eye shut up tight for the purpose, that he underwent a convulsion of shuddering and choking. But even in the

midst of that paroxysm, he still essayed to repeat his favourite introduction of himself, 'Paancks the giipsy,

'I am spending the evening with the rest of 'em,' said Pancks. 'I've been singing. I've been taking a part in

White sand and grey sand. I don't know anything about it. Never mind. I'll take any part in anything. It's all

At first Clennam supposed him to be intoxicated. But he soon perceived that though he might be a little the

worse (or better) for ale, the staple of his excitement was not brewed from malt, or distilled from any grain or

'How d'ye do, Miss Dorrit?' said Pancks. 'I thought you wouldn't mind my running round, and looking in for a

'Gay!' said Pancks. 'I'm in wonderful feather, sir. I can't stop a minute, or I shall be missed, and I don't want

He seemed to have an insatiate delight in appealing to her and looking at her; excitedly sticking his hair up at

'I haven't been here half an hour. I knew Mr Dorrit was in the chair, and I said, "I'll go and support him!" I

ought to be down in Bleeding Heart Yard by rights; but I can worry them tomorrow.Eh, Miss Dorrit?'

His little black eyes sparkled electrically. His very hair seemed to sparkle as he roughened it. He was in that

highlycharged state that one might have expected to draw sparks and snaps from him by presenting a

She was half afraid of him, and irresolute what to say. He laughed, with a nod towards Clennam.

'Don't mind him, Miss Dorrit. He's one of us. We agreed that you shouldn't take on to mind me before people,

but we didn't mean Mr Clennam. He's one of us. He's in it. An't you, Mr Clennam?Eh, Miss Dorrit?' The

excitement of this strange creature was fast communicating itself to Clennam. Little Dorrit with amazement,

'I was making a remark,' said Pancks, 'but I declare I forget what it was. Oh, I know! Capital company here.

'Very generous of you,' she returned, noticing another of the quick looks between the two.

'Not at all,' said Pancks. 'Don't mention it. I'm coming into my property, that's the fact. I can afford to be

liberal. I think I'll give 'em a treat here. Tables laid in the yard. Bread in stacks. Pipes in faggots. Tobacco in

hayloads. Roast beef and plumpudding for every one. Quart of double stout a head. Pint of wine too, if they

She was thrown into such a confusion by his manner, or rather by Clennam's growing understanding of his

manner (for she looked to him after every fresh appeal and cockatoo demonstration on the part of Mr

'And oh, bythebye!' said Pancks, 'you were to live to know what was behind us on that little hand of yours.

He had suddenly checked himself. Where he got all the additional black prongs from, that now flew up all

over his head like the myriads of points that break out in the large change of a great firework, was a

'But I shall be missed;' he came back to that; 'and I don't want 'em to miss me. Mr Clennam, you and I made a

bargain. I said you should find me stick to it. You shall find me stick to it now, sir, if you'll step out of the

room a moment. Miss Dorrit, I wish you good night. Miss Dorrit, I wish you good fortune.'

He rapidly shook her by both hands, and puffed down stairs. Arthur followed him with such a hurried step,

that he had very nearly tumbled over him on the last landing, and rolled him down into the yard.

'What is it, for Heaven's sake!' Arthur demanded, when they burst out there both together.

'Stop a moment, sir. Mr Rugg. Let me introduce him.' With those words he presented another man without a

hat, and also with a cigar, and also surrounded with a halo of ale and tobacco smoke, which man, though not

so excited as himself, was in a state which would have been akin to lunacy but for its fading into sober

method when compared with the rampancy of Mr Pancks. 'Mr Clennam, Mr Rugg,' said Pancks. 'Stop a

They adjourned to the pump. Mr Pancks, instantly putting his head under the spout, requested Mr Rugg to

take a good strong turn at the handle. Mr Rugg complying to the letter, Mr Pancks came forth snorting and

'I am the clearer for that,' he gasped to Clennam standing astonished. 'But upon my soul, to hear her father

making speeches in that chair, knowing what we know, and to see her up in that room in that dress, knowing

what we know, is enough togive me a back, Mr Rugga little higher, sir,that'll do!'

Then and there, on that Marshalsea pavement, in the shades of evening, did Mr Pancks, of all mankind, fly

over the head and shoulders of Mr Rugg of Pentonville, General Agent, Accountant, and Recoverer of Debts.

Alighting on his feet, he took Clennam by the buttonhole, led him behind the pump, and pantingly produced

from his pocket a bundle of papers. Mr Rugg, also, pantingly produced from his pocket a bundle of papers.

Mr Pancks answered, with an unction which there is no language to convey, 'We rather think so.'

'Thank God!' said Clennam to himself. 'Now show me.' 'You are to understand'snorted Pancks, feverishly

unfolding papers, and speaking in short highpressure blasts of sentences, 'Where's the Pedigree? Where's

all right! Here we are.You are to understand that we are this very day virtually complete. We shan't be

legally for a day or two. Call it at the outside a week. We've been at it night and day for I don't know how

long. Mr Rugg, you know how long? Never mind. Don't say. You'll only confuse me. You shall tell her, Mr

Clennam. Not till we give you leave. Where's that rough total, Mr Rugg? Oh! Here we are! There sir! That's

Resigning herself to inevitable fate by making the best of those people, the Miggleses, and submitting her

philosophy to the draught upon it, of which she had foreseen the likelihood in her interview with Arthur, Mrs

Gowan handsomely resolved not to oppose her son's marriage. In her progress to, and happy arrival at, this

resolution, she was possibly influenced, not only by her maternal affections but by three politic

Of these, the first may have been that her son had never signified the smallest intention to ask her consent, or

any mistrust of his ability to dispense with it; the second, that the pension bestowed upon her by a grateful

country (and a Barnacle) would be freed from any little filial inroads, when her Henry should be married to

the darling only child of a man in very easy circumstances; the third, that Henry's debts must clearly be paid

down upon the altarrailing by his fatherinlaw. When, to these threefold points of prudence there is

added the fact that Mrs Gowan yielded her consent the moment she knew of Mr Meagles having yielded his,

and that Mr Meagles's objection to the marriage had been the sole obstacle in its way all along, it becomes the

height of probability that the relict of the deceased Commissioner of nothing particular, turned these ideas in

Among her connections and acquaintances, however, she maintained her individual dignity and the dignity of

the blood of the Barnacles, by diligently nursing the pretence that it was a most unfortunate business; that she

was sadly cut up by it; that this was a perfect fascination under which Henry laboured; that she had opposed it

for a long time, but what could a mother do; and the like. She had already called Arthur Clennam to bear

witness to this fable, as a friend of the Meagles family; and she followed up the move by now impounding

the family itself for the same purpose. In the first interview she accorded to Mr Meagles, she slided herself

into the position of disconsolately but gracefully yielding to irresistible pressure. With the utmost politeness

and good breeding, she feigned that it was shenot hewho had made the difficulty, and who at length

gave way; and that the sacrifice was hersnot his. The same feint, with the same polite dexterity, she foisted

on Mrs Meagles, as a conjuror might have forced a card on that innocent lady; and, when her future

daughterinlaw was presented to her by her son, she said on embracing her, 'My dear, what have you done

to Henry that has bewitched him so!' at the same time allowing a few tears to carry before them, in little pills,

the cosmetic powder on her nose; as a delicate but touching signal that she suffered much inwardly for the

Among the friends of Mrs Gowan (who piqued herself at once on being Society, and on maintaining intimate

and easy relations with that Power), Mrs Merdle occupied a front row. True, the Hampton Court Bohemians,

without exception, turned up their noses at Merdle as an upstart; but they turned them down again, by falling

flat on their faces to worship his wealth. In which compensating adjustment of their noses, they were pretty

To Mrs Merdle, Mrs Gowan repaired on a visit of selfcondolence, after having given the gracious consent

aforesaid. She drove into town for the purpose in a onehorse carriage irreverently called at that period of

English history, a pillbox. It belonged to a job master in a small way, who drove it himself, and who

jobbed it by the day, or hour, to most of the old ladies in Hampton Court Palace; but it was a point of

ceremony, in that encampment, that the whole equipage should be tacitly regarded as the private property of

the jobber for the time being, and that the jobmaster should betray personal knowledge of nobody but the

jobber in possession. So the Circumlocution Barnacles, who were the largest jobmasters in the universe,

Mrs Merdle was at home, and was in her nest of crimson and gold, with the parrot on a neighbouring stem

watching her with his head on one side, as if he took her for another splendid parrot of a larger species. To

whom entered Mrs Gowan, with her favourite green fan, which softened the light on the spots of bloom.

'My dear soul,' said Mrs Gowan, tapping the back of her friend's hand with this fan after a little indifferent

conversation, 'you are my only comfort. That affair of Henry's that I told you of, is to take place. Now, how

does it strike you? I am dying to know, because you represent and express Society so well.'

Mrs Merdle reviewed the bosom which Society was accustomed to review; and having ascertained that

showwindow of Mr Merdle's and the London jewellers' to be in good order, replied:

'As to marriage on the part of a man, my dear, Society requires that he should retrieve his fortunes by

marriage. Society requires that he should gain by marriage. Society requires that he should found a handsome

establishment by marriage. Society does not see, otherwise, what he has to do with marriage. Bird, be quiet!'

For the parrot on his cage above them, presiding over the conference as if he were a judge (and indeed he

'Cases there are,' said Mrs Merdle, delicately crooking the little finger of her favourite hand, and making her

remarks neater by that neat action; 'cases there are where a man is not young or elegant, and is rich, and has a

Mrs Merdle shrugged her snowy shoulders and put her hand upon the jewelstand, checking a little cough, as

though to add, 'why, a man looks out for this sort of thing, my dear.' Then the parrot shrieked again, and she

put up her glass to look at him, and said, 'Bird! Do be quiet!' 'But, young men,' resumed Mrs Merdle, 'and by

young men you know what I mean, my loveI mean people's sons who have the world before themthey

must place themselves in a better position towards Society by marriage, or Society really will not have any

patience with their making fools of themselves. Dreadfully worldly all this sounds,' said Mrs Merdle, leaning

'My dear, it is not to be disputed for a moment,' returned Mrs Merdle; 'because Society has made up its mind

on the subject, and there is nothing more to be said. If we were in a more primitive state, if we lived under

roofs of leaves, and kept cows and sheep and creatures instead of banker's accounts (which would be

delicious; my dear, I am pastoral to a degree, by nature), well and good. But we don't live under leaves, and

keep cows and sheep and creatures. I perfectly exhaust myself sometimes, in pointing out the distinction to

Mrs Gowan, looking over her green fan when this young gentleman's name was mentioned, replied as

'My love, you know the wretched state of the countrythose unfortunate concessions of John

Barnacle's!and you therefore know the reasons for my being as poor as Thingummy.'

'I was thinking of the other proverbial church personJob,' said Mrs Gowan. 'Either will do. It would be idle

to disguise, consequently, that there is a wide difference between the position of your son and mine. I may

'and that his talent, combined with disappointment,' Mrs Gowan went on, 'has led him into a pursuit

whichah dear me! You know, my dear. Such being Henry's different position, the question is what is the

Mrs Merdle was so much engaged with the contemplation of her arms (beautifulformed arms, and the very

thing for bracelets), that she omitted to reply for a while. Roused at length by the silence, she folded the arms,

and with admirable presence of mind looked her friend full in the face, and said interrogatively, 'Yees? And

'And then, my dear,' said Mrs Gowan not quite so sweetly as before, 'I should be glad to hear what you have

Here the parrot, who had been standing on one leg since he screamed last, burst into a fit of laughter, bobbed

himself derisively up and down on both legs, and finished by standing on one leg again, and pausing for a

'Sounds mercenary to ask what the gentleman is to get with the lady,' said Mrs Merdle; 'but Society is perhaps

'From what I can make out,' said Mrs Gowan, 'I believe I may say that Henry will be relieved from debt'

'Meaning the usual thing; I understand; just so,' Mrs Merdle observed in a comfortable sort of way.

'And that the father will make them an allowance of three hundred ayear, or perhaps altogether something

True. Mrs Merdle hastened to spare the feelings of her afflicted friend. She understood. Say no more!

'And that,' said Mrs Gowan, shaking her despondent head, 'that's all. That,' repeated Mrs Gowan, furling her

green fan for the moment, and tapping her chin with it (it was on the way to being a double chin; might be

called a chin and a half at present), 'that's all! On the death of the old people, I suppose there will be more to

come; but how it may be restricted or locked up, I don't know. And as to that, they may live for ever. My

Now, Mrs Merdle, who really knew her friend Society pretty well, and who knew what Society's mothers

were, and what Society's daughters were, and what Society's matrimonial market was, and how prices ruled

in it, and what scheming and counterscheming took place for the high buyers, and what bargaining and

huckstering went on, thought in the depths of her capacious bosom that this was a sufficiently good catch.

Knowing, however, what was expected of her, and perceiving the exact nature of the fiction to be nursed, she

took it delicately in her arms, and put her required contribution of gloss upon it.

'And that is all, my dear?' said she, heaving a friendly sigh. 'Well, well! The fault is not yours. You have

nothing to reproach yourself with. You must exercise the strength of mind for which you are renowned, and

make the best of it.' 'The girl's family have made,' said Mrs Gowan, 'of course, the most strenuous endeavours

'I have persisted in every possible objection, and have worried myself morning, noon, and night, for means to

'And all of no use. All has broken down beneath me. Now tell me, my love. Am I justified in at last yielding

my most reluctant consent to Henry's marrying among people not in Society; or, have I acted with

In answer to this direct appeal, Mrs Merdle assured Mrs Gowan (speaking as a Priestess of Society) that she

was highly to be commended, that she was much to be sympathised with, that she had taken the highest of

parts, and had come out of the furnace refined. And Mrs Gowan, who of course saw through her own

threadbare blind perfectly, and who knew that Mrs Merdle saw through it perfectly, and who knew that

Society would see through it perfectly, came out of this form, notwithstanding, as she had gone into it, with

The conference was held at four or five o'clock in the afternoon, when all the region of Harley Street,

Cavendish Square, was resonant of carriagewheels and doubleknocks. It had reached this point when Mr

Merdle came home from his daily occupation of causing the British name to be more and more respected in

all parts of the civilised globe capable of the appreciation of worldwide commercial enterprise and gigantic

combinations of skill and capital. For, though nobody knew with the least precision what Mr Merdle's

business was, except that it was to coin money, these were the terms in which everybody defined it on all

ceremonious occasions, and which it was the last new polite reading of the parable of the camel and the

For a gentleman who had this splendid work cut out for him, Mr Merdle looked a little common, and rather as

if, in the course of his vast transactions, he had accidentally made an interchange of heads with some inferior

spirit. He presented himself before the two ladies in the course of a dismal stroll through his mansion, which

'I beg your pardon,' he said, stopping short in confusion; 'I didn't know there was anybody here but the parrot.'

However, as Mrs Merdle said, 'You can come in!' and as Mrs Gowan said she was just going, and had already

risen to take her leave, he came in, and stood looking out at a distant window, with his hands crossed under

his uneasy coatcuffs, clasping his wrists as if he were taking himself into custody. In this attitude he fell

directly into a reverie from which he was only aroused by his wife's calling to him from her ottoman, when

'What is it?' repeated Mrs Merdle. 'It is, I suppose, that you have not heard a word of my complaint.'

'Your complaint, Mrs Merdle?' said Mr Merdle. 'I didn't know that you were suffering from a complaint.

'Oh! A complaint of me,' said Mr Merdle. 'What is thewhat have Iwhat may you have to complain of in

me, Mrs Merdle?' In his withdrawing, abstracted, pondering way, it took him some time to shape this

question. As a kind of faint attempt to convince himself that he was the master of the house, he concluded by

presenting his forefinger to the parrot, who expressed his opinion on that subject by instantly driving his bill

'You were saying, Mrs Merdle,' said Mr Merdle, with his wounded finger in his mouth, 'that you had a

'A complaint which I could scarcely show the justice of more emphatically, than by having to repeat it,' said

Mrs Merdle. 'I might as well have stated it to the wall. I had far better have stated it to the bird. He would at

'You don't want me to scream, Mrs Merdle, I suppose,' said Mr Merdle, taking a chair.

'Indeed I don't know,' retorted Mrs Merdle, 'but that you had better do that, than be so moody and distraught.

One would at least know that you were sensible of what was going on around you.'

'And might be dogged, as you are at present, without screaming,' returned Mrs Merdle. 'That's very true. If

you wish to know the complaint I make against you, it is, in so many plain words, that you really ought not to

Mr Merdle, so twisting his hands into what hair he had upon his head that he seemed to lift himself up by it as

he started out of his chair, cried: 'Why, in the name of all the infernal powers, Mrs Merdle, who does more

Do you see this furniture, Mrs Merdle? Do you look in the glass and see yourself, Mrs Merdle? Do you know

the cost of all this, and who it's all provided for? And yet will you tell me that I oughtn't to go into Society? I,

who shower money upon it in this way? I, who might always be saidtototo harness myself to a

wateringcart full of money, and go about saturating Society every day of my life.'

'Violent?' said Mr Merdle. 'You are enough to make me desperate. You don't know half of what I do to

'I know,' returned Mrs Merdle, 'that you receive the best in the land. I know that you move in the whole

Society of the country. And I believe I know (indeed, not to make any ridiculous pretence about it, I know I

'Mrs Merdle,' retorted that gentleman, wiping his dull red and yellow face, 'I know that as well as you do. If

you were not an ornament to Society, and if I was not a benefactor to Society, you and I would never have

come together. When I say a benefactor to it, I mean a person who provides it with all sorts of expensive

things to eat and drink and look at. But, to tell me that I am not fit for it after all I have done for itafter all I

have done for it,' repeated Mr Merdle, with a wild emphasis that made his wife lift up her eyelids, 'after

allall!to tell me I have no right to mix with it after all, is a pretty reward.'

'I say,' answered Mrs Merdle composedly, 'that you ought to make yourself fit for it by being more degage,

and less preoccupied. There is a positive vulgarity in carrying your business affairs about with you as you do.'

'How do you carry them about?' said Mrs Merdle. 'Look at yourself in the glass.'

Mr Merdle involuntarily turned his eyes in the direction of the nearest mirror, and asked, with a slow

determination of his turbid blood to his temples, whether a man was to be called to account for his digestion?

'Besides,' said she, 'your digestion is nonsense. I don't speak of your digestion. I speak of your manner.' 'Mrs

Merdle,' returned her husband, 'I look to you for that. You supply manner, and I supply money.'

'I don't expect you,' said Mrs Merdle, reposing easily among her cushions, 'to captivate people. I don't want

you to take any trouble upon yourself, or to try to be fascinating. I simply request you to care about

'I have already told you. You show that you carry your business cares an projects about, instead of leaving

them in the City, or wherever else they belong to,' said Mrs Merdle. 'Or seeming to. Seeming would be quite

enough: I ask no more. Whereas you couldn't be more occupied with your day's calculations and

'And my complaint is,' pursued the lady, disregarding the low remark, 'that it is not the tone of Society, and

that you ought to correct it, Mr Merdle. If you have any doubt of my judgment, ask even Edmund Sparkler.'

The door of the room had opened, and Mrs Merdle now surveyed the head of her son through her glass.

Mr Sparkler, who had merely put in his head and looked round the room without entering (as if he were

searching the house for that young lady with no nonsense about her), upon this followed up his head with his

body, and stood before them. To whom, in a few easy words adapted to his capacity, Mrs Merdle stated the

The young gentleman, after anxiously feeling his shirtcollar as if it were his pulse and he were

'Edmund Sparkler has heard it noticed,' said Mrs Merdle, with languid triumph. 'Why, no doubt everybody

has heard it noticed!' Which in truth was no unreasonable inference; seeing that Mr Sparkler would probably

be the last person, in any assemblage of the human species, to receive an impression from anything that

'And Edmund Sparkler will tell you, I dare say,' said Mrs Merdle, waving her favourite hand towards her

husband, 'how he has heard it noticed.' 'I couldn't,' said Mr Sparkler, after feeling his pulse as before, 'couldn't

undertake to say what led to it'cause memory desperate loose. But being in company with the brother of a

doosed fine galwell educated toowith no biggodd nonsense about herat the period alluded to'

'There! Never mind the sister,' remarked Mrs Merdle, a little impatiently. 'What did the brother say?'

'Didn't say a word, ma'am,' answered Mr Sparkler. 'As silent a feller as myself. Equally hard up for a remark.'

Mr Sparkler referred to his pulse again, and put himself through some severe mental discipline before he

'Fellers referring to my Governorexpression not my own occasionally compliment my Governor in a

very handsome way on being immensely rich and knowingperfect phenomenon of Buyer and Banker and

thatbut say the Shop sits heavily on him. Say he carried the Shop about, on his back ratherlike Jew

'Which,' said Mrs Merdle, rising, with her floating drapery about her, 'is exactly my complaint. Edmund, give

Mr Merdle, left alone to meditate on a better conformation of himself to Society, looked out of nine windows

in succession, and appeared to see nine wastes of space. When he had thus entertained himself he went

downstairs, and looked intently at all the carpets on the groundfloor; and then came upstairs again, and

looked intently at all the carpets on the firstfloor; as if they were gloomy depths, in unison with his

oppressed soul. Through all the rooms he wandered, as he always did, like the last person on earth who had

any business to approach them. Let Mrs Merdle announce, with all her might, that she was at Home ever so

many nights in a season, she could not announce more widely and unmistakably than Mr Merdle did that he

At last he met the chief butler, the sight of which splendid retainer always finished him. Extinguished by this

great creature, he sneaked to his dressingroom, and there remained shut up until he rode out to dinner, with

Mrs Merdle, in her own handsome chariot. At dinner, he was envied and flattered as a being of might, was

Treasuried, Barred, and Bishoped, as much as he would; and an hour after midnight came home alone, and

being instantly put out again in his own hall, like a rushlight, by the chief butler, went sighing to bed.

Mr Henry Gowan and the dog were established frequenters of the cottage, and the day was fixed for the

wedding. There was to be a convocation of Barnacles on the occasion, in order that that very high and very

large family might shed as much lustre on the marriage as so dim an event was capable of receiving.

To have got the whole Barnacle family together would have been impossible for two reasons. Firstly, because

no building could have held all the members and connections of that illustrious house. Secondly, because

wherever there was a square yard of ground in British occupation under the sun or moon, with a public post

upon it, sticking to that post was a Barnacle. No intrepid navigator could plant a flagstaff upon any spot of

earth, and take possession of it in the British name, but to that spot of earth, so soon as the discovery was

known, the Circumlocution Office sent out a Barnacle and a despatchbox. Thus the Barnacles were all over

But, while the sopotent art of Prospero himself would have failed in summoning the Barnacles from every

speck of ocean and dry land on which there was nothing (except mischief) to be done and anything to be

pocketed, it was perfectly feasible to assemble a good many Barnacles. This Mrs Gowan applied herself to

do; calling on Mr Meagles frequently with new additions to the list, and holding conferences with that

gentleman when he was not engaged (as he generally was at this period) in examining and paying the debts of

One marriage guest there was, in reference to whose presence Mr Meagles felt a nearer interest and concern

than in the attendance of the most elevated Barnacle expected; though he was far from insensible of the

honour of having such company. This guest was Clennam. But Clennam had made a promise he held sacred,

among the trees that summer night, and, in the chivalry of his heart, regarded it as binding him to many

implied obligations. In forgetfulness of himself, and delicate service to her on all occasions, he was never to

fail; to begin it, he answered Mr Meagles cheerfully, 'I shall come, of course.'

His partner, Daniel Doyce, was something of a stumblingblock in Mr Meagles's way, the worthy gentleman

being not at all clear in his own anxious mind but that the mingling of Daniel with official Barnacleism might

produce some explosive combination, even at a marriage breakfast. The national offender, however, lightened

him of his uneasiness by coming down to Twickenham to represent that he begged, with the freedom of an

old friend, and as a favour to one, that he might not be invited. 'For,' said he, 'as my business with this set of

gentlemen was to do a public duty and a public service, and as their business with me was to prevent it by

wearing my soul out, I think we had better not eat and drink together with a show of being of one mind.' Mr

Meagles was much amused by his friend's oddity; and patronised him with a more protecting air of allowance

than usual, when he rejoined: 'Well, well, Dan, you shall have your own crotchety way.'

To Mr Henry Gowan, as the time approached, Clennam tried to convey by all quiet and unpretending means,

that he was frankly and disinterestedly desirous of tendering him any friendship he would accept. Mr Gowan

treated him in return with his usual ease, and with his usual show of confidence, which was no confidence at

'You see, Clennam,' he happened to remark in the course of conversation one day, when they were walking

near the Cottage within a week of the marriage, 'I am a disappointed man. That you know already.'

'Why,' returned Gowan, 'I belong to a clan, or a clique, or a family, or a connection, or whatever you like to

call it, that might have provided for me in any one of fifty ways, and that took it into its head not to do it at

'Yes, yes, I know. I have the good fortune of being beloved by a beautiful and charming girl whom I love

with all my heart.' ('Is there much of it?' Clennam thought. And as he thought it, felt ashamed of himself.)

'And of finding a fatherinlaw who is a capital fellow and a liberal good old boy. Still, I had other prospects

washed and combed into my childish head when it was washed and combed for me, and I took them to a

public school when I washed and combed it for myself, and I am here without them, and thus I am a

Clennam thought (and as he thought it, again felt ashamed of himself), was this notion of being disappointed

in life, an assertion of station which the bridegroom brought into the family as his property, having already

carried it detrimentally into his pursuit? And was it a hopeful or a promising thing anywhere?

'Not bitterly disappointed, I think,' he said aloud. 'Hang it, no; not bitterly,' laughed Gowan. 'My people are

not worth thatthough they are charming fellows, and I have the greatest affection for them. Besides, it's

pleasant to show them that I can do without them, and that they may all go to the Devil. And besides, again,

most men are disappointed in life, somehow or other, and influenced by their disappointment. But it's a dear

'Fair as this summer river,' cried the other, with enthusiasm, 'and by Jove I glow with admiration of it, and

with ardour to run a race in it. It's the best of old worlds! And my calling! The best of old callings, isn't it?'

'And imposition,' added Gowan, laughing; 'we won't leave out the imposition. I hope I may not break down in

that; but there, my being a disappointed man may show itself. I may not be able to face it out gravely enough.

Between you and me, I think there is some danger of my being just enough soured not to be able to do that.'

'To keep it up. To help myself in my turn, as the man before me helps himself in his, and pass the bottle of

smoke. To keep up the pretence as to labour, and study, and patience, and being devoted to my art, and giving

up many solitary days to it, and abandoning many pleasures for it, and living in it, and all the rest of itin

'But it is well for a man to respect his own vocation, whatever it is; and to think himself bound to uphold it,

and to claim for it the respect it deserves; is it not?' Arthur reasoned. 'And your vocation, Gowan, may really

demand this suit and service. I confess I should have thought that all Art did.'

'What a good fellow you are, Clennam!' exclaimed the other, stopping to look at him, as if with irrepressible

admiration. 'What a capital fellow! You have never been disappointed. That's easy to see.'

It would have been so cruel if he had meant it, that Clennam firmly resolved to believe he did not mean it.

Gowan, without pausing, laid his hand upon his shoulder, and laughingly and lightly went on:

'Clennam, I don't like to dispel your generous visions, and I would give any money (if I had any), to live in

such a rosecoloured mist. But what I do in my trade, I do to sell. What all we fellows do, we do to sell. If we

didn't want to sell it for the most we can get for it, we shouldn't do it. Being work, it has to be done; but it's

Now here's one of the advantages, or disadvantages, of knowing a disappointed man. You hear the truth.'

Whatever he had heard, and whether it deserved that name or another, it sank into Clennam's mind. It so took

root there, that he began to fear Henry Gowan would always be a trouble to him, and that so far he had gained

little or nothing from the dismissal of Nobody, with all his inconsistencies, anxieties, and contradictions. He

found a contest still always going on in his breast between his promise to keep Gowan in none but good

aspects before the mind of Mr Meagles, and his enforced observation of Gowan in aspects that had no good

in them. Nor could he quite support his own conscientious nature against misgivings that he distorted and

discoloured himself, by reminding himself that he never sought those discoveries, and that he would have

avoided them with willingness and great relief. For he never could forget what he had been; and he knew that

he had once disliked Gowan for no better reason than that he had come in his way.

Harassed by these thoughts, he now began to wish the marriage over, Gowan and his young wife gone, and

himself left to fulfil his promise, and discharge the generous function he had accepted. This last week was, in

truth, an uneasy interval for the whole house. Before Pet, or before Gowan, Mr Meagles was radiant; but

Clennam had more than once found him alone, with his view of the scales and scoop much blurred, and had

often seen him look after the lovers, in the garden or elsewhere when he was not seen by them, with the old

clouded face on which Gowan had fallen like a shadow. In the arrangement of the house for the great

occasion, many little reminders of the old travels of the father and mother and daughter had to be disturbed

and passed from hand to hand; and sometimes, in the midst of these mute witnesses, to the life they had had

together, even Pet herself would yield to lamenting and weeping. Mrs Meagles, the blithest and busiest of

mothers, went about singing and cheering everybody; but she, honest soul, had her flights into store rooms,

where she would cry until her eyes were red, and would then come out, attributing that appearance to pickled

onions and pepper, and singing clearer than ever. Mrs Tickit, finding no balsam for a wounded mind in

Buchan's Domestic Medicine, suffered greatly from low spirits, and from moving recollections of Minnie's

infancy. When the latter was powerful with her, she usually sent up secret messages importing that she was

not in parlour condition as to her attire, and that she solicited a sight of 'her child' in the kitchen; there, she

would bless her child's face, and bless her child's heart, and hug her child, in a medley of tears and

congratulations, choppingboards, rollingpins, and piecrust, with the tenderness of an old attached servant,

But all days come that are to be; and the marriageday was to be, and it came; and with it came all the

Barnacles who were bidden to the feast. There was Mr Tite Barnacle, from the Circumlocution Office, and

Mews Street, Grosvenor Square, with the expensive Mrs Tite Barnacle NEE Stiltstalking, who made the

Quarter Days so long in coming, and the three expensive Miss Tite Barnacles, doubleloaded with

accomplishments and ready to go off, and yet not going off with the sharpness of flash and bang that might

have been expected, but rather hanging fire. There was Barnacle junior, also from the Circumlocution Office,

leaving the Tonnage of the country, which he was somehow supposed to take under his protection, to look

after itself, and, sooth to say, not at all impairing the efficiency of its protection by leaving it alone. There

was the engaging Young Barnacle, deriving from the sprightly side of the family, also from the

Circumlocution Office, gaily and agreeably helping the occasion along, and treating it, in his sparkling way,

as one of the official forms and fees of the Church Department of How not to do it. There were three other

Young Barnacles from three other offices, insipid to all the senses, and terribly in want of seasoning, doing

the marriage as they would have 'done' the Nile, Old Rome, the new singer, or Jerusalem.

But there was greater game than this. There was Lord Decimus Tite Barnacle himself, in the odour of

Circumlocutionwith the very smell of DespatchBoxes upon him. Yes, there was Lord Decimus Tite

Barnacle, who had risen to official heights on the wings of one indignant idea, and that was, My Lords, that I

am yet to be told that it behoves a Minister of this free country to set bounds to the philanthropy, to cramp the

charity, to fetter the public spirit, to contract the enterprise, to damp the independent self reliance, of its

people. That was, in other words, that this great statesman was always yet to be told that it behoved the Pilot

of the ship to do anything but prosper in the private loaf and fish trade ashore, the crew being able, by dint of

hard pumping, to keep the ship above water without him. On this sublime discovery in the great art How not

to do it, Lord Decimus had long sustained the highest glory of the Barnacle family; and let any illadvised

member of either House but try How to do it by bringing in a Bill to do it, that Bill was as good as dead and

buried when Lord Decimus Tite Barnacle rose up in his place and solemnly said, soaring into indignant

majesty as the Circumlocution cheering soared around him, that he was yet to be told, My Lords, that it

behoved him as the Minister of this free country, to set bounds to the philanthropy, to cramp the charity, to

fetter the public spirit, to contract the enterprise, to damp the independent self reliance, of its people. The

discovery of this Behoving Machine was the discovery of the political perpetual motion. It never wore out,

And there, with his noble friend and relative Lord Decimus, was William Barnacle, who had made the

everfamous coalition with Tudor Stiltstalking, and who always kept ready his own particular recipe for How

not to do it; sometimes tapping the Speaker, and drawing it fresh out of him, with a 'First, I will beg you, sir,

to inform the House what Precedent we have for the course into which the honourable gentleman would

precipitate us;' sometimes asking the honourable gentleman to favour him with his own version of the

Precedent; sometimes telling the honourable gentleman that he (William Barnacle) would search for a

Precedent; and oftentimes crushing the honourable gentleman flat on the spot by telling him there was no

Precedent. But Precedent and Precipitate were, under all circumstances, the wellmatched pair of

battlehorses of this able Circumlocutionist. No matter that the unhappy honourable gentleman had been

trying in vain, for twentyfive years, to precipitate William Barnacle into thisWilliam Barnacle still put it

to the House, and (at secondhand or so) to the country, whether he was to be precipitated into this. No

matter that it was utterly irreconcilable with the nature of things and course of events that the wretched

honourable gentleman could possibly produce a Precedent for thisWilliam Barnacle would nevertheless

thank the honourable gentleman for that ironical cheer, and would close with him upon that issue, and would

tell him to his teeth that there Was NO Precedent for this. It might perhaps have been objected that the

William Barnacle wisdom was not high wisdom or the earth it bamboozled would never have been made, or,

if made in a rash mistake, would have remained blank mud. But Precedent and Precipitate together frightened

And there, too, was another Barnacle, a lively one, who had leaped through twenty places in quick

succession, and was always in two or three at once, and who was the muchrespected inventor of an art

which he practised with great success and admiration in all Barnacle Governments. This was, when he was

asked a Parliamentary question on any one topic, to return an answer on any other. It had done immense

And there, too, was a sprinkling of less distinguished Parliamentary Barnacles, who had not as yet got

anything snug, and were going through their probation to prove their worthiness. These Barnacles perched

upon staircases and hid in passages, waiting their orders to make houses or not to make houses; and they did

all their hearing, and ohing, and cheering, and barking, under directions from the heads of the family; and

they put dummy motions on the paper in the way of other men's motions; and they stalled disagreeable

subjects off until late in the night and late in the session, and then with virtuous patriotism cried out that it

was too late; and they went down into the country, whenever they were sent, and swore that Lord Decimus

had revived trade from a swoon, and commerce from a fit, and had doubled the harvest of corn, quadrupled

the harvest of hay, and prevented no end of gold from flying out of the Bank. Also these Barnacles were

dealt, by the heads of the family, like so many cards below the courtcards, to public meetings and dinners;

where they bore testimony to all sorts of services on the part of their noble and honourable relatives, and

buttered the Barnacles on all sorts of toasts. And they stood, under similar orders, at all sorts of elections; and

they turned out of their own seats, on the shortest notice and the most unreasonable terms, to let in other men;

and they fetched and carried, and toadied and jobbed, and corrupted, and ate heaps of dirt, and were

indefatigable in the public service. And there was not a list, in all the Circumlocution Office, of places that

might fall vacant anywhere within half a century, from a lord of the Treasury to a Chinese consul, and up

again to a governorgeneral of India, but as applicants for such places, the names of some or of every one of

It was necessarily but a sprinkling of any class of Barnacles that attended the marriage, for there were not two

score in all, and what is that subtracted from Legion! But the sprinkling was a swarm in the Twickenham

cottage, and filled it. A Barnacle (assisted by a Barnacle) married the happy pair, and it behoved Lord

The entertainment was not as agreeable and natural as it might have been. Mr Meagles, hove down by his

good company while he highly appreciated it, was not himself. Mrs Gowan was herself, and that did not

improve him. The fiction that it was not Mr Meagles who had stood in the way, but that it was the Family

greatness, and that the Family greatness had made a concession, and there was now a soothing unanimity,

pervaded the affair, though it was never openly expressed. Then the Barnacles felt that they for their parts

would have done with the Meagleses when the present patronising occasion was over; and the Meagleses felt

the same for their parts. Then Gowan asserting his rights as a disappointed man who had his grudge against

the family, and who, perhaps, had allowed his mother to have them there, as much in the hope it might give

them some annoyance as with any other benevolent object, aired his pencil and his poverty ostentatiously

before them, and told them he hoped in time to settle a crust of bread and cheese on his wife, and that he

begged such of them as (more fortunate than himself) came in for any good thing, and could buy a picture, to

please to remember the poor painter. Then Lord Decimus, who was a wonder on his own Parliamentary

pedestal, turned out to be the windiest creature here: proposing happiness to the bride and bridegroom in a

series of platitudes that would have made the hair of any sincere disciple and believer stand on end; and

trotting, with the complacency of an idiotic elephant, among howling labyrinths of sentences which he

seemed to take for high roads, and never so much as wanted to get out of. Then Mr Tite Barnacle could not

but feel that there was a person in company, who would have disturbed his lifelong sitting to Sir Thomas

Lawrence in full official character, if such disturbance had been possible: while Barnacle junior did, with

indignation, communicate to two vapid gentlemen, his relatives, that there was a feller here, look here, who

had come to our Department without an appointment and said he wanted to know, you know; and that, look

here, if he was to break out now, as he might you know (for you never could tell what an ungentlemanly

Radical of that sort would be up to next), and was to say, look here, that he wanted to know this moment, you

The pleasantest part of the occasion by far, to Clennam, was the painfullest. When Mr and Mrs Meagles at

last hung about Pet in the room with the two pictures (where the company were not), before going with her to

the threshold which she could never recross to be the old Pet and the old delight, nothing could be more

natural and simple than the three were. Gowan himself was touched, and answered Mr Meagles's 'O Gowan,

take care of her, take care of her!' with an earnest 'Don't be so brokenhearted, sir. By Heaven I will!'

And so, with the last sobs and last loving words, and a last look to Clennam of confidence in his promise, Pet

fell back in the carriage, and her husband waved his hand, and they were away for Dover; though not until the

faithful Mrs Tickit, in her silk gown and jet black curls, had rushed out from some hidingplace, and thrown

both her shoes after the carriage: an apparition which occasioned great surprise to the distinguished company

The said company being now relieved from further attendance, and the chief Barnacles being rather hurried

(for they had it in hand just then to send a mail or two which was in danger of going straight to its destination,

beating about the seas like the Flying Dutchman, and to arrange with complexity for the stoppage of a good

deal of important business otherwise in peril of being done), went their several ways; with all affability

conveying to Mr and Mrs Meagles that general assurance that what they had been doing there, they had been

doing at a sacrifice for Mr and Mrs Meagles's good, which they always conveyed to Mr John Bull in their

A miserable blank remained in the house and in the hearts of the father and mother and Clennam. Mr

It had made him much more low and unhappy at the time, but now it really did him good. 'It's very

gratifying,' he said, often repeating the remark in the course of the evening. 'Such high company!'

It was at this time that Mr Pancks, in discharge of his compact with Clennam, revealed to him the whole of

his gipsy story, and told him Little Dorrit's fortune. Her father was heiratlaw to a great estate that had long

lain unknown of, unclaimed, and accumulating. His right was now clear, nothing interposed in his way, the

Marshalsea gates stood open, the Marshalsea walls were down, a few flourishes of his pen, and he was

In his tracking out of the claim to its complete establishment, Mr Pancks had shown a sagacity that nothing

could baffle, and a patience and secrecy that nothing could tire. 'I little thought, sir,' said Pancks, 'when you

and I crossed Smithfield that night, and I told you what sort of a Collector I was, that this would come of it. I

little thought, sir, when I told you you were not of the Clennams of Cornwall, that I was ever going to tell you

who were of the Dorrits of Dorsetshire.' He then went on to detail. How, having that name recorded in his

notebook, he was first attracted by the name alone. How, having often found two exactly similar names,

even belonging to the same place, to involve no traceable consanguinity, near or distant, he did not at first

give much heed to this, except in the way of speculation as to what a surprising change would be made in the

condition of a little seamstress, if she could be shown to have any interest in so large a property. How he

rather supposed himself to have pursued the idea into its next degree, because there was something

uncommon in the quiet little seamstress, which pleased him and provoked his curiosity.

How he had felt his way inch by inch, and 'Moled it out, sir' (that was Mr Pancks's expression), grain by

grain. How, in the beginning of the labour described by this new verb, and to render which the more

expressive Mr Pancks shut his eyes in pronouncing it and shook his hair over them, he had alternated from

sudden lights and hopes to sudden darkness and no hopes, and back again, and back again. How he had made

acquaintances in the Prison, expressly that he might come and go there as all other comers and goers did; and

how his first ray of light was unconsciously given him by Mr Dorrit himself and by his son; to both of whom

he easily became known; with both of whom he talked much, casually ('but always Moleing you'll observe,'

said Mr Pancks): and from whom he derived, without being at all suspected, two or three little points of

family history which, as he began to hold clues of his own, suggested others. How it had at length become

plain to Mr Pancks that he had made a real discovery of the heiratlaw to a great fortune, and that his

discovery had but to be ripened to legal fulness and perfection. How he had, thereupon, sworn his landlord,

How they had employed John Chivery as their sole clerk and agent, seeing to whom he was devoted. And

how, until the present hour, when authorities mighty in the Bank and learned in the law declared their

'So if the whole thing had broken down, sir,' concluded Pancks, 'at the very last, say the day before the other

day when I showed you our papers in the Prison yard, or say that very day, nobody but ourselves would have

Clennam, who had been almost incessantly shaking hands with him throughout the narrative, was reminded

by this to say, in an amazement which even the preparation he had had for the main disclosure smoothed

'Pretty well, sir,' said the triumphant Pancks. 'No trifle, though we did it as cheap as it could be done. And the

'A difficulty!' repeated Clennam. 'But the difficulties you have so wonderfully conquered in the whole

'I'll tell you how I did it,' said the delighted Pancks, putting his hair into a condition as elevated as himself.

'I am sorry for it,' said Clennam: 'not that it matters now, though. Then, what did you do?'

'Noble old boy; an't he?' said Mr Pancks, entering on a series of the dryest snorts. 'Generous old buck.

Confiding old boy. Philanthropic old buck. Benevolent old boy! Twenty per cent. I engaged to pay him, sir.

Arthur felt an awkward consciousness of having, in his exultant condition, been a little premature.

'I said to that boilingover old Christian,' Mr Pancks pursued, appearing greatly to relish this descriptive

epithet, 'that I had got a little project on hand; a hopeful one; I told him a hopeful one; which wanted a certain

small capital. I proposed to him to lend me the money on my note. Which he did, at twenty; sticking the

twenty on in a businesslike way, and putting it into the note, to look like a part of the principal. If I had

broken down after that, I should have been his grubber for the next seven years at half wages and double

grind. But he's a perfect Patriarch; and it would do a man good to serve him on such termson any terms.'

Arthur for his life could not have said with confidence whether Pancks really thought so or not.

'When that was gone, sir,' resumed Pancks, 'and it did go, though I dribbled it out like so much blood, I had

taken Mr Rugg into the secret. I proposed to borrow of Mr Rugg (or of Miss Rugg; it's the same thing; she

made a little money by a speculation in the Common Pleas once). He lent it at ten, and thought that pretty

high. But Mr Rugg's a redhaired man, sir, and gets his hair cut. And as to the crown of his hat, it's high. And

as to the brim of his hat, it's narrow. And there's no more benevolence bubbling out of him, than out of a

'Your own recompense for all this, Mr Pancks,' said Clennam, 'ought to be a large one.'

'I don't mistrust getting it, sir,' said Pancks. 'I have made no bargain. I owed you one on that score; now I have

paid it. Money out of pocket made good, time fairly allowed for, and Mr Rugg's bill settled, a thousand

pounds would be a fortune to me. That matter I place in your hands. I authorize you now to break all this to

the family in any way you think best. Miss Amy Dorrit will be with Mrs Finching this morning. The sooner

This conversation took place in Clennam's bedroom, while he was yet in bed. For Mr Pancks had knocked

up the house and made his way in, very early in the morning; and, without once sitting down or standing still,

had delivered himself of the whole of his details (illustrated with a variety of documents) at the bedside. He

now said he would 'go and look up Mr Rugg', from whom his excited state of mind appeared to require

another back; and bundling up his papers, and exchanging one more hearty shake of the hand with Clennam,

Clennam, of course, resolved to go direct to Mr Casby's. He dressed and got out so quickly that he found

himself at the corner of the patriarchal street nearly an hour before her time; but he was not sorry to have the

When he returned to the street, and had knocked at the bright brass knocker, he was informed that she had

come, and was shown upstairs to Flora's breakfastroom. Little Dorrit was not there herself, but Flora was,

'Good gracious, ArthurDoyce and Clennam!' cried that lady, 'who would have ever thought of seeing such

a sight as this and pray excuse a wrapper for upon my word I really never and a faded check too which is

worse but our little friend is making me a, not that I need mind mentioning it to you for you must know that

there are such things a skirt, and having arranged that a trying on should take place after breakfast is the

'I ought to make an apology,' said Arthur, 'for so early and abrupt a visit; but you will excuse it when I tell

'In times for ever fled Arthur,' returned Mrs Finching, 'pray excuse me Doyce and Clennam infinitely more

correct and though unquestionably distant still 'tis distance lends enchantment to the view, at least I don't

mean that and if I did I suppose it would depend considerably on the nature of the view, but I'm running on

'In times for ever fled I was going to say it would have sounded strange indeed for Arthur ClennamDoyce

and Clennam naturally quite differentto make apologies for coming here at any time, but that is past and

what is past can never be recalled except in his own case as poor Mr F. said when he was in spirits Cucumber

She was making the tea when Arthur came in, and now hastily finished that operation.

'Papa,' she said, all mystery and whisper, as she shut down the teapot lid, 'is sitting prosingly breaking his

new laid egg in the back parlour over the City article exactly like the Woodpecker Tapping and need never

know that you are here, and our little friend you are well aware may be fully trusted when she comes down

Arthur then told her, in the fewest words, that it was their little friend he came to see; and what he had to

announce to their little friend. At which astounding intelligence, Flora clasped her hands, fell into a tremble,

and shed tears of sympathy and pleasure, like the goodnatured creature she really was.

'For goodness sake let me get out of the way first,' said Flora, putting her hands to her ears and moving

towards the door, 'or I know I shall go off dead and screaming and make everybody worse, and the dear little

thing only this morning looking so nice and neat and good and yet so poor and now a fortune is she really and

deserves it too! and might I mention it to Mr F.'s Aunt Arthur not Doyce and Clennam for this once or if

Arthur nodded his free permission, since Flora shut out all verbal communication. Flora nodded in return to

Little Dorrit's step was already on the stairs, and in another moment she was at the door. Do what he could to

compose his face, he could not convey so much of an ordinary expression into it, but that the moment she

' Nothing, nothing. That is, no misfortune has happened. I have come to tell you something, but it is a piece of

They stood in a window, and her eyes, full of light, were fixed upon his face. He put an arm about her, seeing

her likely to sink down. She put a hand upon that arm, partly to rest upon it, and partly so to preserve their

relative positions as that her intent look at him should be shaken by no change of attitude in either of them.

The ice of the pale face broke at the word, and little lights and shoots of expression passed all over it. They

were all expressions of pain. Her breath was faint and hurried. Her heart beat fast. He would have clasped the

'Your father can be free within this week. He does not know it; we must go to him from here, to tell him of it.

Your father will be free within a few days. Your father will be free within a few hours. Remember we must

'This is not all the goodfortune. This is not all the wonderful goodfortune, my dear Little Dorrit. Shall I tell

'Your father will be no beggar when he is free. He will want for nothing. Shall I tell you more? Remember!

She seemed to entreat him for a little time. He held her in his arm, and, after a pause, bent down his ear to

'He will be a rich man. He is a rich man. A great sum of money is waiting to be paid over to him as his

inheritance; you are all henceforth very wealthy. Bravest and best of children, I thank Heaven that you are

As he kissed her, she turned her head towards his shoulder, and raised her arm towards his neck; cried out

Upon which Flora returned to take care of her, and hovered about her on a sofa, intermingling kind offices

and incoherent scraps of conversation in a manner so confounding, that whether she pressed the Marshalsea

to take a spoonful of unclaimed dividends, for it would do her good; or whether she congratulated Little

Dorrit's father on coming into possession of a hundred thousand smelling bottles; or whether she explained

that she put seventyfive thousand drops of spirits of lavender on fifty thousand pounds of lump sugar, and

that she entreated Little Dorrit to take that gentle restorative; or whether she bathed the foreheads of Doyce

and Clennam in vinegar, and gave the late Mr F. more air; no one with any sense of responsibility could have

undertaken to decide. A tributary stream of confusion, moreover, poured in from an adjoining bedroom,

where Mr F.'s Aunt appeared, from the sound of her voice, to be in a horizontal posture, awaiting her

breakfast; and from which bower that inexorable lady snapped off short taunts, whenever she could get a

hearing, as, 'Don't believe it's his doing!' and 'He needn't take no credit to himself for it!' and 'It'll be long

enough, I expect, afore he'll give up any of his own money!' all designed to disparage Clennam's share in the

discovery, and to relieve those inveterate feelings with which Mr F.'s Aunt regarded him.

But Little Dorrit's solicitude to get to her father, and to carry the joyful tidings to him, and not to leave him in

his jail a moment with this happiness in store for him and still unknown to him, did more for her speedy

restoration than all the skill and attention on earth could have done. 'Come with me to my dear father. Pray

come and tell my dear father!' were the first words she said. Her father, her father. She spoke of nothing but

him, thought of nothing but him. Kneeling down and pouring out her thankfulness with uplifted hands, her

Flora's tenderness was quite overcome by this, and she launched out among the cups and saucers into a

'I declare,' she sobbed, 'I never was so cut up since your mama and my papa not Doyce and Clennam for this

once but give the precious little thing a cup of tea and make her put it to her lips at least pray Arthur do, not

even Mr F.'s last illness for that was of another kind and gout is not a child's affection though very painful for

all parties and Mr F. a martyr with his leg upon a rest and the wine trade in itself inflammatory for they will

do it more or less among themselves and who can wonder, it seems like a dream I am sure to think of nothing

at all this morning and now Mines of money is it really, but you must know my darling love because you

never will be strong enough to tell him all about it upon teaspoons, mightn't it be even best to try the

directions of my own medical man for though the flavour is anything but agreeable still I force myself to do it

as a prescription and find the benefit, you'd rather not why no my dear I'd rather not but still I do it as a duty,

everybody will congratulate you some in earnest and some not and many will congratulate you with all their

hearts but none more so I do assure you from the bottom of my own I do myself though sensible of

blundering and being stupid, and will be judged by Arthur not Doyce and Clennam for this once so goodbye

darling and God bless you and may you be very happy and excuse the liberty, vowing that the dress shall

never be finished by anybody else but shall be laid by for a keepsake just as it is and called Little Dorrit

though why that strangest of denominations at any time I never did myself and now I never shall!'

Thus Flora, in taking leave of her favourite. Little Dorrit thanked her, and embraced her, over and over again;

and finally came out of the house with Clennam, and took coach for the Marshalsea.

It was a strangely unreal ride through the old squalid streets, with a sensation of being raised out of them into

an airy world of wealth and grandeur. When Arthur told her that she would soon ride in her own carriage

through very different scenes, when all the familiar experiences would have vanished away, she looked

frightened. But when he substituted her father for herself, and told her how he would ride in his carriage, and

how great and grand he would be, her tears of joy and innocent pride fell fast. Seeing that the happiness her

mind could realise was all shining upon him, Arthur kept that single figure before her; and so they rode

brightly through the poor streets in the prison neighbourhood to carry him the great news.

When Mr Chivery, who was on duty, admitted them into the Lodge, he saw something in their faces which

filled him with astonishment. He stood looking after them, when they hurried into the prison, as though he

perceived that they had come back accompanied by a ghost apiece. Two or three Collegians whom they

passed, looked after them too, and presently joining Mr Chivery, formed a little group on the Lodge steps, in

the midst of which there spontaneously originated a whisper that the Father was going to get his discharge.

Little Dorrit opened the door from without, and they both entered. He was sitting in his old grey gown and his

old black cap, in the sunlight by the window, reading his newspaper. His glasses were in his hand, and he had

just looked round; surprised at first, no doubt, by her step upon the stairs, not expecting her until night;

surprised again, by seeing Arthur Clennam in her company. As they came in, the same unwonted look in both

of them which had already caught attention in the yard below, struck him. He did not rise or speak, but laid

down his glasses and his newspaper on the table beside him, and looked at them with his mouth a little open

and his lips trembling. When Arthur put out his hand, he touched it, but not with his usual state; and then he

turned to his daughter, who had sat down close beside him with her hands upon his shoulder, and looked

'By Mr Clennam, father. He brought me such joyful and wonderful intelligence about you! If he had not with

his great kindness and gentleness, prepared me for it, fatherprepared me for it, fatherI think I could not

Her agitation was exceedingly great, and the tears rolled down her face. He put his hand suddenly to his

'Compose yourself, sir,' said Clennam, 'and take a little time to think. To think of the brightest and most

fortunate accidents of life. We have all heard of great surprises of joy. They are not at an end, sir. They are

'Mr Clennam? Not at an end? Not at an end for' He touched himself upon the breast, instead of saying 'me.'

'What surprise,' he asked, keeping his left hand over his heart, and there stopping in his speech, while with his

right hand he put his glasses exactly level on the table: 'what such surprise can be in store for me?'

'Let me answer with another question. Tell me, Mr Dorrit, what surprise would be the most unlooked for and

the most acceptable to you. Do not be afraid to imagine it, or to say what it would be.'

He looked steadfastly at Clennam, and, so looking at him, seemed to change into a very old haggard man.

The sun was bright upon the wall beyond the window, and on the spikes at top. He slowly stretched out the

'And in its place,' said Clennam, slowly and distinctly, 'are the means to possess and enjoy the utmost that

they have so long shut out. Mr Dorrit, there is not the smallest doubt that within a few days you will be free,

and highly prosperous. I congratulate you with all my soul on this change of fortune, and on the happy future

into which you are soon to carry the treasure you have been blest with herethe best of all the riches you

With those words, he pressed his hand and released it; and his daughter, laying her face against his, encircled

him in the hour of his prosperity with her arms, as she had in the long years of his adversity encircled him

with her love and toil and truth; and poured out her full heart in gratitude, hope, joy, blissful ecstasy, and all

'I shall see him as I never saw him yet. I shall see my dear love, with the dark cloud cleared away. I shall see

him, as my poor mother saw him long ago. O my dear, my dear! O father, father! O thank God, thank God!'

He yielded himself to her kisses and caresses, but did not return them, except that he put an arm about her.

Neither did he say one word. His steadfast look was now divided between her and Clennam, and he began to

shake as if he were very cold. Explaining to Little Dorrit that he would run to the coffeehouse for a bottle of

wine, Arthur fetched it with all the haste he could use. While it was being brought from the cellar to the bar, a

number of excited people asked him what had happened; when he hurriedly informed them that Mr Dorrit

On coming back with the wine in his hand, he found that she had placed her father in his easy chair, and had

loosened his shirt and neckcloth. They filled a tumbler with wine, and held it to his lips. When he had

swallowed a little, he took the glass himself and emptied it. Soon after that, he leaned back in his chair and

After this had lasted a while Clennam thought it a good season for diverting his attention from the main

surprise, by relating its details. Slowly, therefore, and in a quiet tone of voice, he explained them as best he

'He shall behahe shall be handsomely recompensed, sir,' said the Father, starting up and moving

hurriedly about the room. 'Assure yourself, Mr Clennam, that everybody concerned shall be hashall be

nobly rewarded. No one, my dear sir, shall say that he has an unsatisfied claim against me. I shall repay

thehum the advances I have had from you, sir, with peculiar pleasure. I beg to be informed at your

'Everybody,' he said, 'shall be remembered. I will not go away from here in anybody's debt. All the people

who have beenha well behaved towards myself and my family, shall be rewarded. Chivery shall be

rewarded. Young John shall be rewarded. I particularly wish, and intend, to act munificently, Mr Clennam.'

'Will you allow me,' said Arthur, laying his purse on the table, 'to supply any present contingencies, Mr

'Thank you, sir, thank you. I accept with readiness, at the present moment, what I could not an hour ago have

conscientiously taken. I am obliged to you for the temporary accommodation. Exceedingly temporary, but

well timedwell timed.' His hand had closed upon the money, and he carried it about with him. 'Be so kind,

sir, as to add the amount to those former advances to which I have already referred; being careful, if you

please, not to omit advances made to my son. A mere verbal statement of the gross amount is all I

His eye fell upon his daughter at this point, and he stopped for a moment to kiss her, and to pat her head.

'It will be necessary to find a milliner, my love, and to make a speedy and complete change in your very plain

dress. Something must be done with Maggy too, who at present ishabarely respectable, barely

respectable. And your sister, Amy, and your brother. And my brother, your unclepoor soul, I trust this will

rouse himmessengers must be despatched to fetch them. They must be informed of this. We must break it

to them cautiously, but they must be informed directly. We owe it as a duty to them and to ourselves, from

This was the first intimation he had ever given, that he was privy to the fact that they did something for a

He was still jogging about the room, with the purse clutched in his hand, when a great cheering arose in the

yard. 'The news has spread already,' said Clennam, looking down from the window. 'Will you show yourself

'IhumhaI confess I could have desired, Amy my dear,' he said, jogging about in a more feverish

flutter than before, 'to have made some change in my dress first, and to have bought a huma watch and

chain. But if it must be done as it is, itha it must be done. Fasten the collar of my shirt, my dear. Mr

Clennam, would you oblige mehumwith a blue neckcloth you will find in that drawer at your elbow.

Button my coat across at the chest, my love. It lookshait looks broader, buttoned.'

With his trembling hand he pushed his grey hair up, and then, taking Clennam and his daughter for

supporters, appeared at the window leaning on an arm of each. The Collegians cheered him very heartily, and

he kissed his hand to them with great urbanity and protection. When he withdrew into the room again, he said

Little Dorrit was deeply anxious that he should lie down to compose himself. On Arthur's speaking to her of

his going to inform Pancks that he might now appear as soon as he would, and pursue the joyful business to

its close, she entreated him in a whisper to stay with her until her father should be quite calm and at rest. He

needed no second entreaty; and she prepared her father's bed, and begged him to lie down. For another

halfhour or more he would be persuaded to do nothing but go about the room, discussing with himself the

probabilities for and against the Marshal's allowing the whole of the prisoners to go to the windows of the

official residence which commanded the street, to see himself and family depart for ever in a

carriagewhich, he said, he thought would be a Sight for them. But gradually he began to droop and tire,

She took her faithful place beside him, fanning him and cooling his forehead; and he seemed to be falling

asleep (always with the money in his hand), when he unexpectedly sat up and said:

'Mr Clennam, I beg your pardon. Am I to understand, my dear sir, that I couldhacould pass through the

'I think not, Mr Dorrit,' was the unwilling reply. 'There are certain forms to be completed; and although your

detention here is now in itself a form, I fear it is one that for a little longer has to be observed too.'

'A few hours, sir,' he returned in a sudden passion. 'You talk very easily of hours, sir! How long do you

It was his last demonstration for that time; as, after shedding some more tears and querulously complaining

that he couldn't breathe, he slowly fell into a slumber. Clennam had abundant occupation for his thoughts, as

he sat in the quiet room watching the father on his bed, and the daughter fanning his face. Little Dorrit had

been thinking too. After softly putting his grey hair aside, and touching his forehead with her lips, she looked

towards Arthur, who came nearer to her, and pursued in a low whisper the subject of her thoughts.

There was something of uncertainty and remonstrance in her look; something that was not all satisfaction. He

'It seems to me hard,' said Little Dorrit, 'that he should have lost so many years and suffered so much, and at

last pay all the debts as well. It seems to me hard that he should pay in life and money both.'

'Yes, I know I am wrong,' she pleaded timidly, 'don't think any worse of me; it has grown up with me here.'

The prison, which could spoil so many things, had tainted Little Dorrit's mind no more than this. Engendered

as the confusion was, in compassion for the poor prisoner, her father, it was the first speck Clennam had ever

seen, it was the last speck Clennam ever saw, of the prison atmosphere upon her.

He thought this, and forebore to say another word. With the thought, her purity and goodness came before

Worn out with her own emotions, and yielding to the silence of the room, her hand slowly slackened and

failed in its fanning movement, and her head dropped down on the pillow at her father's side. Clennam rose

softly, opened and closed the door without a sound, and passed from the prison, carrying the quiet with him

And now the day arrived when Mr Dorrit and his family were to leave the prison for ever, and the stones of

The interval had been short, but he had greatly complained of its length, and had been imperious with Mr

Rugg touching the delay. He had been high with Mr Rugg, and had threatened to employ some one else. He

had requested Mr Rugg not to presume upon the place in which he found him, but to do his duty, sir, and to

do it with promptitude. He had told Mr Rugg that he knew what lawyers and agents were, and that he would

not submit to imposition. On that gentleman's humbly representing that he exerted himself to the utmost,

Miss Fanny was very short with him; desiring to know what less he could do, when he had been told a dozen

times that money was no object, and expressing her suspicion that he forgot whom he talked to.

Towards the Marshal, who was a Marshal of many years' standing, and with whom he had never had any

previous difference, Mr Dorrit comported himself with severity. That officer, on personally tendering his

congratulations, offered the free use of two rooms in his house for Mr Dorrit's occupation until his departure.

Mr Dorrit thanked him at the moment, and replied that he would think of it; but the Marshal was no sooner

gone than he sat down and wrote him a cutting note, in which he remarked that he had never on any former

occasion had the honour of receiving his congratulations (which was true, though indeed there had not been

anything particular to congratulate him upon), and that he begged, on behalf of himself and family, to

repudiate the Marshal's offer, with all those thanks which its disinterested character and its perfect

Although his brother showed so dim a glimmering of interest in their altered fortunes that it was very

doubtful whether he understood them, Mr Dorrit caused him to be measured for new raiment by the hosiers,

tailors, hatters, and bootmakers whom he called in for himself; and ordered that his old clothes should be

taken from him and burned. Miss Fanny and Mr Tip required no direction in making an appearance of great

fashion and elegance; and the three passed this interval together at the best hotel in the

neighbourhoodthough truly, as Miss Fanny said, the best was very indifferent. In connection with that

establishment, Mr Tip hired a cabriolet, horse, and groom, a very neat turn out, which was usually to be

observed for two or three hours at a time gracing the Borough High Street, outside the Marshalsea

courtyard. A modest little hired chariot and pair was also frequently to be seen there; in alighting from and

entering which vehicle, Miss Fanny fluttered the Marshal's daughters by the display of inaccessible bonnets.

A great deal of business was transacted in this short period. Among other items, Messrs Peddle and Pool,

solicitors, of Monument Yard, were instructed by their client Edward Dorrit, Esquire, to address a letter to Mr

Arthur Clennam, enclosing the sum of twenty four pounds nine shillings and eightpence, being the amount

of principal and interest computed at the rate of five per cent. per annum, in which their client believed

himself to be indebted to Mr Clennam. In making this communication and remittance, Messrs Peddle and

Pool were further instructed by their client to remind Mr Clennam that the favour of the advance now repaid

(including gatefees) had not been asked of him, and to inform him that it would not have been accepted if it

had been openly proffered in his name. With which they requested a stamped receipt, and remained his

obedient servants. A great deal of business had likewise to be done, within the sosoontobeorphaned

Marshalsea, by Mr Dorrit so long its Father, chiefly arising out of applications made to him by Collegians for

small sums of money. To these he responded with the greatest liberality, and with no lack of formality;

always first writing to appoint a time at which the applicant might wait upon him in his room, and then

receiving him in the midst of a vast accumulation of documents, and accompanying his donation (for he said

in every such case, 'it is a donation, not a loan') with a great deal of good counsel: to the effect that he, the

expiring Father of the Marshalsea, hoped to be long remembered, as an example that a man might preserve

The Collegians were not envious. Besides that they had a personal and traditional regard for a Collegian of so

many years' standing, the event was creditable to the College, and made it famous in the newspapers. Perhaps

more of them thought, too, than were quite aware of it, that the thing might in the lottery of chances have

happened to themselves, or that something of the sort might yet happen to themselves some day or other.

They took it very well. A few were low at the thought of being left behind, and being left poor; but even these

did not grudge the family their brilliant reverse. There might have been much more envy in politer places. It

seems probable that mediocrity of fortune would have been disposed to be less magnanimous than the

Collegians, who lived from hand to mouthfrom the pawnbroker's hand to the day's dinner.

They got up an address to him, which they presented in a neat frame and glass (though it was not afterwards

displayed in the family mansion or preserved among the family papers); and to which he returned a gracious

answer. In that document he assured them, in a Royal manner, that he received the profession of their

attachment with a full conviction of its sincerity; and again generally exhorted them to follow his

examplewhich, at least in so far as coming into a great property was concerned, there is no doubt they

would have gladly imitated. He took the same occasion of inviting them to a comprehensive entertainment, to

be given to the whole College in the yard, and at which he signified he would have the honour of taking a

parting glass to the health and happiness of all those whom he was about to leave behind.

He did not in person dine at this public repast (it took place at two in the afternoon, and his dinners now came

in from the hotel at six), but his son was so good as to take the head of the principal table, and to be very free

and engaging. He himself went about among the company, and took notice of individuals, and saw that the

viands were of the quality he had ordered, and that all were served. On the whole, he was like a baron of the

olden time in a rare good humour. At the conclusion of the repast, he pledged his guests in a bumper of old

Madeira; and told them that he hoped they had enjoyed themselves, and what was more, that they would

enjoy themselves for the rest of the evening; that he wished them well; and that he bade them welcome.

His health being drunk with acclamations, he was not so baronial after all but that in trying to return thanks

he broke down, in the manner of a mere serf with a heart in his breast, and wept before them all. After this

great success, which he supposed to be a failure, he gave them 'Mr Chivery and his brother officers;' whom

he had beforehand presented with ten pounds each, and who were all in attendance. Mr Chivery spoke to the

toast, saying, What you undertake to lock up, lock up; but remember that you are, in the words of the fettered

African, a man and a brother ever. The list of toasts disposed of, Mr Dorrit urbanely went through the

motions of playing a game of skittles with the Collegian who was the next oldest inhabitant to himself; and

But all these occurrences preceded the final day. And now the day arrived when he and his family were to

leave the prison for ever, and when the stones of its muchtrodden pavement were to know them no more.

Noon was the hour appointed for the departure. As it approached, there was not a Collegian within doors, nor

a turnkey absent. The latter class of gentlemen appeared in their Sunday clothes, and the greater part of the

Collegians were brightened up as much as circumstances allowed. Two or three flags were even displayed,

and the children put on odds and ends of ribbon. Mr Dorrit himself, at this trying time, preserved a serious

but graceful dignity. Much of his great attention was given to his brother, as to whose bearing on the great

'My dear Frederick,' said he, 'if you will give me your arm we will pass among our friends together. I think it

'And if, my dear Frederickif you could, without putting any great constraint upon yourself, throw a little

'William, William,' said the other, shaking his head, 'it's for you to do all that. I don't know how. All

'But, my dear fellow,' returned William, 'for that very reason, if for no other, you must positively try to rouse

yourself. What you have forgotten you must now begin to recall, my dear Frederick. Your position'

'Mine?' He looked first at his own figure, and then at his brother's, and then, drawing a long breath, cried,

'Hah, to be sure! Yes, yes, yes.' 'Your position, my dear Frederick, is now a fine one. Your position, as my

brother, is a very fine one. And I know that it belongs to your conscientious nature to try to become worthy of

it, my dear Frederick, and to try to adorn it. To be no discredit to it, but to adorn it.'

'William,' said the other weakly, and with a sigh, 'I will do anything you wish, my brother, provided it lies in

my power. Pray be so kind as to recollect what a limited power mine is. What would you wish me to do

'My dearest Frederick, nothing. It is not worth troubling so good a heart as yours with.'

'Pray trouble it,' returned the other. 'It finds it no trouble, William, to do anything it can for you.'

William passed his hand across his eyes, and murmured with august satisfaction, 'Blessings on your

attachment, my poor dear fellow!' Then he said aloud, 'Well, my dear Frederick, if you will only try, as we

'Oh! my dear Frederick, how can I answer you? I can only say what, in leaving these good people, I think

'I find that I think, my dear Frederick, and with mixed emotions in which a softened compassion

'True,' returned his brother. 'Yes, yes, yes, yes. I'll think that as we go, What will they do without my brother!

Twelve o'clock having just struck, and the carriage being reported ready in the outer courtyard, the brothers

proceeded downstairs arminarm. Edward Dorrit, Esquire (once Tip), and his sister Fanny followed, also

arminarm; Mr Plornish and Maggy, to whom had been entrusted the removal of such of the family effects

as were considered worth removing, followed, bearing bundles and burdens to be packed in a cart.

In the yard, were the Collegians and turnkeys. In the yard, were Mr Pancks and Mr Rugg, come to see the last

touch given to their work. In the yard, was Young John making a new epitaph for himself, on the occasion of

his dying of a broken heart. In the yard, was the Patriarchal Casby, looking so tremendously benevolent that

many enthusiastic Collegians grasped him fervently by the hand, and the wives and female relatives of many

more Collegians kissed his hand, nothing doubting that he had done it all. In the yard, was the man with the

shadowy grievance respecting the Fund which the Marshal embezzled, who had got up at five in the morning

to complete the copying of a perfectly unintelligible history of that transaction, which he had committed to

Mr Dorrit's care, as a document of the last importance, calculated to stun the Government and effect the

Marshal's downfall. In the yard, was the insolvent whose utmost energies were always set on getting into

debt, who broke into prison with as much pains as other men have broken out of it, and who was always

being cleared and complimented; while the insolvent at his elbowa mere little, snivelling, striving

tradesman, half dead of anxious efforts to keep out of debtfound it a hard matter, indeed, to get a

Commissioner to release him with much reproof and reproach. In the yard, was the man of many children and

many burdens, whose failure astonished everybody; in the yard, was the man of no children and large

resources, whose failure astonished nobody. There, were the people who were always going out tomorrow,

and always putting it off; there, were the people who had come in yesterday, and who were much more

jealous and resentful of this freak of fortune than the seasoned birds. There, were some who, in pure

meanness of spirit, cringed and bowed before the enriched Collegian and his family; there, were others who

did so really because their eyes, accustomed to the gloom of their imprisonment and poverty, could not

support the light of such bright sunshine. There, were many whose shillings had gone into his pocket to buy

him meat and drink; but none who were now obtrusively Hail fellow well met! with him, on the strength of

that assistance. It was rather to be remarked of the caged birds, that they were a little shy of the bird about to

be so grandly free, and that they had a tendency to withdraw themselves towards the bars, and seem a little

Through these spectators the little procession, headed by the two brothers, moved slowly to the gate. Mr

Dorrit, yielding to the vast speculation how the poor creatures were to get on without him, was great, and sad,

but not absorbed. He patted children on the head like Sir Roger de Coverley going to church, he spoke to

people in the background by their Christian names, he condescended to all present, and seemed for their

consolation to walk encircled by the legend in golden characters, 'Be comforted, my people! Bear it!'

At last three honest cheers announced that he had passed the gate, and that the Marshalsea was an orphan.

Before they had ceased to ring in the echoes of the prison walls, the family had got into their carriage, and the

Then, and not before, 'Good Gracious!' cried Miss Fanny all at once, 'Where's Amy!'

Her father had thought she was with her sister. Her sister had thought she was 'somewhere or other.' They had

all trusted to finding her, as they had always done, quietly in the right place at the right moment. This going

away was perhaps the very first action of their joint lives that they had got through without her.

A minute might have been consumed in the ascertaining of these points, when Miss Fanny, who, from her

seat in the carriage, commanded the long narrow passage leading to the Lodge, flushed indignantly.

'I do say,' she repeated, 'this is perfectly infamous! Really almost enough, even at such a time as this, to make

one wish one was dead! Here is that child Amy, in her ugly old shabby dress, which she was so obstinate

about, Pa, which I over and over again begged and prayed her to change, and which she over and over again

objected to, and promised to change today, saying she wished to wear it as long as ever she remained in

there with youwhich was absolutely romantic nonsense of the lowest kindhere is that child Amy

disgracing us to the last moment and at the last moment, by being carried out in that dress after all. And by

The offence was proved, as she delivered the indictment. Clennam appeared at the carriagedoor, bearing the

'She has been forgotten,' he said, in a tone of pity not free from reproach. 'I ran up to her room (which Mr

Chivery showed me) and found the door open, and that she had fainted on the floor, dear child. She appeared

to have gone to change her dress, and to have sunk down overpowered. It may have been the cheering, or it

may have happened sooner. Take care of this poor cold hand, Miss Dorrit. Don't let it fall.'

'Thank you, sir,' returned Miss Dorrit, bursting into tears. 'I believe I know what to do, if you will give me

leave. Dear Amy, open your eyes, that's a love! Oh, Amy, Amy, I really am so vexed and ashamed! Do rouse

The attendant, getting between Clennam and the carriagedoor, with a sharp 'By your leave, sir!' bundled up

In the autumn of the year, Darkness and Night were creeping up to the highest ridges of the Alps.

It was vintage time in the valleys on the Swiss side of the Pass of the Great Saint Bernard, and along the

The air there was charged with the scent of gathered grapes. Baskets, troughs, and tubs of grapes stood in the

dim village doorways, stopped the steep and narrow village streets, and had been carrying all day along the

roads and lanes. Grapes, split and crushed under foot, lay about everywhere. The child carried in a sling by

the laden peasant woman toiling home, was quieted with pickedup grapes; the idiot sunning his big goitre

under the leaves of the wooden chalet by the way to the Waterfall, sat Munching grapes; the breath of the

cows and goats was redolent of leaves and stalks of grapes; the company in every little cabaret were eating,

drinking, talking grapes. A pity that no ripe touch of this generous abundance could be given to the thin, hard,

The air had been warm and transparent through the whole of the bright day. Shining metal spires and

churchroofs, distant and rarely seen, had sparkled in the view; and the snowy mountaintops had been so

clear that unaccustomed eyes, cancelling the intervening country, and slighting their rugged heights for

something fabulous, would have measured them as within a few hours easy reach. Mountainpeaks of great

celebrity in the valleys, whence no trace of their existence was visible sometimes for months together, had

been since morning plain and near in the blue sky. And now, when it was dark below, though they seemed

solemnly to recede, like spectres who were going to vanish, as the red dye of the sunset faded out of them and

left them coldly white, they were yet distinctly defined in their loneliness above the mists and shadows. Seen

from these solitudes, and from the Pass of the Great Saint Bernard, which was one of them, the ascending

Night came up the mountain like a rising water. When it at last rose to the walls of the convent of the Great

Saint Bernard, it was as if that weather beaten structure were another Ark, and floated on the shadowy

Darkness, outstripping some visitors on mules, had risen thus to the rough convent walls, when those

travellers were yet climbing the mountain. As the heat of the glowing day when they had stopped to drink at

the streams of melted ice and snow, was changed to the searching cold of the frosty rarefied night air at a

great height, so the fresh beauty of the lower journey had yielded to barrenness and desolation. A craggy

track, up which the mules in single file scrambled and turned from block to block, as though they were

ascending the broken staircase of a gigantic ruin, was their way now. No trees were to be seen, nor any

vegetable growth save a poor brown scrubby moss, freezing in the chinks of rock. Blackened skeleton arms

of wood by the wayside pointed upward to the convent as if the ghosts of former travellers overwhelmed by

the snow haunted the scene of their distress. Iciclehung caves and cellars built for refuges from sudden

storms, were like so many whispers of the perils of the place; neverresting wreaths and mazes of mist

wandered about, hunted by a moaning wind; and snow, the besetting danger of the mountain, against which

The file of mules, jaded by their day's work, turned and wound slowly up the deep ascent; the foremost led by

a guide on foot, in his broadbrimmed hat and round jacket, carrying a mountain staff or two upon his

shoulder, with whom another guide conversed. There was no speaking among the string of riders. The sharp

cold, the fatigue of the journey, and a new sensation of a catching in the breath, partly as if they had just

emerged from very clear crisp water, and partly as if they had been sobbing, kept them silent.

At length, a light on the summit of the rocky staircase gleamed through the snow and mist. The guides called

to the mules, the mules pricked up their drooping heads, the travellers' tongues were loosened, and in a

sudden burst of slipping, climbing, jingling, clinking, and talking, they arrived at the convent door.

Other mules had arrived not long before, some with peasant riders and some with goods, and had trodden the

snow about the door into a pool of mud. Ridingsaddles and bridles, packsaddles and strings of bells, mules

and men, lanterns, torches, sacks, provender, barrels, cheeses, kegs of honey and butter, straw bundles and

packages of many shapes, were crowded confusedly together in this thawed quagmire and about the steps. Up

here in the clouds, everything was seen through cloud, and seemed dissolving into cloud. The breath of the

men was cloud, the breath of the mules was cloud, the lights were encircled by cloud, speakers close at hand

were not seen for cloud, though their voices and all other sounds were surprisingly clear. Of the cloudy line

of mules hastily tied to rings in the wall, one would bite another, or kick another, and then the whole mist

would be disturbed: with men diving into it, and cries of men and beasts coming out of it, and no bystander

discerning what was wrong. In the midst of this, the great stable of the convent, occupying the basement story

and entered by the basement door, outside which all the disorder was, poured forth its contribution of cloud,

as if the whole rugged edifice were filled with nothing else, and would collapse as soon as it had emptied

While all this noise and hurry were rife among the living travellers, there, too, silently assembled in a grated

house half adozen paces removed, with the same cloud enfolding them and the same snow flakes drifting

in upon them, were the dead travellers found upon the mountain. The mother, stormbelated many winters

ago, still standing in the corner with her baby at her breast; the man who had frozen with his arm raised to his

mouth in fear or hunger, still pressing it with his dry lips after years and years. An awful company,

mysteriously come together! A wild destiny for that mother to have foreseen! 'Surrounded by so many and

such companions upon whom I never looked, and never shall look, I and my child will dwell together

inseparable, on the Great Saint Bernard, outlasting generations who will come to see us, and will never know

The living travellers thought little or nothing of the dead just then. They thought much more of alighting at

the convent door, and warming themselves at the convent fire. Disengaged from the turmoil, which was

already calming down as the crowd of mules began to be bestowed in the stable, they hurried shivering up the

steps and into the building. There was a smell within, coming up from the floor, of tethered beasts, like the

smell of a menagerie of wild animals. There were strong arched galleries within, huge stone piers, great

staircases, and thick walls pierced with small sunken windowsfortifications against the mountain storms,

as if they had been human enemies. There were gloomy vaulted sleeping rooms within, intensely cold, but

clean and hospitably prepared for guests. Finally, there was a parlour for guests to sit in and sup in, where a

In this room, after having had their quarters for the night allotted to them by two young Fathers, the travellers

presently drew round the hearth. They were in three parties; of whom the first, as the most numerous and

important, was the slowest, and had been overtaken by one of the others on the way up. It consisted of an

elderly lady, two greyhaired gentlemen, two young ladies, and their brother. These were attended (not to

mention four guides), by a courier, two footmen, and two waitingmaids: which strong body of

inconvenience was accommodated elsewhere under the same roof. The party that had overtaken them, and

followed in their train, consisted of only three members: one lady and two gentlemen. The third party, which

had ascended from the valley on the Italian side of the Pass, and had arrived first, were four in number: a

plethoric, hungry, and silent German tutor in spectacles, on a tour with three young men, his pupils, all

These three groups sat round the fire eyeing each other drily, and waiting for supper. Only one among them,

one of the gentlemen belonging to the party of three, made advances towards conversation. Throwing out his

lines for the Chief of the important tribe, while addressing himself to his own companions, he remarked, in a

tone of voice which included all the company if they chose to be included, that it had been a long day, and

that he felt for the ladies. That he feared one of the young ladies was not a strong or accustomed traveller, and

had been overfatigued two or three hours ago. That he had observed, from his station in the rear, that she sat

her mule as if she were exhausted. That he had, twice or thrice afterwards, done himself the honour of

inquiring of one of the guides, when he fell behind, how the lady did. That he had been enchanted to learn

that she had recovered her spirits, and that it had been but a passing discomfort. That he trusted (by this time

he had secured the eyes of the Chief, and addressed him) he might be permitted to express his hope that she

'My daughter, I am obliged to you, sir,' returned the Chief, 'is quite restored, and has been greatly interested.'

'I amhumtolerably familiar. Not of late years. Not of late years,' replied the Chief, with a flourish of his

The insinuating traveller, acknowledging the flourish with an inclination of his head, passed from the Chief to

the second young lady, who had not yet been referred to otherwise than as one of the ladies in whose behalf

The insinuating traveller complimented her on the justice of the distinction. It was what he had meant to say.

Every lady must doubtless be incommoded by having to do with that proverbially unaccommodating animal,

'We have had, of course,' said the young lady, who was rather reserved and haughty, 'to leave the carriages

and fourgon at Martigny. And the impossibility of bringing anything that one wants to this inaccessible place,

The elderly lady, who was a model of accurate dressing, and whose manner was perfect, considered as a

'But, like other inconvenient places,' she observed, 'it must be seen. As a place much spoken of, it is

'O! I have not the least objection to seeing it, I assure you, Mrs General,' returned the other, carelessly.

'You, madam,' said the insinuating traveller, 'have visited this spot before?' 'Yes,' returned Mrs General. 'I

have been here before. Let me commend you, my dear,' to the former young lady, 'to shade your face from

the hot wood, after exposure to the mountain air and snow. You, too, my dear,' to the other and younger lady,

who immediately did so; while the former merely said, 'Thank you, Mrs General, I am Perfectly comfortable,

The brother, who had left his chair to open a piano that stood in the room, and who had whistled into it and

shut it up again, now came strolling back to the fire with his glass in his eye. He was dressed in the very

fullest and completest travelling trim. The world seemed hardly large enough to yield him an amount of

'These fellows are an immense time with supper,' he drawled. 'I wonder what they'll give us! Has anybody

'Not roast man, I believe,' replied the voice of the second gentleman of the party of three.

'That, as you are not to be served for the general supper, perhaps you will do us the favour of not cooking

The young gentleman who was standing in an easy attitude on the hearth, cocking his glass at the company,

with his back to the blaze and his coat tucked under his arms, something as if he were Of the Poultry species

and were trussed for roasting, lost countenance at this reply; he seemed about to demand further explanation,

when it was discoveredthrough all eyes turning on the speakerthat the lady with him, who was young

and beautiful, had not heard what had passed through having fainted with her head upon his shoulder.

'I think,' said the gentleman in a subdued tone, 'I had best carry her straight to her room. Will you call to some

one to bring a light?' addressing his companion, 'and to show the way? In this strange rambling place I don't

'Pray, let me put this water to her lips,' said the shorter, who had not spoken yet.

Each doing what she suggested, there was no want of assistance. Indeed, when the two maids came in

(escorted by the courier, lest any one should strike them dumb by addressing a foreign language to them on

the road), there was a prospect of too much assistance. Seeing this, and saying as much in a few words to the

slighter and younger of the two ladies, the gentleman put his wife's arm over his shoulder, lifted her up, and

His friend, being left alone with the other visitors, walked slowly up and down the room without coming to

the fire again, pulling his black moustache in a contemplative manner, as if he felt himself committed to the

late retort. While the subject of it was breathing injury in a corner, the Chief loftily addressed this gentleman.

'Your friend, sir,' said he, 'ishais a little impatient; and, in his impatience, is not perhaps fully sensible of

what he owes tohumtobut we will waive that, we will waive that. Your friend is a little impatient, sir.'

'It may be so, sir,' returned the other. 'But having had the honour of making that gentleman's acquaintance at

the hotel at Geneva, where we and much good company met some time ago, and having had the honour of

exchanging company and conversation with that gentleman on several subsequent excursions, I can hear

nothingno, not even from one of your appearance and station, sirdetrimental to that gentleman.'

'You are in no danger, sir, of hearing any such thing from me. In remarking that your friend has shown

impatience, I say no such thing. I make that remark, because it is not to be doubted that my son, being by

birth and byhaby education ahuma gentleman, would have readily adapted himself to any

obligingly expressed wish on the subject of the fire being equally accessible to the whole of the present circle.

Which, in principle, Ihafor all arehum equal on these occasionsI consider right.'

'Good,' was the reply. 'And there it ends! I am your son's obedient servant. I beg your son to receive the

assurance of my profound consideration. And now, sir, I may admit, freely admit, that my friend is

'Sir, she is peerless. They are still in the first year of their marriage. They are still partly on a marriage, and

The gentleman replied by kissing the fingers of his right hand, and wafting the kiss the length of his arm

towards Heaven. As who should say, I devote him to the celestial Powers as an immortal artist!

'But he is a man of family,' he added. 'His connections are of the best. He is more than an artist: he is highly

connected. He may, in effect, have repudiated his connections, proudly, impatiently, sarcastically (I make the

concession of both words); but he has them. Sparks that have been struck out during our intercourse have

'Well! I hope,' said the lofty gentleman, with the air of finally disposing of the subject, 'that the lady's

'Not altogether mere fatigue, sir, for her mule stumbled today, and she fell from the saddle. She fell lightly,

and was up again without assistance, and rode from us laughing; but she complained towards evening of a

slight bruise in the side. She spoke of it more than once, as we followed your party up the mountain.'

The head of the large retinue, who was gracious but not familiar, appeared by this time to think that he had

condescended more than enough. He said no more, and there was silence for some quarter of an hour until

With the supper came one of the young Fathers (there seemed to be no old Fathers) to take the head of the

table. It was like the supper of an ordinary Swiss hotel, and good red wine grown by the convent in more

genial air was not wanting. The artist traveller calmly came and took his place at table when the rest sat

down, with no apparent sense upon him of his late skirmish with the completely dressed traveller.

'Pray,' he inquired of the host, over his soup, 'has your convent many of its famous dogs now?'

'I saw three in the gallery below. Doubtless the three in question.' The host, a slender, brighteyed, dark

young man of polite manners, whose garment was a black gown with strips of white crossed over it like

braces, and who no more resembled the conventional breed of Saint Bernard monks than he resembled the

conventional breed of Saint Bernard dogs, replied, doubtless those were the three in question.

It was possible. He was a dog sufficiently well known. Monsieur might have easily seen him in the valley or

somewhere on the lake, when he (the dog) had gone down with one of the order to solicit aid for the convent.

'And never without a dog. The dog is very important.' Again Monsieur was right. The dog was very

important. People were justly interested in the dog. As one of the dogs celebrated everywhere, Ma'amselle

Ma'amselle was a little slow to observe it, as though she were not yet well accustomed to the French tongue.

'Ask him if he has saved many lives?' said, in his native English, the young man who had been put out of

The host needed no translation of the question. He promptly replied in French, 'No. Not this one.'

'Pardon,' returned the host composedly, 'give him the opportunity and he will do it without doubt. For

example, I am well convinced,' smiling sedately, as he cut up the dish of veal to be handed round, on the

young man who had been put out of countenance, 'that if you, Monsieur, would give him the opportunity, he

The artist traveller laughed. The insinuating traveller (who evinced a provident anxiety to get his full share of

the supper), wiping some drops of wine from his moustache with a piece of bread, joined the conversation.

'It is becoming late in the year, my Father,' said he, 'for touristtravellers, is it not?'

'Yes, it is late. Yet two or three weeks, at most, and we shall be left to the winter snows.' 'And then,' said the

insinuating traveller, 'for the scratching dogs and the buried children, according to the pictures!'

'Pardon,' said the host, not quite understanding the allusion. 'How, then the scratching dogs and the buried

'Don't you know,' he coldly inquired across the table of his companion, 'that none but smugglers come this

'So it is, I believe. And as they know the signs of the weather tolerably well, they don't give much

employment to the dogswho have consequently died out ratherthough this house of entertainment is

conveniently situated for themselves. Their young families, I am told, they usually leave at home. But it's a

grand idea!' cried the artist traveller, unexpectedly rising into a tone of enthusiasm. 'It's a sublime idea. It's the

finest idea in the world, and brings tears into a man's eyes, by Jupiter!' He then went on eating his veal with

There was enough of mocking inconsistency at the bottom of this speech to make it rather discordant, though

the manner was refined and the person wellfavoured, and though the depreciatory part of it was so skilfully

thrown off as to be very difficult for one not perfectly acquainted with the English language to understand, or

, even understanding, to take offence at: so simple and dispassionate was its tone. After finishing his veal in

'Look,' said he, in his former tone, 'at this gentleman our host, not yet in the prime of life, who in so graceful

a way and with such courtly urbanity and modesty presides over us! Manners fit for a crown! Dine with the

Lord Mayor of London (if you can get an invitation) and observe the contrast. This dear fellow, with the

finest cut face I ever saw, a face in perfect drawing, leaves some laborious life and comes up here I don't

know how many feet above the level of the sea, for no other purpose on earth (except enjoying himself, I

hope, in a capital refectory) than to keep an hotel for idle poor devils like you and me, and leave the bill to

our consciences! Why, isn't it a beautiful sacrifice? What do we want more to touch us? Because rescued

people of interesting appearance are not, for eight or nine months out of every twelve, holding on here round

the necks of the most sagacious of dogs carrying wooden bottles, shall we disparage the place? No! Bless the

The chest of the greyhaired gentleman who was the Chief of the important party, had swelled as if with a

protest against his being numbered among poor devils. No sooner had the artist traveller ceased speaking than

he himself spoke with great dignity, as having it incumbent on him to take the lead in most places, and having

He weightily communicated his opinion to their host, that his life must be a very dreary life here in the

The host allowed to Monsieur that it was a little monotonous. The air was difficult to breathe for a length of

time consecutively. The cold was very severe. One needed youth and strength to bear it. However, having

There were many days, even in bad weather, when it was possible to walk about outside. It was the custom to

Monsieur would recall to himself that there were the refuges to visit, and that tracks had to be made to them

Monsieur still urged, on the other hand, that the space was so hahumso very contracted. More than

With a deprecating smile, the host gently raised and gently lowered his shoulders. That was true, he

remarked, but permit him to say that almost all objects had their various points of view. Monsieur and he did

not see this poor life of his from the same point of view. Monsieur was not used to confinement.

'Ihayes, very true,' said the greyhaired gentleman. He seemed to receive quite a shock from the force

Monsieur, as an English traveller, surrounded by all means of travelling pleasantly; doubtless possessing

Monsieur could not easily place himself in the position of a person who had not the power to choose, I will

go here tomorrow, or there next day; I will pass these barriers, I will enlarge those bounds. Monsieur could

not realise, perhaps, how the mind accommodated itself in such things to the force of necessity.

The supper having come to a close, he drew his chair away as he spoke, and moved back to his former place

by the fire. As it was very cold at the greater part of the table, the other guests also resumed their former seats

by the fire, designing to toast themselves well before going to bed. The host, when they rose from the table,

bowed to all present, wished them good night, and withdrew. But first the insinuating traveller had asked him

if they could have some wine made hot; and as he had answered Yes, and had presently afterwards sent it in,

that traveller, seated in the centre of the group, and in the full heat of the fire, was soon engaged in serving it

At this time, the younger of the two young ladies, who had been silently attentive in her dark corner (the

firelight was the chief light in the sombre room, the lamp being smoky and dull) to what had been said of

the absent lady, glided out. She was at a loss which way to turn when she had softly closed the door; but, after

a little hesitation among the sounding passages and the many ways, came to a room in a corner of the main

gallery, where the servants were at their supper. From these she obtained a lamp, and a direction to the lady's

It was up the great staircase on the story above. Here and there, the bare white walls were broken by an iron

grate, and she thought as she went along that the place was something like a prison. The arched door of the

lady's room, or cell, was not quite shut. After knocking at it two or three times without receiving an answer,

The lady lay with closed eyes on the outside of the bed, protected from the cold by the blankets and wrappers

with which she had been covered when she revived from her fainting fit. A dull light placed in the deep

recess of the window, made little impression on the arched room. The visitor timidly stepped to the bed, and

The lady had fallen into a slumber, and the whisper was too low to awake her. Her visitor, standing quite still,

'She is very pretty,' she said to herself. 'I never saw so beautiful a face. O how unlike me!'

It was a curious thing to say, but it had some hidden meaning, for it filled her eyes with tears.

'I know I must be right. I know he spoke of her that evening. I could very easily be wrong on any other

With a quiet and tender hand she put aside a straying fold of the sleeper's hair, and then touched the hand that

'I like to look at her,' she breathed to herself. 'I like to see what has affected him so much.'

'Pray don't be alarmed. I am only one of the travellers from down stairs. I came to ask if you were better,

'I think you have already been so kind as to send your servants to my assistance?'

'Much better. It is only a slight bruise, and has been well looked to, and is almost easy now. It made me giddy

and faint in a moment. It had hurt me before; but at last it overpowered me all at once.' 'May I stay with you

'I should like it, for it is lonely here; but I am afraid you will feel the cold too much.'

'I don't mind cold. I am not delicate, if I look so.' She quickly moved one of the two rough chairs to the

bedside, and sat down. The other as quickly moved a part of some travelling wrapper from herself, and drew

'You have so much the air of a kind nurse,' said the lady, smiling on her, 'that you seem as if you had come to

'I was dreaming of home when I woke just now. Of my old home, I mean, before I was married.'

'I have been much farther away from it than this; but then I took the best part of it with me, and missed

nothing. I felt solitary as I dropped asleep here, and, missing it a little, wandered back to it.' There was a

sorrowfully affectionate and regretful sound in her voice, which made her visitor refrain from looking at her

'It is a curious chance which at last brings us together, under this covering in which you have wrapped me,'

said the visitor after a pause;'for do you know, I think I have been looking for you some time.' 'Looking for

'I believe I have a little note here, which I was to give to you whenever I found you. This is it. Unless I

The lady took it, and said yes, and read it. Her visitor watched her as she did so. It was very short. She

flushed a little as she put her lips to her visitor's cheek, and pressed her hand.

'The dear young friend to whom he presents me, may be a comfort to me at some time, he says. She is truly a

'Perhaps you don't,' said the visitor, hesitating'perhaps you don't know my story? Perhaps he never told you

'Oh no, why should he! I have scarcely the right to tell it myself at present, because I have been entreated not

to do so. There is not much in it, but it might account to you for my asking you not to say anything about the

letter here. You saw my family with me, perhaps? Some of themI only say this to youare a little proud,

'You shall take it back again,' said the other; 'and then my husband is sure not to see it. He might see it and

speak of it, otherwise, by some accident. Will you put it in your bosom again, to be certain?'

She did so with great care. Her small, slight hand was still upon the letter, when they heard some one in the

'I promised,' said the visitor, rising, 'that I would write to him after seeing you (I could hardly fail to see you

sooner or later), and tell him if you were well and happy. I had better say you were well and happy.'

'Yes, yes, yes! Say I was very well and very happy. And that I thanked him affectionately, and would never

'I shall see you in the morning. After that we are sure to meet again before very long. Good night!'

Both of them were hurried and fluttered as they exchanged this parting, and as the visitor came out of the

door. She had expected to meet the lady's husband approaching it; but the person in the gallery was not he: it

was the traveller who had wiped the wine drops from his moustache with the piece of bread. When he heard

the step behind him, he turned roundfor he was walking away in the dark. His politeness, which was

extreme, would not allow of the young lady's lighting herself downstairs, or going down alone. He took her

lamp, held it so as to throw the best light on the stone steps, and followed her all the way to the supperroom.

She went down, not easily hiding how much she was inclined to shrink and tremble; for the appearance of

this traveller was particularly disagreeable to her. She had sat in her quiet corner before supper imagining

what he would have been in the scenes and places within her experience, until he inspired her with an

He followed her down with his smiling politeness, followed her in, and resumed his seat in the best place in

the hearth. There with the woodfire, which was beginning to burn low, rising and falling upon him in the

dark room, he sat with his legs thrust out to warm, drinking the hot wine down to the lees, with a monstrous

The tired company had broken up, and all the rest were gone to bed except the young lady's father, who

The traveller had been at the pains of going a long way upstairs to his sleepingroom to fetch his

pocketflask of brandy. He told them so, as he poured its contents into what was left of the wine, and drank

The greyhaired gentleman had roused himself, and was preparing to withdraw. He answered in the

'I also!' said the traveller. 'I shall hope to have the honour of offering my compliments in fairer scenes, and

'We poor gentlemen, sir,' said the traveller, pulling his moustache dry with his hand, for he had dipped it in

the wine and brandy; 'we poor gentlemen do not travel like princes, but the courtesies and graces of life are

'Sir, I thank you again, I wish you good night. My dear, are our haour people in attendance?'

'Permit me!' said the traveller, rising and holding the door open, as the gentleman crossed the room towards it

with his arm drawn through his daughter's. 'Good repose! To the pleasure of seeing you once more! To

As he kissed his hand, with his best manner and his daintiest smile, the young lady drew a little nearer to her

'Humph!' said the insinuating traveller, whose manner shrunk, and whose voice dropped when he was left

alone. 'If they all go to bed, why I must go. They are in a devil of a hurry. One would think the night would

be long enough, in this freezing silence and solitude, if one went to bed two hours hence.'

Throwing back his head in emptying his glass, he cast his eyes upon the travellers' book, which lay on the

piano, open, with pens and ink beside it, as if the night's names had been registered when he was absent.

William Dorrit, Esquire Frederick Dorrit, Esquire Edward Dorrit, Esquire Miss Dorrit Miss Amy Dorrit Mrs

To which he added, in a small complicated hand, ending with a long lean flourish, not unlike a lasso thrown

And then, with his nose coming down over his moustache and his moustache going up and under his nose,

It is indispensable to present the accomplished lady who was of sufficient importance in the suite of the

Mrs General was the daughter of a clerical dignitary in a cathedral town, where she had led the fashion until

she was as near forty five as a single lady can be. A stiff commissariat officer of sixty, famous as a martinet,

had then become enamoured of the gravity with which she drove the proprieties fourinhand through the

cathedral town society, and had solicited to be taken beside her on the box of the cool coach of ceremony to

which that team was harnessed. His proposal of marriage being accepted by the lady, the commissary took his

seat behind the proprieties with great decorum, and Mrs General drove until the commissary died. In the

course of their united journey, they ran over several people who came in the way of the proprieties; but

The commissary having been buried with all the decorations suitable to the service (the whole team of

proprieties were harnessed to his hearse, and they all had feathers and black velvet housings with his coat of

arms in the corner), Mrs General began to inquire what quantity of dust and ashes was deposited at the

bankers'. It then transpired that the commissary had so far stolen a march on Mrs General as to have bought

himself an annuity some years before his marriage, and to have reserved that circumstance in mentioning, at

the period of his proposal, that his income was derived from the interest of his money. Mrs General

consequently found her means so much diminished, that, but for the perfect regulation of her mind, she might

have felt disposed to question the accuracy of that portion of the late service which had declared that the

In this state of affairs it occurred to Mrs General, that she might 'form the mind,' and eke the manners of some

young lady of distinction. Or, that she might harness the proprieties to the carriage of some rich young heiress

or widow, and become at once the driver and guard of such vehicle through the social mazes. Mrs General's

communication of this idea to her clerical and commissariat connection was so warmly applauded that, but

for the lady's undoubted merit, it might have appeared as though they wanted to get rid of her. Testimonials

representing Mrs General as a prodigy of piety, learning, virtue, and gentility, were lavishly contributed from

influential quarters; and one venerable archdeacon even shed tears in recording his testimony to her

perfections (described to him by persons on whom he could rely), though he had never had the honour and

Thus delegated on her mission, as it were by Church and State, Mrs General, who had always occupied high

ground, felt in a condition to keep it, and began by putting herself up at a very high figure. An interval of

some duration elapsed, in which there was no bid for Mrs General. At length a countywidower, with a

daughter of fourteen, opened negotiations with the lady; and as it was a part either of the native dignity or of

the artificial policy of Mrs General (but certainly one or the other) to comport herself as if she were much

more sought than seeking, the widower pursued Mrs General until he prevailed upon her to form his

The execution of this trust occupied Mrs General about seven years, in the course of which time she made the

tour of Europe, and saw most of that extensive miscellany of objects which it is essential that all persons of

polite cultivation should see with other people's eyes, and never with their own. When her charge was at

length formed, the marriage, not only of the young lady, but likewise of her father, the widower, was resolved

on. The widower then finding Mrs General both inconvenient and expensive, became of a sudden almost as

much affected by her merits as the archdeacon had been, and circulated such praises of her surpassing worth,

in all quarters where he thought an opportunity might arise of transferring the blessing to somebody else, that

The phoenix was to let, on this elevated perch, when Mr Dorrit, who had lately succeeded to his property,

mentioned to his bankers that he wished to discover a lady, wellbred, accomplished, well connected, well

accustomed to good society, who was qualified at once to complete the education of his daughters, and to be

their matron or chaperon. Mr Dorrit's bankers, as bankers of the county widower, instantly said, 'Mrs

Pursuing the light so fortunately hit upon, and finding the concurrent testimony of the whole of Mrs General's

acquaintance to be of the pathetic nature already recorded, Mr Dorrit took the trouble of going down to the

county of the countywidower to see Mrs General, in whom he found a lady of a quality superior to his

'Why, indeed,' returned Mrs General, stopping the word, 'it is a subject on which I prefer to avoid entering. I

have never entered on it with my friends here; and I cannot overcome the delicacy, Mr Dorrit, with which I

'O dear no!' said Mr Dorrit. 'Pray, madam, do not imagine for a moment that I think so.' He really blushed to

Mrs General gravely inclined her head. 'I cannot, therefore, put a price upon services which it is a pleasure to

me to render if I can render them spontaneously, but which I could not render in mere return for any

consideration. Neither do I know how, or where, to find a case parallel to my own. It is peculiar.'

No doubt. But how then (Mr Dorrit not unnaturally hinted) could the subject be approached. 'I cannot object,'

said Mrs General'though even that is disagreeable to meto Mr Dorrit's inquiring, in confidence of my

friends here, what amount they have been accustomed, at quarterly intervals, to pay to my credit at my

'Permit me to add,' said Mrs General, 'that beyond this, I can never resume the topic. Also that I can accept no

second or inferior position. If the honour were proposed to me of becoming known to Mr Dorrit's familyI

'I could only accept it on terms of perfect equality, as a companion, protector, Mentor, and friend.'

Mr Dorrit, in spite of his sense of his importance, felt as if it would be quite a kindness in her to accept it on

'It would therefore,' said Mrs General, 'be necessary to add a third more to the payment (whatever its amount

may prove to be), which my friends here have been accustomed to make to my bankers'.'

Mr Dorrit lost no time in referring the delicate question to the countywidower, and finding that he had been

accustomed to pay three hundred pounds ayear to the credit of Mrs General, arrived, without any severe

strain on his arithmetic, at the conclusion that he himself must pay four. Mrs General being an article of that

lustrous surface which suggests that it is worth any money, he made a formal proposal to be allowed to have

the honour and pleasure of regarding her as a member of his family. Mrs General conceded that high

In person, Mrs General, including her skirts which had much to do with it, was of a dignified and imposing

appearance; ample, rustling, gravely voluminous; always upright behind the proprieties. She might have been

takenhad been takento the top of the Alps and the bottom of Herculaneum, without disarranging a fold

in her dress, or displacing a pin. If her countenance and hair had rather a floury appearance, as though from

living in some transcendently genteel Mill, it was rather because she was a chalky creation altogether, than

because she mended her complexion with violet powder, or had turned grey. If her eyes had no expression, it

was probably because they had nothing to express. If she had few wrinkles, it was because her mind had

never traced its name or any other inscription on her face. A cool, waxy, blownout woman, who had never

lighted well. Mrs General had no opinions. Her way of forming a mind was to prevent it from forming

opinions. She had a little circular set of mental grooves or rails on which she started little trains of other

people's opinions, which never overtook one another, and never got anywhere. Even her propriety could not

dispute that there was impropriety in the world; but Mrs General's way of getting rid of it was to put it out of

sight, and make believe that there was no such thing. This was another of her ways of forming a mindto

cram all articles of difficulty into cupboards, lock them up, and say they had no existence. It was the easiest

Mrs General was not to be told of anything shocking. Accidents, miseries, and offences, were never to be

mentioned before her. Passion was to go to sleep in the presence of Mrs General, and blood was to change to

milk and water. The little that was left in the world, when all these deductions were made, it was Mrs

General's province to varnish. In that formation process of hers, she dipped the smallest of brushes into the

largest of pots, and varnished the surface of every object that came under consideration. The more cracked it

was, the more Mrs General varnished it. There was varnish in Mrs General's voice, varnish in Mrs General's

touch, an atmosphere of varnish round Mrs General's figure. Mrs General's dreams ought to have been

varnishedif she had any lying asleep in the arms of the good Saint Bernard, with the feathery snow

The bright morning sun dazzled the eyes, the snow had ceased, the mists had vanished, the mountain air was

so clear and light that the new sensation of breathing it was like the having entered on a new existence. To

help the delusion, the solid ground itself seemed gone, and the mountain, a shining waste of immense white

heaps and masses, to be a region of cloud floating between the blue sky above and the earth far below.

Some dark specks in the snow, like knots upon a little thread, beginning at the convent door and winding

away down the descent in broken lengths which were not yet pieced together, showed where the Brethren

were at work in several places clearing the track. Already the snow had begun to be footthawed again about

the door. Mules were busily brought out, tied to the rings in the wall, and laden; strings of bells were buckled

on, burdens were adjusted, the voices of drivers and riders sounded musically. Some of the earliest had even

already resumed their journey; and, both on the level summit by the dark water near the convent, and on the

downward way of yesterday's ascent, little moving figures of men and mules, reduced to miniatures by the

immensity around, went with a clear tinkling of bells and a pleasant harmony of tongues.

In the supperroom of last night, a new fire, piled upon the feathery ashes of the old one, shone upon a

homely breakfast of loaves, butter, and milk. It also shone on the courier of the Dorrit family, making tea for

his party from a supply he had brought up with him, together with several other small stores which were

chiefly laid in for the use of the strong body of inconvenience. Mr Gowan and Blandois of Paris had already

breakfasted, and were walking up and down by the lake, smoking their cigars. 'Gowan, eh?' muttered Tip,

otherwise Edward Dorrit, Esquire, turning over the leaves of the book, when the courier had left them to

breakfast. 'Then Gowan is the name of a puppy, that's all I have got to say! If it was worth my while, I'd pull

'Oh! They are not going today! Fortunately for that fellow too,' said Tip, 'or he and I might have come into

'It is thought better here that she should lie quiet today, and not be fatigued and shaken by the ride down

'With all my heart. But you talk as if you had been nursing her. You haven't been relapsing into (Mrs General

He asked her the question with a sly glance of observation at Miss Fanny, and at his father too.

'I have only been in to ask her if I could do anything for her, Tip,' said Little Dorrit.

'You needn't call me Tip, Amy child,' returned that young gentleman with a frown; 'because that's an old

'I didn't mean to say so, Edward dear. I forgot. It was so natural once, that it seemed at the moment the right

'Oh yes!' Miss Fanny struck in. 'Natural, and right word, and once, and all the rest of it! Nonsense, you little

thing! I know perfectly well why you have been taking such an interest in this Mrs Gowan. You can't blind

'Oh! angry!' returned that young lady with a flounce. 'I have no patience' (which indeed was the truth). 'Pray,

Fanny,' said Mr Dorrit, raising his eyebrows, 'what do you mean? Explain yourself.'

'Oh! Never mind, Pa,' replied Miss Fanny, 'it's no great matter. Amy will understand me. She knew, or knew

'My child,' said Mr Dorrit, turning to his younger daughter, 'has your sisteranyhaauthority for this

'However meek we are,' Miss Fanny struck in before she could answer, 'we don't go creeping into people's

rooms on the tops of cold mountains, and sitting perishing in the frost with people, unless we know

something about them beforehand. It's not very hard to divine whose friend Mrs Gowan is.'

'Pa, I am sorry to say,' returned Miss Fanny, who had by this time succeeded in goading herself into a state of

much illusage and grievance, which she was often at great pains to do: 'that I believe her to be a friend of

that very objectionable and unpleasant person, who, with a total absence of all delicacy, which our experience

might have led us to expect from him, insulted us and outraged our feelings in so public and wilful a manner

on an occasion to which it is understood among us that we will not more pointedly allude.'

'Amy, my child,' said Mr Dorrit, tempering a bland severity with a dignified affection, 'is this the case?'

'Yes it is!' cried Miss Fanny. 'Of course! I said so! And now, Pa, I do declare once for all'this young lady

was in the habit of declaring the same thing once for all every day of her life, and even several times in a

day'that this is shameful! I do declare once for all that it ought to be put a stop to. Is it not enough that we

have gone through what is only known to ourselves, but are we to have it thrown in our faces, perseveringly

and systematically, by the very person who should spare our feelings most? Are we to be exposed to this

unnatural conduct every moment of our lives? Are we never to be permitted to forget? I say again, it is

'Well, Amy,' observed her brother, shaking his head, 'you know I stand by you whenever I can, and on most

occasions. But I must say, that, upon my soul, I do consider it rather an unaccountable mode of showing your

sisterly affection, that you should back up a man who treated me in the most ungentlemanly way in which

one man can treat another. And who,' he added convincingly, must be a low minded thief, you know, or he

'And see,' said Miss Fanny, 'see what is involved in this! Can we ever hope to be respected by our servants?

Never. Here are our two women, and Pa's valet, and a footman, and a courier, and all sorts of dependents, and

yet in the midst of these, we are to have one of ourselves rushing about with tumblers of cold water, like a

menial! Why, a policeman,' said Miss Fanny, 'if a beggar had a fit in the street, could but go plunging about

with tumblers, as this very Amy did in this very room before our very eyes last night!'

'I don't so much mind that, once in a way,' remarked Mr Edward; 'but your Clennam, as he thinks proper to

call himself, is another thing.' 'He is part of the same thing,' returned Miss Fanny, 'and of a piece with all the

rest. He obtruded himself upon us in the first instance. We never wanted him. I always showed him, for one,

He then commits that gross outrage upon our feelings, which he never could or would have committed but for

the delight he took in exposing us; and then we are to be demeaned for the service of his friends! Why, I don't

wonder at this Mr Gowan's conduct towards you. What else was to be expected when he was enjoying our

past misfortunesgloating over them at the moment!' 'FatherEdwardno indeed!' pleaded Little Dorrit.

'Neither Mr nor Mrs Gowan had ever heard our name. They were, and they are, quite ignorant of our history.'

'So much the worse,' retorted Fanny, determined not to admit anything in extenuation, 'for then you have no

excuse. If they had known about us, you might have felt yourself called upon to conciliate them. That would

have been a weak and ridiculous mistake, but I can respect a mistake, whereas I can't respect a wilful and

deliberate abasing of those who should be nearest and dearest to us. No. I can't respect that. I can do nothing

'I never offend you wilfully, Fanny,' said Little Dorrit, 'though you are so hard with me.'

'Then you should be more careful, Amy,' returned her sister. 'If you do such things by accident, you should be

more careful. If I happened to have been born in a peculiar place, and under peculiar circumstances that

blunted my knowledge of propriety, I fancy I should think myself bound to consider at every step, "Am I

going, ignorantly, to compromise any near and dear relations?" That is what I fancy I should do, if it was my

Mr Dorrit now interposed, at once to stop these painful subjects by his authority, and to point their moral by

'My dear,' said he to his younger daughter, 'I beg you tohato say no more. Your sister Fanny expresses

herself strongly, but not without considerable reason. You have now ahuma great position to support.

That great position is not occupied by yourself alone, but byhaby me, andha humby us. Us. Now,

it is incumbent upon all people in an exalted position, but it is particularly so on this family, for reasons

which Ihawill not dwell upon, to make themselves respected. To be vigilant in making themselves

respected. Dependants, to respect us, must behakept at a distance andhumkept down. Down.

Therefore, your not exposing yourself to the remarks of our attendants by appearing to have at any time

dispensed with their services and performed them for yourself, ishahighly important.'

'Why, who can doubt it?' cried Miss Fanny. 'It's the essence of everything.' 'Fanny,' returned her father,

grandiloquently, 'give me leave, my dear. We then come tohato Mr Clennam. I am free to say that I do

not, Amy, share your sister's sentimentsthat is to say altogetherhumaltogetherin reference to Mr

Clennam. I am content to regard that individual in the light ofhagenerally a wellbehaved person.

Hum. A wellbehaved person. Nor will I inquire whether Mr Clennam did, at any time, obtrude himself on

hamy society. He knew my society to behumsought, and his plea might be that he regarded me in the

light of a public character. But there were circumstances attending myhaslight knowledge of Mr

Clennam (it was very slight), which,' here Mr Dorrit became extremely grave and impressive, 'would render it

highly indelicate in Mr Clennam tohato seek to renew communication with me or with any member of

my family under existing circumstances. If Mr Clennam has sufficient delicacy to perceive the impropriety of

any such attempt, I am bound as a responsible gentleman tohadefer to that delicacy on his part. If, on

the other hand, Mr Clennam has not that delicacy, I cannot for a momenthahold any correspondence

with sohumcoarse a mind. In either case, it would appear that Mr Clennam is put altogether out of the

question, and that we have nothing to do with him or he with us. HaMrs General!'

The entrance of the lady whom he announced, to take her place at the breakfasttable, terminated the

discussion. Shortly afterwards, the courier announced that the valet, and the footman, and the two maids, and

the four guides, and the fourteen mules, were in readiness; so the breakfast party went out to the convent door

Mr Gowan stood aloof with his cigar and pencil, but Mr Blandois was on the spot to pay his respects to the

ladies. When he gallantly pulled off his slouched hat to Little Dorrit, she thought he had even a more sinister

look, standing swart and cloaked in the snow, than he had in the firelight overnight. But, as both her father

and her sister received his homage with some favour, she refrained from expressing any distrust of him, lest it

Nevertheless, as they wound down the rugged way while the convent was yet in sight, she more than once

looked round, and descried Mr Blandois, backed by the convent smoke which rose straight and high from the

chimneys in a golden film, always standing on one jutting point looking down after them. Long after he was a

mere black stick in the snow, she felt as though she could yet see that smile of his, that high nose, and those

eyes that were too near it. And even after that, when the convent was gone and some light morning clouds

veiled the pass below it, the ghastly skeleton arms by the wayside seemed to be all pointing up at him.

More treacherous than snow, perhaps, colder at heart, and harder to melt, Blandois of Paris by degrees passed

out of her mind, as they came down into the softer regions. Again the sun was warm, again the streams

descending from glaciers and snowy caverns were refreshing to drink at, again they came among the

pinetrees, the rocky rivulets, the verdant heights and dales, the wooden chalets and rough zigzag fences of

Swiss country. Sometimes the way so widened that she and her father could ride abreast. And then to look at

him, handsomely clothed in his fur and broadcloths, rich, free, numerously served and attended, his eyes

roving far away among the glories of the landscape, no miserable screen before them to darken his sight and

Her uncle was so far rescued from that shadow of old, that he wore the clothes they gave him, and performed

some ablutions as a sacrifice to the family credit, and went where he was taken, with a certain patient animal

enjoyment, which seemed to express that the air and change did him good. In all other respects, save one, he

shone with no light but such as was reflected from his brother. His brother's greatness, wealth, freedom, and

grandeur, pleased him without any reference to himself. Silent and retiring, he had no use for speech when he

could hear his brother speak; no desire to be waited on, so that the servants devoted themselves to his brother.

The only noticeable change he originated in himself, was an alteration in his manner to his younger niece.

Every day it refined more and more into a marked respect, very rarely shown by age to youth, and still more

rarely susceptible, one would have said, of the fitness with which he invested it. On those occasions when

Miss Fanny did declare once for all, he would take the next opportunity of baring his grey head before his

younger niece, and of helping her to alight, or handing her to the carriage, or showing her any other attention,

with the profoundest deference. Yet it never appeared misplaced or forced, being always heartily simple,

spontaneous, and genuine. Neither would he ever consent, even at his brother's request, to be helped to any

place before her, or to take precedence of her in anything. So jealous was he of her being respected, that, on

this very journey down from the Great Saint Bernard, he took sudden and violent umbrage at the footman's

being remiss to hold her stirrup, though standing near when she dismounted; and unspeakably astonished the

whole retinue by charging at him on a hardheaded mule, riding him into a corner, and threatening to trample

They were a goodly company, and the Innkeepers all but worshipped them. Wherever they went, their

importance preceded them in the person of the courier riding before, to see that the rooms of state were ready.

He was the herald of the family procession. The great travellingcarriage came next: containing, inside, Mr

Dorrit, Miss Dorrit, Miss Amy Dorrit, and Mrs General; outside, some of the retainers, and (in fine weather)

Edward Dorrit, Esquire, for whom the box was reserved. Then came the chariot containing Frederick Dorrit,

Esquire, and an empty place occupied by Edward Dorrit, Esquire, in wet weather. Then came the fourgon

with the rest of the retainers, the heavy baggage, and as much as it could carry of the mud and dust which the

These equipages adorned the yard of the hotel at Martigny, on the return of the family from their mountain

excursion. Other vehicles were there, much company being on the road, from the patched Italian

Vetturalike the body of a swing from an English fair put upon a wooden tray on wheels, and having

another wooden tray without wheels put atop of itto the trim English carriage. But there was another

adornment of the hotel which Mr Dorrit had not bargained for. Two strange travellers embellished one of his

The Innkeeper, hat in hand in the yard, swore to the courier that he was blighted, that he was desolated, that

he was profoundly afflicted, that he was the most miserable and unfortunate of beasts, that he had the head of

a wooden pig. He ought never to have made the concession, he said, but the very genteel lady had so

passionately prayed him for the accommodation of that room to dine in, only for a little halfhour, that he

had been vanquished. The little halfhour was expired, the lady and gentleman were taking their little dessert

and halfcup of coffee, the note was paid, the horses were ordered, they would depart immediately; but,

Nothing could exceed Mr Dorrit's indignation, as he turned at the foot of the staircase on hearing these

apologies. He felt that the family dignity was struck at by an assassin's hand. He had a sense of his dignity,

which was of the most exquisite nature. He could detect a design upon it when nobody else had any

perception of the fact. His life was made an agony by the number of fine scalpels that he felt to be incessantly

'Is it possible, sir,' said Mr Dorrit, reddening excessively, 'that you havehahad the audacity to place one

Thousands of pardons! It was the host's profound misfortune to have been overcome by that too genteel lady.

He besought Monseigneur not to enrage himself. He threw himself on Monseigneur for clemency. If

Monseigneur would have the distinguished goodness to occupy the other salon especially reserved for him,

'No, sir,' said Mr Dorrit. 'I will not occupy any salon. I will leave your house without eating or drinking, or

How do you dare to act like this? Who am I that youhaseparate me from other gentlemen?'

Alas! The host called all the universe to witness that Monseigneur was the most amiable of the whole body of

nobility, the most important, the most estimable, the most honoured. If he separated Monseigneur from

others, it was only because he was more distinguished, more cherished, more generous, more renowned.

'Don't tell me so, sir,' returned Mr Dorrit, in a mighty heat. 'You have affronted me. You have heaped insults

Ah, just Heaven, then, how could the host explain himself when he had nothing more to explain; when he had

only to apologise, and confide himself to the so wellknown magnanimity of Monseigneur!

'I tell you, sir,' said Mr Dorrit, panting with anger, 'that you separate mehafrom other gentlemen; that

you make distinctions between me and other gentlemen of fortune and station. I demand of you, why? I wish

to know onhawhat authority, on whose authority. Reply sir. Explain. Answer why.'

Permit the landlord humbly to submit to Monsieur the Courier then, that Monseigneur, ordinarily so gracious,

enraged himself without cause. There was no why. Monsieur the Courier would represent to Monseigneur,

that he deceived himself in suspecting that there was any why, but the why his devoted servant had already

'Silence!' cried Mr Dorrit. 'Hold your tongue! I will hear no more of the very genteel lady; I will hear no more

of you. Look at this familymy familya family more genteel than any lady. You have treated this family

with disrespect; you have been insolent to this family. I'll ruin you. Hasend for the horses, pack the

No one had interfered in the dispute, which was beyond the French colloquial powers of Edward Dorrit,

Esquire, and scarcely within the province of the ladies. Miss Fanny, however, now supported her father with

great bitterness; declaring, in her native tongue, that it was quite clear there was something special in this

man's impertinence; and that she considered it important that he should be, by some means, forced to give up

his authority for making distinctions between that family and other wealthy families. What the reasons of his

presumption could be, she was at a loss to imagine; but reasons he must have, and they ought to be torn from

All the guides, muledrivers, and idlers in the yard, had made themselves parties to the angry conference, and

were much impressed by the courier's now bestirring himself to get the carriages out. With the aid of some

dozen people to each wheel, this was done at a great cost of noise; and then the loading was proceeded with,

But the very genteel lady's English chariot being already horsed and at the inndoor, the landlord had slipped

upstairs to represent his hard case. This was notified to the yard by his now coming down the staircase in

attendance on the gentleman and the lady, and by his pointing out the offended majesty of Mr Dorrit to them

'Beg your pardon,' said the gentleman, detaching himself from the lady, and coming forward. 'I am a man of

few words and a bad hand at an explanationbut lady here is extremely anxious that there should be no

Row. Ladya mother of mine, in point of factwishes me to say that she hopes no Row.'

Mr Dorrit, still panting under his injury, saluted the gentleman, and saluted the lady, in a distant, final, and

'No, but reallyhere, old feller; you!' This was the gentleman's way of appealing to Edward Dorrit, Esquire,

on whom he pounced as a great and providential relief. 'Let you and I try to make this all right. Lady so very

Edward Dorrit, Esquire, led a little apart by the button, assumed a diplomatic expression of countenance in

replying, 'Why you must confess, that when you bespeak a lot of rooms beforehand, and they belong to you,

'No,' said the other, 'I know it isn't. I admit it. Still, let you and I try to make it all right, and avoid Row. The

fault is not this chap's at all, but my mother's. Being a remarkably fine woman with no bigodd nonsense about

'Assure you 'pon my soul 'tis the case. Consequently,' said the other gentleman, retiring on his main position,

'Edmund,' said the lady from the doorway, 'I hope you have explained, or are explaining, to the satisfaction of

'Assure you, ma'am,' returned Edmund, 'perfectly paralysing myself with trying it on.' He then looked

steadfastly at Edward Dorrit, Esquire, for some seconds, and suddenly added, in a burst of confidence, 'Old

'I don't know, after all,' said the lady, gracefully advancing a step or two towards Mr Dorrit, 'but that I had

better say myself, at once, that I assured this good man I took all the consequences on myself of occupying

one of a stranger's suite of rooms during his absence, for just as much (or as little) time as I could dine in. I

had no idea the rightful owner would come back so soon, nor had I any idea that he had come back, or I

should have hastened to make restoration of my illgotten chamber, and to have offered my explanation and

For a moment the lady, with a glass at her eye, stood transfixed and speechless before the two Miss Dorrits.

At the same moment, Miss Fanny, in the foreground of a grand pictorial composition, formed by the family,

the family equipages, and the family servants, held her sister tight under one arm to detain her on the spot,

and with the other arm fanned herself with a distinguished air, and negligently surveyed the lady from head to

The lady, recovering herself quicklyfor it was Mrs Merdle and she was not easily dashedwent on to add

that she trusted in saying this, she apologised for her boldness, and restored this well behaved landlord to

the favour that was so very valuable to him. Mr Dorrit, on the altar of whose dignity all this was incense,

made a gracious reply; and said that his people shouldhacountermand his horses, and he

wouldhumoverlook what he had at first supposed to be an affront, but now regarded as an honour. Upon

this the bosom bent to him; and its owner, with a wonderful command of feature, addressed a winning smile

of adieu to the two sisters, as young ladies of fortune in whose favour she was much prepossessed, and whom

Not so, however, Mr Sparkler. This gentleman, becoming transfixed at the same moment as his ladymother,

could not by any means unfix himself again, but stood stiffly staring at the whole composition with Miss

Fanny in the Foreground. On his mother saying, 'Edmund, we are quite ready; will you give me your arm?' he

seemed, by the motion of his lips, to reply with some remark comprehending the form of words in which his

shining talents found the most frequent utterance, but he relaxed no muscle. So fixed was his figure, that it

would have been matter of some difficulty to bend him sufficiently to get him in the carriagedoor, if he had

not received the timely assistance of a maternal pull from within. He was no sooner within than the pad of the

little window in the back of the chariot disappeared, and his eye usurped its place. There it remained as long

as so small an object was discernible, and probably much longer, staring (as though something inexpressibly

surprising should happen to a codfish) like an illexecuted eye in a large locket.

This encounter was so highly agreeable to Miss Fanny, and gave her so much to think of with triumph

afterwards, that it softened her asperities exceedingly. When the procession was again in motion next day, she

occupied her place in it with a new gaiety; and showed such a flow of spirits indeed, that Mrs General looked

Little Dorrit was glad to be found no fault with, and to see that Fanny was pleased; but her part in the

procession was a musing part, and a quiet one. Sitting opposite her father in the travellingcarriage, and

recalling the old Marshalsea room, her present existence was a dream. All that she saw was new and

wonderful, but it was not real; it seemed to her as if those visions of mountains and picturesque countries

might melt away at any moment, and the carriage, turning some abrupt corner, bring up with a jolt at the old

To have no work to do was strange, but not half so strange as having glided into a corner where she had no

one to think for, nothing to plan and contrive, no cares of others to load herself with. Strange as that was, it

was far stranger yet to find a space between herself and her father, where others occupied themselves in

taking care of him, and where she was never expected to be. At first, this was so much more unlike her old

experience than even the mountains themselves, that she had been unable to resign herself to it, and had tried

to retain her old place about him. But he had spoken to her alone, and had said that peopleha people in

an exalted position, my dear, must scrupulously exact respect from their dependents; and that for her, his

daughter, Miss Amy Dorrit, of the sole remaining branch of the Dorrits of Dorsetshire, to be known

tohumto occupy herself in fulfilling the functions ofha huma valet, would be incompatible with

that respect. Therefore, my dear, hehahe laid his parental injunctions upon her, to remember that she

was a lady, who had now to conduct herself withhuma proper pride, and to preserve the rank of a lady;

and consequently he requested her to abstain from doing what would occasionhaunpleasant and

derogatory remarks. She had obeyed without a murmur. Thus it had been brought about that she now sat in

her corner of the luxurious carriage with her little patient hands folded before her, quite displaced even from

the last point of the old standing ground in life on which her feet had lingered.

It was from this position that all she saw appeared unreal; the more surprising the scenes, the more they

resembled the unreality of her own inner life as she went through its vacant places all day long. The gorges of

the Simplon, its enormous depths and thundering waterfalls, the wonderful road, the points of danger where a

loose wheel or a faltering horse would have been destruction, the descent into Italy, the opening of that

beautiful land as the rugged mountainchasm widened and let them out from a gloomy and dark

imprisonmentall a dreamonly the old mean Marshalsea a reality. Nay, even the old mean Marshalsea

was shaken to its foundations when she pictured it without her father. She could scarcely believe that the

prisoners were still lingering in the close yard, that the mean rooms were still every one tenanted, and that the

turnkey still stood in the Lodge letting people in and out, all just as she well knew it to be.

With a remembrance of her father's old life in prison hanging about her like the burden of a sorrowful tune,

Little Dorrit would wake from a dream of her birthplace into a whole day's dream. The painted room in

which she awoke, often a humbled statechamber in a dilapidated palace, would begin it; with its wild red

autumnal vineleaves overhanging the glass, its orangetrees on the cracked white terrace outside the

window, a group of monks and peasants in the little street below, misery and magnificence wrestling with

each other upon every rood of ground in the prospect, no matter how widely diversified, and misery throwing

magnificence with the strength of fate. To this would succeed a labyrinth of bare passages and pillared

galleries, with the family procession already preparing in the quadrangle below, through the carriages and

luggage being brought together by the servants for the day's journey. Then breakfast in another painted

chamber, dampstained and of desolate proportions; and then the departure, which, to her timidity and sense

of not being grand enough for her place in the ceremonies, was always an uneasy thing. For then the courier

(who himself would have been a foreign gentleman of high mark in the Marshalsea) would present himself to

report that all was ready; and then her father's valet would pompously induct him into his travellingcloak;

and then Fanny's maid, and her own maid (who was a weight on Little Dorrit's mindabsolutely made her

cry at first, she knew so little what to do with her), would be in attendance; and then her brother's man would

complete his master's equipment; and then her father would give his arm to Mrs General, and her uncle would

give his to her, and, escorted by the landlord and Inn servants, they would swoop downstairs. There, a

crowd would be collected to see them enter their carriages, which, amidst much bowing, and begging, and

prancing, and lashing, and clattering, they would do; and so they would be driven madly through narrow

Among the day's unrealities would be roads where the bright red vines were looped and garlanded together

on trees for many miles; woods of olives; white villages and towns on hillsides, lovely without, but frightful

in their dirt and poverty within; crosses by the way; deep blue lakes with fairy islands, and clustering boats

with awnings of bright colours and sails of beautiful forms; vast piles of building mouldering to dust;

hanginggardens where the weeds had grown so strong that their stems, like wedges driven home, had split

the arch and rent the wall; stoneterraced lanes, with the lizards running into and out of every chink; beggars

of all sorts everywhere: pitiful, picturesque, hungry, merry; children beggars and aged beggars. Often at

postinghouses and other halting places, these miserable creatures would appear to her the only realities of

the day; and many a time, when the money she had brought to give them was all given away, she would sit

with her folded hands, thoughtfully looking after some diminutive girl leading her grey father, as if the sight

Again, there would be places where they stayed the week together in splendid rooms, had banquets every

day, rode out among heaps of wonders, walked through miles of palaces, and rested in dark corners of great

churches; where there were winking lamps of gold and silver among pillars and arches, kneeling figures

dotted about at confessionals and on the pavements; where there was the mist and scent of incense; where

there were pictures, fantastic images, gaudy altars, great heights and distances, all softly lighted through

stained glass, and the massive curtains that hung in the doorways. From these cities they would go on again,

by the roads of vines and olives, through squalid villages, where there was not a hovel without a gap in its

filthy walls, not a window with a whole inch of glass or paper; where there seemed to be nothing to support

life, nothing to eat, nothing to make, nothing to grow, nothing to hope, nothing to do but die.

Again they would come to whole towns of palaces, whose proper inmates were all banished, and which were

all changed into barracks: troops of idle soldiers leaning out of the state windows, where their accoutrements

hung drying on the marble architecture, and showing to the mind like hosts of rats who were (happily) eating

away the props of the edifices that supported them, and must soon, with them, be smashed on the heads of the

other swarms of soldiers and the swarms of priests, and the swarms of spies, who were all the illlooking

Through such scenes, the family procession moved on to Venice. And here it dispersed for a time, as they

were to live in Venice some few months in a palace (itself six times as big as the whole Marshalsea) on the

In this crowning unreality, where all the streets were paved with water, and where the deathlike stillness of

the days and nights was broken by no sound but the softened ringing of churchbells, the rippling of the

current, and the cry of the gondoliers turning the corners of the flowing streets, Little Dorrit, quite lost by her

task being done, sat down to muse. The family began a gay life, went here and there, and turned night into

day; but she was timid of joining in their gaieties, and only asked leave to be left alone.

Sometimes she would step into one of the gondolas that were always kept in waiting, moored to painted posts

at the doorwhen she could escape from the attendance of that oppressive maid, who was her mistress, and

a very hard oneand would be taken all over the strange city. Social people in other gondolas began to ask

each other who the little solitary girl was whom they passed, sitting in her boat with folded hands, looking so

pensively and wonderingly about her. Never thinking that it would be worth anybody's while to notice her or

her doings, Little Dorrit, in her quiet, scared, lost manner, went about the city none the less.

But her favourite station was the balcony of her own room, overhanging the canal, with other balconies

below, and none above. It was of massive stone darkened by ages, built in a wild fancy which came from the

East to that collection of wild fancies; and Little Dorrit was little indeed, leaning on the broadcushioned

ledge, and looking over. As she liked no place of an evening half so well, she soon began to be watched for,

and many eyes in passing gondolas were raised, and many people said, There was the little figure of the

Such people were not realities to the little figure of the English girl; such people were all unknown to her. She

would watch the sunset, in its long low lines of purple and red, and its burning flush high up into the sky: so

glowing on the buildings, and so lightening their structure, that it made them look as if their strong walls

were transparent, and they shone from within. She would watch those glories expire; and then, after looking

at the black gondolas underneath, taking guests to music and dancing, would raise her eyes to the shining

stars. Was there no party of her own, in other times, on which the stars had shone? To think of that old gate

now! She would think of that old gate, and of herself sitting at it in the dead of the night, pillowing Maggy's

head; and of other places and of other scenes associated with those different times. And then she would lean

upon her balcony, and look over at the water, as though they all lay underneath it. When she got to that, she

would musingly watch its running, as if, in the general vision, it might run dry, and show her the prison

again, and herself, and the old room , and the old inmates, and the old visitors: all lasting realities that had

I write to you from my own room at Venice, thinking you will be glad to hear from me. But I know you

cannot be so glad to hear from me as I am to write to you; for everything about you is as you have been

accustomed to see it, and you miss nothingunless it should be me, which can only be for a very little while

together and very seldomwhile everything in my life is so strange, and I miss so much.

When we were in Switzerland, which appears to have been years ago, though it was only weeks, I met young

Mrs Gowan, who was on a mountain excursion like ourselves. She told me she was very well and very happy.

She sent you the message, by me, that she thanked you affectionately and would never forget you. She was

quite confiding with me, and I loved her almost as soon as I spoke to her. But there is nothing singular in that;

who could help loving so beautiful and winning a creature! I could not wonder at any one loving her. No

It will not make you uneasy on Mrs Gowan's account, I hopefor I remember that you said you had the

interest of a true friend in herif I tell you that I wish she could have married some one better suited to her.

Mr Gowan seems fond of her, and of course she is very fond of him, but I thought he was not earnest

enoughI don't mean in that respectI mean in anything. I could not keep it out of my mind that if I was

Mrs Gowan (what a change that would be, and how I must alter to become like her!) I should feel that I was

rather lonely and lost, for the want of some one who was steadfast and firm in purpose. I even thought she felt

this want a little, almost without knowing it. But mind you are not made uneasy by this, for she was 'very

I expect to meet her again before long, and indeed have been expecting for some days past to see her here. I

will ever be as good a friend to her as I can for your sake. Dear Mr Clennam, I dare say you think little of

having been a friend to me when I had no other (not that I have any other now, for I have made no new

I wish I knewbut it is best for no one to write to mehow Mr and Mrs Plornish prosper in the business

which my dear father bought for them, and that old Mr Nandy lives happily with them and his two

grandchildren, and sings all his songs over and over again. I cannot quite keep back the tears from my eyes

when I think of my poor Maggy, and of the blank she must have felt at first, however kind they all are to her,

without her Little Mother. Will you go and tell her, as a strict secret, with my love, that she never can have

regretted our separation more than I have regretted it? And will you tell them all that I have thought of them

every day, and that my heart is faithful to them everywhere? O, if you could know how faithful, you would

You will be glad, I am sure, to know that my dear father is very well in health, and that all these changes are

highly beneficial to him, and that he is very different indeed from what he used to be when you used to see

him. There is an improvement in my uncle too, I think, though he never complained of old, and never exults

now. Fanny is very graceful, quick, and clever. It is natural to her to be a lady; she has adapted herself to our

This reminds me that I have not been able to do so, and that I sometimes almost despair of ever being able to

do so. I find that I cannot learn. Mrs General is always with us, and we speak French and speak Italian, and

she takes pains to form us in many ways. When I say we speak French and Italian, I mean they do. As for me,

I am so slow that I scarcely get on at all. As soon as I begin to plan, and think, and try, all my planning,

thinking, and trying go in old directions, and I begin to feel careful again about the expenses of the day, and

about my dear father, and about my work, and then I remember with a start that there are no such cares left,

and that in itself is so new and improbable that it sets me wandering again. I should not have the courage to

It is the same with all these new countries and wonderful sights. They are very beautiful, and they astonish

me, but I am not collected enoughnot familiar enough with myself, if you can quite understand what I

meanto have all the pleasure in them that I might have. What I knew before them, blends with them, too,

so curiously. For instance, when we were among the mountains, I often felt (I hesitate to tell such an idle

thing, dear Mr Clennam, even to you) as if the Marshalsea must be behind that great rock; or as if Mrs

Clennam's room where I have worked so many days, and where I first saw you, must be just beyond that

snow. Do you remember one night when I came with Maggy to your lodging in Covent Garden? That room I

have often and often fancied I have seen before me, travelling along for miles by the side of our carriage,

when I have looked out of the carriagewindow after dark. We were shut out that night, and sat at the iron

gate, and walked about till morning. I often look up at the stars, even from the balcony of this room, and

believe that I am in the street again, shut out with Maggy. It is the same with people that I left in England.

When I go about here in a gondola, I surprise myself looking into other gondolas as if I hoped to see them. It

would overcome me with joy to see them, but I don't think it would surprise me much, at first. In my fanciful

times, I fancy that they might be anywhere; and I almost expect to see their dear faces on the bridges or the

Another difficulty that I have will seem very strange to you. It must seem very strange to any one but me, and

does even to me: I often feel the old sad pity forI need not write the wordfor him. Changed as he is, and

inexpressibly blest and thankful as I always am to know it, the old sorrowful feeling of compassion comes

upon me sometimes with such strength that I want to put my arms round his neck, tell him how I love him,

and cry a little on his breast. I should be glad after that, and proud and happy. But I know that I must not do

this; that he would not like it, that Fanny would be angry, that Mrs General would be amazed; and so I quiet

myself. Yet in doing so, I struggle with the feeling that I have come to be at a distance from him; and that

even in the midst of all the servants and attendants, he is deserted, and in want of me.

Dear Mr Clennam, I have written a great deal about myself, but I must write a little more still, or what I

wanted most of all to say in this weak letter would be left out of it. In all these foolish thoughts of mine,

which I have been so hardy as to confess to you because I know you will understand me if anybody can, and

will make more allowance for me than anybody else would if you cannotin all these thoughts, there is one

thought scarcely everneverout of my memory, and that is that I hope you sometimes, in a quiet moment,

have a thought for me. I must tell you that as to this, I have felt, ever since I have been away, an anxiety

which I am very anxious to relieve. I have been afraid that you may think of me in a new light, or a new

character. Don't do that, I could not bear thatit would make me more unhappy than you can suppose. It

would break my heart to believe that you thought of me in any way that would make me stranger to you than

I was when you were so good to me. What I have to pray and entreat of you is, that you will never think of

me as the daughter of a rich person; that you will never think of me as dressing any better, or living any

better, than when you first knew me. That you will remember me only as the little shabby girl you protected

with so much tenderness, from whose threadbare dress you have kept away the rain, and whose wet feet you

have dried at your fire. That you will think of me (when you think of me at all), and of my true affection and

P.S.Particularly remember that you are not to be uneasy about Mrs Gowan. Her words were, 'Very well

The family had been a month or two at Venice, when Mr Dorrit, who was much among Counts and

Marquises, and had but scant leisure, set an hour of one day apart, beforehand, for the purpose of holding

The time he had reserved in his mind arriving, he sent Mr Tinkler, his valet, to Mrs General's apartment

(which would have absorbed about a third of the area of the Marshalsea), to present his compliments to that

lady, and represent him as desiring the favour of an interview. It being that period of the forenoon when the

various members of the family had coffee in their own chambers, some couple of hours before assembling at

breakfast in a faded hall which had once been sumptuous, but was now the prey of watery vapours and a

settled melancholy, Mrs General was accessible to the valet. That envoy found her on a little square of carpet,

so extremely diminutive in reference to the size of her stone and marble floor that she looked as if she might

have had it spread for the trying on of a readymade pair of shoes; or as if she had come into possession of

the enchanted piece of carpet, bought for forty purses by one of the three princes in the Arabian Nights, and

had that moment been transported on it, at a wish, into a palatial saloon with which it had no connection.

Mrs General, replying to the envoy, as she set down her empty coffeecup, that she was willing at once to

proceed to Mr Dorrit's apartment, and spare him the trouble of coming to her (which, in his gallantry, he had

proposed), the envoy threw open the door, and escorted Mrs General to the presence. It was quite a walk, by

mysterious staircases and corridors, from Mrs General's apartment, hoodwinked by a narrow side street

with a low gloomy bridge in it, and dungeonlike opposite tenements, their walls besmeared with a thousand

downward stains and streaks, as if every crazy aperture in them had been weeping tears of rust into the

Adriatic for centuriesto Mr Dorrit's apartment: with a whole English house front of window, a prospect of

beautiful churchdomes rising into the blue sky sheer out of the water which reflected them, and a hushed

murmur of the Grand Canal laving the doorways below, where his gondolas and gondoliers attended his

Mr Dorrit, in a resplendent dressinggown and capthe dormant grub that had so long bided its time among

the Collegians had burst into a rare butterflyrose to receive Mrs General. A chair to Mrs General. An easier

chair, sir; what are you doing, what are you about, what do you mean? Now, leave us!

'By no means,' Mrs General interposed. 'I was quite at your disposition. I had had my coffee.'

'I took the liberty,' said Mr Dorrit again, with the magnificent placidity of one who was above correction,

'to solicit the favour of a little private conversation with you, because I feel rather worried respecting

myhamy younger daughter. You will have observed a great difference of temperament, madam,

Said Mrs General in response, crossing her gloved hands (she was never without gloves, and they never

'May I ask to be favoured with your view of it?' said Mr Dorrit, with a deference not incompatible with

'Fanny,' returned Mrs General, 'has force of character and self reliance. Amy, none.'

None? O Mrs General, ask the Marshalsea stones and bars. O Mrs General, ask the milliner who taught her to

work, and the dancing master who taught her sister to dance. O Mrs General, Mrs General, ask me, her

father, what I owe her; and hear my testimony touching the life of this slighted little creature from her

No such adjuration entered Mr. Dorrit's head. He looked at Mrs General, seated in her usual erect attitude on

her coachbox behind the proprieties, and he said in a thoughtful manner, 'True, madam.'

'I would not,' said Mrs General, 'be understood to say, observe, that there is nothing to improve in Fanny. But

'Will you be kind enough, madam,' said Mr Dorrit, 'to behamore explicit? I do not quite understand my

Lest he himself should be found deficient in perfect breeding, Mr Dorrit hastened to reply, 'Unquestionably,

madam, you are right.' Mrs General returned, in her emotionless and expressionless manner, 'I believe so.'

'But you are aware, my dear madam,' said Mr Dorrit, 'that my daughters had the misfortune to lose their

lamented mother when they were very young; and that, in consequence of my not having been until lately the

recognised heir to my property, they have lived with me as a comparatively poor, though always proud,

'I do not,' said Mrs General, 'lose sight of the circumstance.' 'Madam,'pursued Mr Dorrit, 'of my daughter

Fanny, under her present guidance and with such an example constantly before her'

'I have no misgivings. There is adaptability of character in Fanny. But my younger daughter, Mrs General,

rather worries and vexes my thoughts. I must inform you that she has always been my favourite.'

'Hano,' assented Mr Dorrit. 'No. Now, madam, I am troubled by noticing that Amy is not, so to speak, one

of ourselves. She does not Care to go about with us; she is lost in the society we have here; our tastes are

evidently not her tastes. Which,' said Mr Dorrit, summing up with judicial gravity, 'is to say, in other words,

'May we incline to the supposition,' said Mrs General, with a little touch of varnish, 'that something is

'Excuse me, madam,' observed Mr Dorrit, rather quickly. 'The daughter of a gentleman,

thoughhahimself at one time comparatively far from affluentcomparativelyand herself reared

'Therefore, madam,' said Mr Dorrit, 'I took the liberty' (he laid an emphasis on the phrase and repeated it, as

though he stipulated, with urbane firmness, that he must not be contradicted again), 'I took the liberty of

requesting this interview, in order that I might mention the topic to you, and inquire how you would advise

'Mr Dorrit,' returned Mrs General, 'I have conversed with Amy several times since we have been residing

here, on the general subject of the formation of a demeanour. She has expressed herself to me as wondering

exceedingly at Venice. I have mentioned to her that it is better not to wonder. I have pointed out to her that

the celebrated Mr Eustace, the classical tourist, did not think much of it; and that he compared the Rialto,

greatly to its disadvantage, with Westminster and Blackfriars Bridges. I need not add, after what you have

said, that I have not yet found my arguments successful. You do me the honour to ask me what to advise. It

always appears to me (if this should prove to be a baseless assumption, I shall be pardoned), that Mr Dorrit

'Hummadam,' said Mr Dorrit, 'I have been at the head ofha of a considerable community. You are right

'I am happy,' returned Mrs General, 'to be so corroborated. I would therefore the more confidently

recommend that Mr Dorrit should speak to Amy himself, and make his observations and wishes known to

her. Being his favourite, besides, and no doubt attached to him, she is all the more likely to yield to his

'I had anticipated your suggestion, madam,' said Mr Dorrit, 'but hawas not sure that I mighthumnot

'Then, with your leave, madam,' resumed Mr Dorrit, ringing his little bell to summon his valet, 'I will send for

'Perhaps, if you have no other engagement, you would not object for a minute or two'

So, Tinkler the valet was instructed to find Miss Amy's maid, and to request that subordinate to inform Miss

Amy that Mr Dorrit wished to see her in his own room. In delivering this charge to Tinkler, Mr Dorrit looked

severely at him, and also kept a jealous eye upon him until he went out at the door, mistrusting that he might

have something in his mind prejudicial to the family dignity; that he might have even got wind of some

Collegiate joke before he came into the service, and might be derisively reviving its remembrance at the

present moment. If Tinkler had happened to smile, however faintly and innocently, nothing would have

persuaded Mr Dorrit, to the hour of his death, but that this was the case. As Tinkler happened, however, very

fortunately for himself, to be of a serious and composed countenance, he escaped the secret danger that

threatened him. And as on his returnwhen Mr Dorrit eyed him againhe announced Miss Amy as if she

had come to a funeral, he left a vague impression on Mr Dorrit's mind that he was a well conducted young

fellow, who had been brought up in the study of his Catechism by a widowed mother.

'Amy,' said Mr Dorrit, 'you have just now been the subject of some conversation between myself and Mrs

'Papa is a preferable mode of address,' observed Mrs General. 'Father is rather vulgar, my dear. The word

Papa, besides, gives a pretty form to the lips. Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes, and prism are all very good

words for the lips: especially prunes and prism. You will find it serviceable, in the formation of a demeanour,

if you sometimes say to yourself in companyon entering a room, for instancePapa, potatoes, poultry,

Poor Little Dorrit, with a rather forlorn glance at that eminent varnisher, promised to try.

'You say, Amy,' pursued Mr Dorrit, 'that you think you require time. Time for what?'

'To become accustomed to the novelty of my life, was all I meant,' said Little Dorrit, with her loving eyes

upon her father; whom she had very nearly addressed as poultry, if not prunes and prism too, in her desire to

Mr Dorrit frowned, and looked anything but pleased. 'Amy,' he returned, 'it appears to me, I must say, that

you have had abundance of time for that. Hayou surprise me. You disappoint me. Fanny has conquered

'I hope so,' returned her father. 'IhaI most devoutly hope so, Amy. I sent for you, in order that I might

sayhumimpressively say, in the presence of Mrs General, to whom we are all so much indebted for

obligingly being present among us, onhaon this or any other occasion,' Mrs General shut her eyes, 'that

Iha humam not pleased with you. You make Mrs General's a thankless task. Youhaembarrass me

very much. You have always (as I have informed Mrs General) been my favourite child; I have always made

you ahuma friend and companion; in return, I begIhaI do beg, that you accommodate yourself

Mr Dorrit was even a little more fragmentary than usual, being excited on the subject and anxious to make

'I do beg,' he repeated, 'that this may be attended to, and that you will seriously take pains and try to conduct

yourself in a manner both becoming your position ashaMiss Amy Dorrit, and satisfactory to myself and

That lady shut her eyes again, on being again referred to; then, slowly opening them and rising, added these

words: 'If Miss Amy Dorrit will direct her own attention to, and will accept of my poor assistance in, the

formation of a surface, Mr. Dorrit will have no further cause of anxiety. May I take this opportunity of

remarking, as an instance in point, that it is scarcely delicate to look at vagrants with the attention which I

have seen bestowed upon them by a very dear young friend of mine? They should not be looked at. Nothing

disagreeable should ever be looked at. Apart from such a habit standing in the way of that graceful

equanimity of surface which is so expressive of good breeding, it hardly seems compatible with refinement of

mind. A truly refined mind will seem to be ignorant of the existence of anything that is not perfectly proper,

placid, and pleasant.' Having delivered this exalted sentiment, Mrs General made a sweeping obeisance, and

Little Dorrit, whether speaking or silent, had preserved her quiet earnestness and her loving look. It had not

been clouded, except for a passing moment, until now. But now that she was left alone with him the fingers

of her lightly folded hands were agitated, and there was repressed emotion in her face.

Not for herself. She might feel a little wounded, but her care was not for herself. Her thoughts still turned, as

they always had turned, to him. A faint misgiving, which had hung about her since their accession to fortune,

that even now she could never see him as he used to be before the prison days, had gradually begun to

assume form in her mind. She felt that, in what he had just now said to her and in his whole bearing towards

her, there was the wellknown shadow of the Marshalsea wall. It took a new shape, but it was the old sad

shadow. She began with sorrowful unwillingness to acknowledge to herself that she was not strong enough to

keep off the fear that no space in the life of man could overcome that quarter of a century behind the prison

bars. She had no blame to bestow upon him, therefore: nothing to reproach him with, no emotions in her

This is why it was, that, even as he sat before her on his sofa, in the brilliant light of a bright Italian day, the

wonderful city without and the splendours of an old palace within, she saw him at the moment in the

longfamiliar gloom of his Marshalsea lodging, and wished to take her seat beside him, and comfort him, and

be again full of confidence with him, and of usefulness to him. If he divined what was in her thoughts, his

After some uneasy moving in his seat, he got up and walked about, looking very much dissatisfied.

'I am sorry you have not been pleased with me, dear. I hope you will not think of me with displeasure now. I

am going to try, more than ever, to adapt myself as you wish to what surrounds me for indeed I have tried

'There is ahuma topic,' said Mr Dorrit, looking all about the ceiling of the room, and never at the

attentive, uncomplainingly shocked face, 'a painful topic, a series of events which I wish haaltogether

to obliterate. This is understood by your sister, who has already remonstrated with you in my presence; it is

understood by your brother; it is understood byha humby every one of delicacy and sensitiveness except

yourselfhaI am sorry to say, except yourself. You, Amyhumyou alone and only you constantly

She laid her hand on his arm. She did nothing more. She gently touched him. The trembling hand may have

said, with some expression, 'Think of me, think how I have worked, think of my many cares!' But she said not

There was a reproach in the touch so addressed to him that she had not foreseen, or she would have withheld

her hand. He began to justify himself in a heated, stumbling, angry manner, which made nothing of it.

'I was there all those years. I washauniversally acknowledged as the head of the place. IhumI

caused you to be respected there, Amy. Iha humI gave my family a position there. I deserve a return. I

claim a return. I say, sweep it off the face of the earth and begin afresh. Is that much? I ask, is that much?' He

did not once look at her, as he rambled on in this way; but gesticulated at, and appealed to, the empty air.

'I have suffered. Probably I know how much I have suffered better than any onehaI say than any one! If

I can put that aside, if I can eradicate the marks of what I have endured, and can emerge before the

worldahagentleman unspoiled, unspotted is it a great deal to expectI say again, is it a great deal

to expect that my children shouldhumdo the same and sweep that accursed experience off the face of

In spite of his flustered state, he made all these exclamations in a carefully suppressed voice, lest the valet

'Accordingly, they do it. Your sister does it. Your brother does it. You alone, my favourite child, whom I

made the friend and companion of my life when you were a merehumBaby, do not do it.

You alone say you can't do it. I provide you with valuable assistance to do it. I attach an accomplished and

highly bred lady haMrs General, to you, for the purpose of doing it. Is it surprising that I should be

displeased? Is it necessary that I should defend myself for expressing my displeasure? No!'

Notwithstanding which, he continued to defend himself, without any abatement of his flushed mood.

'I am careful to appeal to that lady for confirmation, before I express any displeasure at all. IhumI

necessarily make that appeal within limited bounds, or Ihashould render legible, by that lady, what I

desire to be blotted out. Am I selfish? Do I complain for my own sake? No. No. Principally forha

This last consideration plainly appeared, from his manner of pursuing it, to have just that instant come into

'I said I was hurt. So I am. So Ihaam determined to be, whatever is advanced to the contrary. I am hurt

that my daughter, seated in thehumlap of fortune, should mope and retire and proclaim herself unequal

to her destiny. I am hurt that she should hasystematically reproduce what the rest of us blot out; and

seemhumI had almost said positively anxiousto announce to wealthy and distinguished society that

she was born and bred inha huma place that I myself decline to name. But there is no

inconsistencyhanot the least, in my feeling hurt, and yet complaining principally for your sake, Amy. I

do; I say again, I do. It is for your sake that I wish you, under the auspices of Mrs General, to form

ahuma surface. It is for your sake that I wish you to have ahatruly refined mind, and (in the

striking words of Mrs General) to be ignorant of everything that is not perfectly proper, placid, and pleasant.'

He had been running down by jerks, during his last speech, like a sort of illadjusted alarum. The touch was

still upon his arm. He fell silent; and after looking about the ceiling again for a little while, looked down at

her. Her head drooped, and he could not see her face; but her touch was tender and quiet, and in the

expression of her dejected figure there was no blamenothing but love. He began to whimper, just as he had

done that night in the prison when she afterwards sat at his bedside till morning; exclaimed that he was a poor

ruin and a poor wretch in the midst of his wealth; and clasped her in his arms. 'Hush, hush, my own dear!

Kiss me!' was all she said to him. His tears were soon dried, much sooner than on the former occasion; and he

was presently afterwards very high with his valet, as a way of righting himself for having shed any.

With one remarkable exception, to be recorded in its place, this was the only time, in his life of freedom and

But, now, the breakfast hour arrived; and with it Miss Fanny from her apartment, and Mr Edward from his

apartment. Both these young persons of distinction were something the worse for late hours. As to Miss

Fanny, she had become the victim of an insatiate mania for what she called 'going into society;'and would

have gone into it headforemost fifty times between sunset and sunrise, if so many opportunities had been at

her disposal. As to Mr Edward, he, too, had a large acquaintance, and was generally engaged (for the most

part, in diceing circles, or others of a kindred nature), during the greater part of every night. For this

gentleman, when his fortunes changed, had stood at the great advantage of being already prepared for the

highest associates, and having little to learn: so much was he indebted to the happy accidents which had made

At breakfast, Mr Frederick Dorrit likewise appeared. As the old gentleman inhabited the highest story of the

palace, where he might have practised pistolshooting without much chance of discovery by the other

inmates, his younger niece had taken courage to propose the restoration to him of his clarionet, which Mr

Dorrit had ordered to be confiscated, but which she had ventured to preserve. Notwithstanding some

objections from Miss Fanny, that it was a low instrument, and that she detested the sound of it, the concession

had been made. But it was then discovered that he had had enough of it, and never played it, now that it was

no longer his means of getting bread. He had insensibly acquired a new habit of shuffling into the

picturegalleries, always with his twisted paper of snuff in his hand (much to the indignation of Miss Fanny,

who had proposed the purchase of a gold box for him that the family might not be discredited, which he had

absolutely refused to carry when it was bought); and of passing hours and hours before the portraits of

renowned Venetians. It was never made out what his dazed eyes saw in them; whether he had an interest in

them merely as pictures, or whether he confusedly identified them with a glory that was departed, like the

strength of his own mind. But he paid his court to them with great exactness, and clearly derived pleasure

from the pursuit. After the first few days, Little Dorrit happened one morning to assist at these attentions. It

so evidently heightened his gratification that she often accompanied him afterwards, and the greatest delight

of which the old man had shown himself susceptible since his ruin, arose out of these excursions, when he

would carry a chair about for her from picture to picture, and stand behind it, in spite of all her

It fell out that, at this family breakfast, he referred to their having seen in a gallery, on the previous day, the

lady and gentleman whom they had encountered on the Great Saint Bernard, 'I forget the name,' said he. 'I

'I should think so,' observed Miss Fanny, with a toss of her head and a glance at her sister. 'But they would

not have been recalled to our remembrance, I suspect, if Uncle hadn't tumbled over the subject.'

'My dear, what a curious phrase,' said Mrs General. 'Would not inadvertently lighted upon, or accidentally

'Thank you very much, Mrs General,' returned the young lady, no ) I think not. On the whole I prefer my own

expression.' This was always Miss Fanny's way of receiving a suggestion from Mrs General. But she always

'I should have mentioned our having met Mr and Mrs Gowan, Fanny,' said Little Dorrit, 'even if Uncle had

not. I have scarcely seen you since, you know. I meant to have spoken of it at breakfast; because I should like

to pay a visit to Mrs Gowan, and to become better acquainted with her, if Papa and Mrs General do not

'Well, Amy,' said Fanny, 'I am sure I am glad to find you at last expressing a wish to become better

acquainted with anybody in Venice. Though whether Mr and Mrs Gowan are desirable acquaintances,

'No doubt,' said Fanny. 'But you can't separate her from her husband, I believe, without an Act of Parliament.'

'Do you think, Papa,' inquired Little Dorrit, with diffidence and hesitation, 'there is any objection to my

Mrs General's view was, that not having the honour of any acquaintance with the lady and gentleman referred

to, she was not in a position to varnish the present article. She could only remark, as a general principle

observed in the varnishing trade, that much depended on the quarter from which the lady under consideration

was accredited to a family so conspicuously niched in the social temple as the family of Dorrit.

At this remark the face of Mr Dorrit gloomed considerably. He was about (connecting the accrediting with an

obtrusive person of the name of Clennam, whom he imperfectly remembered in some former state of

existence) to blackball the name of Gowan finally, when Edward Dorrit, Esquire, came into the

conversation, with his glass in his eye, and the preliminary remark of 'I sayyou there! Go out, will

you!'which was addressed to a couple of men who were handing the dishes round, as a courteous

'Perhaps it's a matter of policy to let you all know that these Gowansin whose favour, or at least the

gentleman's, I can't be supposed to be much prepossessed myselfare known to people of importance, if that

'That, I would say,' observed the fair varnisher, 'Makes the greatest difference. The connection in question,

'As to that,' said Edward Dorrit, Esquire, 'I'll give you the means of judging for yourself. You are acquainted,

Mrs GowanI mean the dowager, my polite friend's mother is intimate with Mrs Merdle, and I know

'If so, a more undeniable guarantee could not be given,' said Mrs General to Mr Dorrit, raising her gloves and

'I beg to ask my son, from motives ofahcuriosity,' Mr Dorrit observed, with a decided change in his

'It's not a long story, sir,' returned Edward Dorrit, Esquire, 'and you shall have it out of hand. To begin with,

'Martigny,' assented her brother, with a slight nod and a slight wink; in acknowledgment of which, Miss

'How can that be, Edward?' said Mr Dorrit. 'You informed me that the name of the gentleman with whom you

'No doubt of it, father; but it doesn't follow that his mother's name must be the same. Mrs Merdle was married

before, and he is her son. She is in Rome now; where probably we shall know more of her, as you decide to

winter there. Sparkler is just come here. I passed last evening in company with Sparkler. Sparkler is a very

good fellow on the whole, though rather a bore on one subject, in consequence of being tremendously smitten

with a certain young lady.' Here Edward Dorrit, Esquire, eyed Miss Fanny through his glass across the table.

'We happened last night to compare notes about our travels, and I had the information I have given you from

Sparkler himself.' Here he ceased; continuing to eye Miss Fanny through his glass, with a face much twisted,

and not ornamentally so, in part by the action of keeping his glass in his eye, and in part by the great subtlety

of his smile. 'Under these circumstances,' said Mr Dorrit, 'I believe I express the sentiments ofhaMrs

General, no less than my own, when I say that there is no objection, butha humquite the contraryto

your gratifying your desire, Amy. I trust I mayhahailthis desire,' said Mr Dorrit, in an encouraging

and forgiving manner, 'as an auspicious omen. It is quite right to know these people. It is a very proper thing.

Mr Merdle's is a name ofhaworld wide repute. Mr Merdle's undertakings are immense. They bring him

in such vast sums of money that they are regarded ashumnational benefits. Mr Merdle is the man of this

time. The name of Merdle is the name of the age. Pray do everything on my behalf that is civil to Mr and Mrs

This magnificent accordance of Mr Dorrit's recognition settled the matter. It was not observed that Uncle had

pushed away his plate, and forgotten his breakfast; but he was not much observed at any time, except by

Little Dorrit. The servants were recalled, and the meal proceeded to its conclusion. Mrs General rose and left

the table. Little Dorrit rose and left the table. When Edward and Fanny remained whispering together across

it, and when Mr Dorrit remained eating figs and reading a French newspaper, Uncle suddenly fixed the

attention of all three by rising out of his chair, striking his hand upon the table, and saying, 'Brother! I protest

If he had made a proclamation in an unknown tongue, and given up the ghost immediately afterwards, he

could not have astounded his audience more. The paper fell from Mr Dorrit's hand, and he sat petrified, with

'Brother!' said the old man, conveying a surprising energy into his trembling voice, 'I protest against it! I love

you; you know I love you dearly. In these many years I have never been untrue to you in a single thought.

Weak as I am, I would at any time have struck any man who spoke ill of you. But, brother, brother, brother, I

It was extraordinary to see of what a burst of earnestness such a decrepit man was capable. His eyes became

bright, his grey hair rose on his head, markings of purpose on his brow and face which had faded from them

for fiveandtwenty years, started out again, and there was an energy in his hand that made its action nervous

'My dear Frederick!' exclaimed Mr Dorrit faintly. 'What is wrong? What is the matter?'

'How dare you,' said the old man, turning round on Fanny, 'how dare you do it? Have you no memory? Have

'Uncle?' cried Fanny, affrighted and bursting into tears, 'why do you attack me in this cruel manner? What

'Done?' returned the old man, pointing to her sister's place, 'where's your affectionate invaluable friend?

Where's your devoted guardian? Where's your more than mother? How dare you set up superiorities against

For shame, you false girl, for shame!' 'I love Amy,' cried Miss Fanny, sobbing and weeping, 'as well as I love

my lifebetter than I love my life. I don't deserve to be so treated. I am as grateful to Amy, and as fond of

Amy, as it's possible for any human being to be. I wish I was dead. I never was so wickedly wronged. And

'To the winds with the family credit!' cried the old man, with great scorn and indignation. 'Brother, I protest

against pride. I protest against ingratitude. I protest against any one of us here who have known what we have

known, and have seen what we have seen, setting up any pretension that puts Amy at a moment's

disadvantage, or to the cost of a moment's pain. We may know that it's a base pretension by its having that

effect. It ought to bring a judgment on us. Brother, I protest against it in the sight of God!'

As his hand went up above his head and came down on the table, it might have been a blacksmith's. After a

few moments' silence, it had relaxed into its usual weak condition. He went round to his brother with his

ordinary shuffling step, put the hand on his shoulder, and said, in a softened voice, 'William, my dear, I felt

obliged to say it; forgive me, for I felt obliged to say it!' and then went, in his bowed way, out of the palace

All this time Fanny had been sobbing and crying, and still continued to do so. Edward, beyond opening his

mouth in amazement, had not opened his lips, and had done nothing but stare. Mr Dorrit also had been utterly

discomfited, and quite unable to assert himself in any way. Fanny was now the first to speak.

'I never, never, never was so used!' she sobbed. 'There never was anything so harsh and unjustifiable, so

disgracefully violent and cruel! Dear, kind, quiet little Amy, too, what would she feel if she could know that

she had been innocently the means of exposing me to such treatment! But I'll never tell her! No, good darling,

'My dear,' said he, 'Ihaapprove of your resolution. It will beha hummuch better not to speak of this

to Amy. It might humit might distress her. Ha. No doubt it would distress her greatly. It is considerate

'But the cruelty of Uncle!' cried Miss Fanny. 'O, I never can forgive the wanton cruelty of Uncle!'

'My dear,' said Mr Dorrit, recovering his tone, though he remained unusually pale, 'I must request you not to

say so. You must remember that your uncle ishanot what he formerly was. You must remember that

'I am sure,' cried Fanny, piteously, 'it is only charitable to suppose that there Must be something wrong in him

somewhere, or he never could have so attacked Me, of all the people in the world.'

'Fanny,' returned Mr Dorrit in a deeply fraternal tone, 'you know, with his innumerable good points, what

ahumwreck your uncle is; an(] I entreat you by the fondness that I have for him, and by the fidelity that

you know I have always shown him, tohato draw your own conclusions, and to spare my brotherly

This ended the scene; Edward Dorrit, Esquire, saying nothing throughout, but looking, to the last, perplexed

and doubtful. Miss Fanny awakened much affectionate uneasiness in her sister's mind that day by passing the

greater part of it in violent fits of embracing her, and in alternately giving her brooches, and wishing herself

To be in the halting state of Mr Henry Gowan; to have left one of two powers in disgust; to want the

necessary qualifications for finding promotion with another, and to be loitering moodily about on neutral

ground, cursing both; is to be in a situation unwholesome for the mind, which time is not likely to improve.

The worst class of sum worked in the everyday world is cyphered by the diseased arithmeticians who are

always in the rule of Subtraction as to the merits and successes of others, and never in Addition as to their

The habit, too, of seeking some sort of recompense in the discontented boast of being disappointed, is a habit

fraught with degeneracy. A certain idle carelessness and recklessness of consistency soon comes of it. To

bring deserving things down by setting undeserving things up is one of its perverted delights; and there is no

playing fast and loose with the truth, in any game, without growing the worse for it.

In his expressed opinions of all performances in the Art of painting that were completely destitute of merit,

Gowan was the most liberal fellow on earth. He would declare such a man to have more power in his little

finger (provided he had none), than such another had (provided he had much) in his whole mind and body. If

the objection were taken that the thing commended was trash, he would reply, on behalf of his art, 'My good

fellow, what do we all turn out but trash? I turn out nothing else, and I make you a present of the confession.'

To make a vaunt of being poor was another of the incidents of his splenetic state, though this may have had

the design in it of showing that he ought to be rich; just as he would publicly laud and decry the Barnacles,

lest it should be forgotten that he belonged to the family. Howbeit, these two subjects were very often on his

lips; and he managed them so well that he might have praised himself by the month together, and not have

made himself out half so important a man as he did by his light disparagement of his claims on anybody's

Out of this same airy talk of his, it always soon came to be understood, wherever he and his wife went, that

he had married against the wishes of his exalted relations, and had had much ado to prevail on them to

countenance her. He never made the representation, on the contrary seemed to laugh the idea to scorn; but it

did happen that, with all his pains to depreciate himself, he was always in the superior position. From the

days of their honeymoon, Minnie Gowan felt sensible of being usually regarded as the wife of a man who had

made a descent in marrying her, but whose chivalrous love for her had cancelled that inequality.

To Venice they had been accompanied by Monsieur Blandois of Paris, and at Venice Monsieur Blandois of

Paris was very much in the society of Gowan. When they had first met this gallant gentleman at Geneva,

Gowan had been undecided whether to kick him or encourage him; and had remained for about

fourandtwenty hours, so troubled to settle the point to his satisfaction, that he had thought of tossing up a

fivefranc piece on the terms, 'Tails, kick; heads, encourage,' and abiding by the voice of the oracle. It

chanced, however, that his wife expressed a dislike to the engaging Blandois, and that the balance of feeling

Why this perversity, if it were not in a generous fit?which it was not. Why should Gowan, very much the

superior of Blandois of Paris, and very well able to pull that prepossessing gentleman to pieces and find out

the stuff he was made of, take up with such a man? In the first place, he opposed the first separate wish he

observed in his wife, because her father had paid his debts and it was desirable to take an early opportunity of

asserting his independence. In the second place, he opposed the prevalent feeling, because with many

capacities of being otherwise, he was an illconditioned man. He found a pleasure in declaring that a courtier

with the refined manners of Blandois ought to rise to the greatest distinction in any polished country. He

found a pleasure in setting up Blandois as the type of elegance, and making him a satire upon others who

piqued themselves on personal graces. He seriously protested that the bow of Blandois was perfect, that the

address of Blandois was irresistible, and that the picturesque ease of Blandois would be cheaply purchased (if

it were not a gift, and unpurchasable) for a hundred thousand francs. That exaggeration in the manner of the

man which has been noticed as appertaining to him and to every such man, whatever his original breeding, as

certainly as the sun belongs to this system, was acceptable to Gowan as a caricature, which he found it a

humorous resource to have at hand for the ridiculing of numbers of people who necessarily did more or less

of what Blandois overdid. Thus he had taken up with him; and thus, negligently strengthening these

inclinations with habit, and idly deriving some amusement from his talk, he had glided into a way of having

him for a companion. This, though he supposed him to live by his wits at playtables and the like; though he

suspected him to be a coward, while he himself was daring and courageous; though he thoroughly knew him

to be disliked by Minnie; and though he cared so little for him, after all, that if he had given her any tangible

personal cause to regard him with aversion, he would have had no compunction whatever in flinging him out

Little Dorrit would have been glad to make her visit to Mrs Gowan, alone; but as Fanny, who had not yet

recovered from her Uncle's protest, though it was fourandtwenty hours of age, pressingly offered her

company, the two sisters stepped together into one of the gondolas under Mr Dorrit's window, and, with the

courier in attendance, were taken in high state to Mrs Gowan's lodging. In truth, their state was rather too

high for the lodging, which was, as Fanny complained, 'fearfully out of the way,' and which took them

through a complexity of narrow streets of water, which the same lady disparaged as 'mere ditches.'

The house, on a little desert island, looked as if it had broken away from somewhere else, and had floated by

chance into its present anchorage in company with a vine almost as much in want of training as the poor

wretches who were lying under its leaves. The features of the surrounding picture were, a church with

hoarding and scaffolding about it, which had been under suppositious repair so long that the means of repair

looked a hundred years old, and had themselves fallen into decay; a quantity of washed linen, spread to dry in

the sun; a number of houses at odds with one another and grotesquely out of the perpendicular, like rotten

pre Adamite cheeses cut into fantastic shapes and full of mites; and a feverish bewilderment of windows,

with their latticeblinds all hanging askew, and something draggled and dirty dangling out of most of them.

On the firstfloor of the house was a Banka surprising experience for any gentleman of commercial

pursuits bringing laws for all mankind from a British citywhere two spare clerks, like dried dragoons, in

green velvet caps adorned with golden tassels, stood, bearded, behind a small counter in a small room,

containing no other visible objects than an empty ironsafe with the door open, a jug of water, and a papering

of garland of roses; but who, on lawful requisition, by merely dipping their hands out of sight, could produce

exhaustless mounds of fivefranc pieces. Below the Bank was a suite of three or four rooms with barred

windows, which had the appearance of a jail for criminal rats. Above the Bank was Mrs Gowan's residence.

Notwithstanding that its walls were blotched, as if missionary maps were bursting out of them to impart

geographical knowledge; notwithstanding that its weird furniture was forlornly faded and musty, and that the

prevailing Venetian odour of bilge water and an ebb tide on a weedy shore was very strong; the place was

better within, than it promised. The door was opened by a smiling man like a reformed assassina

temporary servantwho ushered them into the room where Mrs Gowan sat, with the announcement that two

Mrs Gowan, who was engaged in needlework, put her work aside in a covered basket, and rose, a little

hurriedly. Miss Fanny was excessively courteous to her, and said the usual nothings with the skill of a

'Papa was extremely sorry,' proceeded Fanny, 'to be engaged today (he is so much engaged here, our

acquaintance being so wretchedly large!); and particularly requested me to bring his card for Mr Gowan. That

I may be sure to acquit myself of a commission which he impressed upon me at least a dozen times, allow me

'We have been,' said Fanny, 'charmed to understand that you know the Merdles. We hope it may be another

'They are friends,' said Mrs Gowan, 'of Mr Gowan's family. I have not yet had the pleasure of a personal

'Indeed?' returned Fanny, with an appearance of amiably quenching her own superiority. 'I think you'll like

'Why, you see,' said Fanny, with a frank action of her pretty shoulders, 'in London one knows every one. We

met her on our way here, and, to say the truth, papa was at first rather cross with her for taking one of the

Although the visit had as yet given Little Dorrit no opportunity of conversing with Mrs Gowan, there was a

silent understanding between them, which did as well. She looked at Mrs Gowan with keen and unabated

interest; the sound of her voice was thrilling to her; nothing that was near her, or about her, or at all

concerned her, escaped Little Dorrit. She was quicker to perceive the slightest matter here, than in any other

'Quite, my dear. And you?' 'Oh! I am always well,' said Little Dorrit, timidly. 'Iyes, thank you.'

There was no reason for her faltering and breaking off, other than that Mrs Gowan had touched her hand in

speaking to her, and their looks had met. Something thoughtfully apprehensive in the large, soft eyes, had

'You don't know that you are a favourite of my husband's, and that I am almost bound to be jealous of you?'

'He will tell you, if he tells you what he tells me, that you are quieter and quicker of resource than any one he

'I doubt that; but I don't at all doubt that I must tell him you are here. I should never be forgiven, if I were to

let youand Miss Dorritgo, without doing so. May I? You can excuse the disorder and discomfort of a

The inquiries were addressed to Miss Fanny, who graciously replied that she would be beyond anything

interested and enchanted. Mrs Gowan went to a door, looked in beyond it, and came back. 'Do Henry the

The first object that confronted Little Dorrit, entering first, was Blandois of Paris in a great cloak and a

furtive slouched hat, standing on a throne platform in a corner, as he had stood on the Great Saint Bernard,

when the warning arms seemed to be all pointing up at him. She recoiled from this figure, as it smiled at her.

'Don't be alarmed,' said Gowan, coming from his easel behind the door. 'It's only Blandois. He is doing duty

as a model today. I am making a study of him. It saves me money to turn him to some use. We poor painters

Blandois of Paris pulled off his slouched hat, and saluted the ladies without coming out of his corner.

'A thousand pardons!' said he. 'But the Professore here is so inexorable with me, that I am afraid to stir.'

'Don't stir, then,' said Gowan coolly, as the sisters approached the easel. 'Let the ladies at least see the original

of the daub, that they may know what it's meant for. There he stands, you see. A bravo waiting for his prey, a

distinguished noble waiting to save his country, the common enemy waiting to do somebody a bad turn, an

angelic messenger waiting to do somebody a good turnwhatever you think he looks most like!' 'Say,

Professore Mio, a poor gentleman waiting to do homage to elegance and beauty,' remarked Blandois.

'Or say, Cattivo Soggetto Mio,' returned Gowan, touching the painted face with his brush in the part where

the real face had moved, 'a murderer after the fact. Show that white hand of yours, Blandois. Put it outside the

'He was formerly in some scuffle with another murderer, or with a victim, you observe,' said Gowan, putting

in the markings of the hand with a quick, impatient, unskilful touch, 'and these are the tokens of it. Outside

Blandois of Paris shook with a laugh again, so that his hand shook more; now he raised it to twist his

moustache, which had a damp appearance; and now he stood in the required position, with a little new

His face was so directed in reference to the spot where Little Dorrit stood by the easel, that throughout he

looked at her. Once attracted by his peculiar eyes, she could not remove her own, and they had looked at each

other all the time. She trembled now; Gowan, feeling it, and supposing her to be alarmed by the large dog

beside him, whose head she caressed in her hand, and who had just uttered a low growl, glanced at her to say,

'I am not afraid of him,' she returned in the same breath; 'but will you look at him?'

In a moment Gowan had thrown down his brush, and seized the dog with both hands by the collar.

'Blandois! How can you be such a fool as to provoke him! By Heaven, and the other place too, he'll tear you

'The great dog, regardless of being halfchoked by his collar, was obdurately pulling with his dead weight

against his master, resolved to get across the room. He had been crouching for a spring at the moment when

'Lion! Lion!' He was up on his hind legs, and it was a wrestle between master and dog. 'Get back! Down,

Lion! Get out of his sight, Blandois! What devil have you conjured into the dog?'

'Get out of his sight or I can't hold the wild beast! Get out of the room! By my soul, he'll kill you!'

The dog, with a ferocious bark, made one other struggle as Blandois vanished; then, in the moment of the

dog's submission, the master, little less angry than the dog, felled him with a blow on the head, and standing

over him, struck him many times severely with the heel of his boot, so that his mouth was presently bloody.

'Now get you into that corner and lie down,' said Gowan, 'or I'll take you out and shoot you.'

Lion did as he was ordered, and lay down licking his mouth and chest. Lion's master stopped for a moment to

take breath, and then, recovering his usual coolness of manner, turned to speak to his frightened wife and her

'Come, come, Minnie! You know he is always goodhumoured and tractable. Blandois must have irritated

him,made faces at him. The dog has his likings and dislikings, and Blandois is no great favourite of his;

but I am sure you will give him a character, Minnie, for never having been like this before.'

Minnie was too much disturbed to say anything connected in reply; Little Dorrit was already occupied in

soothing her; Fanny, who had cried out twice or thrice, held Gowan's arm for protection; Lion, deeply

ashamed of having caused them this alarm, came trailing himself along the ground to the feet of his mistress.

'You furious brute,' said Gowan, striking him with his foot again. 'You shall do penance for this.' And he

'O, pray don't punish him any more,' cried Little Dorrit. 'Don't hurt him. See how gentle he is!' At her

entreaty, Gowan spared him; and he deserved her intercession, for truly he was as submissive, and as sorry,

It was not easy to recover this shock and make the visit unrestrained, even though Fanny had not been, under

the best of circumstances, the least trifle in the way. In such further communication as passed among them

before the sisters took their departure, Little Dorrit fancied it was revealed to her that Mr Gowan treated his

wife, even in his very fondness, too much like a beautiful child. He seemed so unsuspicious of the depths of

feeling which she knew must lie below that surface, that she doubted if there could be any such depths in

himself. She wondered whether his want of earnestness might be the natural result of his want of such

qualities, and whether it was with people as with ships, that, in too shallow and rocky waters, their anchors

He attended them down the staircase, jocosely apologising for the poor quarters to which such poor fellows

as himself were limited, and remarking that when the high and mighty Barnacles, his relatives, who would be

dreadfully ashamed of them, presented him with better, he would live in better to oblige them. At the water's

edge they were saluted by Blandois, who looked white enough after his late adventure, but who made very

Leaving the two together under the scrap of vine upon the causeway, Gowan idly scattering the leaves from it

into the water, and Blandois lighting a cigarette, the sisters were paddled away in state as they had come.

They had not glided on for many minutes, when Little Dorrit became aware that Fanny was more showy in

manner than the occasion appeared to require, and, looking about for the cause through the window and

As this gondola attended their progress in various artful ways; sometimes shooting on ahead, and stopping

to let them pass; sometimes, when the way was broad enough, skimming along side by side with them; and

sometimes following close astern; and as Fanny gradually made no disguise that she was playing off graces

upon somebody within it, of whom she at the same time feigned to be unconscious; Little Dorrit at length

'My dear child,' returned Fanny (in a tone suggesting that before her Uncle's protest she might have said, You

She lowered the window on her side, and, leaning back and resting her elbow on it negligently, fanned herself

with a rich Spanish fan of black and gold. The attendant gondola, having skimmed forward again, with some

window, Fanny laughed coquettishly and said, 'Did you ever see such a fool, my love?'

'My precious child,' returned Fanny, 'I can't possibly answer for what an idiot in a state of desperation may

do, but I should think it highly probable. It's not such an enormous distance. All Venice would scarcely be

'Well, my love, that really is an awkward question for me to answer,' said her sister. 'I believe he is. You had

better ask Edward. He tells Edward he is, I believe. I understand he makes a perfect spectacle of himself at

the Casino, and that sort of places, by going on about me. But you had better ask Edward if you want to

'My dear Amy, your wonder will soon cease, if I am rightly informed. I should not be at all surprised if he

called today. The creature has only been waiting to get his courage up, I suspect.'

'Indeed, my darling,' said Fanny, 'that's just as it may happen. Here he is again. Look at him. O, you

Mr Sparkler had, undeniably, a weak appearance; with his eye in the window like a knot in the glass, and no

'When you asked me if I will see him, my dear,' said Fanny, almost as well composed in the graceful

indifference of her attitude as Mrs Merdle herself, 'what do you mean?' 'I mean,' said Little Dorrit'I think I

Fanny laughed again, in a manner at once condescending, arch, and affable; and said, putting her arm round

'Now tell me, my little pet. When we saw that woman at Martigny, how did you think she carried it off? Did

'Then I'll tell you, Amy. She settled with herself, now I'll never refer to that meeting under such different

circumstances, and I'll never pretend to have any idea that these are the same girls. That's her way out of a

difficulty. What did I tell you when we came away from Harley Street that time? She is as insolent and false

as any woman in the world. But in the first capacity, my love, she may find people who can match her.'

A significant turn of the Spanish fan towards Fanny's bosom, indicated with great expression where one of

'Not only that,' pursued Fanny, 'but she gives the same charge to Young Sparkler; and doesn't let him come

after me until she has got it thoroughly into his most ridiculous of all ridiculous noddles (for one really can't

call it a head), that he is to pretend to have been first struck with me in that Inn Yard.'

'Why? Good gracious, my love!' (again very much in the tone of You stupid little creature) 'how can you ask?

Don't you see that I may have become a rather desirable match for a noddle? And don't you see that she puts

the deception upon us, and makes a pretence, while she shifts it from her own shoulders (very good shoulders

they are too, I must say),' observed Miss Fanny, glancing complacently at herself, 'of considering our

'Yes, but if you please we won't,' retorted Fanny. 'No; I am not going to have that done, Amy. The pretext is

In the triumphant exaltation of her feelings, Miss Fanny, using her Spanish fan with one hand, squeezed her

'No,' repeated Fanny. 'She shall find me go her way. She took it, and I'll follow it. And, with the blessing of

fate and fortune, I'll go on improving that woman's acquaintance until I have given her maid, before her eyes,

things from my dressmaker's ten times as handsome and expensive as she once gave me from hers!'

Little Dorrit was silent; sensible that she was not to be heard on any question affecting the family dignity, and

unwilling to lose to no purpose her sister's newly and unexpectedly restored favour. She could not concur, but

she was silent. Fanny well knew what she was thinking of; so well, that she soon asked her.

'Encourage him, my dear?' said her sister, smiling contemptuously, 'that depends upon what you call

Little Dorrit glanced seriously and doubtfully in her face, but Fanny was not to be so brought to a check. She

furled her fan of black and gold, and used it to tap her sister's nose; with the air of a proud beauty and a great

'I shall make him fetch and carry, my dear, and I shall make him subject to me. And if I don't make his

'Do you thinkdear Fanny, don't be offended, we are so comfortable together nowthat you can quite see

'I can't say I have so much as looked for it yet, my dear,' answered Fanny, with supreme indifference; 'all in

good time. Such are my intentions. And really they have taken me so long to develop, that here we are at

home. And Young Sparkler at the door, inquiring who is within. By the merest accident, of course!'

In effect, the swain was standing up in his gondola, cardcase in hand, affecting to put the question to a

servant. This conjunction of circumstances led to his immediately afterwards presenting himself before the

young ladies in a posture, which in ancient times would not have been considered one of favourable augury

for his suit; since the gondoliers of the young ladies, having been put to some inconvenience by the chase, so

neatly brought their own boat in the gentlest collision with the bark of Mr Sparkler, as to tip that gentleman

over like a larger species of ninepin, and cause him to exhibit the soles of his shoes to the object of his dearest

wishes: while the nobler portions of his anatomy struggled at the bottom of his boat in the arms of one of his

However, as Miss Fanny called out with much concern, Was the gentleman hurt, Mr Sparkler rose more

restored than might have been expected, and stammered for himself with blushes, 'Not at all so.' Miss Fanny

had no recollection of having ever seen him before, and was passing on, with a distant inclination of her head,

when he announced himself by name. Even then she was in a difficulty from being unable to call it to mind,

until he explained that he had had the honour of seeing her at Martigny. Then she remembered him, and

'In Rome,' Mr Sparkler answered. 'I am here by myself, myself. I came to call upon Mr Edward Dorrit

Turning graciously to the attendants, Miss Fanny inquired whether her papa or brother was within? The reply

being that they were both within, Mr Sparkler humbly offered his arm. Miss Fanny accepting it, was squired

up the great staircase by Mr Sparkler, who, if he still believed (which there is not any reason to doubt) that

Arrived in a mouldering receptionroom, where the faded hangings, of a sad seagreen, had worn and

withered until they looked as if they might have claimed kindred with the waifs of seaweed drifting under the

windows, or clinging to the walls and weeping for their imprisoned relations, Miss Fanny despatched

emissaries for her father and brother. Pending whose appearance, she showed to great advantage on a sofa,

completing Mr Sparkler's conquest with some remarks upon Danteknown to that gentleman as an eccentric

man in the nature of an Old File, who used to put leaves round his head, and sit upon a stool for some

Mr Dorrit welcomed the visitor with the highest urbanity, and most courtly manners. He inquired particularly

after Mrs Merdle. He inquired particularly after Mr Merdle. Mr Sparkler said, or rather twitched out of

himself in small pieces by the shirtcollar, that Mrs Merdle having completely used up her place in the

country, and also her house at Brighton, and being, of course, unable, don't you see, to remain in London

when there wasn't a soul there, and not feeling herself this year quite up to visiting about at people's places,

had resolved to have a touch at Rome, where a woman like herself, with a proverbially fine appearance, and

with no nonsense about her, couldn't fail to be a great acquisition. As to Mr Merdle, he was so much wanted

by the men in the City and the rest of those places, and was such a doosed extraordinary phenomenon in

Buying and Banking and that, that Mr Sparkler doubted if the monetary system of the country would be able

to spare him; though that his work was occasionally one too many for him, and that he would be all the better

for a temporary shy at an entirely new scene and climate, Mr Sparkler did not conceal. As to himself, Mr

Sparkler conveyed to the Dorrit family that he was going, on rather particular business, wherever they were

This immense conversational achievement required time, but was effected. Being effected, Mr Dorrit

expressed his hope that Mr Sparkler would shortly dine with them. Mr Sparkler received the idea so kindly

that Mr Dorrit asked what he was going to do that day, for instance? As he was going to do nothing that day

(his usual occupation, and one for which he was particularly qualified), he was secured without

postponement; being further bound over to accompany the ladies to the Opera in the evening.

At dinnertime Mr Sparkler rose out of the sea, like Venus's son taking after his mother, and made a splendid

appearance ascending the great staircase. If Fanny had been charming in the morning, she was now thrice

charming, very becomingly dressed in her most suitable colours, and with an air of negligence upon her that

'I hear you are acquainted, Mr Sparkler,' said his host at dinner, 'withhaMr Gowan. Mr Henry Gowan?'

'Perfectly, sir,' returned Mr Sparkler. 'His mother and my mother are cronies in fact.'

'If I had thought of it, Amy,' said Mr Dorrit, with a patronage as magnificent as that of Lord Decimus himself,

'you should have despatched a note to them, asking them to dine today. Some of our people could

havehafetched them, and taken them home. We could have spared ahumgondola for that purpose.

Little Dorrit was not without doubts how Mr Henry Gowan might take their patronage; but she promised not

Mr Sparkler, stimulated by Love to brilliancy, replied that for a particular walk a man ought to have a

particular pair of shoes; as, for example, shooting, shootingshoes; cricket, cricketshoes. Whereas, he

This being a very long word for Mr Sparkler, and his mind being exhausted by his late effort, he replied, 'No,

'Well!' said Mr Dorrit. 'It would be very agreeable to me to present a gentleman so connected, with

somehaTestimonial of my desire to further his interests, and develop thehumgerms of his genius. I

think I must engage Mr Gowan to paint my picture. If the result should behamutually satisfactory, I

The exquisitely bold and original thought presented itself to Mr Sparkler, that there was an opening here for

saying there were some of the family (emphasising 'some' in a marked manner) to whom no painter could

render justice. But, for want of a form of words in which to express the idea, it returned to the skies.

This was the more to be regretted as Miss Fanny greatly applauded the notion of the portrait, and urged her

papa to act upon it. She surmised, she said, that Mr Gowan had lost better and higher opportunities by

marrying his pretty wife; and Love in a cottage, painting pictures for dinner, was so delightfully interesting,

that she begged her papa to give him the commission whether he could paint a likeness or not: though indeed

both she and Amy knew he could, from having seen a speaking likeness on his easel that day, and having had

the opportunity of comparing it with the original. These remarks made Mr Sparkler (as perhaps they were

intended to do) nearly distracted; for while on the one hand they expressed Miss Fanny's susceptibility of the

tender passion, she herself showed such an innocent unconsciousness of his admiration that his eyes goggled

Descending into the sea again after dinner, and ascending out of it at the Opera staircase, preceded by one of

their gondoliers, like an attendant Merman, with a great linen lantern, they entered their box, and Mr Sparkler

entered on an evening of agony. The theatre being dark, and the box light, several visitors lounged in during

the representation; in whom Fanny was so interested, and in conversation with whom she fell into such

charming attitudes, as she had little confidences with them, and little disputes concerning the identity of

people in distant boxes, that the wretched Sparkler hated all mankind. But he had two consolations at the

close of the performance. She gave him her fan to hold while she adjusted her cloak, and it was his blessed

privilege to give her his arm downstairs again. These crumbs of encouragement, Mr Sparkler thought,

would just keep him going; and it is not impossible that Miss Dorrit thought so too.

The Merman with his light was ready at the boxdoor, and other Mermen with other lights were ready at

many of the doors. The Dorrit Merman held his lantern low, to show the steps, and Mr Sparkler put on

another heavy set of fetters over his former set, as he watched her radiant feet twinkling down the stairs

beside him. Among the loiterers here, was Blandois of Paris. He spoke, and moved forward beside Fanny.

Little Dorrit was in front with her brother and Mrs General (Mr Dorrit had remained at home), but on the

brink of the quay they all came together. She started again to find Blandois close to her, handing Fanny into

'Gowan has had a loss,' he said, 'since he was made happy today by a visit from fair ladies.'

'A loss?' repeated Fanny, relinquished by the bereaved Sparkler, and taking her seat.

'Faith, dear ladies!' said Blandois, smiling and shrugging his shoulders, 'somebody has poisoned that noble

Mrs General, always on her coachbox keeping the proprieties well together, took pains to form a surface on

her very dear young friend, and Mrs General's very dear young friend tried hard to receive it. Hard as she had

tried in her laborious life to attain many ends, she had never tried harder than she did now, to be varnished by

Mrs General. It made her anxious and ill at ease to be operated upon by that smoothing hand, it is true; but

she submitted herself to the family want in its greatness as she had submitted herself to the family want in its

littleness, and yielded to her own inclinations in this thing no more than she had yielded to her hunger itself,

in the days when she had saved her dinner that her father might have his supper.

One comfort that she had under the Ordeal by General was more sustaining to her, and made her more

grateful than to a less devoted and affectionate spirit, not habituated to her struggles and sacrifices, might

appear quite reasonable; and, indeed, it may often be observed in life, that spirits like Little Dorrit do not

appear to reason half as carefully as the folks who get the better of them. The continued kindness of her sister

was this comfort to Little Dorrit. It was nothing to her that the kindness took the form of tolerant patronage;

she was used to that. It was nothing to her that it kept her in a tributary position, and showed her in

attendance on the flaming car in which Miss Fanny sat on an elevated seat, exacting homage; she sought no

better place. Always admiring Fanny's beauty, and grace, and readiness, and not now asking herself how

much of her disposition to be strongly attached to Fanny was due to her own heart, and how much to Fanny's,

The wholesale amount of Prunes and Prism which Mrs General infused into the family life, combined with

the perpetual plunges made by Fanny into society, left but a very small residue of any natural deposit at the

bottom of the mixture. This rendered confidences with Fanny doubly precious to Little Dorrit, and heightened

'Amy,' said Fanny to her one night when they were alone, after a day so tiring that Little Dorrit was quite

worn out, though Fanny would have taken another dip into society with the greatest pleasure in life, 'I am

going to put something into your little head. You won't guess what it is, I suspect.'

Prunes and Prism, in a thousand combinations, having been wearily in the ascendant all dayeverything

having been surface and varnish and show without substanceLittle Dorrit looked as if she had hoped that

'No, dear. Unless I have done anything,' said Little Dorrit, rather alarmed, and meaning anything calculated to

Fanny was so very much amused by the misgiving, that she took up her favourite fan (being then seated at her

dressingtable with her armoury of cruel instruments about her, most of them reeking from the heart of

Sparkler), and tapped her sister frequently on the nose with it, laughing all the time.

'Oh, our Amy, our Amy!' said Fanny. 'What a timid little goose our Amy is! But this is nothing to laugh at.

'Ah! But I do mind,' said Fanny, 'and so will you, Pet, when I enlighten you. Amy, has it never struck you that

'Because she freezes them into it?' interrupted Fanny. 'I don't mean that; quite different from that. Come! Has

Amy, murmuring 'No,' looked quite confounded. 'No; I dare say not. But he is,' said Fanny. 'He is, Amy. And

'Do I think it possible?' retorted Fanny. 'My love, I know it. I tell you she has designs on Pa. And more than

that, I tell you Pa considers her such a wonder, such a paragon of accomplishment, and such an acquisition to

our family, that he is ready to get himself into a state of perfect infatuation with her at any moment. And that

opens a pretty picture of things, I hope? Think of me with Mrs General for a Mama!'

Little Dorrit did not reply, 'Think of me with Mrs General for a Mama;' but she looked anxious, and seriously

'Lord, my darling,' said Fanny, tartly. 'You might as well ask me how I know when a man is struck with

myself! But, of course I do know. It happens pretty often: but I always know it. I know this in much the same

'Say anything?' repeated Fanny. 'My dearest, darling child, what necessity has he had, yet awhile, to say

'And you have never heard Mrs General say anything?' 'My goodness me, Amy,' returned Fanny, 'is she the

sort of woman to say anything? Isn't it perfectly plain and clear that she has nothing to do at present but to

hold herself upright, keep her aggravating gloves on, and go sweeping about? Say anything! If she had the

ace of trumps in her hand at whist, she wouldn't say anything, child. It would come out when she played it.'

'O yes, I MAY be,' said Fanny, 'but I am not. However, I am glad you can contemplate such an escape, my

dear, and I am glad that you can take this for the present with sufficient coolness to think of such a chance. It

makes me hope that you may be able to bear the connection. I should not be able to bear it, and I should not

'Upon my word, my dear,' rejoined that young lady with exceeding indifference, 'I wouldn't positively answer

even for that. There's no knowing what might happen. Especially as I should have many opportunities,

afterwards, of treating that woman, his mother, in her own style. Which I most decidedly should not be slow

No more passed between the sisters then; but what had passed gave the two subjects of Mrs General and Mr

Sparkler great prominence in Little Dorrit's mind, and thenceforth she thought very much of both.

Mrs General, having long ago formed her own surface to such perfection that it hid whatever was below it (if

anything), no observation was to be made in that quarter. Mr Dorrit was undeniably very polite to her and had

a high opinion of her; but Fanny, impetuous at most times, might easily be wrong for all that.

Whereas, the Sparkler question was on the different footing that any one could see what was going on there,

The devotion of Mr Sparkler was only to be equalled by the caprice and cruelty of his enslaver. Sometimes

she would prefer him to such distinction of notice, that he would chuckle aloud with joy; next day, or next

hour, she would overlook him so completely, and drop him into such an abyss of obscurity, that he would

groan under a weak pretence of coughing. The constancy of his attendance never touched Fanny: though he

was so inseparable from Edward, that, when that gentleman wished for a change of society, he was under the

irksome necessity of gliding out like a conspirator in disguised boats and by secret doors and back ways;

though he was so solicitous to know how Mr Dorrit was, that he called every other day to inquire, as if Mr

Dorrit were the prey of an intermittent fever; though he was so constantly being paddled up and down before

the principal windows, that he might have been supposed to have made a wager for a large stake to be

paddled a thousand miles in a thousand hours; though whenever the gondola of his mistress left the gate, the

gondola of Mr Sparkler shot out from some watery ambush and gave chase, as if she were a fair smuggler and

he a customhouse officer. It was probably owing to this fortification of the natural strength of his

constitution with so much exposure to the air, and the salt sea, that Mr Sparkler did not pine outwardly; but,

whatever the cause, he was so far from having any prospect of moving his mistress by a languishing state of

health, that he grew bluffer every day, and that peculiarity in his appearance of seeming rather a swelled boy

than a young man, became developed to an extraordinary degree of ruddy puffiness.

Blandois calling to pay his respects, Mr Dorrit received him with affability as the friend of Mr Gowan, and

mentioned to him his idea of commissioning Mr Gowan to transmit him to posterity. Blandois highly

extolling it, it occurred to Mr Dorrit that it might be agreeable to Blandois to communicate to his friend the

great opportunity reserved for him. Blandois accepted the commission with his own free elegance of manner,

and swore he would discharge it before he was an hour older. On his imparting the news to Gowan, that

Master gave Mr Dorrit to the Devil with great liberality some round dozen of times (for he resented patronage

almost as much as he resented the want of it), and was inclined to quarrel with his friend for bringing him the

'It may be a defect in my mental vision, Blandois,' said he, 'but may I die if I see what you have to do with

'Death of my life,' replied Blandois, 'nor I neither, except that I thought I was serving my friend.'

'Do you mean that? Tell your other friend to get his head painted for the sign of some publichouse, and to

Without appearing at all interested in the latter question, Gowan angrily whistled Mr Dorrit away. But, next

day, he resumed the subject by saying in his offhand manner and with a slighting laugh, 'Well, Blandois,

We journeymen must take jobs when we can get them. When shall we go and look after this job?' 'When you

will,' said the injured Blandois, 'as you please. What have I to do with it? What is it to me?'

'I can tell you what it is to me,' said Gowan. 'Bread and cheese. One must eat! So come along, my Blandois.'

Mr Dorrit received them in the presence of his daughters and of Mr Sparkler, who happened, by some

surprising accident, to be calling there. 'How are you, Sparkler?' said Gowan carelessly. 'When you have to

Mr Dorrit then mentioned his proposal. 'Sir,' said Gowan, laughing, after receiving it gracefully enough, 'I am

new to the trade, and not expert at its mysteries. I believe I ought to look at you in various lights, tell you you

are a capital subject, and consider when I shall be sufficiently disengaged to devote myself with the necessary

enthusiasm to the fine picture I mean to make of you. I assure you,' and he laughed again, 'I feel quite a traitor

in the camp of those dear, gifted, good, noble fellows, my brother artists, by not doing the hocuspocus

better. But I have not been brought up to it, and it's too late to learn it. Now, the fact is, I am a very bad

painter, but not much worse than the generality. If you are going to throw away a hundred guineas or so, I am

as poor as a poor relation of great people usually is, and I shall be very much obliged to you, if you'll throw

them away upon me. I'll do the best I can for the money; and if the best should be bad, why even then, you

may probably have a bad picture with a small name to it, instead of a bad picture with a large name to it.'

This tone, though not what he had expected, on the whole suited Mr Dorrit remarkably well. It showed that

the gentleman, highly connected, and not a mere workman, would be under an obligation to him. He

expressed his satisfaction in placing himself in Mr Gowan's hands, and trusted that he would have the

pleasure, in their characters of private gentlemen, of improving his acquaintance.

'You are very good,' said Gowan. 'I have not forsworn society since I joined the brotherhood of the brush (the

most delightful fellows on the face of the earth), and am glad enough to smell the old fine gunpowder now

and then, though it did blow me into midair and my present calling. You'll not think, Mr Dorrit,' and here he

laughed again in the easiest way, 'that I am lapsing into the freemasonry of the craftfor it's not so; upon my

life I can't help betraying it wherever I go, though, by Jupiter, I love and honour the craft with all my

'Again you are very good,' said Gowan. 'Mr Dorrit, I hear you are going to Rome. I am going to Rome,

having friends there. Let me begin to do you the injustice I have conspired to do you, there not here. We

shall all be hurried during the rest of our stay here; and though there's not a poorer man with whole elbows in

Venice, than myself, I have not quite got all the Amateur out of me yetcomprising the trade again, you

see!and can't fall on to order, in a hurry, for the mere sake of the sixpences.' These remarks were not less

favourably received by Mr Dorrit than their predecessors. They were the prelude to the first reception of Mr

and Mrs Gowan at dinner, and they skilfully placed Gowan on his usual ground in the new family.

His wife, too, they placed on her usual ground. Miss Fanny understood, with particular distinctness, that Mrs

Gowan's good looks had cost her husband very dear; that there had been a great disturbance about her in the

Barnacle family; and that the Dowager Mrs Gowan, nearly heartbroken, had resolutely set her face against

the marriage until overpowered by her maternal feelings. Mrs General likewise clearly understood that the

attachment had occasioned much family grief and dissension. Of honest Mr Meagles no mention was made;

except that it was natural enough that a person of that sort should wish to raise his daughter out of his own

Little Dorrit's interest in the fair subject of this easily accepted belief was too earnest and watchful to fail in

accurate observation. She could see that it had its part in throwing upon Mrs Gowan the touch of a shadow

under which she lived, and she even had an instinctive knowledge that there was not the least truth in it. But

it had an influence in placing obstacles in the way of her association with Mrs Gowan by making the Prunes

and Prism school excessively polite to her, but not very intimate with her; and Little Dorrit, as an enforced

Nevertheless, there was a sympathetic understanding already established between the two, which would have

carried them over greater difficulties, and made a friendship out of a more restricted intercourse. As though

accidents were determined to be favourable to it, they had a new assurance of congeniality in the aversion

which each perceived that the other felt towards Blandois of Paris; an aversion amounting to the repugnance

and horror of a natural antipathy towards an odious creature of the reptile kind.

And there was a passive congeniality between them, besides this active one. To both of them, Blandois

behaved in exactly the same manner; and to both of them his manner had uniformly something in it, which

they both knew to be different from his bearing towards others. The difference was too minute in its

expression to be perceived by others, but they knew it to be there. A mere trick of his evil eyes, a mere turn of

his smooth white hand, a mere hair's breadth of addition to the fall of his nose and the rise of the moustache

in the most frequent movement of his face, conveyed to both of them, equally, a swagger personal to

themselves. It was as if he had said, 'I have a secret power in this quarter. I know what I know.'

This had never been felt by them both in so great a degree, and never by each so perfectly to the knowledge

of the other, as on a day when he came to Mr Dorrit's to take his leave before quitting Venice. Mrs Gowan

was herself there for the same purpose, and he came upon the two together; the rest of the family being out.

The two had not been together five minutes, and the peculiar manner seemed to convey to them, 'You were

'Not coming!' said Blandois. 'Permit your devoted servant, when you leave here, to escort you home.'

That he might be; but he was not so forlorn as to roam away and leave them together. He sat entertaining

them with his finest compliments, and his choicest conversation; but he conveyed to them, all the time, 'No,

He conveyed it to them with so much meaning, and he had such a diabolical persistency in him, that at

length, Mrs Gowan rose to depart. On his offering his hand to Mrs Gowan to lead her down the staircase, she

retained Little Dorrit's hand in hers, with a cautious pressure, and said, 'No, thank you. But, if you will please

It left him no choice but to go down before them. As he did so, hat in hand, Mrs Gowan whispered:

'No one knows it. Don't look towards me; look towards him. He will turn his face in a moment. No one

'Henry likes him, and he will not think ill of him; he is so generous and open himself. But you and I feel sure

that we think of him as he deserves. He argued with Henry that the dog had been already poisoned when he

changed so, and sprang at him. Henry believes it, but we do not. I see he is listening, but can't hear.

The last words were spoken aloud, as the vigilant Blandois stopped, turned his head, and looked at them from

the bottom of the staircase. Assuredly he did look then, though he looked his politest, as if any real

philanthropist could have desired no better employment than to lash a great stone to his neck, and drop him

into the water flowing beyond the dark arched gateway in which he stood. No such benefactor to mankind

being on the spot, he handed Mrs Gowan to her boat, and stood there until it had shot out of the narrow view;

Little Dorrit had sometimes thought, and now thought again as she retraced her steps up the staircase, that he

had made his way too easily into her father's house. But so many and such varieties of people did the same,

through Mr Dorrit's participation in his elder daughter's society mania, that it was hardly an exceptional case.

A perfect fury for making acquaintances on whom to impress their riches and importance, had seized the

It appeared on the whole, to Little Dorrit herself, that this same society in which they lived, greatly resembled

a superior sort of Marshalsea. Numbers of people seemed to come abroad, pretty much as people had come

into the prison; through debt, through idleness, relationship, curiosity, and general unfitness for getting on at

home. They were brought into these foreign towns in the custody of couriers and local followers, just as the

debtors had been brought into the prison. They prowled about the churches and picture galleries, much in

the old, dreary, prisonyard manner. They were usually going away again tomorrow or next week, and

rarely knew their own minds, and seldom did what they said they would do, or went where they said they

would go: in all this again, very like the prison debtors. They paid high for poor accommodation, and

disparaged a place while they pretended to like it: which was exactly the Marshalsea custom. They were

envied when they went away by people left behind, feigning not to want to go: and that again was the

Marshalsea habit invariably. A certain set of words and phrases, as much belonging to tourists as the College

and the Snuggery belonged to the jail, was always in their mouths. They had precisely the same incapacity for

settling down to anything, as the prisoners used to have; they rather deteriorated one another, as the prisoners

used to do; and they wore untidy dresses, and fell into a slouching way of life: still, always like the people in

The period of the family's stay at Venice came, in its course, to an end, and they moved, with their retinue, to

Rome. Through a repetition of the former Italian scenes, growing more dirty and more haggard as they went

on, and bringing them at length to where the very air was diseased, they passed to their destination. A fine

residence had been taken for them on the Corso, and there they took up their abode, in a city where

everything seemed to be trying to stand still for ever on the ruins of something elseexcept the water,

which, following eternal laws, tumbled and rolled from its glorious multitude of fountains.

Here it seemed to Little Dorrit that a change came over the Marshalsea spirit of their society, and that Prunes

and Prism got the upper hand. Everybody was walking about St Peter's and the Vatican on somebody else's

cork legs, and straining every visible object through somebody else's sieve. Nobody said what anything was,

but everybody said what the Mrs Generals, Mr Eustace, or somebody else said it was. The whole body of

travellers seemed to be a collection of voluntary human sacrifices, bound hand and foot, and delivered over to

Mr Eustace and his attendants, to have the entrails of their intellects arranged according to the taste of that

sacred priesthood. Through the rugged remains of temples and tombs and palaces and senate halls and

theatres and amphitheatres of ancient days, hosts of tonguetied and blindfolded moderns were carefully

feeling their way, incessantly repeating Prunes and Prism in the endeavour to set their lips according to the

received form. Mrs General was in her pure element. Nobody had an opinion. There was a formation of

surface going on around her on an amazing scale, and it had not a flaw of courage or honest free speech in it.

Another modification of Prunes and Prism insinuated itself on Little Dorrit's notice very shortly after their

arrival. They received an early visit from Mrs Merdle, who led that extensive department of life in the Eternal

City that winter; and the skilful manner in which she and Fanny fenced with one another on the occasion,

'So delighted,' said Mrs Merdle, 'to resume an acquaintance so inauspiciously begun at Martigny.'

'I understand,' said Mrs Merdle, 'from my son Edmund Sparkler, that he has already improved that chance

'I might refer that question to Mr Dorrit,' said Mrs Merdle, turning the bosom towards that gentleman;

'Oh, pray don't speak of it,' returned Fanny. 'I believe Papa had the pleasure of inviting Mr Sparkler twice or

thrice,but it was nothing. We had so many people about us, and kept such open house, that if he had that

'Except, my dear,' said Mr Dorrit, 'excepthaas it afforded me unusual gratification tohumshow by

any means, however slight and worthless, theha, humhigh estimation in which, inha common with

the rest of the world, I hold so distinguished and princely a character as Mr Merdle's.'

The bosom received this tribute in its most engaging manner. 'Mr Merdle,' observed Fanny, as a means of

dismissing Mr Sparkler into the background, 'is quite a theme of Papa's, you must know, Mrs Merdle.'

'I have beenhadisappointed, madam,' said Mr Dorrit, 'to understand from Mr Sparkler that there is no

'Why, indeed,' said Mrs Merdle, 'he is so much engaged and in such request, that I fear not. He has not been

able to get abroad for years. You, Miss Dorrit, I believe have been almost continually abroad for a long time.'

'Oh dear yes,' drawled Fanny, with the greatest hardihood. 'An immense number of years.'

'I trust, however,' resumed Mr Dorrit, 'that if I have not the humgreat advantage of becoming known to

Mr Merdle on this side of the Alps or Mediterranean, I shall have that honour on returning to England. It is an

honour I particularly desire and shall particularly esteem.' 'Mr Merdle,' said Mrs Merdle, who had been

looking admiringly at Fanny through her eyeglass, 'will esteem it, I am sure, no less.'

Little Dorrit, still habitually thoughtful and solitary though no longer alone, at first supposed this to be mere

Prunes and Prism. But as her father when they had been to a brilliant reception at Mrs Merdle's, harped at

their own family breakfasttable on his wish to know Mr Merdle, with the contingent view of benefiting by

the advice of that wonderful man in the disposal of his fortune, she began to think it had a real meaning, and

While the waters of Venice and the ruins of Rome were sunning themselves for the pleasure of the Dorrit

family, and were daily being sketched out of all earthly proportion, lineament, and likeness, by travelling

pencils innumerable, the firm of Doyce and Clennam hammered away in Bleeding Heart Yard, and the

The younger partner had, by this time, brought the business into sound trim; and the elder, left free to follow

his own ingenious devices, had done much to enhance the character of the factory. As an ingenious man, he

had necessarily to encounter every discouragement that the ruling powers for a length of time had been able

by any means to put in the way of this class of culprits; but that was only reasonable selfdefence in the

powers, since How to do it must obviously be regarded as the natural and mortal enemy of How not to do it.

In this was to be found the basis of the wise system, by tooth and nail upheld by the Circumlocution Office,

of warning every ingenious British subject to be ingenious at his peril: of harassing him, obstructing him,

inviting robbers (by making his remedy uncertain, and expensive) to plunder him, and at the best of

confiscating his property after a short term of enjoyment, as though invention were on a par with felony. The

system had uniformly found great favour with the Barnacles, and that was only reasonable, too; for one who

worthily invents must be in earnest, and the Barnacles abhorred and dreaded nothing half so much. That again

was very reasonable; since in a country suffering under the affliction of a great amount of earnestness, there

might, in an exceeding short space of time, be not a single Barnacle left sticking to a post.

Daniel Doyce faced his condition with its pains and penalties attached to it, and soberly worked on for the

work's sake. Clennam cheering him with a hearty cooperation, was a moral support to him, besides doing

good service in his business relation. The concern prospered, and the partners were fast friends. But Daniel

could not forget the old design of so many years. It was not in reason to be expected that he should; if he

could have lightly forgotten it, he could never have conceived it, or had the patience and perseverance to

work it out. So Clennam thought, when he sometimes observed him of an evening looking over the models

and drawings, and consoling himself by muttering with a sigh as he put them away again, that the thing was

To show no sympathy with so much endeavour, and so much disappointment, would have been to fail in what

Clennam regarded as among the implied obligations of his partnership. A revival of the passing interest in the

subject which had been by chance awakened at the door of the Circumlocution Office, originated in this

feeling. He asked his partner to explain the invention to him; 'having a lenient consideration,' he stipulated,

'No workman?' said Doyce. 'You would have been a thorough workman if you had given yourself to it. You

'I don't know that,' returned Doyce, 'and I wouldn't have you say that. No man of sense who has been

generally improved, and has improved himself, can be called quite uneducated as to anything. I don't

particularly favour mysteries. I would as soon, on a fair and clear explanation, be judged by one class of man

'At all events,' said Clennam'this sounds as if we were exchanging compliments, but we know we are

He had the power, often to be found in union with such a character, of explaining what he himself perceived,

and meant, with the direct force and distinctness with which it struck his own mind. His manner of

demonstration was so orderly and neat and simple, that it was not easy to mistake him. There was something

almost ludicrous in the complete irreconcilability of a vague conventional notion that he must be a visionary

man, with the precise, sagacious travelling of his eye and thumb over the plans, their patient stoppages at

particular points, their careful returns to other points whence little channels of explanation had to be traced

up, and his steady manner of making everything good and everything sound at each important stage, before

taking his hearer on a line'sbreadth further. His dismissal of himself from his description, was hardly less

remarkable. He never said, I discovered this adaptation or invented that combination; but showed the whole

thing as if the Divine artificer had made it, and he had happened to find it; so modest he was about it, such a

pleasant touch of respect was mingled with his quiet admiration of it, and so calmly convinced he was that it

Not only that evening, but for several succeeding evenings, Clennam was quite charmed by this investigation.

The more he pursued it, and the oftener he glanced at the grey head bending over it, and the shrewd eye

kindling with pleasure in it and love of it instrument for probing his heart though it had been made for

twelve long yearsthe less he could reconcile it to his younger energy to let it go without one effort more.

'Doyce, it came to this at lastthat the business was to be sunk with Heaven knows how many more wrecks,

'Yes,' returned Doyce, 'that's what the noblemen and gentlemen made of it after a dozen years.'

'The usual thing!' observed Doyce. 'I must not make a martyr of myself, when I am one of so large a

'Then, my friend,' cried Clennam, starting up and taking his work roughened hand, 'it shall be begun all over

Doyce looked alarmed, and replied in a hurryfor him, 'No, no. Better put it by. Far better put it by. It will

be heard of, one day. I can put it by. You forget, my good Clennam; I HAVE put it by. It's all at an end.'

'Yes, Doyce,' returned Clennam, 'at an end as far as your efforts and rebuffs are concerned, I admit, but not as

far as mine are. I am younger than you: I have only once set foot in that precious office, and I am fresh game

for them. Come! I'll try them. You shall do exactly as you have been doing since we have been together. I

will add (as I easily can) to what I have been doing, the attempt to get public justice done to you; and, unless I

Daniel Doyce was still reluctant to consent, and again and again urged that they had better put it by. But it

was natural that he should gradually allow himself to be overpersuaded by Clennam, and should yield. Yield

he did. So Arthur resumed the long and hopeless labour of striving to make way with the Circumlocution

The waitingrooms of that Department soon began to be familiar with his presence, and he was generally

ushered into them by its janitors much as a pickpocket might be shown into a policeoffice; the principal

difference being that the object of the latter class of public business is to keep the pickpocket, while the

Circumlocution object was to get rid of Clennam. However, he was resolved to stick to the Great Department;

and so the work of form filling, corresponding, minuting, memorandummaking, signing, countersigning,

countercountersigning, referring backwards and forwards, and referring sideways, crosswise, and zigzag,

Here arises a feature of the Circumlocution Office, not previously mentioned in the present record. When that

admirable Department got into trouble, and was, by some infuriated members of Parliament whom the

smaller Barnacles almost suspected of labouring under diabolic possession, attacked on the merits of no

individual case, but as an Institution wholly abominable and Bedlamite; then the noble or right honourable

Barnacle who represented it in the House, would smite that member and cleave him asunder, with a statement

of the quantity of business (for the prevention of business) done by the Circumlocution Office. Then would

that noble or right honourable Barnacle hold in his hand a paper containing a few figures, to which, with the

permission of the House, he would entreat its attention. Then would the inferior Barnacles exclaim, obeying

orders,'Hear, Hear, Hear!' and 'Read!' Then would the noble or right honourable Barnacle perceive, sir, from

this little document, which he thought might carry conviction even to the perversest mind (Derisive laughter

and cheering from the Barnacle fry), that within the short compass of the last financial half year, this

muchmaligned Department (Cheers) had written and received fifteen thousand letters (Loud cheers), had

written twentyfour thousand minutes (Louder cheers), and thirtytwo thousand five hundred and seventeen

memoranda (Vehement cheering). Nay, an ingenious gentleman connected with the Department, and himself

a valuable public servant, had done him the favour to make a curious calculation of the amount of stationery

consumed in it during the same period. It formed a part of this same short document; and he derived from it

the remarkable fact that the sheets of foolscap paper it had devoted to the public service would pave the

footways on both sides of Oxford Street from end to end, and leave nearly a quarter of a mile to spare for the

park (Immense cheering and laughter); while of tapered tapeit had used enough to stretch, in graceful

festoons, from Hyde Park Corner to the General Post Office. Then, amidst a burst of official exultation,

would the noble or right honourable Barnacle sit down, leaving the mutilated fragments of the Member on the

field. No one, after that exemplary demolition of him, would have the hardihood to hint that the more the

Circumlocution Office did, the less was done, and that the greatest blessing it could confer on an unhappy

With sufficient occupation on his hands, now that he had this additional tasksuch a task had many and

many a serviceable man died of before his dayArthur Clennam led a life of slight variety. Regular visits to

his mother's dull sick room, and visits scarcely less regular to Mr Meagles at Twickenham, were its only

He sadly and sorely missed Little Dorrit. He had been prepared to miss her very much, but not so much. He

knew to the full extent only through experience, what a large place in his life was left blank when her familiar

little figure went out of it. He felt, too, that he must relinquish the hope of its return, understanding the family

character sufficiently well to be assured that he and she were divided by a broad ground of separation. The

old interest he had had in her, and her old trusting reliance on him, were tinged with melancholy in his mind:

so soon had change stolen over them, and so soon had they glided into the past with other secret tendernesses.

When he received her letter he was greatly moved, but did not the less sensibly feel that she was far divided

from him by more than distance. It helped him to a clearer and keener perception of the place assigned him

by the family. He saw that he was cherished in her grateful remembrance secretly, and that they resented him

Through all these meditations which every day of his life crowded about her, he thought of her otherwise in

the old way. She was his innocent friend, his delicate child, his dear Little Dorrit. This very change of

circumstances fitted curiously in with the habit, begun on the night when the roses floated away, of

considering himself as a much older man than his years really made him. He regarded her from a point of

view which in its remoteness, tender as it was, he little thought would have been unspeakable agony to her.

He speculated about her future destiny, and about the husband she might have, with an affection for her

Everything about him tended to confirm him in the custom of looking on himself as an elderly man, from

whom such aspirations as he had combated in the case of Minnie Gowan (though that was not so long ago

either, reckoning by months and seasons), were finally departed. His relations with her father and mother

were like those on which a widower soninlaw might have stood. If the twin sister who was dead had lived

to pass away in the bloom of womanhood, and he had been her husband, the nature of his intercourse with Mr

and Mrs Meagles would probably have been just what it was. This imperceptibly helped to render habitual

the impression within him, that he had done with, and dismissed that part of life.

He invariably heard of Minnie from them, as telling them in her letters how happy she was, and how she

loved her husband; but inseparable from that subject, he invariably saw the old cloud on Mr Meagles's face.

Mr Meagles had never been quite so radiant since the marriage as before. He had never quite recovered the

separation from Pet. He was the same goodhumoured, open creature; but as if his face, from being much

turned towards the pictures of his two children which could show him only one look, unconsciously adopted

a characteristic from them, it always had now, through all its changes of expression, a look of loss in it.

One wintry Saturday when Clennam was at the cottage, the Dowager Mrs Gowan drove up, in the Hampton

Court equipage which pretended to be the exclusive equipage of so many individual proprietors. She

descended, in her shady ambuscade of green fan, to favour Mr and Mrs Meagles with a call.

'And how do you both do, Papa and Mama Meagles?' said she, encouraging her humble connections. 'And

My poor fellow was her son; and this mode of speaking of him politely kept alive, without any offence in the

'And the dear pretty one?' said Mrs Gowan. 'Have you later news of her than I have?'

Which also delicately implied that her son had been captured by mere beauty, and under its fascination had

' I am sure,' said Mrs Gowan, without straining her attention on the answers she received, 'it's an unspeakable

comfort to know they continue happy. My poor fellow is of such a restless disposition, and has been so used

to roving about, and to being inconstant and popular among all manner of people, that it's the greatest comfort

Mr Meagles, fidgety under the question, replied, 'I hope not, ma'am. I hope they will manage their little

'Oh! my dearest Meagles!' returned the lady, tapping him on the arm with the green fan and then adroitly

interposing it between a yawn and the company, 'how can you, as a man of the world and one of the most

businesslike of human beingsfor you know you are businesslike, and a great deal too much for us who

(Which went to the former purpose, by making Mr Meagles out to be an artful schemer.)

'How can you talk about their managing their little means? My poor dear fellow! The idea of his managing

hundreds! And the sweet pretty creature too. The notion of her managing! Papa Meagles! Don't!'

'Well, ma'am,' said Mr Meagles, gravely, 'I am sorry to admit, then, that Henry certainly does anticipate his

'My dear good manI use no ceremony with you, because we are a kind of relations;positively, Mama

Meagles,' exclaimed Mrs Gowan cheerfully, as if the absurd coincidence then flashed upon her for the first

time, 'a kind of relations! My dear good man, in this world none of us can have everything our own way.'

This again went to the former point, and showed Mr Meagles with all good breeding that, so far, he had been

brilliantly successful in his deep designs. Mrs Gowan thought the hit so good a one, that she dwelt upon it;

repeating 'Not everything. No, no; in this world we must not expect everything, Papa Meagles.'

'And may I ask, ma'am,' retorted Mr Meagles, a little heightened in colour, 'who does expect everything?'

'Oh, nobody, nobody!' said Mrs Gowan. 'I was going to saybut you put me out. You interrupting Papa,

Drooping her large green fan, she looked musingly at Mr Meagles while she thought about it; a performance

'Ah! Yes, to be sure!' said Mrs Gowan. 'You must remember that my poor fellow has always been

accustomed to expectations. They may have been realised, or they may not have been realised'

The Dowager for a moment gave him an angry look; but tossed it off with her head and her fan, and pursued

'It makes no difference. My poor fellow has been accustomed to that sort of thing, and of course you knew it,

and were prepared for the consequences. I myself always clearly foresaw the consequences, and am not

'And now here's my poor fellow,' Mrs Gowan pursued, 'receiving notice that he is to hold himself in

expectation of a baby, and all the expenses attendant on such an addition to his family! Poor Henry! But it

can't be helped now; it's too late to help it now. Only don't talk of anticipating means, Papa Meagles, as a

'There, there!' said Mrs Gowan, putting him in his inferior place with an expressive action of her hand. 'Too

much for my poor fellow's mother to bear at this time of day. They are fast married, and can't be unmarried.

There, there! I know that! You needn't tell me that, Papa Meagles. I know it very well. What was it I said just

now? That it was a great comfort they continued happy. It is to be hoped they will still continue happy. It is to

be hoped Pretty One will do everything she can to make my poor fellow happy, and keep him contented. Papa

and Mama Meagles, we had better say no more about it. We never did look at this subject from the same side,

Truly, having by this time said everything she could say in maintenance of her wonderfully mythical position,

and in admonition to Mr Meagles that he must not expect to bear his honours of alliance too cheaply, Mrs

Gowan was disposed to forgo the rest. If Mr Meagles had submitted to a glance of entreaty from Mrs

Meagles, and an expressive gesture from Clennam, he would have left her in the undisturbed enjoyment of

this state of mind. But Pet was the darling and pride of his heart; and if he could ever have championed her

more devotedly, or loved her better, than in the days when she was the sunlight of his house, it would have

'Mrs Gowan, ma'am,' said Mr Meagles, 'I have been a plain man all my life. If I was to tryno matter

whether on myself, on somebody else, or bothany genteel mystifications, I should probably not succeed in

'Papa Meagles,' returned the Dowager, with an affable smile, but with the bloom on her cheeks standing out a

little more vividly than usual as the neighbouring surface became paler,'probably not.'

'Therefore, my good madam,' said Mr Meagles, at great pains to restrain himself, 'I hope I may, without

offence, ask to have no such mystification played off upon me.' 'Mama Meagles,' observed Mrs Gowan, 'your

Her turning to that worthy lady was an artifice to bring her into the discussion, quarrel with her, and vanquish

'Mother,' said he, 'you are inexpert, my dear, and it is not a fair match. Let me beg of you to remain quiet.

Come, Mrs Gowan, come! Let us try to be sensible; let us try to be goodnatured; let us try to be fair. Don't

you pity Henry, and I won't pity Pet. And don't be onesided, my dear madam; it's not considerate, it's not

kind. Don't let us say that we hope Pet will make Henry happy, or even that we hope Henry will make Pet

happy,' (Mr Meagles himself did not look happy as he spoke the words,) 'but let us hope they will make each

'Yes, sure, and there leave it, father,' said Mrs Meagles the kind hearted and comfortable.

'Why, mother, no,' returned Mr Meagles, 'not exactly there. I can't quite leave it there; I must say just

halfadozen words more. Mrs Gowan, I hope I am not oversensitive. I believe I don't look it.'

'Indeed you do not,' said Mrs Gowan, shaking her head and the great green fan together, for emphasis.

'Thank you, ma'am; that's well. Notwithstanding which, I feel a littleI don't want to use a strong

wordnow shall I say hurt?' asked Mr Meagles at once with frankness and moderation, and with a

'No, no, don't say that,' urged Mr Meagles, 'because that's not responding amiably. I feel a little hurt when I

hear references made to consequences having been foreseen, and to its being too late now, and so forth.'

'Well, ma'am,' reasoned Mr Meagles, 'I was in hopes you would have been at least surprised, because to hurt

me wilfully on so tender a subject is surely not generous.' 'I am not responsible,' said Mrs Gowan, 'for your

'If I am unluckily obliged to carry a cap about with me, which is yours and fits you,' pursued Mrs Gowan,

'don't blame me for its pattern, Papa Meagles, I beg!' 'Why, good Lord, ma'am!' Mr Meagles broke out, 'that's

'Now, Papa Meagles, Papa Meagles,' said Mrs Gowan, who became extremely deliberate and prepossessing

in manner whenever that gentleman became at all warm, 'perhaps to prevent confusion, I had better speak for

It's as much as to state, you begin. If you please, I will finish the sentence. It is as much as to statenot that I

wish to press it or even recall it, for it is of no use now, and my only wish is to make the best of existing

circumstancesthat from the first to the last I always objected to this match of yours, and at a very late

'The room being of a convenient size,' said Mrs Gowan, looking about as she fanned herself, 'and quite

charmingly adapted in all respects to conversation, I should imagine I am audible in any part of it.'

Some moments passed in silence, before Mr Meagles could hold himself in his chair with sufficient security

to prevent his breaking out of it at the next word he spoke. At last he said: 'Ma'am, I am very unwilling to

revive them, but I must remind you what my opinions and my course were, all along, on that unfortunate

'O, my dear sir!' said Mrs Gowan, smiling and shaking her head with accusatory intelligence, 'they were well

'I never, ma'am,' said Mr Meagles, 'knew unhappiness before that time, I never knew anxiety before that time.

It was a time of such distress to me that' That Mr Meagles could really say no more about it, in short, but

'I understood the whole affair,' said Mrs Gowan, composedly looking over her fan. 'As you have appealed to

'I am very unwilling,' said Clennam, looked to by all parties, 'to take any share in this discussion, more

especially because I wish to preserve the best understanding and the clearest relations with Mr Henry Gowan.

I have very strong reasons indeed, for entertaining that wish. Mrs Gowan attributed certain views of

furthering the marriage to my friend here, in conversation with me before it took place; and I endeavoured to

undeceive her. I represented that I knew him (as I did and do) to be strenuously opposed to it, both in opinion

'You see?' said Mrs Gowan, turning the palms of her hands towards Mr Meagles, as if she were Justice

herself, representing to him that he had better confess, for he had not a leg to stand on. 'You see? Very good!

Now Papa and Mama Meagles both!' here she rose; 'allow me to take the liberty of putting an end to this

rather formidable controversy. I will not say another word upon its merits. I will only say that it is an

additional proof of what one knows from all experience; that this kind of thing never answers as my poor

'It is in vain,' said Mrs Gowan, 'for people to attempt to get on together who have such extremely different

antecedents; who are jumbled against each other in this accidental, matrimonial sort of way; and who cannot

look at the untoward circumstance which has shaken them together in the same light. It never does.'

'No, don't,' returned Mrs Gowan. 'Why should you! It is an ascertained fact. It never does. I will therefore, if

you please, go my way, leaving you to yours. I shall at all times be happy to receive my poor fellow's pretty

wife, and I shall always make a point of being on the most affectionate terms with her. But as to these terms,

semifamily and semistranger, semigoring and semi boring, they form a state of things quite amusing in

The Dowager here made a smiling obeisance, rather to the room than to any one in it, and therewith took a

final farewell of Papa and Mama Meagles. Clennam stepped forward to hand her to the PillBox which was

at the service of all the Pills in Hampton Court Palace; and she got into that vehicle with distinguished

Thenceforth the Dowager, with a light and careless humour, often recounted to her particular acquaintance

how, after a hard trial, she had found it impossible to know those people who belonged to Henry's wife, and

who had made that desperate set to catch him. Whether she had come to the conclusion beforehand, that to

get rid of them would give her favourite pretence a better air, might save her some occasional inconvenience,

and could risk no loss (the pretty creature being fast married, and her father devoted to her), was best known

to herself. Though this history has its opinion on that point too, and decidedly in the affirmative.

'Arthur, my dear boy,' said Mr Meagles, on the evening of the following day, 'Mother and I have been talking

this over, and we don't feel comfortable in remaining as we are. That elegant connection of oursthat dear

'Even that affable and condescending ornament of society,' pursued Mr Meagles, 'may misrepresent us, we

are afraid. We could bear a great deal, Arthur, for her sake; but we think we would rather not bear that, if it

'You see,' proceeded Mr Meagles 'it might put us wrong with our soninlaw, it might even put us wrong

with our daughter, and it might lead to a great deal of domestic trouble. You see, don't you?'

'Yes, indeed,' returned Arthur, 'there is much reason in what you say.' He had glanced at Mrs Meagles, who

was always on the good and sensible side; and a petition had shone out of her honest face that he would

'So we are very much disposed, are Mother and I,' said Mr Meagles, 'to pack up bags and baggage and go

among the Allongers and Marshongers once more. I mean, we are very much disposed to be off, strike right

'And I don't think,' replied Arthur, touched by the motherly anticipation in the bright face of Mrs Meagles

(she must have been very like her daughter, once), 'that you could do better. And if you ask me for my

'Is it really, though?' said Mr Meagles. 'Mother, this is being backed in an idea!'

Mother, with a look which thanked Clennam in a manner very agreeable to him, answered that it was indeed.

'The fact is, besides, Arthur,' said Mr Meagles, the old cloud coming over his face, 'that my soninlaw is

already in debt again, and that I suppose I must clear him again. It may be as well, even on this account, that I

should step over there, and look him up in a friendly way. Then again, here's Mother foolishly anxious (and

yet naturally too) about Pet's state of health, and that she should not be left to feel lonesome at the present

time. It's undeniably a long way off, Arthur, and a strange place for the poor love under all the circumstances.

Let her be as well cared for as any lady in that land, still it is a long way off. just as Home is Home though it's

never so Homely, why you see,' said Mr Meagles, adding a new version to the proverb, 'Rome is Rome,

'I am glad you think so; it decides me. Mother, my dear, you may get ready. We have lost our pleasant

interpreter (she spoke three foreign languages beautifully, Arthur; you have heard her many a time), and you

I require a deal of pulling through, Arthur,' said Mr Meagles, shaking his head, 'a deal of pulling through. I

stick at everything beyond a nounsubstantiveand I stick at him, if he's at all a tight one.'

'Now I think of it,' returned Clennam, 'there's Cavalletto. He shall go with you, if you like. I could not afford

'Well! I am much obliged to you, my boy,' said Mr Meagles, turning it over, 'but I think not. No, I think I'll be

pulled through by Mother. Cavallooro (I stick at his very name to start with, and it sounds like the chorus to a

comic song) is so necessary to you, that I don't like the thought of taking him away. More than that, there's no

saying when we may come home again; and it would never do to take him away for an indefinite time. The

cottage is not what it was. It only holds two little people less than it ever did, Pet, and her poor unfortunate

maid Tattycoram; but it seems empty now. Once out of it, there's no knowing when we may come back to it.

They would do best by themselves perhaps, after all, Clennam thought; therefore did not press his proposal.

'If you would come down and stay here for a change, when it wouldn't trouble you,' Mr Meagles resumed, 'I

should be glad to thinkand so would Mother too, I knowthat you were brightening up the old place with

a bit of life it was used to when it was full, and that the Babies on the wall there had a kind eye upon them

sometimes. You so belong to the spot, and to them, Arthur, and we should every one of us have been so

happy if it had fallen outbut, let us seehow's the weather for travelling now?' Mr Meagles broke off,

They agreed that the weather was of high promise; and Clennam kept the talk in that safe direction until it

had become easy again, when he gently diverted it to Henry Gowan and his quick sense and agreeable

qualities when he was delicately dealt With; he likewise dwelt on the indisputable affection he entertained for

his wife. Clennam did not fail of his effect upon good Mr Meagles, whom these commendations greatly

cheered; and who took Mother to witness that the single and cordial desire of his heart in reference to their

daughter's husband, was harmoniously to exchange friendship for friendship, and confidence for confidence.

Within a few hours the cottage furniture began to be wrapped up for preservation in the family absenceor,

as Mr Meagles expressed it, the house began to put its hair in papersand within a few days Father and

Mother were gone, Mrs Tickit and Dr Buchan were posted, as of yore, behind the parlour blind, and Arthur's

As he had a liking for the spot, he seldom let a week pass without paying a visit. Sometimes, he went down

alone from Saturday to Monday; sometimes his partner accompanied him; sometimes, he merely strolled for

an hour or two about the house and garden, saw that all was right, and returned to London again. At all times,

and under all circumstances, Mrs Tickit, with her dark row of curls, and Dr Buchan, sat in the parlour

On one of his visits Mrs Tickit received him with the words, 'I have something to tell you, Mr Clennam, that

will surprise you.' So surprising was the something in question, that it actually brought Mrs Tickit out of the

parlour window and produced her in the garden walk, when Clennam went in at the gate on its being opened

'Sir,' returned that faithful housekeeper, having taken him into the parlour and closed the door; 'if ever I saw

the led away and deluded child in my life, I saw her identically in the dusk of yesterday evening.'

'Mr Clennam,' returned Mrs Tickit, 'I was a little heavy in my eyes, being that I was waiting longer than

customary for my cup of tea which was then preparing by Mary Jane. I was not sleeping, nor what a person

would term correctly, dozing. I was more what a person would strictly call watching with my eyes closed.'

Without entering upon an inquiry into this curious abnormal condition, Clennam said, 'Exactly. Well?'

'Well, sir,' proceeded Mrs Tickit, 'I was thinking of one thing and thinking of another. just as you yourself

'And when I do think of one thing and do think of another,' pursued Mrs Tickit, 'I hardly need to tell you, Mr

Clennam, that I think of the family. Because, dear me! a person's thoughts,' Mrs Tickit said this with an

argumentative and philosophic air, 'however they may stray, will go more or less on what is uppermost in

'You find it so yourself, sir, I'll be bold to say,' said Mrs Tickit, 'and we all find it so. It an't our stations in life

that changes us, Mr Clennam; thoughts is free!As I was saying, I was thinking of one thing and thinking of

another, and thinking very much of the family. Not of the family in the present times only, but in the past

times too. For when a person does begin thinking of one thing and thinking of another in that manner, as it's

getting dark, what I say is, that all times seem to be present, and a person must get out of that state and

He nodded again; afraid to utter a word, lest it should present any new opening to Mrs Tickit's conversational

'In consequence of which,' said Mrs Tickit, 'when I quivered my eyes and saw her actual form and figure

looking in at the gate, I let them close again without so much as starting, for that actual form and figure came

so pat to the time when it belonged to the house as much as mine or your own, that I never thought at the

moment of its having gone away. But, sir, when I quivered my eyes again, and saw that it wasn't there, then it

'I ran out,' assented Mrs Tickit, 'as fast as ever my feet would carry me; and if you'll credit it, Mr Clennam,

there wasn't in the whole shining Heavens, no not so much as a finger of that young woman.'

Passing over the absence from the firmament of this novel constellation, Arthur inquired of Mrs Tickit if she

He then asked Mrs Tickit how long a space of time she supposed there might have been between the two sets

of ocular quiverings she had experienced? Mrs Tickit, though minutely circumstantial in her reply, had no

She was so plainly at sea on this part of the case, and had so clearly been startled out of slumber, that

Clennam was much disposed to regard the appearance as a dream. Without hurting Mrs Tickit's feelings with

that infidel solution of her mystery, he took it away from the cottage with him; and probably would have

retained it ever afterwards if a circumstance had not soon happened to change his opinion. He was passing at

nightfall along the Strand, and the lamplighter was going on before him, under whose hand the

streetlamps, blurred by the foggy air, burst out one after another, like so many blazing sunflowers coming

into fullblow all at once,when a stoppage on the pavement, caused by a train of coalwaggons toiling up

from the wharves at the riverside, brought him to a standstill. He had been walking quickly, and going

with some current of thought, and the sudden check given to both operations caused him to look freshly about

Immediately, he saw in advancea few people intervening, but still so near to him that he could have

touched them by stretching out his armTattycoram and a strange man of a remarkable appearance: a

swaggering man, with a high nose, and a black moustache as false in its colour as his eyes were false in their

expression, who wore his heavy cloak with the air of a foreigner. His dress and general appearance were

those of a man on travel, and he seemed to have very recently joined the girl. In bending down (being much

taller than she was), listening to whatever she said to him, he looked over his shoulder with the suspicious

glance of one who was not unused to be mistrustful that his footsteps might be dogged. It was then that

Clennam saw his face; as his eyes lowered on the people behind him in the aggregate, without particularly

He had scarcely turned his head about again, and it was still bent down, listening to the girl, when the

stoppage ceased, and the obstructed stream of people flowed on. Still bending his head and listening to the

girl, he went on at her side, and Clennam followed them, resolved to play this unexpected play out, and see

He had hardly made the determination (though he was not long about it), when he was again as suddenly

brought up as he had been by the stoppage. They turned short into the Adelphi,the girl evidently

leading,and went straight on, as if they were going to the Terrace which overhangs the river.

There is always, to this day, a sudden pause in that place to the roar of the great thoroughfare. The many

sounds become so deadened that the change is like putting cotton in the ears, or having the head thickly

muffled. At that time the contrast was far greater; there being no small steamboats on the river, no landing

places but slippery wooden stairs and footcauseways, no railroad on the opposite bank, no hanging bridge or

fishmarket near at hand, no traffic on the nearest bridge of stone, nothing moving on the stream but

watermen's wherries and coallighters. Long and broad black tiers of the latter, moored fast in the mud as if

they were never to move again, made the shore funereal and silent after dark; and kept what little

watermovement there was, far out towards mid stream. At any hour later than sunset, and not least at that

hour when most of the people who have anything to eat at home are going home to eat it, and when most of

those who have nothing have hardly yet slunk out to beg or steal, it was a deserted place and looked on a

Such was the hour when Clennam stopped at the corner, observing the girl and the strange man as they went

down the street. The man's footsteps were so noisy on the echoing stones that he was unwilling to add the

sound of his own. But when they had passed the turning and were in the darkness of the dark corner leading

to the terrace, he made after them with such indifferent appearance of being a casual passenger on his way, as

When he rounded the dark corner, they were walking along the terrace towards a figure which was coming

towards them. If he had seen it by itself, under such conditions of gaslamp, mist, and distance, he might not

have known it at first sight, but with the figure of the girl to prompt him, he at once recognised Miss Wade.

He stopped at the corner, seeming to look back expectantly up the street as if he had made an appointment

with some one to meet him there; but he kept a careful eye on the three. When they came together, the man

took off his hat, and made Miss Wade a bow. The girl appeared to say a few words as though she presented

him, or accounted for his being late, or early, or what not; and then fell a pace or so behind, by herself. Miss

Wade and the man then began to walk up and down; the man having the appearance of being extremely

courteous and complimentary in manner; Miss Wade having the appearance of being extremely haughty.

'If I pinch myself for it, sir, that is my business. Confine yourself to yours, and ask me no question.'

'By Heaven, ma'am!' he replied, making her another bow. 'It was my profound respect for the strength of your

'I want neither the one nor the other from any one,' said she, 'and certainly not from you of all creatures. Go

Whether the girl hung behind because she was not to hear the business, or as already knowing enough about

it, Clennam could not determine. They turned and she turned. She looked away at the river, as she walked

with her hands folded before her; and that was all he could make of her without showing his face. There

happened, by good fortune, to be a lounger really waiting for some one; and he sometimes looked over the

railing at the water, and sometimes came to the dark corner and looked up the street, rendering Arthur less

When Miss Wade and the man came back again, she was saying, 'You must wait until tomorrow.'

'A thousand pardons?' he returned. 'My faith! Then it's not convenient tonight?'

She stopped in the roadway, as if to put an end to the conference. He of course stopped too. And the girl

'It's a little inconvenient,' said the man. 'A little. But, Holy Blue! that's nothing in such a service. I am without

money to night, by chance. I have a good banker in this city, but I would not wish to draw upon the house

'Harriet,' said Miss Wade, 'arrange with himthis gentleman here for sending him some money

tomorrow.' She said it with a slur of the word gentleman which was more contemptuous than any emphasis,

and walked slowly on. The man bent his head again, and the girl spoke to him as they both followed her.

Clennam ventured to look at the girl as they Moved away. He could note that her rich black eyes were

fastened upon the man with a scrutinising expression, and that she kept at a little distance from him, as they

A loud and altered clank upon the pavement warned him, before he could discern what was passing there,

that the man was coming back alone. Clennam lounged into the road, towards the railing; and the man passed

at a quick swing, with the end of his cloak thrown over his shoulder, singing a scrap of a French song.

The whole vista had no one in it now but himself. The lounger had lounged out of view, and Miss Wade and

Tattycoram were gone. More than ever bent on seeing what became of them, and on having some information

to give his good friend, Mr Meagles, he went out at the further end of the terrace, looking cautiously about

him. He rightly judged that, at first at all events, they would go in a contrary direction from their late

companion. He soon saw them in a neighbouring byestreet, which was not a thoroughfare, evidently

allowing time for the man to get well out of their way. They walked leisurely arminarm down one side of

the street, and returned on the opposite side. When they came back to the street corner, they changed their

pace for the pace of people with an object and a distance before them, and walked steadily away. Clennam,

They crossed the Strand, and passed through Covent Garden (under the windows of his old lodging where

dear Little Dorrit had come that night), and slanted away northeast, until they passed the great building

whence Tattycoram derived her name, and turned into the Gray's Inn Road. Clennam was quite at home here,

in right of Flora, not to mention the Patriarch and Pancks, and kept them in view with ease. He was beginning

to wonder where they might be going next, when that wonder was lost in the greater wonder with which he

saw them turn into the Patriarchal street. That wonder was in its turn swallowed up on the greater wonder

with which he saw them stop at the Patriarchal door. A low double knock at the bright brass knocker, a gleam

of light into the road from the opened door, a brief pause for inquiry and answer and the door was shut, and

After looking at the surrounding objects for assurance that he was not in an odd dream, and after pacing a

little while before the house, Arthur knocked at the door. It was opened by the usual maidservant, and she

There was no one with Flora but Mr F.'s Aunt, which respectable gentlewoman, basking in a balmy

atmosphere of tea and toast, was ensconced in an easychair by the fireside, with a little table at her elbow,

and a clean white handkerchief spread over her lap on which two pieces of toast at that moment awaited

consumption. Bending over a steaming vessel of tea, and looking through the steam, and breathing forth the

steam, like a malignant Chinese enchantress engaged in the performance of unholy rites, Mr F.'s Aunt put

It would seem from the foregoing exclamation that this uncompromising relative of the lamented Mr F.,

measuring time by the acuteness of her sensations and not by the clock, supposed Clennam to have lately

gone away; whereas at least a quarter of a year had elapsed since he had had the temerity to present himself

'My goodness Arthur!' cried Flora, rising to give him a cordial reception, 'Doyce and Clennam what a start

and a surprise for though not far from the machinery and foundry business and surely might be taken

sometimes if at no other time about midday when a glass of sherry and a humble sandwich of whatever cold

meat in the larder might not come amiss nor taste the worse for being friendly for you know you buy it

somewhere and wherever bought a profit must be made or they would never keep the place it stands to reason

without a motive still never seen and learnt now not to be expected, for as Mr F. himself said if seeing is

believing not seeing is believing too and when you don't see you may fully believe you're not remembered

not that I expect you Arthur Doyce and Clennam to remember me why should I for the days are gone but

bring another teacup here directly and tell her fresh toast and pray sit near the fire.'

Arthur was in the greatest anxiety to explain the object of his visit; but was put off for the moment, in spite of

himself, by what he understood of the reproachful purport of these words, and by the genuine pleasure she

testified in seeing him. 'And now pray tell me something all you know,' said Flora, drawing her chair near to

his, 'about the good dear quiet little thing and all the changes of her fortunes carriage people now no doubt

and horses without number most romantic, a coat of arms of course and wild beasts on their hind legs

showing it as if it was a copy they had done with mouths from ear to ear good gracious, and has she her

health which is the first consideration after all for what is wealth without it Mr F. himself so often saying

when his twinges came that sixpence a day and find yourself and no gout so much preferable, not that he

could have lived on anything like it being the last man or that the previous little thing though far too familiar

an expression now had any tendency of that sort much too slight and small but looked so fragile bless her?'

Mr F.'s Aunt, who had eaten a piece of toast down to the crust, here solemnly handed the crust to Flora, who

ate it for her as a matter of business. Mr F.'s Aunt then moistened her ten fingers in slow succession at her

lips, and wiped them in exactly the same order on the white handkerchief; then took the other piece of toast,

and fell to work upon it. While pursuing this routine, she looked at Clennam with an expression of such

intense severity that he felt obliged to look at her in return, against his personal inclinations.

'She is in Italy, with all her family, Flora,' he said, when the dreaded lady was occupied again.

'In Italy is she really?' said Flora, 'with the grapes growing everywhere and lava necklaces and bracelets too

that land of poetry with burning mountains picturesque beyond belief though if the organboys come away

from the neighbourhood not to be scorched nobody can wonder being so young and bringing their white mice

with them most humane, and is she really in that favoured land with nothing but blue about her and dying

gladiators and Belvederes though Mr F. himself did not believe for his objection when in spirits was that the

images could not be true there being no medium between expensive quantities of linen badly got up and all in

creases and none whatever, which certainly does not seem probable though perhaps in consequence of the

'Venice Preserved too,' said she, 'I think you have been there is it well or ill preserved for people differ so and

Maccaroni if they really eat it like the conjurors why not cut it shorter, you are acquainted Arthurdear

Doyce and Clennam at least not dear and most assuredly not Doyce for I have not the pleasure but pray

excuse meacquainted I believe with Mantua what has it got to do with Mantuamaking for I never have

'I believe there is no connection, Flora, between the two,' Arthur was beginning, when she caught him up

'Upon your word no isn't there I never did but that's like me I run away with an idea and having none to spare

I keep it, alas there was a time dear Arthur that is to say decidedly not dear nor Arthur neither but you

understand me when one bright idea gilded the what'shisname horizon of et cetera but it is darkly clouded

Arthur's increasing wish to speak of something very different was by this time so plainly written on his face,

'I have the greatest desire, Flora, to speak to some one who is now in this housewith Mr Casby no doubt.

Some one whom I saw come in, and who, in a misguided and deplorable way, has deserted the house of a

'Papa sees so many and such odd people,' said Flora, rising, 'that I shouldn't venture to go down for any one

but you Arthur but for you I would willingly go down in a divingbell much more a dining room and will

come back directly if you'll mind and at the same time not mind Mr F.'s Aunt while I'm gone.'

With those words and a parting glance, Flora bustled out, leaving Clennam under dreadful apprehension of

The first variation which manifested itself in Mr F.'s Aunt's demeanour when she had finished her piece of

toast, was a loud and prolonged sniff. Finding it impossible to avoid construing this demonstration into a

defiance of himself, its gloomy significance being unmistakable, Clennam looked plaintively at the excellent

though prejudiced lady from whom it emanated, in the hope that she might be disarmed by a meek

'None of your eyes at me,' said Mr F.'s Aunt, shivering with hostility. 'Take that.'

'That' was the crust of the piece of toast. Clennam accepted the boon with a look of gratitude, and held it in

his hand under the pressure of a little embarrassment, which was not relieved when Mr F.'s Aunt, elevating

her voice into a cry of considerable power, exclaimed, 'He has a proud stomach, this chap! He's too proud a

chap to eat it!' and, coming out of her chair, shook her venerable fist so very close to his nose as to tickle the

surface. But for the timely return of Flora, to find him in this difficult situation, further consequences might

have ensued. Flora, without the least discomposure or surprise, but congratulating the old lady in an

'He has a proud stomach, this chap,' said Mr F.'s relation, on being reseated. 'Give him a meal of chaff!'

'Give him a meal of chaff, I tell you,' said Mr F.'s Aunt, glaring round Flora on her enemy. 'It's the only thing

for a proud stomach. Let him eat up every morsel. Drat him, give him a meal of chaff!'

Under a general pretence of helping him to this refreshment, Flora got him out on the staircase; Mr F.'s Aunt

even then constantly reiterating, with inexpressible bitterness, that he was 'a chap,' and had a 'proud stomach,'

and over and over again insisting on that equine provision being made for him which she had already so

'Such an inconvenient staircase and so many cornerstairs Arthur,' whispered Flora, 'would you object to

With a sense of going downstairs in a highlyridiculous manner, Clennam descended in the required

attitude, and only released his fair burden at the diningroom door; indeed, even there she was rather difficult

to be got rid of, remaining in his embrace to murmur, 'Arthur, for mercy's sake, don't breathe it to papa!'

She accompanied Arthur into the room, where the Patriarch sat alone, with his list shoes on the fender,

twirling his thumbs as if he had never left off. The youthful Patriarch, aged ten, looked out of his

pictureframe above him with no calmer air than he. Both smooth heads were alike beaming, blundering, and

'Mr Clennam, I am glad to see you. I hope you are well, sir, I hope you are well. Please to sit down, please to

'I had hoped, sir,' said Clennam, doing so, and looking round with a face of blank disappointment, 'not to find

'Miss? Oh, you call her Wade,' returned Mr Casby. 'Highly proper.' Arthur quickly returned, 'What do you

After looking at the philanthropic visage and the long silky white hair for a few seconds, during which Mr

Casby twirled his thumbs, and smiled at the fire as if he were benevolently wishing it to burn him that he

'But, Miss Wade had an attendant with hera young woman brought up by friends of mine, over whom

her influence is not considered very salutary, and to whom I should be glad to have the opportunity of giving

'Dear, dear, dear!' said the Patriarch, 'how very unfortunate! If you had only sent in to me when they were

here! I observed the young woman, Mr Clennam. A fine fullcoloured young woman, Mr Clennam, with

Arthur assented, and said once more with new expression, 'If you would be so good as to give me the

'Dear, dear, dear!' exclaimed the Patriarch in sweet regret. 'Tut, tut, tut! what a pity, what a pity! I have no

address, sir. Miss Wade mostly lives abroad, Mr Clennam. She has done so for some years, and she is (if I

may say so of a fellowcreature and a lady) fitful and uncertain to a fault, Mr Clennam. I may not see her

again for a long, long time. I may never see her again. What a pity, what a pity!'

Clennam saw now, that he had as much hope of getting assistance out of the Portrait as out of the Patriarch;

'Mr Casby, could you, for the satisfaction of the friends I have mentioned, and under any obligation of

secrecy that you may consider it your duty to impose, give me any information at all touching Miss Wade? I

have seen her abroad, and I have seen her at home, but I know nothing of her. Could you give me any account

'None,' returned the Patriarch, shaking his big head with his utmost benevolence. 'None at all. Dear, dear,

dear! What a real pity that she stayed so short a time, and you delayed! As confidential agency business,

agency business, I have occasionally paid this lady money; but what satisfaction is it to you, sir, to know

'Truly,' assented the Patriarch, with a shining face as he philanthropically smiled at the fire, 'none at all, sir.

You hit the wise answer, Mr Clennam. Truly, none at all, sir.' His turning of his smooth thumbs over one

another as he sat there, was so typical to Clennam of the way in which he would make the subject revolve if it

were pursued, never showing any new part of it nor allowing it to make the smallest advance, that it did much

to help to convince him of his labour having been in vain. He might have taken any time to think about it, for

Mr Casby, well accustomed to get on anywhere by leaving everything to his bumps and his white hair, knew

his strength to lie in silence. So there Casby sat, twirling and twirling, and making his polished head and

With this spectacle before him, Arthur had risen to go, when from the inner Dock where the good ship Pancks

was hove down when out in no cruising ground, the noise was heard of that steamer labouring towards him. It

struck Arthur that the noise began demonstratively far off, as though Mr Pancks sought to impress on any one

who might happen to think about it, that he was working on from out of hearing. Mr Pancks and he shook

hands, and the former brought his employer a letter or two to sign. Mr Pancks in shaking hands merely

scratched his eyebrow with his left forefinger and snorted once, but Clennam, who understood him better

now than of old, comprehended that he had almost done for the evening and wished to say a word to him

outside. Therefore, when he had taken his leave of Mr Casby, and (which was a more difficult process) of

He had waited but a short time when Mr Pancks appeared. Mr Pancks shaking hands again with another

expressive snort, and taking off his hat to put his hair up, Arthur thought he received his cue to speak to him

as one who knew pretty well what had just now passed. Therefore he said, without any preface:

Mr Pancks did not? No, Mr Pancks did not. Did Mr Pancks know anything about her? 'I expect,' rejoined that

Put her in a room in London here with any six people old enough to be her parents, and her parents may be

there for anything she knows. They may be in any house she sees, they may be in any churchyard she passes,

she may run against 'em in any street, she may make chance acquaintance of 'em at any time; and never know

She knows nothing about 'em. She knows nothing about any relative whatever. Never did. Never will.' 'Mr

'May be,' said Pancks. 'I expect so, but don't know. He has long had money (not overmuch as I make out) in

trust to dole out to her when she can't do without it. Sometimes she's proud and won't touch it for a length of

time; sometimes she's so poor that she must have it. She writhes under her life. A woman more angry,

passionate, reckless, and revengeful never lived. She came for money tonight. Said she had peculiar

'I think,' observed Clennam musing, 'I by chance know what occasionI mean into whose pocket the money

'Indeed?' said Pancks. 'If it's a compact, I recommend that party to be exact in it. I wouldn't trust myself to

that woman, young and handsome as she is, if I had wronged her; no, not for twice my proprietor's money!

Unless,' Pancks added as a saving clause, 'I had a lingering illness on me, and wanted to get it over.'

Arthur, hurriedly reviewing his own observation of her, found it to tally pretty nearly with Mr Pancks's view.

'The wonder is to me,' pursued Pancks, 'that she has never done for my proprietor, as the only person

connected with her story she can lay hold of. Mentioning that, I may tell you, between ourselves, that I am

'Understand me,' said Pancks, extending five cropped coaly finger nails on Arthur's arm; 'I don't mean, cut

Having exhibited himself in the new light of enunciating this tremendous threat, Mr Pancks, with a

The shady waitingrooms of the Circumlocution Office, where he passed a good deal of time in company

with various troublesome Convicts who were under sentence to be broken alive on that wheel, had afforded

Arthur Clennam ample leisure, in three or four successive days, to exhaust the subject of his late glimpse of

Miss Wade and Tattycoram. He had been able to make no more of it and no less of it, and in this

One of his customary evenings for repairing thither now coming round, he left his dwelling and his partner at

nearly nine o'clock, and slowly walked in the direction of that grim home of his youth.

It always affected his imagination as wrathful, mysterious, and sad; and his imagination was sufficiently

impressible to see the whole neighbourhood under some tinge of its dark shadow. As he went along, upon a

dreary night, the dim streets by which he went, seemed all depositories of oppressive secrets. The deserted

countinghouses, with their secrets of books and papers locked up in chests and safes; the bankinghouses,

with their secrets of strong rooms and wells, the keys of which were in a very few secret pockets and a very

few secret breasts; the secrets of all the dispersed grinders in the vast mill, among whom there were doubtless

plunderers, forgers, and trustbetrayers of many sorts, whom the light of any day that dawned might reveal;

he could have fancied that these things, in hiding, imparted a heaviness to the air. The shadow thickening and

thickening as he approached its source, he thought of the secrets of the lonely churchvaults, where the

people who had hoarded and secreted in iron coffers were in their turn similarly hoarded, not yet at rest from

doing harm; and then of the secrets of the river, as it rolled its turbid tide between two frowning wildernesses

of secrets, extending, thick and dense, for many miles, and warding off the free air and the free country swept

The shadow still darkening as he drew near the house, the melancholy room which his father had once

occupied, haunted by the appealing face he had himself seen fade away with him when there was no other

watcher by the bed, arose before his mind. Its close air was secret. The gloom, and must, and dust of the

whole tenement, were secret. At the heart of it his mother presided, inflexible of face, indomitable of will,

firmly holding all the secrets of her own and his father's life, and austerely opposing herself, front to front, to

He had turned into the narrow and steep street from which the court of enclosure wherein the house stood

opened, when another footstep turned into it behind him, and so close upon his own that he was jostled to the

wall. As his mind was teeming with these thoughts, the encounter took him altogether unprepared, so that the

other passenger had had time to say, boisterously, 'Pardon! Not my fault!' and to pass on before the instant

When that moment had flashed away, he saw that the man striding on before him was the man who had been

so much in his mind during the last few days. It was no casual resemblance, helped out by the force of the

impression the man made upon him. It was the man; the man he had followed in company with the girl, and

The street was a sharp descent and was crooked too, and the man (who although not drunk had the air of

being flushed with some strong drink) went down it so fast that Clennam lost him as he looked at him. With

no defined intention of following him, but with an impulse to keep the figure in view a little longer, Clennam

quickened his pace to pass the twist in the street which hid him from his sight. On turning it, he saw the man

Standing now, close to the gateway of his mother's house, he looked down the street: but it was empty. There

was no projecting shadow large enough to obscure the man; there was no turning near that he could have

taken; nor had there been any audible sound of the opening and closing of a door. Nevertheless, he concluded

that the man must have had a key in his hand, and must have opened one of the many housedoors and gone

Ruminating on this strange chance and strange glimpse, he turned into the courtyard. As he looked, by mere

habit, towards the feebly lighted windows of his mother's room, his eyes encountered the figure he had just

lost, standing against the iron railings of the little waste enclosure looking up at those windows and laughing

to himself. Some of the many vagrant cats who were always prowling about there by night, and who had

taken fright at him, appeared to have stopped when he had stopped, and were looking at him with eyes by no

means unlike his own from tops of walls and porches, and other safe points of pause. He had only halted for a

moment to entertain himself thus; he immediately went forward, throwing the end of his cloak off his

shoulder as he went, ascended the unevenly sunken steps, and knocked a sounding knock at the door.

Clennam's surprise was not so absorbing but that he took his resolution without any incertitude. He went up

to the door too, and ascended the steps too. His friend looked at him with a braggart air, and sang to himself.

'Who passes by this road so late? Compagnon de la Majolaine; Who passes by this road so late? Always gay!'

'I am, sir. Death of my life, sir,' returned the stranger, 'it's my character to be impatient!' The sound of

Mistress Affery cautiously chaining the door before she opened it, caused them both to look that way. Affery

opened it a very little, with a flaring candle in her hands and asked who was that, at that time of night, with

that knock! 'Why, Arthur!' she added with astonishment, seeing him first. 'Not you sure? Ah, Lord save us!

'It's true! Him again, dear Mrs Flintwinch,' cried the stranger. 'Open the door, and let me take my dear friend

Jeremiah to my arms! Open the door, and let me hasten myself to embrace my Flintwinch!'

'Fetch him!' cried the stranger. 'Fetch my Flintwinch! Tell him that it is his old Blandois, who comes from

arriving in England; tell him that it is his little boy who is here, his cabbage, his wellbeloved! Open the

door, beautiful Mrs Flintwinch, and in the meantime let me to pass upstairs, to present my compliments

To Arthur's increased surprise, Mistress Affery, stretching her eyes wide at himself, as if in warning that this

was not a gentleman for him to interfere with, drew back the chain, and opened the door. The stranger,

'Despatch then! Achieve then! Bring my Flintwinch! Announce me to my lady!' cried the stranger, clanking

'Pray tell me, Affery,' said Arthur aloud and sternly, as he surveyed him from head to foot with indignation;

'Pray tell me, Affery,' the stranger repeated in his turn, 'who ha, ha, ha!who is this gentleman?'

The voice of Mrs Clennam opportunely called from her chamber above, 'Affery, let them both come up.

'Arthur?' exclaimed Blandois, taking off his hat at arm's length, and bringing his heels together from a great

stride in making him a flourishing bow. 'The son of my lady? I am the alldevoted of the son of my lady!'

Arthur looked at him again in no more flattering manner than before, and, turning on his heel without

acknowledgment, went up stairs. The visitor followed him upstairs. Mistress Affery took the key from

A bystander, informed of the previous appearance of Monsieur Blandois in that room, would have observed a

difference in Mrs Clennam's present reception of him. Her face was not one to betray it; and her suppressed

manner, and her set voice, were equally under her control. It wholly consisted in her never taking her eyes off

his face from the moment of his entrance, and in her twice or thrice, when he was becoming noisy, swaying

herself a very little forward in the chair in which she sat upright, with her hands immovable upon its elbows;

as if she gave him the assurance that he should be presently heard at any length he would. Arthur did not fail

to observe this; though the difference between the present occasion and the former was not within his power

'Madame,' said Blandois, 'do me the honour to present me to Monsieur, your son. It appears to me, madame,

'Sir,' said Arthur, striking in expeditiously, 'whoever you are, and however you come to be here, if I were the

'But you are not,' said his mother, without looking at him. 'Unfortunately for the gratification of your

'I make no claim to be, mother. If I object to this person's manner of conducting himself here, and object to it

so much, that if I had any authority here I certainly would not suffer him to remain a minute, I object on your

'In the case of objection being necessary,' she returned, 'I could object for myself. And of course I should.'

The subject of their dispute, who had seated himself, laughed aloud, and rapped his legs with his hand.

'You have no right,' said Mrs Clennam, always intent on Blandois, however directly she addressed her son, 'to

speak to the prejudice of any gentleman (least of all a gentleman from another country), because he does not

conform to your standard, or square his behaviour by your rules. It is possible that the gentleman may, on

'The gentleman,' pursued Mrs Clennam, 'on a former occasion brought a letter of recommendation to us from

highly esteemed and responsible correspondents. I am perfectly unacquainted with the gentleman's object in

coming here at present. I am entirely ignorant of it, and cannot be supposed likely to be able to form the

remotest guess at its nature;' her habitual frown became stronger, as she very slowly and weightily

emphasised those words; 'but, when the gentleman proceeds to explain his object, as I shall beg him to have

the goodness to do to myself and Flintwinch, when Flintwinch returns, it will prove, no doubt, to be one more

or less in the usual way of our business, which it will be both our business and our pleasure to advance. It can

'We shall see,' she assented. 'The gentleman is acquainted with Flintwinch; and when the gentleman was in

London last, I remember to have heard that he and Flintwinch had some entertainment or goodfellowship

together. I am not in the way of knowing much that passes outside this room, and the jingle of little worldly

'Right, madame. It is true.' He laughed again, and whistled the burden of the tune he had sung at the door.

'Therefore, Arthur,' said his mother, 'the gentleman comes here as an acquaintance, and no stranger; and it is

much to be regretted that your unreasonable temper should have found offence in him. I regret it. I say so to

the gentleman. You will not say so, I know; therefore I say it for myself and Flintwinch, since with us two the

The key of the door below was now heard in the lock, and the door was heard to open and close. In due

sequence Mr Flintwinch appeared; on whose entrance the visitor rose from his chair, laughing loud, and

'How goes it, my cherished friend!' said he. 'How goes the world, my Flintwinch? Rosecoloured? So much

the better, so much the better! Ah, but you look charming! Ah, but you look young and fresh as the flowers of

While heaping these compliments on Mr Flintwinch, he rolled him about with a hand on each of his

shoulders, until the staggerings of that gentleman, who under the circumstances was dryer and more twisted

'I had a presentiment, last time, that we should be better and more intimately acquainted. Is it coming on you,

'Why, no, sir,' retorted Mr Flintwinch. 'Not unusually. Hadn't you better be seated? You have been calling for

'Ah, Little joker! Little pig!' cried the visitor. 'Ha ha ha ha!' And throwing Mr Flintwinch away, as a closing

The amazement, suspicion, resentment, and shame, with which Arthur looked on at all this, struck him dumb.

Mr Flintwinch, who had spun backward some two or three yards under the impetus last given to him, brought

himself up with a face completely unchanged in its stolidity except as it was affected by shortness of breath,

and looked hard at Arthur. Not a whit less reticent and wooden was Mr Flintwinch outwardly, than in the

usual course of things: the only perceptible difference in him being that the knot of cravat which was

generally under his ear, had worked round to the back of his head: where it formed an ornamental appendage

not unlike a bagwig, and gave him something of a courtly appearance. 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

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

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

'I leave youryour business acquaintance in my mother's room, Mr Flintwinch,' said Clennam, 'with a great

'I had a friend once, my good comrade Flintwinch,' said Blandois, standing astride before the fire, and so

evidently saying it to arrest Clennam's retreating steps, that he lingered near the door; 'I had a friend once,

who had heard so much of the dark side of this city and its ways, that he wouldn't have confided himself

alone by night with two people who had an interest in getting him under the groundmy faith! not even in a

respectable house like thisunless he was bodily too strong for them. Bah! What a poltroon, my Flintwinch!

'Agreed! A cur. But he wouldn't have done it, my Flintwinch, unless he had known them to have the will to

silence him, without the power. He wouldn't have drunk from a glass of water under such

circumstancesnot even in a respectable house like this, my Flintwinchunless he had seen one of them

Disdaining to speak, and indeed not very well able, for he was halfchoking, Clennam only glanced at the

The visitor saluted him with another parting snap, and his nose came down over his moustache and his

'For Heaven's sake, Affery,' whispered Clennam, as she opened the door for him in the dark hall, and he

Her own appearance was sufficiently ghastly, standing in the dark with her apron thrown over her head, and

'Don't ask me anything, Arthur. I've been in a dream for ever so long. Go away!'

He went out, and she shut the door upon him. He looked up at the windows of his mother's room, and the dim

light, deadened by the yellow blinds, seemed to say a response after Affery, and to mutter, 'Don't ask me

As I said in my last that it was best for nobody to write to me, and as my sending you another little letter can

therefore give you no other trouble than the trouble of reading it (perhaps you may not find leisure for even

that, though I hope you will some day), I am now going to devote an hour to writing to you again. This time,

We left Venice before Mr and Mrs Gowan did, but they were not so long upon the road as we were, and did

not travel by the same way, and so when we arrived we found them in a lodging here, in a place called the

Now I am going to tell you all I can about them, because I know that is what you most want to hear. Theirs is

not a very comfortable lodging, but perhaps I thought it less so when I first saw it than you would have done,

because you have been in many different countries and have seen many different customs. Of course it is a

far, far better placemillions of timesthan any I have ever been used to until lately; and I fancy I don't

look at it with my own eyes, but with hers. For it would be easy to see that she has always been brought up in

Well, it is a rather bare lodging up a rather dark common staircase, and it is nearly all a large dull room,

where Mr Gowan paints. The windows are blocked up where any one could look out, and the walls have been

all drawn over with chalk and charcoal by others who have lived there beforeoh,I should think, for

There is a curtain more dustcoloured than red, which divides it, and the part behind the curtain makes the

When I first saw her there she was alone, and her work had fallen out of her hand, and she was looking up at

the sky shining through the tops of the windows. Pray do not be uneasy when I tell you, but it was not quite

so airy, nor so bright, nor so cheerful, nor so happy and youthful altogether as I should have liked it to be.

On account of Mr Gowan's painting Papa's picture (which I am not quite convinced I should have known

from the likeness if I had not seen him doing it), I have had more opportunities of being with her since then

than I might have had without this fortunate chance. She is very much alone. Very much alone indeed.

Shall I tell you about the second time I saw her? I went one day, when it happened that I could run round by

myself, at four or five o'clock in the afternoon. She was then dining alone, and her solitary dinner had been

brought in from somewhere, over a kind of brazier with a fire in it, and she had no company or prospect of

company, that I could see, but the old man who had brought it. He was telling her a long story (of robbers

outside the walls being taken up by a stone statue of a Saint), to entertain heras he said to me when I came

I ought now to mention Mr Gowan, before I say what little more I have to say about her. He must admire her

beauty, and he must be proud of her, for everybody praises it, and he must be fond of her, and I do not doubt

that he isbut in his way. You know his way, and if it appears as careless and discontented in your eyes as it

does in mine, I am not wrong in thinking that it might be better suited to her. If it does not seem so to you, I

am quite sure I am wholly mistaken; for your unchanged poor child confides in your knowledge and

goodness more than she could ever tell you if she was to try. But don't be frightened, I am not going to try.

Owing (as I think, if you think so too) to Mr Gowan's unsettled and dissatisfied way, he applies himself to his

He does nothing steadily or patiently; but equally takes things up and throws them down, and does them, or

leaves them undone, without caring about them. When I have heard him talking to Papa during the sittings for

the picture, I have sat wondering whether it could be that he has no belief in anybody else, because he has no

belief in himself. Is it so? I wonder what you will say when you come to this! I know how you will look, and

Mr Gowan goes out a good deal among what is considered the best company herethough he does not look

as if he enjoyed it or liked it when he is with itand she sometimes accompanies him, but lately she has

gone out very little. I think I have noticed that they have an inconsistent way of speaking about her, as if she

had made some great selfinterested success in marrying Mr Gowan, though, at the same time, the very same

people, would not have dreamed of taking him for themselves or their daughters. Then he goes into the

country besides, to think about making sketches; and in all places where there are visitors, he has a large

acquaintance and is very well known. Besides all this, he has a friend who is much in his society both at

home and away from home, though he treats this friend very coolly and is very uncertain in his behaviour to

him. I am quite sure (because she has told me so), that she does not like this friend. He is so revolting to me,

too, that his being away from here, at present, is quite a relief to my mind. How much more to hers!

But what I particularly want you to know, and why I have resolved to tell you so much while I am afraid it

may make you a little uncomfortable without occasion, is this. She is so true and so devoted, and knows so

completely that all her love and duty are his for ever, that you may be certain she will love him, admire him,

praise him, and conceal all his faults, until she dies. I believe she conceals them, and always will conceal

She has given him a heart that can never be taken back; and however much he may try it, he will never wear

out its affection. You know the truth of this, as you know everything, far far better than I; but I cannot help

telling you what a nature she shows, and that you can never think too well of her.

I have not yet called her by her name in this letter, but we are such friends now that I do so when we are

quietly together, and she speaks to me by my nameI mean, not my Christian name, but the name you gave

me. When she began to call me Amy, I told her my short story, and that you had always called me Little

Dorrit. I told her that the name was much dearer to me than any other, and so she calls me Little Dorrit too.

Perhaps you have not heard from her father or mother yet, and may not know that she has a baby son. He was

born only two days ago, and just a week after they came. It has made them very happy. However, I must tell

you, as I am to tell you all, that I fancy they are under a constraint with Mr Gowan, and that they feel as if his

mocking way with them was sometimes a slight given to their love for her. It was but yesterday, when I was

there, that I saw Mr Meagles change colour, and get up and go out, as if he was afraid that he might say so,

unless he prevented himself by that means. Yet I am sure they are both so considerate, goodhumoured, and

reasonable, that he might spare them. It is hard in him not to think of them a little more.

I stopped at the last full stop to read all this over. It looked at first as if I was taking on myself to understand

and explain so much, that I was half inclined not to send it. But when I thought it over a little, I felt more

hopeful for your knowing at once that I had only been watchful for you, and had only noticed what I think I

have noticed, because I was quickened by your interest in it. Indeed, you may be sure that is the truth.

And now I have done with the subject in the present letter, and have little left to say.

We are all quite well, and Fanny improves every day. You can hardly think how kind she is to me, and what

pains she takes with me. She has a lover, who has followed her, first all the way from Switzerland, and then

all the way from Venice, and who has just confided to me that he means to follow her everywhere. I was

much confused by his speaking to me about it, but he would. I did not know what to say, but at last I told him

that I thought he had better not. For Fanny (but I did not tell him this) is much too spirited and clever to suit

If you should ever get so far as this in this long letter, you will perhaps say, Surely Little Dorrit will not leave

off without telling me something about her travels, and surely it is time she did. I think it is indeed, but I don't

know what to tell you. Since we left Venice we have been in a great many wonderful places, Genoa and

Florence among them, and have seen so many wonderful sights, that I am almost giddy when I think what a

But you can tell me so much more about them than I can tell you, that why should I tire you with my

Dear Mr Clennam, as I had the courage to tell you what the familiar difficulties in my travelling mind were

before, I will not be a coward now. One of my frequent thoughts is this: Old as these cities are, their age

itself is hardly so curious, to my reflections, as that they should have been in their places all through those

days when I did not even know of the existence of more than two or three of them, and when I scarcely knew

of anything outside our old walls. There is something melancholy in it, and I don't know why. When we went

to see the famous leaning tower at Pisa, it was a bright sunny day, and it and the buildings near it looked so

old, and the earth and the sky looked so young, and its shadow on the ground was so soft and retired! I could

not at first think how beautiful it was, or how curious, but I thought, 'O how many times when the shadow of

the wall was falling on our room, and when that weary tread of feet was going up and down the yardO how

many times this place was just as quiet and lovely as it is today!' It quite overpowered me. My heart was so

full that tears burst out of my eyes, though I did what I could to restrain them. And I have the same feeling

Do you know that since the change in our fortunes, though I appear to myself to have dreamed more than

before, I have always dreamed of myself as very young indeed! I am not very old, you may say. No, but that

is not what I mean. I have always dreamed of myself as a child learning to do needlework. I have often

dreamed of myself as back there, seeing faces in the yard little known, and which I should have thought I had

quite forgotten; but, as often as not, I have been abroad herein Switzerland, or France, or Italy

somewhere where we have beenyet always as that little child. I have dreamed of going down to Mrs

General, with the patches on my clothes in which I can first remember myself. I have over and over again

dreamed of taking my place at dinner at Venice when we have had a large company, in the mourning for my

poor mother which I wore when I was eight years old, and wore long after it was threadbare and would mend

no more. It has been a great distress to me to think how irreconcilable the company would consider it with my

father's wealth, and how I should displease and disgrace him and Fanny and Edward by so plainly disclosing

what they wished to keep secret. But I have not grown out of the little child in thinking of it; and at the

selfsame moment I have dreamed that I have sat with the heartache at table, calculating the expenses of the

dinner, and quite distracting myself with thinking how they were ever to be made good. I have never dreamed

of the change in our fortunes itself; I have never dreamed of your coming back with me that memorable

Dear Mr Clennam, it is possible that I have thought of youand othersso much by day, that I have no

thoughts left to wander round you by night. For I must now confess to you that I suffer from

homesicknessthat I long so ardently and earnestly for home, as sometimes, when no one sees me, to pine

for it. I cannot bear to turn my face further away from it. My heart is a little lightened when we turn towards

it, even for a few miles, and with the knowledge that we are soon to turn away again. So dearly do I love the

Heaven knows when your poor child will see England again. We are all fond of the life here (except me), and

there are no plans for our return. My dear father talks of a visit to London late in this next spring, on some

affairs connected with the property, but I have no hope that he will bring me with him.

I have tried to get on a little better under Mrs General's instruction, and I hope I am not quite so dull as I used

to be. I have begun to speak and understand, almost easily, the hard languages I told you about. I did not

remember, at the moment when I wrote last, that you knew them both; but I remembered it afterwards, and it

helped me on. God bless you, dear Mr Clennam. Do not forget your ever grateful and affectionate LITTLE

P.S.Particularly remember that Minnie Gowan deserves the best remembrance in which you can hold her.

You cannot think too generously or too highly of her. I forgot Mr Pancks last time. Please, if you should see

The famous name of Merdle became, every day, more famous in the land. Nobody knew that the Merdle of

such high renown had ever done any good to any one, alive or dead, or to any earthly thing; nobody knew

that he had any capacity or utterance of any sort in him, which had ever thrown, for any creature, the feeblest

farthingcandle ray of light on any path of duty or diversion, pain or pleasure, toil or rest, fact or fancy,

among the multiplicity of paths in the labyrinth trodden by the sons of Adam; nobody had the smallest reason

for supposing the clay of which this object of worship was made, to be other than the commonest clay, with

as clogged a wick smouldering inside of it as ever kept an image of humanity from tumbling to pieces. All

people knew (or thought they knew) that he had made himself immensely rich; and, for that reason alone,

prostrated themselves before him, more degradedly and less excusably than the darkest savage creeps out of

his hole in the ground to propitiate, in some log or reptile, the Deity of his benighted soul.

Nay, the high priests of this worship had the man before them as a protest against their meanness. The

multitude worshipped on trustthough always distinctly knowing whybut the officiators at the altar had

the man habitually in their view. They sat at his feasts, and he sat at theirs. There was a spectre always

attendant on him, saying to these high priests, 'Are such the signs you trust, and love to honour; this head,

these eyes, this mode of speech, the tone and manner of this man? You are the levers of the Circumlocution

Office, and the rulers of men. When halfadozen of you fall out by the ears, it seems that mother earth can

give birth to no other rulers. Does your qualification lie in the superior knowledge of men which accepts,

courts, and puffs this man? Or, if you are competent to judge aright the signs I never fail to show you when

he appears among you, is your superior honesty your qualification?' Two rather ugly questions these, always

going about town with Mr Merdle; and there was a tacit agreement that they must be stifled. In Mrs Merdle's

absence abroad, Mr Merdle still kept the great house open for the passage through it of a stream Of visitors.

A few of these took affable possession of the establishment. Three or four ladies of distinction and liveliness

used to say to one another, 'Let us dine at our dear Merdle's next Thursday. Whom shall we have?' Our dear

Merdle would then receive his instructions; and would sit heavily among the company at table and wander

lumpishly about his drawingrooms afterwards, only remarkable for appearing to have nothing to do with the

The Chief Butler, the Avenging Spirit of this great man's life, relaxed nothing of his severity. He looked on at

these dinners when the bosom was not there, as he looked on at other dinners when the bosom was there; and

his eye was a basilisk to Mr Merdle. He was a hard man, and would never bate an ounce of plate or a bottle of

wine. He would not allow a dinner to be given, unless it was up to his mark. He set forth the table for his own

dignity. If the guests chose to partake of what was served, he saw no objection; but it was served for the

maintenance of his rank. As he stood by the sideboard he seemed to announce, 'I have accepted office to look

at this which is now before me, and to look at nothing less than this.' If he missed the presiding bosom, it was

as a part of his own state of which he was, from unavoidable circumstances, temporarily deprived. just as he

might have missed a centrepiece, or a choice winecooler, which had been sent to the Banker's.

Mr Merdle issued invitations for a Barnacle dinner. Lord Decimus was to be there, Mr Tite Barnacle was to

be there, the pleasant young Barnacle was to be there; and the Chorus of Parliamentary Barnacles who went

about the provinces when the House was up, warbling the praises of their Chief, were to be represented there.

It was understood to be a great occasion. Mr Merdle was going to take up the Barnacles. Some delicate little

negotiations had occurred between him and the noble Decimusthe young Barnacle of engaging manners

acting as negotiatorand Mr Merdle had decided to cast the weight of his great probity and great riches into

the Barnacle scale. jobbery was suspected by the malicious; perhaps because it was indisputable that if the

adherence of the immortal Enemy of Mankind could have been secured by a job, the Barnacles would have

Mrs Merdle had written to this magnificent spouse of hers, whom it was heresy to regard as anything less

than all the British Merchants since the days of Whittington rolled into one, and gilded three feet deep all

overhad written to this spouse of hers, several letters from Rome, in quick succession, urging upon him

with importunity that now or never was the time to provide for Edmund Sparkler. Mrs Merdle had shown him

that the case of Edmund was urgent, and that infinite advantages might result from his having some good

thing directly. In the grammar of Mrs Merdle's verbs on this momentous subject, there was only one mood,

the Imperative; and that Mood had only one Tense, the Present. Mrs Merdle's verbs were so pressingly

presented to Mr Merdle to conjugate, that his sluggish blood and his long coatcuffs became quite agitated.

In which state of agitation, Mr Merdle, evasively rolling his eyes round the Chief Butler's shoes without

raising them to the index of that stupendous creature's thoughts, had signified to him his intention of giving a

special dinner: not a very large dinner, but a very special dinner. The Chief Butler had signified, in return,

that he had no objection to look on at the most expensive thing in that way that could be done; and the day of

Mr Merdle stood in one of his drawingrooms, with his back to the fire, waiting for the arrival of his

important guests. He seldom or never took the liberty of standing with his back to the fire unless he was quite

alone. In the presence of the Chief Butler, he could not have done such a deed. He would have clasped

himself by the wrists in that constabulary manner of his, and have paced up and down the hearthrug, or gone

creeping about among the rich objects of furniture, if his oppressive retainer had appeared in the room at that

very moment. The sly shadows which seemed to dart out of hiding when the fire rose, and to dart back into it

They were even more than sufficient, if his uncomfortable glances at them might be taken to mean anything.

Mr Merdle's right hand was filled with the evening paper, and the evening paper was full of Mr Merdle. His

wonderful enterprise, his wonderful wealth, his wonderful Bank, were the fattening food of the evening paper

that night. The wonderful Bank, of which he was the chief projector, establisher, and manager, was the latest

of the many Merdle wonders. So modest was Mr Merdle withal, in the midst of these splendid achievements,

that he looked far more like a man in possession of his house under a distraint, than a commercial Colossus

Behold the vessels coming into port! The engaging young Barnacle was the first arrival; but Bar overtook

him on the staircase. Bar, strengthened as usual with his double eyeglass and his little jury droop, was

overjoyed to see the engaging young Barnacle; and opined that we were going to sit in Banco, as we lawyers

'Indeed,' said the sprightly young Barnacle, whose name was Ferdinand; 'how so?'

'Nay,' smiled Bar. 'If you don't know, how can I know? You are in the innermost sanctuary of the temple; I

Bar could be light in hand, or heavy in hand, according to the customer he had to deal with. With Ferdinand

Barnacle he was gossamer. Bar was likewise always modest and selfdepreciatoryin his way. Bar was a

man of great variety; but one leading thread ran through the woof of all his patterns. Every man with whom

he had to do was in his eyes a juryman; and he must get that juryman over, if he could.

'Our illustrious host and friend,' said Bar; 'our shining mercantile star;going into politics?'

'Going? He has been in Parliament some time, you know,' returned the engaging young Barnacle.

'True,' said Bar, with his lightcomedy laugh for special jurymen, which was a very different thing from his

lowcomedy laugh for comic tradesmen on common juries: 'he has been in Parliament for some time. Yet

An average witness would have been seduced by the Humph? into an affirmative answer, But Ferdinand

Barnacle looked knowingly at Bar as he strolled upstairs, and gave him no answer at all.

'Just so, just so,' said Bar, nodding his head, for he was not to be put off in that way, 'and therefore I spoke of

our sitting in Banco to take a special argumentmeaning this to be a high and solemn occasion, when, as

Captain Macheath says, "the judges are met: a terrible show!" We lawyers are sufficiently liberal, you see, to

quote the Captain, though the Captain is severe upon us. Nevertheless, I think I could put in evidence an

admission of the Captain's,' said Bar, with a little jocose roll of his head; for, in his legal current of speech, he

always assumed the air of rallying himself with the best grace in the world; 'an admission of the Captain's that

Law, in the gross, is at least intended to be impartial. For what says the Captain, if I quote him correctly

and if not,' with a lightcomedy touch of his double eyeglass on his companion's shoulder, 'my learned

"Since laws were made for every degree, To curb vice in others as well as in me, I wonder we ha'n't better

These words brought them to the drawingroom, where Mr Merdle stood before the fire. So immensely

astounded was Mr Merdle by the entrance of Bar with such a reference in his mouth, that Bar explained

himself to have been quoting Gay. 'Assuredly not one of our Westminster Hall authorities,' said he, 'but still

no despicable one to a man possessing the largelypractical Mr Merdle's knowledge of the world.'

Mr Merdle looked as if he thought he would say something, but subsequently looked as if he thought he

wouldn't. The interval afforded time for Bishop to be announced. Bishop came in with meekness, and yet

with a strong and rapid step as if he wanted to get his sevenleague dressshoes on, and go round the world

to see that everybody was in a satisfactory state. Bishop had no idea that there was anything significant in the

occasion. That was the most remarkable trait in his demeanour. He was crisp, fresh, cheerful, affable, bland;

Bar sidled up to prefer his politest inquiries in reference to the health of Mrs Bishop. Mrs Bishop had been a

little unfortunate in the article of taking cold at a Confirmation, but otherwise was well. Young Mr Bishop

was also well. He was down, with his young wife and little family, at his Cure of Souls. The representatives

of the Barnacle Chorus dropped in next, and Mr Merdle's physician dropped in next. Bar, who had a bit of

one eye and a bit of his double eyeglass for every one who came in at the door, no matter with whom he was

conversing or what he was talking about, got among them all by some skilful means, without being seen to

get at them, and touched each individual gentleman of the jury on his own individual favourite spot. With

some of the Chorus, he laughed about the sleepy member who had gone out into the lobby the other night,

and voted the wrong way: with others, he deplored that innovating spirit in the time which could not even be

prevented from taking an unnatural interest in the public service and the public money: with the physician he

had a word to say about the general health; he had also a little information to ask him for, concerning a

professional man of unquestioned erudition and polished mannersbut those credentials in their highest

development he believed were the possession of other professors of the healing art (jury droop)whom he

had happened to have in the witnessbox the day before yesterday, and from whom he had elicited in

crossexamination that he claimed to be one of the exponents of this new mode of treatment which appeared

to Bar toeh?well, Bar thought so; Bar had thought, and hoped, Physician would tell him so. Without

presuming to decide where doctors disagreed, it did appear to Bar, viewing it as a question of common sense

and not of socalled legal penetration, that this new system wasmight be, in the presence of so great an

authoritysay, Humbug? Ah! Fortified by such encouragement, he could venture to say Humbug; and now

Mr Tite Barnacle, who, like Dr johnson's celebrated acquaintance, had only one idea in his head and that was

a wrong one, had appeared by this time. This eminent gentleman and Mr Merdle, seated diverse ways and

with ruminating aspects on a yellow ottoman in the light of the fire, holding no verbal communication with

each other, bore a strong general resemblance to the two cows in the Cuyp picture over against them.

But now, Lord Decimus arrived. The Chief Butler, who up to this time had limited himself to a branch of his

usual function by looking at the company as they entered (and that, with more of defiance than favour), put

himself so far out of his way as to come upstairs with him and announce him. Lord Decimus being an

overpowering peer, a bashful young member of the Lower House who was the last fish but one caught by the

Barnacles, and who had been invited on this occasion to commemorate his capture, shut his eyes when his

Lord Decimus, nevertheless, was glad to see the Member. He was also glad to see Mr Merdle, glad to see

Bishop, glad to see Bar, glad to see Physician, glad to see Tite Barnacle, glad to see Chorus, glad to see

Ferdinand his private secretary. Lord Decimus, though one of the greatest of the earth, was not remarkable

for ingratiatory manners, and Ferdinand had coached him up to the point of noticing all the fellows he might

find there, and saying he was glad to see them. When he had achieved this rush of vivacity and

condescension, his Lordship composed himself into the picture after Cuyp, and made a third cow in the

Bar, who felt that he had got all the rest of the jury and must now lay hold of the Foreman, soon came sidling

up, double eyeglass in hand. Bar tendered the weather, as a subject neatly aloof from official reserve, for the

Foreman's consideration. Bar said that he was told (as everybody always is told, though who tells them, and

why, will ever remain a mystery), that there was to be no wall fruit this year. Lord Decimus had not heard

anything amiss of his peaches, but rather believed, if his people were correct, he was to have no apples. No

apples? Bar was lost in astonishment and concern. It would have been all one to him, in reality, if there had

not been a pippin on the surface of the earth, but his show of interest in this apple question was positively

painful. Now, to what, Lord Decimusfor we troublesome lawyers loved to gather information, and could

never tell how useful it might prove to us to what, Lord Decimus, was this to be attributed? Lord Decimus

could not undertake to propound any theory about it. This might have stopped another man; but Bar, sticking

Long after Bar got made AttorneyGeneral, this was told of him as a masterstroke. Lord Decimus had a

reminiscence about a peartree formerly growing in a garden near the back of his dame's house at Eton, upon

which peartree the only joke of his life perennially bloomed. It was a joke of a compact and portable nature,

turning on the difference between Eton pears and Parliamentary pairs; but it was a joke, a refined relish of

which would seem to have appeared to Lord Decimus impossible to be had without a thorough and intimate

acquaintance with the tree. Therefore, the story at first had no idea of such a tree, sir, then gradually found it

in winter, carried it through the changing season, saw it bud, saw it blossom, saw it bear fruit, saw the fruit

ripen; in short, cultivated the tree in that diligent and minute manner before it got out of the bedroom

window to steal the fruit, that many thanks had been offered up by belated listeners for the trees having been

planted and grafted prior to Lord Decimus's time. Bar's interest in apples was so overtopped by the wrapt

suspense in which he pursued the changes of these pears, from the moment when Lord Decimus solemnly

opened with 'Your mentioning pears recalls to my remembrance a peartree,' down to the rich conclusion,

'And so we pass, through the various changes of life, from Eton pears to Parliamentary pairs,' that he had to

go downstairs with Lord Decimus, and even then to be seated next to him at table in order that he might

hear the anecdote out. By that time, Bar felt that he had secured the Foreman, and might go to dinner with a

It was a dinner to provoke an appetite, though he had not had one. The rarest dishes, sumptuously cooked and

sumptuously served; the choicest fruits; the most exquisite wines; marvels of workmanship in gold and silver,

china and glass; innumerable things delicious to the senses of taste, smell, and sight, were insinuated into its

composition. O, what a wonderful man this Merdle, what a great man, what a master man, how blessedly and

He took his usual poor eighteenpennyworth of food in his usual indigestive way, and had as little to say for

himself as ever a wonderful man had. Fortunately Lord Decimus was one of those sublimities who have no

occasion to be talked to, for they can be at any time sufficiently occupied with the contemplation of their own

greatness. This enabled the bashful young Member to keep his eyes open long enough at a time to see his

The agreeable young Barnacle, and Bar, were the talkers of the party. Bishop would have been exceedingly

agreeable also, but that his innocence stood in his way. He was so soon left behind. When there was any little

hint of anything being in the wind, he got lost directly. Worldly affairs were too much for him; he couldn't

This was observable when Bar said, incidentally, that he was happy to have heard that we were soon to have

the advantage of enlisting on the good side, the sound and plain sagacitynot demonstrative or ostentatious,

Ferdinand Barnacle laughed, and said oh yes, he believed so. A vote was a vote, and always acceptable.

'He is away with Mrs Merdle,' returned that gentleman, slowly coming out of a long abstraction, in the course

of which he had been fitting a tablespoon up his sleeve. 'It is not indispensable for him to be on the spot.'

'The magic name of Merdle,' said Bar, with the jury droop, 'no doubt will suffice for all.'

'WhyyesI believe so,' assented Mr Merdle, putting the spoon aside, and clumsily hiding each of his

hands in the coatcuff of the other hand. 'I believe the people in my interest down there will not make any

'And the people of those other two places, now,' pursued Bar, with a bright twinkle in his keen eye, as it

slightly turned in the direction of his magnificent neighbour; 'we lawyers are always curious, always

inquisitive, always picking up odds and ends for our patchwork minds, since there is no knowing when and

where they may fit into some corner;the people of those other two places now? Do they yield so laudably

to the vast and cumulative influence of such enterprise and such renown; do those little rills become absorbed

so quietly and easily, and, as it were by the influence of natural laws, so beautifully, in the swoop of the

majestic stream as it flows upon its wondrous way enriching the surrounding lands; that their course is

Mr Merdle, a little troubled by Bar's eloquence, looked fitfully about the nearest saltcellar for some

'They are perfectly aware, sir, of their duty to Society. They will return anybody I send to them for that

The three places in question were three little rotten holes in this Island, containing three little ignorant,

drunken, guzzling, dirty, outoftheway constituencies, that had reeled into Mr Merdle's pocket. Ferdinand

Barnacle laughed in his easy way, and airily said they were a nice set of fellows. Bishop, mentally

perambulating among paths of peace, was altogether swallowed up in absence of mind.

'Pray,' asked Lord Decimus, casting his eyes around the table, 'what is this story I have heard of a gentleman

long confined in a debtors' prison proving to be of a wealthy family, and having come into the inheritance of

a large sum of money? I have met with a variety of allusions to it. Do you know anything of it, Ferdinand?'

'I only know this much,' said Ferdinand, 'that he has given the Department with which I have the honour to be

associated;' this sparkling young Barnacle threw off the phrase sportively, as who should say, We know all

about these forms of speech, but we must keep it up, we must keep the game alive; 'no end of trouble, and has

'Fixes?' repeated Lord Decimus, with a majestic pausing and pondering on the word that made the bashful

'A very perplexing business indeed,' observed Mr Tite Barnacle, with an air of grave resentment.

'What,' said Lord Decimus, 'was the character of his business; what was the nature of theseaFixes,

'Oh, it's a good story, as a story,' returned that gentleman; 'as good a thing of its kind as need be. This Mr

Dorrit (his name is Dorrit) had incurred a responsibility to us, ages before the fairy came out of the Bank and

gave him his fortune, under a bond he had signed for the performance of a contract which was not at all

performed. He was a partner in a house in some large wayspirits, or buttons, or wine, or blacking, or

oatmeal, or woollen, or pork, or hooks and eyes, or iron, or treacle, or shoes, or something or other that was

wanted for troops, or seamen, or somebodyand the house burst, and we being among the creditors,

detainees were lodged on the part of the Crown in a scientific manner, and all the rest Of it. When the fairy

had appeared and he wanted to pay us off, Egad we had got into such an exemplary state of checking and

counterchecking, signing and countersigning, that it was six months before we knew how to take the

money, or how to give a receipt for it. It was a triumph of public business,' said this handsome young

Barnacle, laughing heartily, 'You never saw such a lot of forms in your life. "Why," the attorney said to me

one day, "if I wanted this office to give me two or three thousand pounds instead of take it, I couldn't have

more trouble about it." "You are right, old fellow," I told him, "and in future you'll know that we have

something to do here."' The pleasant young Barnacle finished by once more laughing heartily. He was a very

Mr Tite Barnacle's view of the business was of a less airy character. He took it ill that Mr Dorrit had troubled

the Department by wanting to pay the money, and considered it a grossly informal thing to do after so many

years. But Mr Tite Barnacle was a buttonedup man, and consequently a weighty one. All buttonedup men

are weighty. All buttonedup men are believed in. Whether or no the reserved and neverexercised power of

unbuttoning, fascinates mankind; whether or no wisdom is supposed to condense and augment when buttoned

up, and to evaporate when unbuttoned; it is certain that the man to whom importance is accorded is the

buttonedup man. Mr Tite Barnacle never would have passed for half his current value, unless his coat had

'Mrs Merdle is. Mr Sparkler is, too. In fact,' said Mr Merdle, 'I rather believe that one of the young ladies has

made an impression on Edmund Sparkler. He is susceptible, andIthinkthe conquest' Here Mr

Merdle stopped, and looked at the tablecloth, as he usually did when he found himself observed or listened

Bar was uncommonly pleased to find that the Merdle family, and this family, had already been brought into

contact. He submitted, in a low voice across the table to Bishop, that it was a kind of analogical illustration of

those physical laws, in virtue of which Like flies to Like. He regarded this power of attraction in wealth to

draw wealth to it, as something remarkably interesting and curioussomething indefinably allied to the

loadstone and gravitation. Bishop, who had ambled back to earth again when the present theme was

broached, acquiesced. He said it was indeed highly important to Society that one in the trying situation of

unexpectedly finding himself invested with a power for good or for evil in Society, should become, as it

were, merged in the superior power of a more legitimate and more gigantic growth, the influence of which (as

in the case of our friend at whose board we sat) was habitually exercised in harmony with the best interests of

Thus, instead of two rival and contending flames, a larger and a lesser, each burning with a lurid and

uncertain glare, we had a blended and a softened light whose genial ray diffused an equable warmth

throughout the land. Bishop seemed to like his own way of putting the case very much, and rather dwelt upon

it; Bar, meanwhile (not to throw away a juryman), making a show of sitting at his feet and feeding on his

The dinner and dessert being three hours long, the bashful Member cooled in the shadow of Lord Decimus

faster than he warmed with food and drink, and had but a chilly time of it. Lord Decimus, like a tall tower in

a flat country, seemed to project himself across the tablecloth, hide the light from the honourable Member,

cool the honourable Member's marrow, and give him a woeful idea of distance. When he asked this

unfortunate traveller to take wine, he encompassed his faltering steps with the gloomiest of shades; and when

At length Lord Decimus, with a coffeecup in his hand, began to hover about among the pictures, and to

cause an interesting speculation to arise in all minds as to the probabilities of his ceasing to hover, and

enabling the smaller birds to flutter up stairs; which could not be done until he had urged his noble pinions

in that direction. After some delay, and several stretches of his wings which came to nothing, he soared to the

And here a difficulty arose, which always does arise when two people are specially brought together at a

dinner to confer with one another. Everybody (except Bishop, who had no suspicion of it) knew perfectly

well that this dinner had been eaten and drunk, specifically to the end that Lord Decimus and Mr Merdle

should have five minutes' conversation together. The opportunity so elaborately prepared was now arrived,

and it seemed from that moment that no mere human ingenuity could so much as get the two chieftains into

the same room. Mr Merdle and his noble guest persisted in prowling about at opposite ends of the

perspective. It was in vain for the engaging Ferdinand to bring Lord Decimus to look at the bronze horses

near Mr Merdle. Then Mr Merdle evaded, and wandered away. It was in vain for him to bring Mr Merdle to

Lord Decimus to tell him the history of the unique Dresden vases. Then Lord Decimus evaded and wandered

'Did you ever see such a thing as this?' said Ferdinand to Bar when he had been baffled twenty times.

'Unless I butt one of them into an appointed corner, and you butt the other,' said Ferdinand,'it will not come

Ferdinand laughed, in the midst of his vexation. 'Confound them both!' said he, looking at his watch. 'I want

to get away. Why the deuce can't they come together! They both know what they want and mean to do. Look

They were still looming at opposite ends of the perspective, each with an absurd pretence of not having the

other on his mind, which could not have been more transparently ridiculous though his real mind had been

chalked on his back. Bishop, who had just now made a third with Bar and Ferdinand, but whose innocence

had again cut him out of the subject and washed him in sweet oil, was seen to approach Lord Decimus and

'I must get Merdle's doctor to catch and secure him, I suppose,' said Ferdinand; 'and then I must lay hold of

my illustrious kinsman, and decoy him if I candrag him if I can'tto the conference.'

'Since you do me the honour,' said Bar, with his slyest smile, to ask for my poor aid, it shall be yours with the

greatest pleasure. I don't think this is to be done by one man. But if you will undertake to pen my lord into

that furthest drawingroom where he is now so profoundly engaged, I will undertake to bring our dear

Bar was a sight wondrous to behold, and full of matter, when, jauntily waving his double eyeglass by its

ribbon, and jauntily drooping to an Universe of jurymen, he, in the most accidental manner ever seen, found

himself at Mr Merdle's shoulder, and embraced that opportunity of mentioning a little point to him, on which

he particularly wished to be guided by the light of his practical knowledge. (Here he took Mr Merdle's arm

and walked him gently away.) A banker, whom we would call A. B., advanced a considerable sum of money,

which we would call fifteen thousand pounds, to a client or customer of his, whom he would call P. q. (Here,

as they were getting towards Lord Decimus, he held Mr Merdle tight.) As a security for the repayment of this

advance to P. Q. whom we would call a widow lady, there were placed in A. B.'s hands the titledeeds of a

freehold estate, which we would call Blinkiter Doddles. Now, the point was this. A limited right of felling

and lopping in the woods of Blinkiter Doddles, lay in the son of P. Q. then past his majority, and whom we

would call X. Y.but really this was too bad! In the presence of Lord Decimus, to detain the host with

chopping our dry chaff of law, was really too bad! Another time! Bar was truly repentant, and would not say

another syllable. Would Bishop favour him with halfadozen words? (He had now set Mr Merdle down on

And now the rest of the company, highly excited and interested, always excepting Bishop, who had not the

slightest idea that anything was going on, formed in one group round the fire in the next drawingroom, and

pretended to be chatting easily on the infinite variety of small topics, while everybody's thoughts and eyes

were secretly straying towards the secluded pair. The Chorus were excessively nervous, perhaps as labouring

under the dreadful apprehension that some good thing was going to be diverted from them! Bishop alone

talked steadily and evenly. He conversed with the great Physician on that relaxation of the throat with which

young curates were too frequently afflicted, and on the means of lessening the great prevalence of that

disorder in the church. Physician, as a general rule, was of opinion that the best way to avoid it was to know

how to read, before you made a profession of reading. Bishop said dubiously, did he really think so? And

Ferdinand, meanwhile, was the only one of the party who skirmished on the outside of the circle; he kept

about midway between it and the two, as if some sort of surgical operation were being performed by Lord

Decimus on Mr Merdle, or by Mr Merdle on Lord Decimus, and his services might at any moment be

required as Dresser. In fact, within a quarter of an hour Lord Decimus called to him 'Ferdinand!' and he went,

and took his place in the conference for some five minutes more. Then a halfsuppressed gasp broke out

among the Chorus; for Lord Decimus rose to take his leave. Again coached up by Ferdinand to the point of

making himself popular, he shook hands in the most brilliant manner with the whole company, and even said

to Bar, 'I hope you were not bored by my pears?' To which Bar retorted, 'Eton, my lord, or Parliamentary?'

neatly showing that he had mastered the joke, and delicately insinuating that he could never forget it while his

All the grave importance that was buttoned up in Mr Tite Barnacle, took itself away next; and Ferdinand took

himself away next, to the opera. Some of the rest lingered a little, marrying golden liqueur glasses to Buhl

tables with sticky rings; on the desperate chance of Mr Merdle's saying something. But Merdle, as usual,

In a day or two it was announced to all the town, that Edmund Sparkler, Esquire, soninlaw of the eminent

Mr Merdle of worldwide renown, was made one of the Lords of the Circumlocution Office; and proclamation

was issued, to all true believers, that this admirable appointment was to be hailed as a graceful and gracious

mark of homage, rendered by the graceful and gracious Decimus, to that commercial interest which must ever

in a great commercial country and all the rest of it, with blast of trumpet. So, bolstered by this mark of

Government homage, the wonderful Bank and all the other wonderful undertakings went on and went up; and

gapers came to Harley Street, Cavendish Square, only to look at the house where the golden wonder lived.

And when they saw the Chief Butler looking out at the halldoor in his moments of condescension, the

gapers said how rich he looked, and wondered how much money he had in the wonderful Bank. But, if they

had known that respectable Nemesis better, they would not have wondered about it, and might have stated the

That it is at least as difficult to stay a moral infection as a physical one; that such a disease will spread with

the malignity and rapidity of the Plague; that the contagion, when it has once made head, will spare no

pursuit or condition, but will lay hold on people in the soundest health, and become developed in the most

unlikely constitutions: is a fact as firmly established by experience as that we human creatures breathe an

atmosphere. A blessing beyond appreciation would be conferred upon mankind, if the tainted, in whose

weakness or wickedness these virulent disorders are bred, could be instantly seized and placed in close

As a vast fire will fill the air to a great distance with its roar, so the sacred flame which the mighty Barnacles

had fanned caused the air to resound more and more with the name of Merdle. It was deposited on every lip,

and carried into every ear. There never was, there never had been, there never again should be, such a man as

Mr Merdle. Nobody, as aforesaid, knew what he had done; but everybody knew him to be the greatest that

Down in Bleeding Heart Yard, where there was not one unappropriated halfpenny, as lively an interest was

taken in this paragon of men as on the Stock Exchange. Mrs Plornish, now established in the small grocery

and general trade in a snug little shop at the crack end of the Yard, at the top of the steps, with her little old

father and Maggy acting as assistants, habitually held forth about him over the counter in conversation with

her customers. Mr Plornish, who had a small share in a small builder's business in the neighbourhood, said,

trowel in hand, on the tops of scaffolds and on the tiles of houses, that people did tell him as Mr Merdle was

the one, mind you, to put us all to rights in respects of that which all on us looked to, and to bring us all safe

home as much as we needed, mind you, fur toe be brought. Mr Baptist, sole lodger of Mr and Mrs Plornish

was reputed in whispers to lay by the savings which were the result of his simple and moderate life, for

investment in one of Mr Merdle's certain enterprises. The female Bleeding Hearts, when they came for

ounces of tea, and hundredweights of talk, gave Mrs Plornish to understand, That how, ma'am, they had heard

from their cousin Mary Anne, which worked in the line, that his lady's dresses would fill three waggons. That

how she was as handsome a lady, ma'am, as lived, no matter wheres, and a busk like marble itself. That how,

according to what they was told, ma'am, it was her son by a former husband as was took into the

Government; and a General he had been, and armies he had marched again and victory crowned, if all you

heard was to be believed. That how it was reported that Mr Merdle's words had been, that if they could have

made it worth his while to take the whole Government he would have took it without a profit, but that take it

he could not and stand a loss. That how it was not to be expected, ma'am, that he should lose by it, his ways

being, as you might say and utter no falsehood, paved with gold; but that how it was much to be regretted that

something handsome hadn't been got up to make it worth his while; for it was such and only such that

knowed the heighth to which the bread and butchers' meat had rose, and it was such and only such that both

So rife and potent was the fever in Bleeding Heart Yard, that Mr Pancks's rentdays caused no interval in the

patients. The disease took the singular form, on those occasions, of causing the infected to find an

'I haven't got it, Mr Pancks,' Defaulter would reply. 'I tell you the truth, sir, when I say I haven't got so much

'This won't do, you know,' Mr Pancks would retort. 'You don't expect it will do; do you?' Defaulter would

'My proprietor isn't going to stand this, you know,' Mr Pancks would proceed. 'He don't send me here for this.

The Defaulter would make answer, 'Ah, Mr Pancks. If I was the rich gentleman whose name is in everybody's

Dialogues on the rentquestion usually took place at the house doors or in the entries, and in the presence of

several deeply interested Bleeding Hearts. They always received a reference of this kind with a low murmur

of response, as if it were convincing; and the Defaulter, however black and discomfited before, always

'If I was Mr Merdle, sir, you wouldn't have cause to complain of me then. No, believe me!' the Defaulter

would proceed with a shake of the head. 'I'd pay up so quick then, Mr Pancks, that you shouldn't have to ask

The response would be heard again here, implying that it was impossible to say anything fairer, and that this

Mr Pancks would be now reduced to saying as he booked the case, 'Well! You'll have the broker in, and be

turned out; that's what'll happen to you. It's no use talking to me about Mr Merdle. You are not Mr Merdle,

The response would take this up quickly; replying with great feeling, 'Only wish you were him, sir.'

'You'd be easier with us if you were Mr Merdle, sir,' the Defaulter would go on with rising spirits, 'and it

would be better for all parties. Better for our sakes, and better for yours, too. You wouldn't have to worry no

one, then, sir. You wouldn't have to worry us, and you wouldn't have to worry yourself. You'd be easier in

your own mind, sir, and you'd leave others easier, too, you would, if you were Mr Merdle.'

Mr Pancks, in whom these impersonal compliments produced an irresistible sheepishness, never rallied after

such a charge. He could only bite his nails and puff away to the next Defaulter. The responsive Bleeding

Hearts would then gather round the Defaulter whom he had just abandoned, and the most extravagant

rumours would circulate among them, to their great comfort, touching the amount of Mr Merdle's ready

From one of the many such defeats of one of many rentdays, Mr Pancks, having finished his day's

collection, repaired with his notebook under his arm to Mrs Plornish's corner. Mr Pancks's object was not

professional, but social. He had had a trying day, and wanted a little brightening. By this time he was on

friendly terms with the Plornish family, having often looked in upon them at similar seasons, and borne his

Mrs Plornish's shopparlour had been decorated under her own eye, and presented, on the side towards the

shop, a little fiction in which Mrs Plornish unspeakably rejoiced. This poetical heightening of the parlour

consisted in the wall being painted to represent the exterior of a thatched cottage; the artist having introduced

(in as effective a manner as he found compatible with their highly disproportionate dimensions) the real door

and window. The modest sunflower and hollyhock were depicted as flourishing with great luxuriance on this

rustic dwelling, while a quantity of dense smoke issuing from the chimney indicated good cheer within, and

also, perhaps, that it had not been lately swept. A faithful dog was represented as flying at the legs of the

friendly visitor, from the threshold; and a circular pigeonhouse, enveloped in a cloud of pigeons, arose from

behind the gardenpaling. On the door (when it was shut), appeared the semblance of a brassplate,

presenting the inscription, Happy Cottage, T. and M. Plornish; the partnership expressing man and wife. No

Poetry and no Art ever charmed the imagination more than the union of the two in this counterfeit cottage

charmed Mrs Plornish. It was nothing to her that Plornish had a habit of leaning against it as he smoked his

pipe after work, when his hat blotted out the pigeonhouse and all the pigeons, when his back swallowed up

the dwelling, when his hands in his pockets uprooted the blooming garden and laid waste the adjacent

country. To Mrs Plornish, it was still a most beautiful cottage, a most wonderful deception; and it made no

difference that Mr Plornish's eye was some inches above the level of the gable bedroom in the thatch. To

come out into the shop after it was shut, and hear her father sing a song inside this cottage, was a perfect

Pastoral to Mrs Plornish, the Golden Age revived. And truly if that famous period had been revived, or had

ever been at all, it may be doubted whether it would have produced many more heartily admiring daughters

Warned of a visitor by the tinkling bell at the shopdoor, Mrs Plornish came out of Happy Cottage to see

who it might be. 'I guessed it was you, Mr Pancks,' said she, 'for it's quite your regular night; ain't it? Here's

father, you see, come out to serve at the sound of the bell, like a brisk young shopman. Ain't he looking well?

Father's more pleased to see you than if you was a customer, for he dearly loves a gossip; and when it turns

upon Miss Dorrit, he loves it all the more. You never heard father in such voice as he is at present,' said Mrs

Plornish, her own voice quavering, she was so proud and pleased. 'He gave us Strephon last night to that

degree that Plornish gets up and makes him this speech across the table. "John Edward Nandy," says Plornish

to father, "I never heard you come the warbles as I have heard you come the warbles this night." An't it

Mr Pancks, who had snorted at the old man in his friendliest manner, replied in the affirmative, and casually

asked whether that lively Altro chap had come in yet? Mrs Plornish answered no, not yet, though he had gone

to the WestEnd with some work, and had said he should be back by teatime. Mr Pancks was then

hospitably pressed into Happy Cottage, where he encountered the elder Master Plornish just come home from

school. Examining that young student, lightly, on the educational proceedings of the day, he found that the

more advanced pupils who were in the large text and the letter M, had been set the copy 'Merdle, Millions.'

'And how are you getting on, Mrs Plornish,' said Pancks, 'since we're mentioning millions?'

'Very steady, indeed, sir,' returned Mrs Plornish. 'Father, dear, would you go into the shop and tidy the

John Edward Nandy trotted away, much gratified, to comply with his daughter's request. Mrs Plornish, who

was always in mortal terror of mentioning pecuniary affairs before the old gentleman, lest any disclosure she

made might rouse his spirit and induce him to run away to the workhouse, was thus left free to be confidential

'It's quite true that the business is very steady indeed,' said Mrs Plornish, lowering her voice; 'and has a

excellent connection. The only thing that stands in its way, sir, is the Credit.'

This drawback, rather severely felt by most people who engaged in commercial transactions with the

inhabitants of Bleeding Heart Yard, was a large stumblingblock in Mrs Plornish's trade. When Mr Dorrit

had established her in the business, the Bleeding Hearts had shown an amount of emotion and a

determination to support her in it, that did honour to human nature. Recognising her claim upon their

generous feelings as one who had long been a member of their community, they pledged themselves, with

great feeling, to deal with Mrs Plornish, come what would and bestow their patronage on no other

establishment. Influenced by these noble sentiments, they had even gone out of their way to purchase little

luxuries in the grocery and butter line to which they were unaccustomed; saying to one another, that if they

did stretch a point, was it not for a neighbour and a friend, and for whom ought a point to be stretched if not

for such? So stimulated, the business was extremely brisk, and the articles in stock went off with the greatest

celerity. In short, if the Bleeding Hearts had but paid, the undertaking would have been a complete success;

whereas, by reason of their exclusively confining themselves to owing, the profits actually realised had not

Mr Pancks was making a very porcupine of himself by sticking his hair up in the contemplation of this state

of accounts, when old Mr Nandy, reentering the cottage with an air of mystery, entreated them to come and

look at the strange behaviour of Mr Baptist, who seemed to have met with something that had scared him. All

three going into the shop, and watching through the window, then saw Mr Baptist, pale and agitated, go

through the following extraordinary performances. First, he was observed hiding at the top of the steps

leading down into the Yard, and peeping up and down the street with his head cautiously thrust out close to

the side of the shopdoor. After very anxious scrutiny, he came out of his retreat, and went briskly down the

street as if he were going away altogether; then, suddenly turned about, and went, at the same pace, and with

the same feint, up the street. He had gone no further up the street than he had gone down, when he crossed the

road and disappeared. The object of this last manoeuvre was only apparent, when his entering the shop with a

sudden twist, from the steps again, explained that he had made a wide and obscure circuit round to the other,

or Doyce and Clennam, end of the Yard, and had come through the Yard and bolted in. He was out of breath

by that time, as he might well be, and his heart seemed to jerk faster than the little shopbell, as it quivered

Mr Baptist, or Signor Cavalletto, understood English now almost as well as Mr Pancks himself, and could

speak it very well too. Nevertheless, Mrs Plornish, with a pardonable vanity in that accomplishment of hers

'Come into the happy little cottage, Padrona,' returned Mr Baptist, imparting great stealthiness to his flurried

Mrs Plornish was proud of the title Padrona, which she regarded as signifying: not so much Mistress of the

house, as Mistress of the Italian tongue. She immediately complied with Mr Baptist's request, and they all

'E ope you no fright,' said Mrs Plornish then, interpreting Mr Pancks in a new way with her usual fertility of

'A bad man. A baddest man. I have hoped that I should never see him again.' 'Ow you know him bad?' asked

'He says,' Mrs Plornish then interpreted, addressing her father and Pancks with mild condescension, 'that he

has met a bad man, but he hopes the bad man didn't see himWhy,' inquired Mrs Plornish, reverting to the

'Padrona, dearest,' returned the little foreigner whom she so considerately protected, 'do not ask, I pray. Once

again I say it matters not. I have fear of this man. I do not wish to see him, I do not wish to be known of

The topic was so disagreeable to him, and so put his usual liveliness to the rout, that Mrs Plornish forbore to

press him further: the rather as the tea had been drawing for some time on the hob. But she was not the less

surprised and curious for asking no more questions; neither was Mr Pancks, whose expressive breathing had

been labouring hard since the entrance of the little man, like a locomotive engine with a great load getting up

a steep incline. Maggy, now better dressed than of yore, though still faithful to the monstrous character of her

cap, had been in the background from the first with open mouth and eyes, which staring and gaping features

were not diminished in breadth by the untimely suppression of the subject. However, no more was said about

it, though much appeared to be thought on all sides: by no means excepting the two young Plornishes, who

partook of the evening meal as if their eating the bread and butter were rendered almost superfluous by the

painful probability of the worst of men shortly presenting himself for the purpose of eating them. Mr Baptist,

by degrees began to chirp a little; but never stirred from the seat he had taken behind the door and close to the

window, though it was not his usual place. As often as the little bell rang, he started and peeped out secretly,

with the end of the little curtain in his hand and the rest before his face; evidently not at all satisfied but that

the man he dreaded had tracked him through all his doublings and turnings, with the certainty of a terrible

The entrance, at various times, of two or three customers and of Mr Plornish, gave Mr Baptist just enough of

this employment to keep the attention of the company fixed upon him. Tea was over, and the children were

abed, and Mrs Plornish was feeling her way to the dutiful proposal that her father should favour them with

Clennam had been poring late over his books and letters; for the waitingrooms of the Circumlocution Office

Over and above that, he was depressed and made uneasy by the late occurrence at his mother's. He looked

worn and solitary. He felt so, too; but, nevertheless, was returning home from his counting house by that

end of the Yard to give them the intelligence that he had received another letter from Miss Dorrit.

The news made a sensation in the cottage which drew off the general attention from Mr Baptist. Maggy, who

pushed her way into the foreground immediately, would have seemed to draw in the tidings of her Little

Mother equally at her ears, nose, mouth, and eyes, but that the last were obstructed by tears. She was

particularly delighted when Clennam assured her that there were hospitals, and very kindly conducted

hospitals, in Rome. Mr Pancks rose into new distinction in virtue of being specially remembered in the letter.

Everybody was pleased and interested, and Clennam was well repaid for his trouble. 'But you are tired, sir.

Let me make you a cup of tea,' said Mrs Plornish, 'if you'd condescend to take such a thing in the cottage; and

Mr Plornish deeming it incumbent on him, as host, to add his personal acknowledgments, tendered them in

the form which always expressed his highest ideal of a combination of ceremony with sincerity.

'John Edward Nandy,' said Mr Plornish, addressing the old gentleman. 'Sir. It's not too often that you see

unpretending actions without a spark of pride, and therefore when you see them give grateful honour unto the

same, being that if you don't, and live to want 'em, it follows serve you right.'

'I am heartily of your opinion, Thomas, and which your opinion is the same as mine, and therefore no more

words and not being backwards with that opinion, which opinion giving it as yes, Thomas, yes, is the opinion

in which yourself and me must ever be unanimously jined by all, and where there is not difference of opinion

Arthur, with less formality, expressed himself gratified by their high appreciation of so very slight an

attention on his part; and explained as to the tea that he had not yet dined, and was going straight home to

refresh after a long day's labour, or he would have readily accepted the hospitable offer. As Mr Pancks was

somewhat noisily getting his steam up for departure, he concluded by asking that gentleman if he would walk

with him? Mr Pancks said he desired no better engagement, and the two took leave of Happy Cottage.

'If you will come home with me, Pancks,' said Arthur, when they got into the street, 'and will share what

dinner or supper there is, it will be next door to an act of charity; for I am weary and out of sorts tonight.'

'Ask me to do a greater thing than that,' said Pancks, 'when you want it done, and I'll do it.'

Between this eccentric personage and Clennam, a tacit understanding and accord had been always improving

since Mr Pancks flew over Mr Rugg's back in the Marshalsea Yard. When the carriage drove away on the

memorable day of the family's departure, these two had looked after it together, and had walked slowly away

together. When the first letter came from little Dorrit, nobody was more interested in hearing of her than Mr

Pancks. The second letter, at that moment in Clennam's breastpocket, particularly remembered him by

name. Though he had never before made any profession or protestation to Clennam, and though what he had

just said was little enough as to the words in which it was expressed, Clennam had long had a growing belief

that Mr Pancks, in his own odd way, was becoming attached to him. All these strings intertwining made

'I am quite alone,' Arthur explained as they walked on. 'My partner is away, busily engaged at a distance on

'Thank you. You didn't take particular notice of little Altro just now; did you?' said Pancks.

'He's a bright fellow, and I like him,' said Pancks. 'Something has gone amiss with him today. Have you any

Mr Pancks gave his reasons for the inquiry. Arthur was quite unprepared for them, and quite unable to

'I ought first to see for myself that he has something on his mind, I think,' said Clennam. 'I have found him in

every way so diligent, so grateful (for little enough), and so trustworthy, that it might look like suspecting

'True,' said Pancks. 'But, I say! You oughtn't to be anybody's proprietor, Mr Clennam. You're much too

delicate.' 'For the matter of that,' returned Clennam laughing, 'I have not a large proprietary share in

Cavalletto. His carving is his livelihood. He keeps the keys of the Factory, watches it every alternate night,

and acts as a sort of housekeeper to it generally; but we have little work in the way of his ingenuity, though

we give him what we have. No! I am rather his adviser than his proprietor. To call me his standing counsel

and his banker would be nearer the fact. Speaking of being his banker, is it not curious, Pancks, that the

ventures which run just now in so many people's heads, should run even in little Cavalletto's?'

'Oh! Investments,' said Pancks. 'Ay, ay! I didn't know you were speaking of investments.' His quick way of

replying caused Clennam to look at him, with a doubt whether he meant more than he said. As it was

accompanied, however, with a quickening of his pace and a corresponding increase in the labouring of his

machinery, Arthur did not pursue the matter, and they soon arrived at his house.

A dinner of soup and a pigeonpie, served on a little round table before the fire, and flavoured with a bottle

of good wine, oiled Mr Pancks's works in a highly effective manner; so that when Clennam produced his

Eastern pipe, and handed Mr Pancks another Eastern pipe, the latter gentleman was perfectly comfortable.

They puffed for a while in silence, Mr Pancks like a steamvessel with wind, tide, calm water, and all other

seagoing conditions in her favour. He was the first to speak, and he spoke thus:

'Wasn't it a curious thing that they should run in little Altro's head? Eh?' said Pancks as he smoked. 'Wasn't

'Ay! But think of the whole Yard having got it. Think of their all meeting me with it, on my collecting days,

here and there and everywhere. Whether they pay, or whether they don't pay. Merdle, Merdle, Merdle.

'An't it?' returned Pancks. After smoking for a minute or so, more drily than comported with his recent oiling,

'Not a bit,' cried Pancks. 'Know nothing of figures. Know nothing of money questions. Never made a

'If they had' Clennam was going on to say; when Mr Pancks, without change of countenance, produced a

sound so far surpassing all his usual efforts, nasal or bronchial, that he stopped.

'I thought youspoke,' said Arthur, hesitating what name to give the interruption.

'If they had,' observed Clennam, who was a little at a loss how to take his friend, 'why, I suppose they would

'How so, Mr Clennam?' Pancks asked quickly, and with an odd effect of having been from the

commencement of the conversation loaded with the heavy charge he now fired off. 'They're right, you know.

'Perfectly, sir,' said Pancks. 'I've gone into it. I've made the calculations. I've worked it. They're safe and

genuine.' Relieved by having got to this, Mr Pancks took as long a pull as his lungs would permit at his

Eastern pipe, and looked sagaciously and steadily at Clennam while inhaling and exhaling too.

In those moments, Mr Pancks began to give out the dangerous infection with which he was laden. It is the

manner of communicating these diseases; it is the subtle way in which they go about.

'Do you mean, my good Pancks,' asked Clennam emphatically, 'that you would put that thousand pounds of

Mr Pancks took another long inhalation, another long exhalation, another long sagacious look at Clennam.

'I tell you, Mr Clennam, I've gone into it,' said Pancks. 'He's a man of immense resourcesenormous

capitalgovernment influence. They're the best schemes afloat. They're safe. They're certain.'

'Well!' returned Clennam, looking first at him gravely and then at the fire gravely. 'You surprise me!'

'Bah!' Pancks retorted. 'Don't say that, sir. It's what you ought to do yourself! Why don't you do as I do?'

Of whom Mr Pancks had taken the prevalent disease, he could no more have told than if he had

unconsciously taken a fever. Bred at first, as many physical diseases are, in the wickedness of men, and then

disseminated in their ignorance, these epidemics, after a period, get communicated to many sufferers who are

neither ignorant nor wicked. Mr Pancks might, or might not, have caught the illness himself from a subject of

this class; but in this category he appeared before Clennam, and the infection he threw off was all the more

'And you have really invested,' Clennam had already passed to that word, 'your thousand pounds, Pancks?'

'To be sure, sir!' replied Pancks boldly, with a puff of smoke. 'And only wish it ten!'

Now, Clennam had two subjects lying heavy on his lonely mind that night; the one, his partner's

longdeferred hope; the other, what he had seen and heard at his mother's. In the relief of having this

companion, and of feeling that he could trust him, he passed on to both, and both brought him round again,

It came about in the simplest manner. Quitting the investment subject, after an interval of silent looking at the

fire through the smoke of his pipe, he told Pancks how and why he was occupied with the great National

Department. 'A hard case it has been, and a hard case it is on Doyce,' he finished by saying, with all the

'Manage it better, sir,' said Pancks. 'Recompense him for his toils and disappointments. Give him the chances

of the time. He'll never benefit himself in that way, patient and preoccupied workman. He looks to you, sir.'

'I do my best, Pancks,' returned Clennam, uneasily. 'As to duly weighing and considering these new

enterprises of which I have had no experience, I doubt if I am fit for it, I am growing old.'

There was something so indubitably genuine in the wonderful laugh, and series of snorts and puffs,

engendered in Mr Pancks's astonishment at, and utter rejection of, the idea, that his being quite in earnest

The positive refusal expressed in Mr Pancks's continued snorts, no less than in these exclamations, to

entertain the sentiment for a single instant, drove Arthur away from it. Indeed, he was fearful of something

happening to Mr Pancks in the violent conflict that took place between the breath he jerked out of himself and

the smoke he jerked into himself. This abandonment of the second topic threw him on the third.

'Young, old, or middleaged, Pancks,' he said, when there was a favourable pause, 'I am in a very anxious

and uncertain state; a state that even leads me to doubt whether anything now seeming to belong to me, may

be really mine. Shall I tell you how this is? Shall I put a great trust in you?'

'You may!' Mr Pancks's short and sharp rejoinder, confirmed by the sudden outstretching of his coaly hand,

He then, softening the nature of his old apprehensions as much as was possible consistently with their being

made intelligible and never alluding to his mother by name, but speaking vaguely of a relation of his,

confided to Mr Pancks a broad outline of the misgivings he entertained, and of the interview he had

witnessed. Mr Pancks listened with such interest that, regardless of the charms of the Eastern pipe, he put it in

the grate among the fire irons, and occupied his hands during the whole recital in so erecting the loops and

hooks of hair all over his head, that he looked, when it came to a conclusion, like a journeyman Hamlet in

'Brings me back, sir,' was his exclamation then, with a startling touch on Clennam's knee, 'brings me back,

sir, to the Investments! I don't say anything of your making yourself poor to repair a wrong you never

committed. That's you. A man must be himself. But I say this, fearing you may want money to save your own

'Be as rich as you can, sir,' Pancks adjured him with a powerful concentration of all his energies on the

advice. 'Be as rich as you honestly can. It's your duty. Not for your sake, but for the sake of others. Take time

by the forelock. Poor Mr Doyce (who really is growing old) depends upon you. Your relative depends upon

'One word more, Mr Clennam,' retorted Pancks, 'and then enough for tonight. Why should you leave all the

gains to the gluttons, knaves, and impostors? Why should you leave all the gains that are to be got to my

proprietor and the like of him? Yet you're always doing it. When I say you, I mean such men as you. You

know you are. Why, I see it every day of my life. I see nothing else. It's my business to see it. Therefore I

'Can't be done, sir,' returned Pancks. 'I have looked into it. Name up everywhereimmense

resourcesenormous capitalgreat positionhigh connectiongovernment influence. Can't be done!'

Gradually, after this closing exposition, Mr Pancks subsided; allowed his hair to droop as much as it ever

would droop on the utmost persuasion; reclaimed the pipe from the fireirons, filled it anew, and smoked it

out. They said little more; but were company to one another in silently pursuing the same subjects, and did

not part until midnight. On taking his leave, Mr Pancks, when he had shaken hands with Clennam, worked

completely round him before he steamed out at the door. This, Arthur received as an assurance that he might

implicitly rely on Pancks, if he ever should come to need assistance; either in any of the matters of which

they had spoken that night, or any other subject that could in any way affect himself.

At intervals all next day, and even while his attention was fixed on other things, he thought of Mr Pancks's

investment of his thousand pounds, and of his having 'looked into it.' He thought of Mr Pancks's being so

sanguine in this matter, and of his not being usually of a sanguine character. He thought of the great National

Department, and of the delight it would be to him to see Doyce better off. He thought of the darkly

threatening place that went by the name of Home in his remembrance, and of the gathering shadows which

made it yet more darkly threatening than of old. He observed anew that wherever he went, he saw, or heard,

or touched, the celebrated name of Merdle; he found it difficult even to remain at his desk a couple of hours,

without having it presented to one of his bodily senses through some agency or other. He began to think it

was curious too that it should be everywhere, and that nobody but he should seem to have any mistrust of it.

Though indeed he began to remember, when he got to this, even he did not mistrust it; he had only happened

Such symptoms, when a disease of the kind is rife, are usually the signs of sickening.

When it became known to the Britons on the shore of the yellow Tiber that their intelligent compatriot, Mr

Sparkler, was made one of the Lords of their Circumlocution Office, they took it as a piece of news with

which they had no nearer concern than with any other piece of newsany other Accident or Offencein the

English papers. Some laughed; some said, by way of complete excuse, that the post was virtually a sinecure,

and any fool who could spell his name was good enough for it; some, and these the more solemn political

oracles, said that Decimus did wisely to strengthen himself, and that the sole constitutional purpose of all

places within the gift of Decimus, was, that Decimus should strengthen himself. A few bilious Britons there

were who would not subscribe to this article of faith; but their objection was purely theoretical. In a practical

point of view, they listlessly abandoned the matter, as being the business of some other Britons unknown,

somewhere, or nowhere. In like manner, at home, great numbers of Britons maintained, for as long as

fourandtwenty consecutive hours, that those invisible and anonymous Britons 'ought to take it up;' and that

if they quietly acquiesced in it, they deserved it. But of what class the remiss Britons were composed, and

where the unlucky creatures hid themselves, and why they hid themselves, and how it constantly happened

that they neglected their interests, when so many other Britons were quite at a loss to account for their not

looking after those interests, was not, either upon the shore of the yellow Tiber or the shore of the black

Mrs Merdle circulated the news, as she received congratulations on it, with a careless grace that displayed it

to advantage, as the setting displays the jewel. Yes, she said, Edmund had taken the place. Mr Merdle wished

him to take it, and he had taken it. She hoped Edmund might like it, but really she didn't know. It would keep

him in town a good deal, and he preferred the country. Still, it was not a disagreeable positionand it was a

position. There was no denying that the thing was a compliment to Mr Merdle, and was not a bad thing for

Edmund if he liked it. It was just as well that he should have something to do, and it was just as well that he

should have something for doing it. Whether it would be more agreeable to Edmund than the army, remained

Thus the Bosom; accomplished in the art of seeming to make things of small account, and really enhancing

them in the process. While Henry Gowan, whom Decimus had thrown away, went through the whole round

of his acquaintance between the Gate of the People and the town of Albano, vowing, almost (but not quite)

with tears in his eyes, that Sparkler was the sweetesttempered, simplesthearted, altogether most lovable

jackass that ever grazed on the public common; and that only one circumstance could have delighted him

(Gowan) more, than his (the beloved jackass's) getting this post, and that would have been his (Gowan's)

getting it himself. He said it was the very thing for Sparkler. There was nothing to do, and he would do it

charmingly; there was a handsome salary to draw, and he would draw it charmingly; it was a delightful,

appropriate, capital appointment; and he almost forgave the donor his slight of himself, in his joy that the

dear donkey for whom he had so great an affection was so admirably stabled. Nor did his benevolence stop

here. He took pains, on all social occasions, to draw Mr Sparkler out, and make him conspicuous before the

company; and, although the considerate action always resulted in that young gentleman's making a dreary and

forlorn mental spectacle of himself, the friendly intention was not to be doubted.

Unless, indeed, it chanced to be doubted by the object of Mr Sparkler's affections. Miss Fanny was now in the

difficult situation of being universally known in that light, and of not having dismissed Mr Sparkler, however

capriciously she used him. Hence, she was sufficiently identified with the gentleman to feel compromised by

his being more than usually ridiculous; and hence, being by no means deficient in quickness, she sometimes

came to his rescue against Gowan, and did him very good service. But, while doing this, she was ashamed of

him, undetermined whether to get rid of him or more decidedly encourage him, distracted with apprehensions

that she was every day becoming more and more immeshed in her uncertainties, and tortured by misgivings

that Mrs Merdle triumphed in her distress. With this tumult in her mind, it is no subject for surprise that Miss

Fanny came home one night in a state of agitation from a concert and ball at Mrs Merdle's house, and on her

sister affectionately trying to soothe her, pushed that sister away from the toilettetable at which she sat

angrily trying to cry, and declared with a heaving bosom that she detested everybody, and she wished she was

'Matter, you little Mole,' said Fanny. 'If you were not the blindest of the blind, you would have no occasion to

ask me. The idea of daring to pretend to assert that you have eyes in your head, and yet ask me what's the

'Is it Mr Sparkler, dear?' 'Mister Sparkler!' repeated Fanny, with unbounded scorn, as if he were the last

subject in the Solar system that could possibly be near her mind. 'No, Miss Bat, it is not.'

Immediately afterwards, she became remorseful for having called her sister names; declaring with sobs that

'Stuff and nonsense!' replied the young lady, turning angry again; 'I am as well as you are. Perhaps I might

Poor Little Dorrit, not seeing her way to the offering of any soothing words that would escape repudiation,

deemed it best to remain quiet. At first, Fanny took this ill, too; protesting to her lookingglass, that of all the

trying sisters a girl could have, she did think the most trying sister was a flat sister. That she knew she was at

times a wretched temper; that she knew she made herself hateful; that when she made herself hateful, nothing

would do her half the good as being told so; but that, being afflicted with a flat sister, she never WAS told so,

and the consequence resulted that she was absolutely tempted and goaded into making herself disagreeable.

Besides (she angrily told her looking glass), she didn't want to be forgiven. It was not a right example, that

she should be constantly stooping to be forgiven by a younger sister. And this was the Art of itthat she was

always being placed in the position of being forgiven, whether she liked it or not. Finally she burst into

violent weeping, and, when her sister came and sat close at her side to comfort her, said, 'Amy, you're an

'But, I tell you what, my Pet,' said Fanny, when her sister's gentleness had calmed her, 'it now comes to this;

that things cannot and shall not go on as they are at present going on, and that there must be an end of this,

As the announcement was vague, though very peremptory, Little Dorrit returned, 'Let us talk about it.'

'Quite so, my dear,' assented Fanny, as she dried her eyes. 'Let us talk about it. I am rational again now, and

Even Amy smiled at this notion, but she said, 'I will, Fanny, as well as I can.'

Having embraced her Anchor with great affection, Fanny took a bottle of sweet toilette water from the table,

and called to her maid for a fine handkerchief. She then dismissed that attendant for the night, and went on to

'My love,' Fanny began, 'our characters and points of view are sufficiently different (kiss me again, my

darling), to make it very probable that I shall surprise you by what I am going to say. What I am going to say,

my dear, is, that notwithstanding our property, we labour, socially speaking, under disadvantages. You don't

'Well, my dear, what I mean is, that we are, after all, newcomers into fashionable life.'

'I am sure, Fanny,' Little Dorrit interposed in her zealous admiration, 'no one need find that out in you.'

'Well, my dear child, perhaps not,' said Fanny, 'though it's most kind and most affectionate in you, you

precious girl, to say so.' Here she dabbed her sister's forehead, and blew upon it a little. 'But you are,' resumed

Fanny, 'as is well known, the dearest little thing that ever was! To resume, my child. Pa is extremely

gentlemanly and extremely well informed, but he is, in some trifling respects, a little different from other

gentlemen of his fortune: partly on account of what he has gone through, poor dear: partly, I fancy, on

account of its often running in his mind that other people are thinking about that, while he is talking to them.

Uncle, my love, is altogether unpresentable. Though a dear creature to whom I am tenderly attached, he is,

socially speaking, shocking. Edward is frightfully expensive and dissipated. I don't mean that there is

anything ungenteel in that itselffar from it but I do mean that he doesn't do it well, and that he doesn't, if

I may so express myself, get the money'sworth in the sort of dissipated reputation that attaches to him.'

'Very true! Then, my dear, we have no mother, and we have a Mrs General. And I tell you again, darling, that

Mrs General, if I may reverse a common proverb and adapt it to her, is a cat in gloves who WILL catch mice.

'Now, don't argue with me about it, Amy,' said she, 'because I know better.' Feeling that she had been sharp

again, she dabbed her sister's forehead again, and blew upon it again. 'To resume once more, my dear. It then

becomes a question with me (I am proud and spirited, Amy, as you very well know: too much so, I dare say)

whether I shall make up my mind to take it upon myself to carry the family through.' 'How?' asked her sister,

'I will not,' said Fanny, without answering the question, 'submit to be motherinlawed by Mrs General; and I

will not submit to be, in any respect whatever, either patronised or tormented by Mrs Merdle.'

Little Dorrit laid her hand upon the hand that held the bottle of sweet water, with a still more anxious look.

Fanny, quite punishing her own forehead with the vehement dabs she now began to give it, fitfully went on.

'That he has somehow or other, and how is of no consequence, attained a very good position, no one can

deny. That it is a very good connection, no one can deny. And as to the question of clever or not clever, I

doubt very much whether a clever husband would be suitable to me. I cannot submit. I should not be able to

'O, my dear Fanny!' expostulated Little Dorrit, upon whom a kind of terror had been stealing as she perceived

what her sister meant. 'If you loved any one, all this feeling would change. If you loved any one, you would

no more be yourself, but you would quite lose and forget yourself in your devotion to him. If you loved him,

'O, indeed!' cried Fanny. 'Really? Bless me, how much some people know of some subjects! They say every

one has a subject, and I certainly seem to have hit upon yours, Amy. There, you little thing, I was only in fun,'

dabbing her sister's forehead; 'but don't you be a silly puss, and don't you think flightily and eloquently about

'Dear Fanny, let me say first, that I would far rather we worked for a scanty living again than I would see you

'Let you say, my dear?' retorted Fanny. 'Why, of course, I will let you say anything. There is no constraint

upon you, I hope. We are together to talk it over. And as to marrying Mr Sparkler, I have not the slightest

'At no time, for anything I know at present,' answered Fanny, with indifference. Then, suddenly changing her

indifference into a burning restlessness, she added, 'You talk about the clever men, you little thing! It's all

very fine and easy to talk about the clever men; but where are they? I don't see them anywhere near me!'

'Short time or long time,' interrupted Fanny. 'I am impatient of our situation. I don't like our situation, and

very little would induce me to change it. Other girls, differently reared and differently circumstanced

altogether, might wonder at what I say or may do. Let them. They are driven by their lives and characters; I

'Fanny, my dear Fanny, you know that you have qualities to make you the wife of one very superior to Mr

'Amy, my dear Amy,' retorted Fanny, parodying her words, 'I know that I wish to have a more defined and

distinct position, in which I can assert myself with greater effect against that insolent woman.'

'Why, perhaps,' said Fanny, with a triumphant smile. 'There may be many less promising ways of arriving at

an end than that, MY dear. That piece of insolence may think, now, that it would be a great success to get her

son off upon me, and shelve me. But, perhaps, she little thinks how I would retort upon her if I married her

I would oppose her in everything, and compete with her. I would make it the business of my life.'

Fanny set down the bottle when she came to this, and walked about the room; always stopping and standing

'One thing I could certainly do, my child: I could make her older. And I would!'

'I would talk of her as an old woman. I would pretend to know if I didn't, but I should from her sonall

about her age. And she should hear me say, Amy: affectionately, quite dutifully and affectionately: how well

she looked, considering her time of life. I could make her seem older at once, by being myself so much

younger. I may not be as handsome as she is; I am not a fair judge of that question, I suppose; but I know I

'It wouldn't be an unhappy life, Amy. It would be the life I am fitted for. Whether by disposition, or whether

by circumstances, is no matter; I am better fitted for such a life than for almost any other.'

There was something of a desolate tone in those words; but, with a short proud laugh she took another walk,

'Figure! Figure, Amy! Well. The woman has a good figure. I will give her her due, and not deny it. But is it

so far beyond all others that it is altogether unapproachable? Upon my word, I am not so sure of it. Give some

much younger woman the latitude as to dress that she has, being married; and we would see about that, my

Something in the thought that was agreeable and flattering, brought her back to her seat in a gayer temper.

She took her sister's hands in hers, and clapped all four hands above her head as she looked in her sister's face

'And the dancer, Amy, that she has quite forgottenthe dancer who bore no sort of resemblance to me, and

of whom I never remind her, oh dear no!should dance through her life, and dance in her way, to such a

tune as would disturb her insolent placidity a little. just a little, my dear Amy, just a little!'

Meeting an earnest and imploring look in Amy's face, she brought the four hands down, and laid only one on

'Now, don't argue with me, child,' she said in a sterner way, 'because it is of no use. I understand these

subjects much better than you do. I have not nearly made up my mind, but it may be. Now we have talked

this over comfortably, and may go to bed. You best and dearest little mouse, Good night!' With those words

Fanny weighed her Anchor, andhaving taken so much adviceleft off being advised for that occasion.

Thenceforward, Amy observed Mr Sparkler's treatment by his enslaver, with new reasons for attaching

importance to all that passed between them. There were times when Fanny appeared quite unable to endure

his mental feebleness, and when she became so sharply impatient of it that she would all but dismiss him for

good. There were other times when she got on much better with him; when he amused her, and when her

sense of superiority seemed to counterbalance that opposite side of the scale. If Mr Sparkler had been other

than the faithfullest and most submissive of swains, he was sufficiently hard pressed to have fled from the

scene of his trials, and have set at least the whole distance from Rome to London between himself and his

enchantress. But he had no greater will of his own than a boat has when it is towed by a steamship; and he

followed his cruel mistress through rough and smooth, on equally strong compulsion.

Mrs Merdle, during these passages, said little to Fanny, but said more about her. She was, as it were, forced

to look at her through her eyeglass, and in general conversation to allow commendations of her beauty to be

wrung from her by its irresistible demands. The defiant character it assumed when Fanny heard these

extollings (as it generally happened that she did), was not expressive of concessions to the impartial bosom;

but the utmost revenge the bosom took was, to say audibly, 'A spoilt beautybut with that face and shape,

It might have been about a month or six weeks after the night of the new advice, when Little Dorrit began to

think she detected some new understanding between Mr Sparkler and Fanny. Mr Sparkler, as if in attendance

to some compact, scarcely ever spoke without first looking towards Fanny for leave. That young lady was too

discreet ever to look back again; but, if Mr Sparkler had permission to speak, she remained silent; if he had

not, she herself spoke. Moreover, it became plain whenever Henry Gowan attempted to perform the friendly

office of drawing him out, that he was not to be drawn. And not only that, but Fanny would presently,

without any pointed application in the world, chance to say something with such a sting in it that Gowan

There was yet another circumstance which went a long way to confirm Little Dorrit in her fears, though it

was not a great circumstance in itself. Mr Sparkler's demeanour towards herself changed. It became fraternal.

Sometimes, when she was in the outer circle of assembliesat their own residence, at Mrs Merdle's, or

elsewhere she would find herself stealthily supported round the waist by Mr Sparkler's arm. Mr Sparkler

never offered the slightest explanation of this attention; but merely smiled with an air of blundering,

contented, goodnatured proprietorship, which, in so heavy a gentleman, was ominously expressive.

Little Dorrit was at home one day, thinking about Fanny with a heavy heart. They had a room at one end of

their drawingroom suite, nearly all irregular baywindow, projecting over the street, and commanding all

the picturesque life and variety of the Corso, both up and down. At three or four o'clock in the afternoon,

English time, the view from this window was very bright and peculiar; and Little Dorrit used to sit and muse

here, much as she had been used to while away the time in her balcony at Venice. Seated thus one day, she

was softly touched on the shoulder, and Fanny said, 'Well, Amy dear,' and took her seat at her side. Their seat

was a part of the window; when there was anything in the way of a procession going on, they used to have

bright draperies hung out of the window, and used to kneel or sit on this seat, and look out at it, leaning on

the brilliant colour. But there was no procession that day, and Little Dorrit was rather surprised by Fanny's

'Well, Amy,' said Fanny, 'what are you thinking of, little one?' 'I was thinking of you, Fanny.'

'No? What a coincidence! I declare here's some one else. You were not thinking of this some one else too;

Amy HAD been thinking of this some one else too; for it was Mr Sparkler. She did not say so, however, as

she gave him her hand. Mr Sparkler came and sat down on the other side of her, and she felt the fraternal

'Well, my little sister,' said Fanny with a sigh, 'I suppose you know what this means?'

'She's as beautiful as she's doated on,' stammered Mr Sparkler 'and there's no nonsense about herit's

'In short, pet,' proceeded Fanny, 'on the whole, we are engaged. We must tell papa about it either tonight or

tomorrow, according to the opportunities. Then it's done, and very little more need be said.'

'My dear Fanny,' said Mr Sparkler, with deference, 'I should like to say a word to Amy.'

'I am convinced, my dear Amy,' said Mr Sparkler, 'that if ever there was a girl, next to your highly endowed

'We know all about that, Edmund,' interposed Miss Fanny. 'Never mind that. Pray go on to something else

'Yes, my love,' said Mr Sparkler. 'And I assure you, Amy, that nothing can be a greater happiness to myself,

myselfnext to the happiness of being so highly honoured with the choice of a glorious girl who hasn't an

'Pray, Edmund, pray!' interrupted Fanny, with a slight pat of her pretty foot upon the floor.

'My love, you're quite right,' said Mr Sparkler, 'and I know I have a habit of it. What I wished to declare was,

that nothing can be a greater happiness to myself, myselfnext to the happiness of being united to

preeminently the most glorious of girlsthan to have the happiness of cultivating the affectionate

acquaintance of Amy. I may not myself,' said Mr Sparkler manfully, 'be up to the mark on some other

subjects at a short notice, and I am aware that if you were to poll Society the general opinion would be that I

'A knife and fork and an apartment,' proceeded Mr Sparkler, growing, in comparison with his oratorical

antecedents, quite diffuse, 'will ever be at Amy's disposal. My Governor, I am sure, will always be proud to

entertain one whom I so much esteem. And regarding my mother,' said Mr Sparkler, 'who is a remarkably

'With submission, my soul,' pleaded Mr Sparkler. 'I know I have a habit of it, and I thank you very much, my

adorable girl, for taking the trouble to correct it; but my mother is admitted on all sides to be a remarkably

'That may be, or may not be,' returned Fanny, 'but pray don't mention it any more.'

'Then, in fact, you have nothing more to say, Edmund; have you?' inquired Fanny.

'So far from it, my adorable girl,' answered Mr Sparkler, 'I apologise for having said so much.'

Mr Sparkler perceived, by a kind of inspiration, that the question implied had he not better go? He therefore

withdrew the fraternal railing, and neatly said that he thought he would, with submission, take his leave. He

did not go without being congratulated by Amy, as well as she could discharge that office in the flutter and

When he was gone, she said, 'O Fanny, Fanny!' and turned to her sister in the bright window, and fell upon

her bosom and cried there. Fanny laughed at first; but soon laid her face against her sister's and cried tooa

little. It was the last time Fanny ever showed that there was any hidden, suppressed, or conquered feeling in

her on the matter. From that hour the way she had chosen lay before her, and she trod it with her own

Mr Dorrit, on being informed by his elder daughter that she had accepted matrimonial overtures from Mr

Sparkler, to whom she had plighted her troth, received the communication at once with great dignity and with

a large display of parental pride; his dignity dilating with the widened prospect of advantageous ground from

which to make acquaintances, and his parental pride being developed by Miss Fanny's ready sympathy with

that great object of his existence. He gave her to understand that her noble ambition found harmonious echoes

in his heart; and bestowed his blessing on her, as a child brimful of duty and good principle, selfdevoted to

To Mr Sparkler, when Miss Fanny permitted him to appear, Mr Dorrit said, he would not disguise that the

alliance Mr Sparkler did him the honour to propose was highly congenial to his feelings; both as being in

unison with the spontaneous affections of his daughter Fanny, and as opening a family connection of a

gratifying nature with Mr Merdle, the master spirit of the age. Mrs Merdle also, as a leading lady rich in

distinction, elegance, grace, and beauty, he mentioned in very laudatory terms. He felt it his duty to remark

(he was sure a gentleman of Mr Sparkler's fine sense would interpret him with all delicacy), that he could not

consider this proposal definitely determined on, until he should have had the privilege of holding some

correspondence with Mr Merdle; and of ascertaining it to be so far accordant with the views of that eminent

gentleman as that his (Mr Dorrit's) daughter would be received on that footing which her station in life and

her dowry and expectations warranted him in requiring that she should maintain in what he trusted he might

be allowed, without the appearance of being mercenary, to call the Eye of the Great World. While saying this,

which his character as a gentleman of some little station, and his character as a father, equally demanded of

him, he would not be so diplomatic as to conceal that the proposal remained in hopeful abeyance and under

conditional acceptance, and that he thanked Mr Sparkler for the compliment rendered to himself and to his

family. He concluded with some further and more general observations on thehacharacter of an

independent gentleman, and thehumcharacter of a possibly too partial and admiring parent. To sum the

whole up shortly, he received Mr Sparkler's offer very much as he would have received three or four

Mr Sparkler, finding himself stunned by the words thus heaped upon his inoffensive head, made a brief

though pertinent rejoinder; the same being neither more nor less than that he had long perceived Miss Fanny

to have no nonsense about her, and that he had no doubt of its being all right with his Governor. At that point

the object of his affections shut him up like a box with a spring lid, and sent him away.

Proceeding shortly afterwards to pay his respects to the Bosom, Mr Dorrit was received by it with great

consideration. Mrs Merdle had heard of this affair from Edmund. She had been surprised at first, because she

had not thought Edmund a marrying man. Society had not thought Edmund a marrying man. Still, of course

she had seen, as a woman (we women did instinctively see these things, Mr Dorrit!), that Edmund had been

immensely captivated by Miss Dorrit, and she had openly said that Mr Dorrit had much to answer for in

'Have I the honour to conclude, madam,' said Mr Dorrit, 'that the direction which Mr Sparkler's affections

This casual repetition of the word 'personally,' moved Mr Dorrit to express his hope that Mr Merdle's

'I cannot,' said Mrs Merdle, 'take upon myself to answer positively for Mr Merdle; gentlemen, especially

gentlemen who are what Society calls capitalists, having their own ideas of these matters. But I should

thinkmerely giving an opinion, Mr DorritI should think Mr Merdle would be upon the whole,' here she

At the mention of gentlemen whom Society called capitalists, Mr Dorrit had coughed, as if some internal

demur were breaking out of him. Mrs Merdle had observed it, and went on to take up the cue.

'Though, indeed, Mr Dorrit, it is scarcely necessary for me to make that remark, except in the mere openness

of saying what is uppermost to one whom I so highly regard, and with whom I hope I may have the pleasure

of being brought into still more agreeable relations. For one cannot but see the great probability of your

considering such things from Mr Merdle's own point of view, except indeed that circumstances have made it

Mr Merdle's accidental fortune, or misfortune, to be engaged in business transactions, and that they, however

vast, may a little cramp his horizons. I am a very child as to having any notion of business,' said Mrs Merdle;

This skilful seesaw of Mr Dorrit and Mrs Merdle, so that each of them sent the other up, and each of them

sent the other down, and neither had the advantage, acted as a sedative on Mr Dorrit's cough. He remarked

with his utmost politeness, that he must beg to protest against its being supposed, even by Mrs Merdle, the

accomplished and graceful (to which compliment she bent herself), that such enterprises as Mr Merdle's,

apart as they were from the puny undertakings of the rest of men, had any lower tendency than to enlarge and

expand the genius in which they were conceived. 'You are generosity itself,' said Mrs Merdle in return,

smiling her best smile; 'let us hope so. But I confess I am almost superstitious in my ideas about business.'

Mr Dorrit threw in another compliment here, to the effect that business, like the time which was precious in

it, was made for slaves; and that it was not for Mrs Merdle, who ruled all hearts at her supreme pleasure, to

have anything to do with it. Mrs Merdle laughed, and conveyed to Mr Dorrit an idea that the Bosom

'I say so much,' she then explained, 'merely because Mr Merdle has always taken the greatest interest in

Edmund, and has always expressed the strongest desire to advance his prospects. Edmund's public position, I

think you know. His private position rests solely with Mr Merdle. In my foolish incapacity for business, I

Mr Dorrit again expressed, in his own way, the sentiment that business was below the ken of enslavers and

enchantresses. He then mentioned his intention, as a gentleman and a parent, of writing to Mr Merdle. Mrs

Merdle concurred with all her heartor with all her art, which was exactly the same thingand herself

despatched a preparatory letter by the next post to the eighth wonder of the world.

In his epistolary communication, as in his dialogues and discourses on the great question to which it related,

Mr Dorrit surrounded the subject with flourishes, as writingmasters embellish copybooks and

cipheringbooks: where the titles of the elementary rules of arithmetic diverge into swans, eagles, griffins,

and other calligraphic recreations, and where the capital letters go out of their minds and bodies into ecstasies

of pen and ink. Nevertheless, he did render the purport of his letter sufficiently clear, to enable Mr Merdle to

make a decent pretence of having learnt it from that source. Mr Merdle replied to it accordingly. Mr Dorrit

replied to Mr Merdle; Mr Merdle replied to Mr Dorrit; and it was soon announced that the corresponding

Now, and not before, Miss Fanny burst upon the scene, completely arrayed for her new part. Now and not

before, she wholly absorbed Mr Sparkler in her light, and shone for both, and twenty more. No longer feeling

that want of a defined place and character which had caused her so much trouble, this fair ship began to steer

steadily on a shaped course, and to swim with a weight and balance that developed her sailing qualities.

'The preliminaries being so satisfactorily arranged, I think I will now, my dear,' said Mr Dorrit,

'Papa,' returned Fanny, taking him up short upon that name, 'I don't see what Mrs General has got to do with

'My dear,' said Mr Dorrit, 'it will be an act of courtesy tohum a lady, well bred and refined'

'Oh! I am sick of Mrs General's good breeding and refinement, papa,' said Fanny. 'I am tired of Mrs General.'

'Quite disgusted with her, papa,' said Fanny. 'I really don't see what she has to do with my marriage. Let her

'Fanny,' returned Mr Dorrit, with a grave and weighty slowness upon him, contrasting strongly with his

daughter's levity: 'I beg the favour of your explaininghawhat it is you mean.' 'I mean, papa,' said Fanny,

'that if Mrs General should happen to have any matrimonial projects of her own, I dare say they are quite

enough to occupy her spare time. And that if she has not, so much the better; but still I don't wish to have the

'Because she can find my engagement out for herself, papa,' retorted Fanny. 'She is watchful enough, I dare

say. I think I have seen her so. Let her find it out for herself. If she should not find it out for herself, she will

know it when I am married. And I hope you will not consider me wanting in affection for you, papa, if I say it

'Fanny,' returned Mr Dorrit, 'I am amazed, I am displeased by thishumthis capricious and unintelligible

'Do not, if you please, papa,' urged Fanny, 'call it animosity, because I assure you I do not consider Mrs

At this, Mr Dorrit rose from his chair with a fixed look of severe reproof, and remained standing in his

dignity before his daughter. His daughter, turning the bracelet on her arm, and now looking at him, and now

looking from him, said, 'Very well, papa. I am truly sorry if you don't like it; but I can't help it. I am not a

'Fanny,' gasped Mr Dorrit, after a majestic silence, 'if I request you to remain here, while I formally announce

to Mrs General, as an exemplary lady, who ishuma trusted member of this family, the hathe

change that is contemplated among us; if Ihanot only request it, buthuminsist upon it'

'Oh, papa,' Fanny broke in with pointed significance, 'if you make so much of it as that, I have in duty nothing

to do but comply. I hope I may have my thoughts upon the subject, however, for I really cannot help it under

the circumstances.'So, Fanny sat down with a meekness which, in the junction of extremes, became defiance;

and her father, either not deigning to answer, or not knowing what to answer, summoned Mr Tinkler into his

Mr Tinkler, unused to receive such short orders in connection with the fair varnisher, paused. Mr Dorrit,

seeing the whole Marshalsea and all its testimonials in the pause, instantly flew at him with, 'How dare you,

'I beg your pardon, sir,' pleaded Mr Tinkler, 'I was wishful to know' 'You wished to know nothing, sir,'

'Don't assure me!' said Mr Dorrit. 'I will not be assured by a domestic. You are guilty of mockery. You shall

'It's false,' said Mr Dorrit, 'you have your orders. Hahum. MY compliments to Mrs General, and I beg the

favour of her coming to me, if quite convenient, for a few minutes. Those are your orders.'

In his execution of this mission, Mr Tinkler perhaps expressed that Mr Dorrit was in a raging fume. However

that was, Mrs General's skirts were very speedily heard outside, coming alongone might almost have said

bouncing alongwith unusual expedition. Albeit, they settled down at the door and swept into the room with

Mrs General, with a graceful curve of acknowledgment, descended into the chair which Mr Dorrit offered.

'Madam,' pursued that gentleman, 'as you have had the kindness to undertake thehumformation of my

daughters, and as I am persuaded that nothing nearly affecting them canhabe indifferent to you'

Mrs General made a slight inclination of her head to Fanny, who made a very low inclination of her head to

'That my daughter Fanny ishacontracted to be married to Mr Sparkler, with whom you are

acquainted. Hence, madam, you will be relieved of half your difficult chargehadifficult charge.' Mr

Dorrit repeated it with his angry eye on Fanny. 'But not, I hope, to thehumdiminution of any other

portion, direct or indirect, of the footing you have at present the kindness to occupy in my family.'

'Mr Dorrit,' returned Mrs General, with her gloved hands resting on one another in exemplary repose, 'is ever

'Miss Dorrit has no doubt exercised the soundest discretion of which the circumstances admitted, and I trust

will allow me to offer her my sincere congratulations. When free from the trammels of passion,' Mrs General

closed her eyes at the word, as if she could not utter it, and see anybody; 'when occurring with the

approbation of near relatives; and when cementing the proud structure of a family edifice; these are usually

Here Mrs General stopped, and added internally, for the setting of her face, 'Papa, potatoes, poultry, Prunes,

'Mr Dorrit,' she superadded aloud, 'is ever most obliging; and for the attention, and I will add distinction, of

having this confidence imparted to me by himself and Miss Dorrit at this early time, I beg to offer the tribute

of my thanks. My thanks, and my congratulations, are equally the meed of Mr Dorrit and of Miss Dorrit.'

'To me,' observed Miss Fanny, 'they are excessively gratifying inexpressibly so. The relief of finding that

you have no objection to make, Mrs General, quite takes a load off my mind, I am sure. I hardly know what I

should have done,' said Fanny, 'if you had interposed any objection, Mrs General.'

Mrs General changed her gloves, as to the right glove being uppermost and the left undermost, with a Prunes

'To preserve your approbation, Mrs General,' said Fanny, returning the smile with one in which there was no

trace of those ingredients, 'will of course be the highest object of my married life; to lose it, would of course

be perfect wretchedness. I am sure your great kindness will not object, and I hope papa will not object, to my

correcting a small mistake you have made, however. The best of us are so liable to mistakes, that even you,

Mrs General, have fallen into a little error. The attention and distinction you have so impressively mentioned,

Mrs General, as attaching to this confidence, are, I have no doubt, of the most complimentary and gratifying

description; but they don't at all proceed from me. The merit of having consulted you on the subject would

have been so great in me, that I feel I must not lay claim to it when it really is not mine. It is wholly papa's. I

am deeply obliged to you for your encouragement and patronage, but it was papa who asked for it. I have to

thank you, Mrs General, for relieving my breast of a great weight by so handsomely giving your consent to

my engagement, but you have really nothing to thank me for. I hope you will always approve of my

proceedings after I have left home and that my sister also may long remain the favoured object of your

With this address, which was delivered in her politest manner, Fanny left the room with an elegant and

cheerful airto tear up stairs with a flushed face as soon as she was out of hearing, pounce in upon her

sister, call her a little Dormouse, shake her for the better opening of her eyes, tell her what had passed below,

Towards Mrs Merdle, the young lady comported herself with great independence and selfpossession; but

not as yet with any more decided opening of hostilities. Occasionally they had a slight skirmish, as when

Fanny considered herself patted on the back by that lady, or as when Mrs Merdle looked particularly young

and well; but Mrs Merdle always soon terminated those passages of arms by sinking among her cushions

with the gracefullest indifference, and finding her attention otherwise engaged. Society (for that mysterious

creature sat upon the Seven Hills too) found Miss Fanny vastly improved by her engagement. She was much

more accessible, much more free and engaging, much less exacting; insomuch that she now entertained a host

of followers and admirers, to the bitter indignation of ladies with daughters to marry, who were to be

regarded as Having revolted from Society on the Miss Dorrit grievance, and erected a rebellious standard.

Enjoying the flutter she caused. Miss Dorrit not only haughtily moved through it in her own proper person,

but haughtily, even Ostentatiously, led Mr Sparkler through it too: seeming to say to them all, 'If I think

proper to march among you in triumphal procession attended by this weak captive in bonds, rather than a

stronger one, that is my business. Enough that I choose to do it!' Mr Sparkler for his part, questioned nothing;

but went wherever he was taken, did whatever he was told, felt that for his brideelect to be distinguished

was for him to be distinguished on the easiest terms, and was truly grateful for being so openly

The winter passing on towards the spring while this condition of affairs prevailed, it became necessary for Mr

Sparkler to repair to England, and take his appointed part in the expression and direction of its genius,

learning, commerce, spirit, and sense. The land of Shakespeare, Milton, Bacon, Newton, Watt, the land of a

host of past and present abstract philosophers, natural philosophers, and subduers of Nature and Art in their

myriad forms, called to Mr Sparkler to come and take care of it, lest it should perish. Mr Sparkler, unable to

resist the agonised cry from the depths of his country's soul, declared that he must go.

It followed that the question was rendered pressing when, where, and how Mr Sparkler should be married to

the foremost girl in all this world with no nonsense about her. Its solution, after some little mystery and

'Now, my child,' said she, seeking her out one day, 'I am going to tell you something. It is only this moment

'My precious child,' said Fanny, 'don't anticipate me. Let me impart my confidence to you, you flurried little

thing, in my own way. As to your guess, if I answered it literally, I should answer no. For really it is not my

Little Dorrit looked, and perhaps not altogether without cause, somewhat at a loss to understand this fine

'I am in no difficulty,' exclaimed Fanny, 'and in no hurry. I am not wanted at any public office, or to give any

But Edmund is. And Edmund is deeply dejected at the idea of going away by himself, and, indeed, I don't like

that he should be trusted by himself. For, if it's possibleand it generally isto do a foolish thing, he is sure

As she concluded this impartial summary of the reliance that might be safely placed upon her future husband,

she took off, with an air of business, the bonnet she wore, and dangled it by its strings upon the ground.

'It is far more Edmund's question, therefore, than mine. However, we need say no more about that. That is

selfevident on the face of it. Well, my dearest Amy! The point arising, is he to go by himself, or is he not to

go by himself, this other point arises, are we to be married here and shortly, or are we to be married at home

'What a little thing you are,' cried Fanny, half tolerant and half impatient, 'for anticipating one! Pray, my

darling, hear me out. That woman,' she spoke of Mrs Merdle, of course, 'remains here until after Easter; so, in

the case of my being married here and going to London with Edmund, I should have the start of her. That is

something. Further, Amy. That woman being out of the way, I don't know that I greatly object to Mr Merdle's

proposal to Pa that Edmund and I should take up our abode in that house .you know where you once went

with a dancer, my dear, until our own house can be chosen and fitted up. Further still, Amy. Papa having

always intended to go to town himself, in the spring,you see, if Edmund and I were married here, we might

go off to Florence, where papa might join us, and we might all three travel home together. Mr Merdle has

entreated Pa to stay with him in that same mansion I have mentioned, and I suppose he will. But he is master

of his own actions; and upon that point (which is not at all material) I can't speak positively.' The difference

between papa's being master of his own actions and Mr Sparkler's being nothing of the sort, was forcibly

expressed by Fanny in her manner of stating the case. Not that her sister noticed it; for she was divided

between regret at the coming separation, and a lingering wish that she had been included in the plans for

'Arrangements!' repeated Fanny. 'Now, really, child, you are a little trying. You know I particularly guarded

myself against laying my words open to any such construction. What I said was, that certain questions present

'Now, my own sweet girl,' said Fanny, weighing her bonnet by the strings with considerable impatience, 'it's

no use staring. A little owl could stare. I look to you for advice, Amy. What do you advise me to do?'

'Do you think,' asked Little Dorrit, persuasively, after a short hesitation, 'do you think, Fanny, that if you were

'No, little Tortoise,' retorted Fanny, with exceeding sharpness. 'I don't think anything of the kind.'

Here, she threw her bonnet from her altogether, and flounced into a chair. But, becoming affectionate almost

immediately, she flounced out of it again, and kneeled down on the floor to take her sister, chair and all, in

'Don't suppose I am hasty or unkind, darling, because I really am not. But you are such a little oddity! You

make one bite your head off, when one wants to be soothing beyond everything. Didn't I tell you, you dearest

baby, that Edmund can't be trusted by himself? And don't you know that he can't?'

'And you know it, I know,' retorted Fanny. 'Well, my precious child! If he is not to be trusted by himself, it

'Therefore, having heard the arrangements that are feasible to carry out that object, am I to understand,

'Very well,' cried Fanny with an air of resignation, 'then I suppose it must be done! I came to you, my sweet,

the moment I saw the doubt, and the necessity of deciding. I have now decided. So let it be.'

After yielding herself up, in this pattern manner, to sisterly advice and the force of circumstances, Fanny

became quite benignant: as one who had laid her own inclinations at the feet of her dearest friend, and felt a

glow of conscience in having made the sacrifice. 'After all, my Amy,' she said to her sister, 'you are the best

of small creatures, and full of good sense; and I don't know what I shall ever do without you!'

'Not that I contemplate doing without You, Amy, by any means, for I hope we shall ever be next to

inseparable. And now, my pet, I am going to give you a word of advice. When you are left alone here with

'Why, of course, my precious, till papa comes back! Unless you call Edward company, which he certainly is

not, even when he is here, and still more certainly is not when he is away at Naples or in Sicily. I was going

to saybut you are such a beloved little Marplot for putting one outwhen you are left alone here with Mrs

General, Amy, don't you let her slide into any sort of artful understanding with you that she is looking after

Pa, or that Pa is looking after her. She will if she can. I know her sly manner of feeling her way with those

gloves of hers. But don't you comprehend her on any account. And if Pa should tell you when he comes back,

that he has it in contemplation to make Mrs General your mama (which is not the less likely because I am

going away), my advice to you is, that you say at once," Papa, I beg to object most strongly. Fanny cautioned

me about this, and she objected, and I object." I don't mean to say that any objection from you, Amy, is likely

to be of the smallest effect, or that I think you likely to make it with any degree of firmness. But there is a

principle involveda filial principleand I implore you not to submit to be motherinlawed by Mrs

General, without asserting it in making every one about you as uncomfortable as possible. I don't expect you

to stand by itindeed, I know you won't, Pa being concernedbut I wish to rouse you to a sense of duty. As

to any help from me, or as to any opposition that I can offer to such a match, you shall not be left in the lurch

, my love. Whatever weight I may derive from my position as a married girl not wholly devoid of

attractionsused, as that position always shall be, to oppose that womanI will bring to bear, you May

depend upon it, on the head and false hair (for I am confident it's not all real, ugly as it is and unlikely as it

appears that any One in their Senses would go to the expense of buying it) of Mrs General!' Little Dorrit

received this counsel without venturing to oppose it but without giving Fanny any reason to believe that she

intended to act upon it. Having now, as it were, formally wound up her single life and arranged her worldly

affairs, Fanny proceeded with characteristic ardour to prepare for the serious change in her condition.

The preparation consisted in the despatch of her maid to Paris under the protection of the Courier, for the

purchase of that outfit for a bride on which it would be extremely low, in the present narrative, to bestow an

English name, but to which (on a vulgar principle it observes of adhering to the language in which it

professes to be written) it declines to give a French one. The rich and beautiful wardrobe purchased by these

agents, in the course of a few weeks made its way through the intervening country, bristling with

customhouses, garrisoned by an immense army of shabby mendicants in uniform who incessantly repeated

the Beggar's Petition over it, as if every individual warrior among them were the ancient Belisarius: and of

whom there were so many Legions, that unless the Courier had expended just one bushel and a half of silver

money relieving their distresses, they would have worn the wardrobe out before it got to Rome, by turning it

over and over. Through all such dangers, however, it was triumphantly brought, inch by inch, and arrived at

There it was exhibited to select companies of female viewers, in whose gentle bosoms it awakened

implacable feelings. Concurrently, active preparations were made for the day on which some of its treasures

were to be publicly displayed. Cards of breakfast invitation were sent out to half the English in the city of

Romulus; the other half made arrangements to be under arms, as criticising volunteers, at various outer points

of the solemnity. The most high and illustrious English Signor Edgardo Dorrit, came post through the deep

mud and ruts (from forming a surface under the improving Neapolitan nobility), to grace the occasion. The

best hotel and all its culinary myrmidons, were set to work to prepare the feast. The drafts of Mr Dorrit

almost constituted a run on the Torlonia Bank. The British Consul hadn't had such a marriage in the whole of

The day came, and the SheWolf in the Capitol might have snarled with envy to see how the Island Savages

contrived these things now adays. The murderousheaded statues of the wicked Emperors of the Soldiery,

whom sculptors had not been able to flatter out of their villainous hideousness, might have come off their

pedestals to run away with the Bride. The choked old fountain, where erst the gladiators washed, might have

leaped into life again to honour the ceremony. The Temple of Vesta might have sprung up anew from its

ruins, expressly to lend its countenance to the occasion. Might have done; but did not. Like sentient

thingseven like the lords and ladies of creation sometimesmight have done much, but did nothing. The

celebration went off with admirable pomp; monks in black robes, white robes, and russet robes stopped to

look after the carriages; wandering peasants in fleeces of sheep, begged and piped under the housewindows;

the English volunteers defiled; the day wore on to the hour of vespers; the festival wore away; the thousand

churches rang their bells without any reference to it; and St Peter denied that he had anything to do with it.

But by that time the Bride was near the end of the first day's journey towards Florence. It was the peculiarity

of the nuptials that they were all Bride. Nobody noticed the Bridegroom. Nobody noticed the first

Bridesmaid. Few could have seen Little Dorrit (who held that post) for the glare, even supposing many to

have sought her. So, the Bride had mounted into her handsome chariot, incidentally accompanied by the

Bridegroom; and after rolling for a few minutes smoothly over a fair pavement, had begun to jolt through a

Slough of Despond, and through a long, long avenue of wrack and ruin. Other nuptial carriages are said to

If Little Dorrit found herself left a little lonely and a little low that night, nothing would have done so much

against her feeling of depression as the being able to sit at work by her father, as in the old time, and help him

to his supper and his rest. But that was not to be thought of now, when they sat in the stateequipage with

Mrs General on the coachbox. And as to supper! If Mr Dorrit had wanted supper, there was an Italian cook

and there was a Swiss confectioner, who must have put on caps as high as the Pope's Mitre, and have

performed the mysteries of Alchemists in a copper saucepaned laboratory below, before he could have got

He was sententious and didactic that night. If he had been simply loving, he would have done Little Dorrit

more good; but she accepted him as he waswhen had she not accepted him as he was ! and made the

most and best of him. Mrs General at length retired. Her retirement for the night was always her frostiest

ceremony, as if she felt it necessary that the human imagination should be chilled into stone to prevent its

following her. When she had gone through her rigid preliminaries, amounting to a sort of genteel

platoonexercise, she withdrew. Little Dorrit then put her arm round her father's neck, to bid him good night.

'Amy, my dear,' said Mr Dorrit, taking her by the hand, 'this is the close of a day, that hashagreatly

'No,' said Mr Dorrit, 'no: I am not sensible of fatigue when it arises from an occasion sohumreplete with

Little Dorrit was glad to find him in such heart, and smiled from her own heart.

'My dear,' he continued, 'this is an occasionhateeming with a good example. With a good example, my

Little Dorrit, fluttered by his words, did not know what to say, though he stopped as if he expected her to say

'Amy,' he resumed; 'your dear sister, our Fanny, has contracted ha huma marriage, eminently calculated to

extend the basis of our haconnection, and tohumconsolidate our social relations. My love, I trust

that the time is not far distant when someha eligible partner may be found for you.'

'Oh no! Let me stay with you. I beg and pray that I may stay with you! I want nothing but to stay and take

'Nay, Amy, Amy,' said Mr Dorrit. 'This is weak and foolish, weak and foolish. You have

aharesponsibility imposed upon you by your position. It is to develop that position, and behum

worthy of that position. As to taking care of me; I canhatake care of myself. Or,' he added after a

moment, 'if I should need to be taken care of, Ihumcan, with thehablessing of Providence, be taken

care of, Iha humI cannot, my dear child, think of engrossing, andhaas it were, sacrificing you.'

O what a time of day at which to begin that profession of self denial; at which to make it, with an air of

'Don't speak, Amy. I positively say I cannot do it. Ihamust not do it. Myhumconscience would not

allow it. I therefore, my love, take the opportunity afforded by this gratifying and impressive occasion

ofhasolemnly remarking, that it is now a cherished wish and purpose of mine to see youhaeligibly

'Amy,' said Mr Dorrit, 'I am well persuaded that if the topic were referred to any person of superior social

knowledge, of superior delicacy and senselet us say, for instance, tohaMrs General that there

would not be two opinions as to thehumaffectionate character and propriety of my sentiments. But, as I

know your loving and dutiful nature fromhumfrom experience, I am quite satisfied that it is necessary to

say no more. I havehumno husband to propose at present, my dear: I have not even one in view. I

merely wish that we shouldhaunderstand each other. Hum. Good night, my dear and sole remaining

If the thought ever entered Little Dorrit's head that night, that he could give her up lightly now in his

prosperity, and when he had it in his mind to replace her with a second wife, she drove it away. Faithful to

him still, as in the worst times through which she had borne him singlehanded, she drove the thought away;

and entertained no harder reflection, in her tearful unrest, than that he now saw everything through their

wealth, and through the care he always had upon him that they should continue rich, and grow richer.

They sat in their equipage of state, with Mrs General on the box, for three weeks longer, and then he started

for Florence to join Fanny. Little Dorrit would have been glad to bear him company so far, only for the sake

of her own love, and then to have turned back alone, thinking of dear England. But, though the Courier had

gone on with the Bride, the Valet was next in the line; and the succession would not have come to her, as

Mrs General took life easilyas easily, that is, as she could take anythingwhen the Roman establishment

remained in their sole occupation; and Little Dorrit would often ride out in a hired carriage that was left them,

and alight alone and wander among the ruins of old Rome. The ruins of the vast old Amphitheatre, of the old

Temples, of the old commemorative Arches, of the old trodden highways, of the old tombs, besides being

what they were, to her were ruins of the old Marshalsearuins of her own old liferuins of the faces and

forms that of old peopled itruins of its loves, hopes, cares, and joys. Two ruined spheres of action and

suffering were before the solitary girl often sitting on some broken fragment; and in the lonely places, under

Up, then, would come Mrs General; taking all the colour out of everything, as Nature and Art had taken it out

of herself; writing Prunes and Prism, in Mr Eustace's text, wherever she could lay a hand; looking

everywhere for Mr Eustace and company, and seeing nothing else; scratching up the driest little bones of

antiquity, and bolting them whole without any human visitingslike a Ghoule in gloves.

The newly married pair, on their arrival in Harley Street, Cavendish Square, London, were received by the

Chief Butler. That great man was not interested in them, but on the whole endured them. People must

continue to be married and given in marriage, or Chief Butlers would not be wanted. As nations are made to

be taxed, so families are made to be butlered. The Chief Butler, no doubt, reflected that the course of nature

He therefore condescended to look at the carriage from the Hall door without frowning at it, and said, in a

very handsome way, to one of his men, 'Thomas, help with the luggage.' He even escorted the Bride upstairs

into Mr Merdle's presence; but this must be considered as an act of homage to the sex (of which he was an

admirer, being notoriously captivated by the charms of a certain Duchess), and not as a committal of himself

Mr Merdle was slinking about the hearthrug, waiting to welcome Mrs Sparkler. His hand seemed to retreat up

his sleeve as he advanced to do so, and he gave her such a superfluity of coatcuff that it was like being

received by the popular conception of Guy Fawkes. When he put his lips to hers, besides, he took himself

into custody by the wrists, and backed himself among the ottomans and chairs and tables as if he were his

own Police officer, saying to himself, 'Now, none of that! Come! I've got you, you know, and you go quietly

Mrs Sparkler, installed in the rooms of statethe innermost sanctuary of down, silk, chintz, and fine

linenfelt that so far her triumph was good, and her way made, step by step. On the day before her marriage,

she had bestowed on Mrs Merdle's maid with an air of gracious indifference, in Mrs Merdle's presence, a

trifling little keepsake (bracelet, bonnet, and two dresses, all new) about four times as valuable as the present

formerly made by Mrs Merdle to her. She was now established in Mrs Merdle's own rooms, to which some

extra touches had been given to render them more worthy of her occupation. In her mind's eye, as she

lounged there, surrounded by every luxurious accessory that wealth could obtain or invention devise, she saw

the fair bosom that beat in unison with the exultation of her thoughts, competing with the bosom that had

been famous so long, outshining it, and deposing it. Happy? Fanny must have been happy. No more wishing

The Courier had not approved of Mr Dorrit's staying in the house of a friend, and had preferred to take him to

an hotel in Brook Street, Grosvenor Square. Mr Merdle ordered his carriage to be ready early in the morning

that he might wait upon Mr Dorrit immediately after breakfast. Bright the carriage looked, sleek the horses

looked, gleaming the harness looked, luscious and lasting the liveries looked. A rich, responsible turnout.

An equipage for a Merdle. Early people looked after it as it rattled along the streets, and said, with awe in

There he went, until Brook Street stopped him. Then, forth from its magnificent case came the jewel; not

Commotion in the office of the hotel. Merdle! The landlord, though a gentleman of a haughty spirit who had

just driven a pair of thoroughbred horses into town, turned out to show him up stairs. The clerks and

servants cut him off by backpassages, and were found accidentally hovering in doorways and angles, that

they might look upon him. Merdle! O ye sun, moon, and stars, the great man! The rich man, who had in a

manner revised the New Testament, and already entered into the kingdom of Heaven. The man who could

As he went up the stairs, people were already posted on the lower stairs, that his shadow might fall upon them

when he came down. So were the sick brought out and laid in the track of the Apostlewho had NOT got

Mr Dorrit, dressinggowned and newspapered, was at his breakfast. The Courier, with agitation in his voice,

announced 'Miss Mairdale!' Mr Dorrit's overwrought heart bounded as he leaped up.

'Mr Merdle, this ishaindeed an honour. Permit me to express thehumsense, the high sense, I

entertain of thisha hum highly gratifying act of attention. I am well aware, sir, of the many demands

upon your time, and itshaenormous value,' Mr Dorrit could not say enormous roundly enough for his

own satisfaction. 'That you shouldhaat this early hour, bestow any of your priceless time upon me,

ishaa compliment that I acknowledge with the greatest esteem.' Mr Dorrit positively trembled in

Mr Merdle uttered, in his subdued, inward, hesitating voice, a few sounds that were to no purpose whatever;

'You are very kind,' said Mr Dorrit. 'Truly kind.' By this time the visitor was seated, and was passing his great

'Tolerably so. ButOh dear no, there's not much the matter with me,' said Mr Merdle, looking round the

There were black traces on his lips where they met, as if a little train of gunpowder had been fired there; and

he looked like a man who, if his natural temperament had been quicker, would have been very feverish that

morning. This, and his heavy way of passing his hand over his forehead, had prompted Mr Dorrit's solicitous

'Mrs Merdle,' Mr Dorrit insinuatingly pursued, 'I left, as you will be prepared to hear, thehaobserved of

all observers, thehum admired of all admirers, the leading fascination and charm of Society in Rome.

'Mrs Merdle,' said Mr Merdle, 'is generally considered a very attractive woman. And she is, no doubt. I am

Mr Merdle turned his tongue in his closed mouthit seemed rather a stiff and unmanageable

tonguemoistened his lips, passed his hand over his forehead again, and looked all round the room again,

'But,' he said, looking Mr Dorrit in the face for the first time, and immediately afterwards dropping his eyes to

the buttons of Mr Dorrit's waistcoat; 'if we speak of attractions, your daughter ought to be the subject of our

conversation. She is extremely beautiful. Both in face and figure, she is quite uncommon. When the young

Mr Dorrit's gratification was such that he saidhahe could not refrain from telling Mr Merdle verbally, as

he had already done by letter, what honour and happiness he felt in this union of their families. And he

offered his hand. Mr Merdle looked at the hand for a little while, took it on his for a moment as if his were a

'I thought I would drive round the first thing,' said Mr Merdle, 'to offer my services, in case I can do anything

for you; and to say that I hope you will at least do me the honour of dining with me today, and every day

'I have not at present the intention,' said Mr Dorrit, 'of ha exceeding a fortnight.'

'Hum. Yes,' said Mr Dorrit. 'But the truth ishamy dear Mr Merdle, that I find a foreign life so well suited

to my health and taste, that Ihumhave but two objects in my present visit to London. First,

thehathe distinguished happiness andha privilege which I now enjoy and appreciate; secondly, the

arrangementhumthe laying out, that is to say, in the best way, ofha, hummy money.'

'Well, sir,' said Mr Merdle, after turning his tongue again, 'if I can be of any use to you in that respect, you

Mr Dorrit's speech had had more hesitation in it than usual, as he approached the ticklish topic, for he was not

perfectly clear how so exalted a potentate might take it. He had doubts whether reference to any individual

capital, or fortune, might not seem a wretchedly retail affair to so wholesale a dealer. Greatly relieved by Mr

Merdle's affable offer of assistance, he caught at it directly, and heaped acknowledgments upon him.

'I scarcelyhadared,' said Mr Dorrit, 'I assure you, to hope for sohumvast an advantage as your

direct advice and assistance. Though of course I should, under any circumstances, like theha, humrest of

'You know we may almost say we are related, sir,' said Mr Merdle, curiously interested in the pattern of the

'it would not,' said Mr Merdle, 'be at the present moment easy for what I may call a mere outsider to come

'Of course, of course!' cried Mr Dorrit, in a tone implying that there were no other good things.

Mr Dorrit laughed in the buoyancy of his spirit. Ha, ha, ha! Long figure. Good. Ha. Very expressive to be

'However,' said Mr Merdle, 'I do generally retain in my own hands the power of exercising some

preferencepeople in general would be pleased to call it favouras a sort of compliment for my care and

Mr Merdle, with a dry, swallowing action, seemed to dispose of those qualities like a bolus; then added, 'As a

sort of return for it. I will see, if you please, how I can exert this limited power (for people are jealous, and it

is limited), to your advantage.' 'You are very good,' replied Mr Dorrit. 'You are very good.'

'Of course,' said Mr Merdle, 'there must be the strictest integrity and uprightness in these transactions; there

must be the purest faith between man and man; there must be unimpeached and unimpeachable confidence;

'Therefore,' said Mr Merdle, 'I can only give you a preference to a certain extent.'

'Defined extent. And perfectly aboveboard. As to my advice, however,' said Mr Merdle, 'that is another

Oh! Such as it was! (Mr Dorrit could not bear the faintest appearance of its being depreciated, even by Mr

'That, there is nothing in the bonds of spotless honour between myself and my fellowman to prevent my

parting with, if I choose. And that,' said Mr Merdle, now deeply intent upon a dustcart that was passing the

New acknowledgments from Mr Dorrit. New passages of Mr Merdle's hand over his forehead. Calm and

'My time being rather precious,' said Mr Merdle, suddenly getting up, as if he had been waiting in the interval

for his legs and they had just come, 'I must be moving towards the City. Can I take you anywhere, sir? I shall

Mr Dorrit bethought himself that he had business at his banker's. His banker's was in the City. That was

fortunate; Mr Merdle would take him into the City. But, surely, he might not detain Mr Merdle while he

assumed his coat? Yes, he might and must; Mr Merdle insisted on it. So Mr Dorrit, retiring into the next

room, put himself under the hands of his valet, and in five minutes came back glorious.

Then said Mr Merdle, 'Allow me, sir. Take my arm!' Then leaning on Mr Merdle's arm, did Mr Dorrit

descend the staircase, seeing the worshippers on the steps, and feeling that the light of Mr Merdle shone by

reflection in himself. Then the carriage, and the ride into the City; and the people who looked at them; and

the hats that flew off grey heads; and the general bowing and crouching before this wonderful mortal the like

of which prostration of spirit was not to be seenno, by high Heaven, no! It may be worth thinking of by

Fawners of all denominationsin Westminster Abbey and Saint Paul's Cathedral put together, on any

Sunday in the year. It was a rapturous dream to Mr Dorrit to find himself set aloft in this public car of

triumph, making a magnificent progress to that befitting destination, the golden Street of the Lombards.

There Mr Merdle insisted on alighting and going his way afoot, and leaving his poor equipage at Mr Dorrit's

disposition. So the dream increased in rapture when Mr Dorrit came out of the bank alone, and people looked

at him in default of Mr Merdle, and when, with the ears of his mind, he heard the frequent exclamation as he

At dinner that day, although the occasion was not foreseen and provided for, a brilliant company of such as

are not made of the dust of the earth, but of some superior article for the present unknown, shed their lustrous

benediction upon Mr Dorrit's daughter's marriage. And Mr Dorrit's daughter that day began, in earnest, her

competition with that woman not present; and began it so well that Mr Dorrit could all but have taken his

affidavit, if required, that Mrs Sparkler had all her life been lying at full length in the lap of luxury, and had

Next day, and the day after, and every day, all graced by more dinner company, cards descended on Mr

Dorrit like theatrical snow. As the friend and relative by marriage of the illustrious Merdle, Bar, Bishop,

Treasury, Chorus, Everybody, wanted to make or improve Mr Dorrit's acquaintance. In Mr Merdle's heap of

offices in the City, when Mr Dorrit appeared at any of them on his business taking him Eastward (which it

frequently did, for it throve amazingly), the name of Dorrit was always a passport to the great presence of

Merdle. So the dream increased in rapture every hour, as Mr Dorrit felt increasingly sensible that this

Only one thing sat otherwise than auriferously, and at the same time lightly, on Mr Dorrit's mind. It was the

Chief Butler. That stupendous character looked at him, in the course of his official looking at the dinners, in a

manner that Mr Dorrit considered questionable. He looked at him, as he passed through the hall and up the

staircase, going to dinner, with a glazed fixedness that Mr Dorrit did not like. Seated at table in the act of

drinking, Mr Dorrit still saw him through his wineglass, regarding him with a cold and ghostly eye. It

misgave him that the Chief Butler must have known a Collegian, and must have seen him in the College

perhaps had been presented to him. He looked as closely at the Chief Butler as such a man could be looked at,

and yet he did not recall that he had ever seen him elsewhere. Ultimately he was inclined to think that there

was no reverence in the man, no sentiment in the great creature. But he was not relieved by that; for, let him

think what he would, the Chief Butler had him in his supercilious eye, even when that eye was on the plate

and other tablegarniture; and he never let him out of it. To hint to him that this confinement in his eye was

disagreeable, or to ask him what he meant, was an act too daring to venture upon; his severity with his

employers and their visitors being terrific, and he never permitting himself to be approached with the slightest

The term of Mr Dorrit's visit was within two days of being out, and he was about to dress for another

inspection by the Chief Butler (whose victims were always dressed expressly for him), when one of the

servants of the hotel presented himself bearing a card. Mr Dorrit, taking it, read:

'Man, man,' said Mr Dorrit, turning upon him with grievous indignation, 'explain your motive in bringing me

this ridiculous name. I am wholly unacquainted with it. Finching, sir?' said Mr Dorrit, perhaps avenging

The man, man, seemed to mean Flinching as much as anything else, for he backed away from Mr Dorrit's

'I know no such lady, sir,' said Mr Dorrit. 'Take this card away. I know no Finching of either sex.'

'Ask your pardon, sir. The lady said she was aware she might be unknown by name. But she begged me to

say, sir, that she had formerly the honour of being acquainted with Miss Dorrit. The lady said, sir, the

Mr Dorrit knitted his brows and rejoined, after a moment or two, 'Inform Mrs Finching, sir,' emphasising the

name as if the innocent man were solely responsible for it, 'that she can come up.'

He had reflected, in his momentary pause, that unless she were admitted she might leave some message, or

might say something below, having a disgraceful reference to that former state of existence. Hence the

'I have not the pleasure,' said Mr Dorrit, standing with the card in his hand, and with an air which imported

that it would scarcely have been a firstclass pleasure if he had had it, 'of knowing either this name, or

yourself, madam. Place a chair, sir.' The responsible man, with a start, obeyed, and went out on tiptoe. Flora,

putting aside her veil with a bashful tremor upon her, proceeded to introduce herself. At the same time a

singular combination of perfumes was diffused through the room, as if some brandy had been put by mistake

in a lavenderwater bottle, or as if some lavenderwater had been put by mistake in a brandybottle.

'I beg Mr Dorrit to offer a thousand apologies and indeed they would be far too few for such an intrusion

which I know must appear extremely bold in a lady and alone too, but I thought it best upon the whole

however difficult and even apparently improper though Mr F.'s Aunt would have willingly accompanied me

and as a character of great force and spirit would probably have struck one possessed of such a knowledge of

life as no doubt with so many changes must have been acquired, for Mr F. himself said frequently that

although well educated in the neighbourhood of Blackheath at as high as eighty guineas which is a good deal

for parents and the plate kept back too on going away but that is more a meanness than its value that he had

learnt more in his first years as a commercial traveller with a large commission on the sale of an article that

nobody would hear of much less buy which preceded the wine trade a long time than in the whole six years in

that academy conducted by a college Bachelor, though why a Bachelor more clever than a married man I do

'I must openly admit that I have no pretensions,' said Flora, 'but having known the dear little thing which

under altered circumstances appears a liberty but is not so intended and Goodness knows there was no favour

in halfacrown aday to such a needle as herself but quite the other way and as to anything lowering in it

far from it the labourer is worthy of his hire and I am sure I only wish he got it oftener and more animal food

'Madam,' said Mr Dorrit, recovering his breath by a great effort, as the relict of the late Mr Finching stopped

to take hers; 'madam,' said Mr Dorrit, very red in the face, 'if I understand you to refer tohato anything

in the antecedents ofhuma daughter of mine, involvingha humdaily compensation, madam, I beg

to observe that thehafact, assuming ithato be fact, never was within my knowledge. Hum. I should

'Unnecessary to pursue the subject,' returned Flora, 'and would not have mentioned it on any account except

as supposing it a favourable and only letter of introduction but as to being fact no doubt whatever and you

may set your mind at rest for the very dress I have on now can prove it and sweetly made though there is no

denying that it would tell better on a better figure for my own is much too fat though how to bring it down I

know not, pray excuse me I am roving off again.' Mr Dorrit backed to his chair in a stony way, and seated

'The dear little thing,' said Flora, 'having gone off perfectly limp and white and cold in my own house or at

least papa's for though not a freehold still a long lease at a peppercorn on the morning when Arthurfoolish

habit of our youthful days and Mr Clennam far more adapted to existing circumstances particularly

addressing a stranger and that stranger a gentleman in an elevated stationcommunicated the glad tidings

At the mention of these two names, Mr Dorrit frowned, stared, frowned again, hesitated with his fingers at his

lips, as he had hesitated long ago, and said, 'Do me the favour tohastate your pleasure, madam.'

'Mr Dorrit,' said Flora, 'you are very kind in giving me permission and highly natural it seems to me that you

should be kind for though more stately I perceive a likeness filled out of course but a likeness still, the object

of my intruding is my own without the slightest consultation with any human being and most decidedly not

with Arthurpray excuse me Doyce and Clennam I don't know what I am saying Mr Clennam solusfor to

put that individual linked by a golden chain to a purple time when all was ethereal out of any anxiety would

be worth to me the ransom of a monarch not that I have the least idea how much that would come to but using

Mr Dorrit, without greatly regarding the earnestness of these latter words, repeated, 'State your pleasure,

'It's not likely I well know,' said Flora, 'but it's possible and being possible when I had the gratification of

reading in the papers that you had arrived from Italy and were going back I made up my mind to try it for you

might come across him or hear something of him and if so what a blessing and relief to all!'

'Allow me to ask, madam,' said Mr Dorrit, with his ideas in wild confusion, 'to whomhaTo whom,' he

'To the foreigner from Italy who disappeared in the City as no doubt you have read in the papers equally with

myself,' said Flora, 'not referring to private sources by the name of Pancks from which one gathers what

dreadfully illnatured things some people are wicked enough to whisper most likely judging others by

themselves and what the uneasiness and indignation of Arthurquite unable to overcome it Doyce and

It happened, fortunately for the elucidation of any intelligible result, that Mr Dorrit had heard or read nothing

about the matter. This caused Mrs Finching, with many apologies for being in great practical difficulties as to

finding the way to her pocket among the stripes of her dress at length to produce a police handbill, setting

forth that a foreign gentleman of the name of Blandois, last from Venice, had unaccountably disappeared on

such a night in such a part of the city of London; that he was known to have entered such a house, at such an

hour; that he was stated by the inmates of that house to have left it, about so many minutes before midnight;

and that he had never been beheld since. This, with exact particulars of time and locality, and with a good

detailed description of the foreign gentleman who had so mysteriously vanished, Mr Dorrit read at large.

'Blandois!' said Mr Dorrit. 'Venice! And this description! I know this gentleman. He has been in my house.

He is intimately acquainted with a gentleman of good family (but in indifferent circumstances), of whom I

'Then my humble and pressing entreaty is the more,' said Flora, 'that in travelling back you will have the

kindness to look for this foreign gentleman along all the roads and up and down all the turnings and to make

inquiries for him at all the hotels and orangetrees and vineyards and volcanoes and places for he must be

somewhere and why doesn't he come forward and say he's there and clear all parties up?'

'Pray, madam,' said Mr Dorrit, referring to the handbill again, 'who is Clennam and Co.? Ha. I see the name

mentioned here, in connection with the occupation of the house which Monsieur Blandois was seen to enter:

who is Clennam and Co.? Is it the individual of whom I had formerlyhumsomehaslight transitory

'It's a very different person indeed,' replied Flora, 'with no limbs and wheels instead and the grimmest of

Mr Dorrit looked as if he must immediately be driven out of his mind by this account. Neither was it rendered

more favourable to sanity by Flora's dashing into a rapid analysis of Mr Flintwinch's cravat, and describing

him, without the lightest boundary line of separation between his identity and Mrs Clennam's, as a rusty

screw in gaiters. Which compound of man and woman, no limbs, wheels, rusty screw, grimness, and gaiters,

so completely stupefied Mr Dorrit, that he was a spectacle to be pitied. 'But I would not detain you one

moment longer,' said Flora, upon whom his condition wrought its effect, though she was quite unconscious of

having produced it, 'if you would have the goodness to give your promise as a gentleman that both in going

back to Italy and in Italy too you would look for this Mr Blandois high and low and if you found or heard of

him make him come forward for the clearing of all parties.' By that time Mr Dorrit had so far recovered from

his bewilderment, as to be able to say, in a tolerably connected manner, that he should consider that his duty.

'With a million thanks,' said she, 'and my address upon my card in case of anything to be communicated

personally, I will not send my love to the dear little thing for it might not be acceptable, and indeed there is

no dear little thing left in the transformation so why do it but both myself and Mr F.'s Aunt ever wish her well

and lay no claim to any favour on our side you may be sure of that but quite the other way for what she

undertook to do she did and that is more than a great many of us do, not to say anything of her doing it as

Well as it could be done and I myself am one of them for I have said ever since I began to recover the blow of

Mr F's death that I would learn the Organ of which I am extremely fond but of which I am ashamed to say I

When Mr Dorrit, who attended her to the roomdoor, had had a little time to collect his senses, he found that

the interview had summoned back discarded reminiscences which jarred with the Merdle dinnertable. He

wrote and sent off a brief note excusing himself for that day, and ordered dinner presently in his own rooms

at the hotel. He had another reason for this. His time in London was very nearly out, and was anticipated by

engagements; his plans were made for returning; and he thought it behoved his importance to pursue some

direct inquiry into the Blandois disappearance, and be in a condition to carry back to Mr Henry Gowan the

result of his own personal investigation. He therefore resolved that he would take advantage of that evening's

freedom to go down to Clennam and Co.'s, easily to be found by the direction set forth in the handbill; and

Having dined as plainly as the establishment and the Courier would let him, and having taken a short sleep by

the fire for his better recovery from Mrs Finching, he set out in a hackneycabriolet alone. The deep bell of

St Paul's was striking nine as he passed under the shadow of Temple Bar, headless and forlorn in these

As he approached his destination through the bystreets and water side ways, that part of London seemed to

him an uglier spot at such an hour than he had ever supposed it to be. Many long years had passed since he

had seen it; he had never known much of it; and it wore a mysterious and dismal aspect in his eyes. So

powerfully was his imagination impressed by it, that when his driver stopped, after having asked the way

more than once, and said to the best of his belief this was the gateway they wanted, Mr Dorrit stood

hesitating, with the coachdoor in his hand, half afraid of the dark look of the place.

Truly, it looked as gloomy that night as even it had ever looked. Two of the handbills were posted on the

entrance wall, one on either side, and as the lamp flickered in the night air, shadows passed over them, not

unlike the shadows of fingers following the lines. A watch was evidently kept upon the place. As Mr Dorrit

paused, a man passed in from over the way, and another man passed out from some dark corner within; and

As there was only one house in the enclosure, there was no room for uncertainty, so he went up the steps of

that house and knocked. There was a dim light in two windows on the firstfloor. The door gave back a

dreary, vacant sound, as though the house were empty; but it was not, for a light was visible, and a step was

audible, almost directly. They both came to the door, and a chain grated, and a woman with her apron thrown

Mr Dorrit, much amazed by this appearance, replied that he was from Italy, and that he wished to ask a

Upon this, a dry old man appeared, whom Mr Dorrit thought he identified by his gaiters, as the rusty screw.

The woman was Under apprehensions of the dry old man, for she whisked her apron away as he approached,

and disclosed a pale affrighted face. 'Open the door, you fool,' said the old man; 'and let the gentleman in.'

Mr Dorrit, not without a glance over his shoulder towards his driver and the cabriolet, walked into the dim

hall. 'Now, sir,' said Mr Flintwinch, 'you can ask anything here you think proper; there are no secrets here,

Before a reply could be made, a strong stern voice, though a woman's, called from above, 'Who is it?'

Mr Flintwinch muttered, as if he deemed that unnecessary; but, turning to Mr Dorrit, said, 'Mrs Clennam. She

will do as she likes. I'll show you the way.' He then preceded Mr Dorrit up the blackened staircase; that

gentleman, not unnaturally looking behind him on the road, saw the woman following, with her apron thrown

Mrs Clennam had her books open on her little table. 'Oh!' said she abruptly, as she eyed her visitor with a

steady look. 'You are from Italy, sir, are you. Well?' Mr Dorrit was at a loss for any more distinct rejoinder at

'Where is this missing man? Have you come to give us information where he is? I hope you have?'

'So far from it, Ihumhave come to seek information.' 'Unfortunately for us, there is none to be got here.

Flintwinch, show the gentleman the handbill. Give him several to take away. Hold the light for him to read it.'

Mr Flintwinch did as he was directed, and Mr Dorrit read it through, as if he had not previously seen it; glad

enough of the opportunity of collecting his presence of mind, which the air of the house and of the people in

it had a little disturbed. While his eyes were on the paper, he felt that the eyes of Mr Flintwinch and of Mrs

Clennam were on him. He found, when he looked up, that this sensation was not a fanciful one.

'Now you know as much,' said Mrs Clennam, 'as we know, sir. Is Mr Blandois a friend of yours?'

The searching look turned gradually to the floor, after taking Mr Flintwinch's face in its way. Mr Dorrit,

discomfited by finding that he was the questioned instead of the questioner, applied himself to the reversal of

'I amhaa gentleman of property, at present residing in Italy with my family, my servants,

andhummy rather large establishment. Being in London for a short time on affairs connected

withhamy estate, and hearing of this strange disappearance, I wished to make myself acquainted with

the circumstances at firsthand, because there isha human English gentleman in Italy whom I shall no

doubt see on my return, who has been in habits of close and daily intimacy with Monsieur Blandois. Mr

'Wishing tohamake the narrative coherent and consecutive to him,' said Mr Dorrit, 'may I asksay,

'Not a twelvemonth. Mr Flintwinch here, will refer to the books and tell you when, and by whom at Paris he

was introduced to us. If that,' Mrs Clennam added, 'should be any satisfaction to you. It is poor satisfaction to

'Pray, madam,' said Mr Dorrit, with a growing fancy upon him as he recovered his importance, that he was in

some superior way in the Commission of the Peace; 'pray, madam, may I inquire, for the greater satisfaction

of the gentleman whom I have the honour to haretain, or protect or let me say tohumknowto

knowWas Monsieur Blandois here on business on the night indicated in this present sheet?'

'The question has been asked before,' said Mrs Clennam, 'and the answer has been, No. We don't choose to

'I suppose,' observed Mr Dorrit, glancing from Mrs Clennam to Mr Flintwinch, and from Mr Flintwinch to

Disconcerted by the cold and hard inquiry, Mr Dorrit was unable to assign any reason for his supposing so.

'I account for it, sir,' she pursued after an awkward silence on Mr Dorrit's part, 'by having no doubt that he is

It was exactly the same No as before, and put another barrier up. 'You asked me if I accounted for the

disappearance to myself,' Mrs Clennam sternly reminded him, 'not if I accounted for it to you. I do not

pretend to account for it to you, sir. I understand it to be no more my business to do that, than it is yours to

Mr Dorrit answered with an apologetic bend of his head. As he stepped back, preparatory to saying he had no

more to ask, he could not but observe how gloomily and fixedly she sat with her eyes fastened on the ground,

and a certain air upon her of resolute waiting; also, how exactly the selfsame expression was reflected in Mr

Flintwinch, standing at a little distance from her chair, with his eyes also on the ground, and his right hand

At that moment, Mistress Affery (of course, the woman with the apron) dropped the candlestick she held, and

If there were any sound at all, it was so slight that she must have fallen into a confirmed habit of listening for

sounds; but Mr Dorrit believed he did hear a something, like the falling of dry leaves. The woman's terror, for

Mr Flintwinch was the first to stir. 'Affery, my woman,' said he, sidling at her with his fists clenched, and his

elbows quivering with impatience to shake her, 'you are at your old tricks. You'll be walking in your sleep

next, my woman, and playing the whole round of your distempered antics. You must have some physic.

When I have shown this gentleman out, I'll make you up such a comfortable dose, my woman; such a

It did not appear altogether comfortable in expectation to Mistress Affery; but Jeremiah, without further

reference to his healing medicine, took another candle from Mrs Clennam's table, and said, 'Now, sir; shall I

Mr Dorrit professed himself obliged, and went down. Mr Flintwinch shut him out, and chained him out,

He was again passed by the two men, one going out and the other coming in; got into the vehicle he had left

Before he had gone far, the driver stopped to let him know that he had given his name, number, and address

to the two men, on their joint requisition; and also the address at which he had taken Mr Dorrit up, the hour at

which he had been called from his stand and the way by which he had come. This did not make the night's

adventure run any less hotly in Mr Dorrit's mind, either when he sat down by his fire again, or when he went

to bed. All night he haunted the dismal house, saw the two people resolutely waiting, heard the woman with

her apron over her face cry out about the noise, and found the body of the missing Blandois, now buried in

Manifold are the cares of wealth and state. Mr Dorrit's satisfaction in remembering that it had not been

necessary for him to announce himself to Clennam and Co., or to make an allusion to his having had any

knowledge of the intrusive person of that name, had been damped overnight, while it was still fresh, by a

debate that arose within him whether or no he should take the Marshalsea in his way back, and look at the old

gate. He had decided not to do so; and had astonished the coachman by being very fierce with him for

proposing to go over London Bridge and recross the river by Waterloo Bridgea course which would have

taken him almost within sight of his old quarters. Still, for all that, the question had raised a conflict in his

breast; and, for some odd reason or no reason, he was vaguely dissatisfied. Even at the Merdle dinner table

next day, he was so out of sorts about it that he continued at intervals to turn it over and over, in a manner

frightfully inconsistent with the good society surrounding him. It made him hot to think what the Chief

Butler's opinion of him would have been, if that illustrious personage could have plumbed with that heavy

The farewell banquet was of a gorgeous nature, and wound up his visit in a most brilliant manner. Fanny

combined with the attractions of her youth and beauty, a certain weight of self sustainment as if she had

been married twenty years. He felt that he could leave her with a quiet mind to tread the paths of distinction,

and wishedbut without abatement of patronage, and without prejudice to the retiring virtues of his

'My dear,' he told her at parting, 'our family looks to you tohaassert its dignity andhummaintain its

'No, papa,' said Fanny, 'you may rely upon that, I think. My best love to dearest Amy, and I will write to her

'Shall I convey any message tohaanybody else?' asked Mr Dorrit, in an insinuating manner.

'Papa,' said Fanny, before whom Mrs General instantly loomed, 'no, I thank you. You are very kind, Pa, but I

must beg to be excused. There is no other message to send, I thank you, dear papa, that it would be at all

They parted in an outer drawingroom, where only Mr Sparkler waited on his lady, and dutifully bided his

time for shaking hands. When Mr Sparkler was admitted to this closing audience, Mr Merdle came creeping

in with not much more appearance of arms in his sleeves than if he had been the twin brother of Miss Biffin,

and insisted on escorting Mr Dorrit downstairs. All Mr Dorrit's protestations being in vain, he enjoyed the

honour of being accompanied to the halldoor by this distinguished man, who (as Mr Dorrit told him in

shaking hands on the step) had really overwhelmed him with attentions and services during this memorable

visit. Thus they parted; Mr Dorrit entering his carriage with a swelling breast, not at all sorry that his Courier,

who had come to take leave in the lower regions, should have an opportunity of beholding the grandeur of his

The aforesaid grandeur was yet full upon Mr Dorrit when he alighted at his hotel. Helped out by the Courier

and some halfdozen of the hotel servants, he was passing through the hall with a serene magnificence, when

lo! a sight presented itself that struck him dumb and motionless. John Chivery, in his best clothes, with his

tall hat under his arm, his ivoryhandled cane genteelly embarrassing his deportment, and a bundle of cigars

'Now, young man,' said the porter. 'This is the gentleman. This young man has persisted in waiting, sir,

Mr Dorrit glared on the young man, choked, and said, in the mildest of tones, 'Ah! Young John! It is Young

'Ihathought it was Young john!' said Mr Dorrit. 'The young man may come up,' turning to the

attendants, as he passed on: 'oh yes, he may come up. Let Young John follow. I will speak to him above.'

Young John followed, smiling and much gratified. Mr Dorrit's rooms were reached. Candles were lighted.

'Now, sir,' said Mr Dorrit, turning round upon him and seizing him by the collar when they were safely alone.

The amazement and horror depicted in the unfortunate john's face for he had rather expected to be

embraced nextwere of that powerfully expressive nature that Mr Dorrit withdrew his hand and merely

'How dare you do this?' said Mr Dorrit. 'How do you presume to come here? How dare you insult me?'

'Yes, sir,' returned Mr Dorrit. 'Insult me. Your coming here is an affront, an impertinence, an audacity. You

'I thought, sir,' said Young John, with as pale and shocked a face as ever had been turned to Mr Dorrit's in his

lifeeven in his College life: 'I thought, sir, you mightn't object to have the goodness to accept a bundle'

'Damn your bundle, sir!' cried Mr Dorrit, in irrepressible rage. 'Ihumdon't smoke.'

'Tell me that again,' cried Mr Dorrit, quite beside himself, 'and I'll take the poker to you!'

John Chivery dropped into the chair nearest the door, and Mr Dorrit walked up and down the room; rapidly at

first; then, more slowly. Once, he went to the window, and stood there with his forehead against the glass. All

'Nothing else in the world, sir. Oh dear me! Only to say, Sir, that I hoped you was well, and only to ask if

'It's nothing to me, sir, by rights. I never thought of lessening the distance betwixt us, I am sure. I know it's a

liberty, sir, but I never thought you'd have taken it ill. Upon my word and honour, sir,' said Young John, with

emotion, 'in my poor way, I am too proud to have come, I assure you, if I had thought so.'

Mr Dorrit was ashamed. He went back to the window, and leaned his forehead against the glass for some

time. When he turned, he had his handkerchief in his hand, and he had been wiping his eyes with it, and he

'Young John, I am very sorry to have been hasty with you, butha some remembrances are not happy

'I feel that now, sir,' returned John Chivery; 'but I didn't before, and Heaven knows I meant no harm, sir.'

'No. No,' said Mr Dorrit. 'I amhumsure of that. Ha. Give me your hand, Young John, give me your

Young John gave it; but Mr Dorrit had driven his heart out of it, and nothing could change his face now, from

'There!' said Mr Dorrit, slowly shaking hands with him. 'Sit down again, Young John.'

Mr Dorrit sat down instead. After painfully holding his head a little while, he turned it to his visitor, and said,

'Thank you, sir, They're all pretty well, sir. They're not any ways complaining.'

'Hum. You are in yourhaold business I see, John?' said Mr Dorrit, with a glance at the offending bundle

'Yes, sir; we're pretty heavy at present. I don't know how it is, but we generally ARE pretty heavy.'

'Mostly at all times of the year, sir. I don't know the time that makes much difference to us. I wish you good

'Stay a moment, Young John; stay another moment. It would be ahaa gratification to me to send a

littlehumTestimonial, by such a trusty messenger, to be divided amongha humthemthem

'Not in any ways, sir. There's many of them, I'm sure, that would be the better for it.'

His hand shook so that he was a long time writing it, and wrote it in a tremulous scrawl at last. It was a

cheque for one hundred pounds. He folded it up, put it in Young john's hand, and pressed the hand in his.

'Don't speak of it, sir, on any accounts. I don't in any ways bear malice, I'm sure.'

But nothing while John was there could change John's face to its natural colour and expression, or restore

'And, John,' said Mr Dorrit, giving his hand a final pressure, and releasing it, 'I hope wehaagree that we

have spoken together in confidence; and that you will abstain, in going out, from saying anything to any one

'Oh! I assure you, sir,' returned John Chivery, 'in my poor humble way, sir, I'm too proud and honourable to

Mr Dorrit was not too proud and honourable to listen at the door that he might ascertain for himself whether

John really went straight out, or lingered to have any talk with any one. There was no doubt that he went

direct out at the door, and away down the street with a quick step. After remaining alone for an hour, Mr

Dorrit rang for the Courier, who found him with his chair on the hearthrug, sitting with his back towards

him and his face to the fire. 'You can take that bundle of cigars to smoke on the journey, if you like,' said Mr

Dorrit, with a careless wave of his hand. 'Habrought byhumlittle offering fromhason of old

Next morning's sun saw Mr Dorrit's equipage upon the Dover road, where every redjacketed postilion was

the sign of a cruel house, established for the unmerciful plundering of travellers. The whole business of the

human race, between London and Dover, being spoliation, Mr Dorrit was waylaid at Dartford, pillaged at

Gravesend, rifled at Rochester, fleeced at Sittingbourne, and sacked at Canterbury. However, it being the

Courier's business to get him out of the hands of the banditti, the Courier brought him off at every stage; and

so the redjackets went gleaming merrily along the spring landscape, rising and falling to a regular measure,

between Mr Dorrit in his snug corner and the next chalky rise in the dusty highway.

Another day's sun saw him at Calais. And having now got the Channel between himself and John Chivery, he

began to feel safe, and to find that the foreign air was lighter to breathe than the air of England.

On again by the heavy French roads for Paris. Having now quite recovered his equanimity, Mr Dorrit, in his

snug corner, fell to castlebuilding as he rode along. It was evident that he had a very large castle in hand. All

day long he was running towers up, taking towers down, adding a wing here, putting on a battlement there,

looking to the walls, strengthening the defences, giving ornamental touches to the interior, making in all

respects a superb castle of it. His preoccupied face so clearly denoted the pursuit in which he was engaged,

that every cripple at the posthouses, not blind, who shoved his little battered tinbox in at the carriage

window for Charity in the name of Heaven, Charity in the name of our Lady, Charity in the name of all the

Saints, knew as well what work he was at, as their countryman Le Brun could have known it himself, though

he had made that English traveller the subject of a special physiognomical treatise.

Arrived at Paris, and resting there three days, Mr Dorrit strolled much about the streets alone, looking in at

the shopwindows, and particularly the jewellers' windows. Ultimately, he went into the most famous

It was a charming little woman to whom he said ita sprightly little woman, dressed in perfect taste, who

came out of a green velvet bower to attend upon him, from posting up some dainty little books of account

which one could hardly suppose to be ruled for the entry of any articles more commercial than kisses, at a

For example, then, said the little woman, what species of gift did Monsieur desire? A lovegift?

Mr Dorrit smiled, and said, Eh, well! Perhaps. What did he know? It was always possible; the sex being so

Most willingly, said the little woman. Flattered and enchanted to show him many. But pardon! To begin with,

he would have the great goodness to observe that there were lovegifts, and there were nuptial gifts. For

example, these ravishing earrings and this necklace so superb to correspond, were what one called a love

gift. These brooches and these rings, of a beauty so gracious and celestial, were what one called, with the

Perhaps it would be a good arrangement, Mr Dorrit hinted, smiling, to purchase both, and to present the

Ah Heaven! said the little woman, laying the tips of the fingers of her two little hands against each other, that

would be generous indeed, that would be a special gallantry! And without doubt the lady so crushed with

Mr Dorrit was not sure of that. But, for example, the sprightly little woman was very sure of it, she said. So

Mr Dorrit bought a gift of each sort, and paid handsomely for it. As he strolled back to his hotel afterwards,

he carried his head high: having plainly got up his castle now to a much loftier altitude than the two square

Building away with all his might, but reserving the plans of his castle exclusively for his own eye, Mr Dorrit

posted away for Marseilles. Building on, building on, busily, busily, from morning to night. Falling asleep,

and leaving great blocks of building materials dangling in the air; waking again, to resume work and get them

into their places. What time the Courier in the rumble, smoking Young john's best cigars, left a little thread of

thin light smoke behindperhaps as he built a castle or two with stray pieces of Mr Dorrit's money.

Not a fortified town that they passed in all their journey was as strong, not a Cathedral summit was as high,

as Mr Dorrit's castle. Neither the Saone nor the Rhone sped with the swiftness of that peerless building; nor

was the Mediterranean deeper than its foundations; nor were the distant landscapes on the Cornice road, nor

the hills and bay of Genoa the Superb, more beautiful. Mr Dorrit and his matchless castle were disembarked

among the dirty white houses and dirtier felons of Civita Vecchia, and thence scrambled on to Rome as they

The sun had gone down full four hours, and it was later than most travellers would like it to be for finding

themselves outside the walls of Rome, when Mr Dorrit's carriage, still on its last wearisome stage, rattled

over the solitary Campagna. The savage herdsmen and the fiercelooking peasants who had chequered the

way while the light lasted, had all gone down with the sun, and left the wilderness blank. At some turns of the

road, a pale flare on the horizon, like an exhalation from the ruinsown land, showed that the city was yet far

off; but this poor relief was rare and shortlived. The carriage dipped down again into a hollow of the black

dry sea, and for a long time there was nothing visible save its petrified swell and the gloomy sky.

Mr Dorrit, though he had his castlebuilding to engage his mind, could not be quite easy in that desolate

place. He was far more curious, in every swerve of the carriage, and every cry of the postilions, than he had

been since he quitted London. The valet on the box evidently quaked. The Courier in the rumble was not

altogether comfortable in his mind. As often as Mr Dorrit let down the glass and looked back at him (which

was very often), he saw him smoking John Chivery out, it is true, but still generally standing up the while and

looking about him, like a man who had his suspicions, and kept upon his guard. Then would Mr Dorrit,

pulling up the glass again, reflect that those postilions were cutthroat looking fellows, and that he would

have done better to have slept at Civita Vecchia, and have started betimes in the morning. But, for all this, he

And now, fragments of ruinous enclosure, yawning windowgap and crazy wall, deserted houses, leaking

wells, broken watertanks, spectral cypresstrees, patches of tangled vine, and the changing of the track to a

long, irregular, disordered lane where everything was crumbling away, from the unsightly buildings to the

jolting roadnow, these objects showed that they were nearing Rome. And now, a sudden twist and

stoppage of the carriage inspired Mr Dorrit with the mistrust that the brigand moment was come for twisting

him into a ditch and robbing him; until, letting down the glass again and looking out, he perceived himself

assailed by nothing worse than a funeral procession, which came mechanically chaunting by, with an

indistinct show of dirty vestments, lurid torches, swinging censers, and a great cross borne before a priest. He

was an ugly priest by torchlight; of a lowering aspect, with an overhanging brow; and as his eyes met those of

Mr Dorrit, looking bareheaded out of the carriage, his lips, moving as they chaunted, seemed to threaten that

important traveller; likewise the action of his hand, which was in fact his manner of returning the traveller's

salutation, seemed to come in aid of that menace. So thought Mr Dorrit, made fanciful by the weariness of

building and travelling, as the priest drifted past him, and the procession straggled away, taking its dead along

with it. Upon their sodifferent way went Mr Dorrit's company too; and soon, with their coach load of

luxuries from the two great capitals of Europe, they were (like the Goths reversed) beating at the gates of

Mr Dorrit was not expected by his own people that night. He had been; but they had given him up until

tomorrow, not doubting that it was later than he would care, in those parts, to be out. Thus, when his

equipage stopped at his own gate, no one but the porter appeared to receive him. Was Miss Dorrit from

home? he asked. No. She was within. Good, said Mr Dorrit to the assembling servants; let them keep where

they were; let them help to unload the carriage; he would find Miss Dorrit for himself. So he went up his

grand staircase, slowly, and tired, and looked into various chambers which were empty, until he saw a light in

a small anteroom. It was a curtained nook, like a tent, within two other rooms; and it looked warm and

There was a draped doorway, but no door; and as he stopped here, looking in unseen, he felt a pang. Surely

not like jealousy? For why like jealousy? There was only his daughter and his brother there: he, with his chair

drawn to the hearth, enjoying the warmth of the evening wood fire; she seated at a little table, busied with

some embroidery work. Allowing for the great difference in the stilllife of the picture, the figures were

much the same as of old; his brother being sufficiently like himself to represent himself, for a moment, in the

composition. So had he sat many a night, over a coal fire far away; so had she sat, devoted to him. Yet surely

there was nothing to be jealous of in the old miserable poverty. Whence, then, the pang in his heart?

'I think,' returned Little Dorrit, plying her needle, 'that you have been growing younger for weeks past. So

'Yes, yes. You have done me a world of good. You have been so considerate of me, and so tender with me,

and so delicate in trying to hide your attentions from me, that Iwell, well, well! It's treasured up, my

'There is nothing in it but your own fresh fancy, uncle,' said Little Dorrit, cheerfully.

She paused for an instant in her work to look at him, and her look revived that former pain in her father's

breast; in his poor weak breast, so full of contradictions, vacillations, inconsistencies, the little peevish

perplexities of this ignorant life, mists which the morning without a night only can clear away.

'I have been freer with you, you see, my dove,' said the old man, 'since we have been alone. I say, alone, for I

don't count Mrs General; I don't care for her; she has nothing to do with me. But I know Fanny was impatient

of me. And I don't wonder at it, or complain of it, for I am sensible that I must be in the way, though I try to

keep out of it as well as I can. I know I am not fit company for our company. My brother William,' said the

old man admiringly, 'is fit company for monarchs; but not so your uncle, my dear. Frederick Dorrit is no

credit to William Dorrit, and he knows it quite well. Ah! Why, here's your father, Amy! My dear William,

(Turning his head in speaking, he had caught sight of him as he stood in the doorway.)

Little Dorrit with a cry of pleasure put her arms about her father's neck, and kissed him again and again. Her

father was a little impatient, and a little querulous. 'I am glad to find you at last, Amy,' he said. 'Ha. Really I

am glad to findhumany one to receive me at last. I appear to have beenhaso little expected, that

upon my word I beganha humto think it might be right to offer an apology forhataking the liberty

'It was so late, my dear William,' said his brother, 'that we had given you up for tonight.'

'I am stronger than you, dear Frederick,' returned his brother with an elaboration of fraternity in which there

was severity; 'and I hope I can travel without detriment athaany hour I choose.'

'Surely, surely,' returned the other, with a misgiving that he had given offence. 'Surely, William.'

'Thank you, Amy,' pursued Mr Dorrit, as she helped him to put off his wrappers. 'I can do it without

assistance. Ihaneed not trouble you, Amy. Could I have a morsel of bread and a glass of wine,

'Thank you, my love,' said Mr Dorrit, with a reproachful frost upon him; 'Ihaam afraid I am causing

'Mrs General complained of a headache, and of being fatigued; and so, when we gave you up, she went to

Perhaps Mr Dorrit thought that Mrs General had done well in being overcome by the disappointment of his

not arriving. At any rate, his face relaxed, and he said with obvious satisfaction, 'Extremely sorry to hear that

During this short dialogue, his daughter had been observant of him, with something more than her usual

interest. It would seem as though he had a changed or worn appearance in her eyes, and he perceived and

resented it; for he said with renewed peevishness, when he had divested himself of his travellingcloak, and

had come to the fire: 'Amy, what are you looking at? What do you see in me that causes you

'I did not know it, father; I beg your pardon. It gladdens my eyes to see you again; that's all.'

'Don't say that's all, becausehathat's not all. Youhumyou think,' said Mr Dorrit, with an accusatory

emphasis, 'that I am not looking well.' 'I thought you looked a little tired, love.'

'Then you are mistaken,' said Mr Dorrit. 'Ha, I am not tired. Ha, hum. I am very much fresher than I was

He was so inclined to be angry that she said nothing more in her justification, but remained quietly beside

him embracing his arm. As he stood thus, with his brother on the other side, he fell into a heavy doze, of not a

'Frederick,' he said, turning to his brother: 'I recommend you to go to bed immediately.'

'Frederick,' he retorted, 'I beg you to go to bed. Ihamake it a personal request that you go to bed. You

'Hah!' said the old man, who had no wish but to please him. 'Well, well, well! I dare say I am.'

'My dear Frederick,' returned Mr Dorrit, with an astonishing superiority to his brother's failing powers, 'there

can be no doubt of it. It is painful to me to see you so weak. Ha. It distresses me. Hum. I don't find you

looking at all well. You are not fit for this sort of thing. You should be more careful, you should be very

'Dear Frederick,' said Mr Dorrit, 'do, I adjure you! Good night, brother. I hope you will be stronger

tomorrow. I am not at all pleased with your looks. Good night, dear fellow.' After dismissing his brother in

this gracious way, he fell into a doze again before the old man was well out of the room: and he would have

'Your uncle wanders very much, Amy,' he said, when he was thus roused. 'He is lesshacoherent, and his

conversation is more humbroken, than I haveha, humever known. Has he had any illness since I

'Greatly broken,' said Mr Dorrit. 'Greatly broken. My poor, affectionate, failing Frederick! Ha. Even taking

His supper, which was brought to him there, and spread upon the little table where he had seen her working,

She sat at his side as in the days that were gone, for the first time since those days ended. They were alone,

and she helped him to his meat and poured out his drink for him, as she had been used to do in the prison. All

this happened now, for the first time since their accession to wealth. She was afraid to look at him much, after

the offence he had taken; but she noticed two occasions in the course of his meal, when he all of a sudden

looked at her, and looked about him, as if the association were so strong that he needed assurance from his

sense of sight that they were not in the old prisonroom. Both times, he put his hand to his head as if he

missed his old black capthough it had been ignominiously given away in the Marshalsea, and had never

got free to that hour, but still hovered about the yards on the head of his successor.

He took very little supper, but was a long time over it, and often reverted to his brother's declining state.

Though he expressed the greatest pity for him, he was almost bitter upon him. He said that poor

Frederickha humdrivelled. There was no other word to express it; drivelled. Poor fellow! It was

melancholy to reflect what Amy must have undergone from the excessive tediousness of his

Societywandering and babbling on, poor dear estimable creature, wandering and babbling onif it had

not been for the relief she had had in Mrs General. Extremely sorry, he then repeated with his former

Little Dorrit, in her watchful love, would have remembered the lightest thing he said or did that night, though

she had had no subsequent reason to recall that night. She always remembered that, when he looked about

him under the strong influence of the old association, he tried to keep it out of her mind, and perhaps out of

his own too, by immediately expatiating on the great riches and great company that had encompassed him in

his absence, and on the lofty position he and his family had to sustain. Nor did she fail to recall that there

were two undercurrents, side by side, pervading all his discourse and all his manner; one showing her how

well he had got on without her, and how independent he was of her; the other, in a fitful and unintelligible

way almost complaining of her, as if it had been possible that she had neglected him while he was away.

His telling her of the glorious state that Mr Merdle kept, and of the court that bowed before him, naturally

brought him to Mrs Merdle. So naturally indeed, that although there was an unusual want of sequence in the

'She will be a vast loss here,' said Mr Dorrit. 'A vastha acquisition at home. To Fanny, and

Little Dorrit thought of the competition that was to be entered upon, and assented very softly.

'Mrs Merdle is going to have a great farewell Assembly, dear, and a dinner before it. She has been expressing

her anxiety that you should return in time. She has invited both you and me to her dinner.'

'Write round in the morning, and say that I have returned, and shallhumbe delighted.'

'No!' he answered, looking angrily round; for he was moving away, as if forgetful of leavetaking. 'You may

not, Amy. I want no help. I am your father, not your infirm uncle!' He checked himself, as abruptly as he had

broken into this reply, and said, 'You have not kissed me, Amy. Good night, my dear! We must

marryhawe must marry YOU, now.' With that he went, more slowly and more tired, up the staircase to

his rooms, and, almost as soon as he got there, dismissed his valet. His next care was to look about him for

his Paris purchases, and, after opening their cases and carefully surveying them, to put them away under lock

and key. After that, what with dozing and what with castlebuilding, he lost himself for a long time, so that

there was a touch of morning on the eastward rim of the desolate Campagna when he crept to bed.

Mrs General sent up her compliments in good time next day, and hoped he had rested well after this fatiguing

journey. He sent down his compliments, and begged to inform Mrs General that he had rested very well

indeed, and was in high condition. Nevertheless, he did not come forth from his own rooms until late in the

afternoon; and, although he then caused himself to be magnificently arrayed for a drive with Mrs General and

his daughter, his appearance was scarcely up to his description of himself. As the family had no visitors that

day, its four members dined alone together. He conducted Mrs General to the seat at his right hand with

immense ceremony; and Little Dorrit could not but notice as she followed with her uncle, both that he was

again elaborately dressed, and that his manner towards Mrs General was very particular. The perfect

formation of that accomplished lady's surface rendered it difficult to displace an atom of its genteel glaze, but

Little Dorrit thought she descried a slight thaw of triumph in a corner of her frosty eye.

Notwithstanding what may be called in these pages the Pruney and Prismatic nature of the family banquet,

Mr Dorrit several times fell asleep while it was in progress. His fits of dozing were as sudden as they had

been overnight, and were as short and profound. When the first of these slumberings seized him, Mrs General

looked almost amazed: but, on each recurrence of the symptoms, she told her polite beads, Papa, Potatoes,

Poultry, Prunes, and Prism; and, by dint of going through that infallible performance very slowly, appeared to

He was again painfully aware of a somnolent tendency in Frederick (which had no existence out of his own

imagination), and after dinner, when Frederick had withdrawn, privately apologised to Mrs General for the

poor man. 'The most estimable and affectionate of brothers,' he said, 'butha, humbroken up altogether.

'Mr Frederick, sir,' quoth Mrs General, 'is habitually absent and drooping, but let us hope it is not so bad as

Mr Dorrit, however, was determined not to let him off. 'Fast declining, madam. A wreck. A ruin. Mouldering

'You left Mrs Sparkler quite well and happy, I trust?' said Mrs General, after heaving a cool sigh for

'Surrounded,' replied Mr Dorrit, 'byhaall that can charm the taste, andhumelevate the mind.

Mrs General was a little fluttered; seeming delicately to put the word away with her gloves, as if there were

'Fanny,' Mr Dorrit continued. 'Fanny, Mrs General, has high qualities. Ha. Ambitionhumpurpose,

consciousness ofha position, determination to support that positionha, humgrace, beauty, and

'Combined with these qualities, madam,' said Mr Dorrit, 'Fanny hashamanifested one blemish which has

made mehummade me uneasy, andhaI must add, angry; but which I trust may now be considered

at an end, even as to herself, and which is undoubtedly at an end as tohaothers.'

'To what, Mr Dorrit,' returned Mrs General, with her gloves again somewhat excited, 'can you allude? I am at

Mrs General's voice, as it died away, pronounced the words, 'at a loss to imagine.'

After which Mr Dorrit was seized with a doze for about a minute, out of which he sprang with spasmodic

'I refer, Mrs General, to thathastrong spirit of opposition, orhumI might sayhajealousy in

Fanny, which has occasionally risen against thehasense I entertain ofhumthe claims of hathe

'Mr Dorrit,' returned Mrs General, 'is ever but too obliging, ever but too appreciative. If there have been

moments when I have imagined that Miss Dorrit has indeed resented the favourable opinion Mr Dorrit has

formed of my services, I have found, in that only too high opinion, my consolation and recompense.'

'I presume,' retorted Mrs General, in her former impressive manner, 'of my services alone. For, to what else,'

said Mrs General, with a slightly interrogative action of her gloves, 'could I impute'

'Tohayourself, Mrs General. Ha, hum. To yourself and your merits,' was Mr Dorrit's rejoinder.

'Mr Dorrit will pardon me,' said Mrs General, 'if I remark that this is not a time or place for the pursuit of the

present conversation. Mr Dorrit will excuse me if I remind him that Miss Dorrit is in the adjoining room, and

is visible to myself while I utter her name. Mr Dorrit will forgive me if I observe that I am agitated, and that I

find there are moments when weaknesses I supposed myself to have subdued, return with redoubled power.

'Hum. Perhaps we may resume thishainteresting conversation,' said Mr Dorrit, 'at another time; unless it

should be, what I hope it is nothumin any way disagreeable toahMrs General.' 'Mr Dorrit,' said

Mrs General, casting down her eyes as she rose with a bend, 'must ever claim my homage and obedience.'

Mrs General then took herself off in a stately way, and not with that amount of trepidation upon her which

might have been expected in a less remarkable woman. Mr Dorrit, who had conducted his part of the dialogue

with a certain majestic and admiring condescension much as some people may be seen to conduct

themselves in Church, and to perform their part in the serviceappeared, on the whole, very well satisfied

with himself and with Mrs General too. On the return of that lady to tea, she had touched herself up with a

little powder and pomatum, and was not without moral enchantment likewise: the latter showing itself in

much sweet patronage of manner towards Miss Dorrit, and in an air of as tender interest in Mr Dorrit as was

consistent with rigid propriety. At the close of the evening, when she rose to retire, Mr Dorrit took her by the

hand as if he were going to lead her out into the Piazza of the people to walk a minuet by moonlight, and with

great solemnity conducted her to the room door, where he raised her knuckles to his lips. Having parted from

her with what may be conjectured to have been a rather bony kiss of a cosmetic flavour, he gave his daughter

his blessing, graciously. And having thus hinted that there was something remarkable in the wind, he again

He remained in the seclusion of his own chamber next morning; but, early in the afternoon, sent down his

best compliments to Mrs General, by Mr Tinkler, and begged she would accompany Miss Dorrit on an airing

without him. His daughter was dressed for Mrs Merdle's dinner before he appeared. He then presented

himself in a refulgent condition as to his attire, but looking indefinably shrunken and old. However, as he was

plainly determined to be angry with her if she so much as asked him how he was, she only ventured to kiss

The distance that they had to go was very short, but he was at his building work again before the carriage had

half traversed it. Mrs Merdle received him with great distinction; the bosom was in admirable preservation,

and on the best terms with itself; the dinner was very choice; and the company was very select.

It was principally English; saving that it comprised the usual French Count and the usual Italian

Marchesedecorative social milestones, always to be found in certain places, and varying very little in

appearance. The table was long, and the dinner was long; and Little Dorrit, overshadowed by a large pair of

black whiskers and a large white cravat, lost sight of her father altogether, until a servant put a scrap of paper

in her hand, with a whispered request from Mrs Merdle that she would read it directly. Mrs Merdle had

written on it in pencil, 'Pray come and speak to Mr Dorrit, I doubt if he is well.'

She was hurrying to him, unobserved, when he got up out of his chair, and leaning over the table called to

The action was so unusual, to say nothing of his strange eager appearance and strange eager voice, that it

She was at his side, and touching him, but he still perversely supposed her to be in her seat, and called out,

still leaning over the table, 'Amy, Amy. I don't feel quite myself. Ha. I don't know what's the matter with me.

I particularly wish to see Bob. Ha. Of all the turnkeys, he's as much my friend as yours. See if Bob is in the

'Oh! You are here, Amy! Good. Hum. Good. Ha. Call Bob. If he has been relieved, and is not on the lock, tell

'I tell you, child,' he said petulantly, 'I can't be got up the narrow stairs without Bob. Ha. Send for Bob. Hum.

He looked confusedly about him, and, becoming conscious of the number of faces by which he was

'Ladies and gentlemen, the dutyhadevolves upon me ofhum welcoming you to the Marshalsea!

Welcome to the Marshalsea! The space ishalimitedlimitedthe parade might be wider; but you will

find it apparently grow larger after a timea time, ladies and gentlemenand the air is, all things

considered, very good. It blows over thehaSurrey hills. Blows over the Surrey hills. This is the

Snuggery. Hum. Supported by a small subscription of thehaCollegiate body. In return for whichhot

watergeneral kitchenand little domestic advantages. Those who are habituated to thehaMarshalsea,

are pleased to call me its father. I am accustomed to be complimented by strangers as thehaFather of the

Marshalsea. Certainly, if years of residence may establish a claim to sohahonourable a title, I may

accept thehum conferred distinction. My child, ladies and gentlemen. My daughter. Born here!'

She was not ashamed of it, or ashamed of him. She was pale and frightened; but she had no other care than to

soothe him and get him away, for his own dear sake. She was between him and the wondering faces, turned

round upon his breast with her own face raised to his. He held her clasped in his left arm, and between whiles

'Born here,' he repeated, shedding tears. 'Bred here. Ladies and gentlemen, my daughter. Child of an

unfortunate father, butha always a gentleman. Poor, no doubt, buthumproud. Always proud. It has

become ahumnot infrequent custom for myha personal admirerspersonal admirers solelyto

be pleased to express their desire to acknowledge my semiofficial position here, by offeringhalittle

tributes, which usually take the form of havoluntary recognitions of my humble endeavours

tohumto uphold a Tone herea ToneI beg it to be understood that I do not consider myself

compromised. Ha. Not compromised. Ha. Not a beggar. No; I repudiate the title! At the same time far be it

from me tohumto put upon the fine feelings by which my partial friends are actuated, the slight of

scrupling to admit that those offerings arehumhighly acceptable. On the contrary, they are most

acceptable. In my child's name, if not in my own, I make the admission in the fullest manner, at the same

time reservingha shall I say my personal dignity? Ladies and gentlemen, God bless you all!'

By this time, the exceeding mortification undergone by the Bosom had occasioned the withdrawal of the

greater part of the company into other rooms. The few who had lingered thus long followed the rest, and

Little Dorrit and her father were left to the servants and themselves. Dearest and most precious to her, he

would come with her now, would he not? He replied to her fervid entreaties, that he would never be able to

get up the narrow stairs without Bob; where was Bob, would nobody fetch Bob? Under pretence of looking

for Bob, she got him out against the stream of gay company now pouring in for the evening assembly, and

The broad stairs of his Roman palace were contracted in his failing sight to the narrow stairs of his London

prison; and he would suffer no one but her to touch him, his brother excepted. They got him up to his room

without help, and laid him down on his bed. And from that hour his poor maimed spirit, only remembering

the place where it had broken its wings, cancelled the dream through which it had since groped, and knew of

nothing beyond the Marshalsea. When he heard footsteps in the street, he took them for the old weary tread in

the yards. When the hour came for locking up, he supposed all strangers to be excluded for the night. When

the time for opening came again, he was so anxious to see Bob, that they were fain to patch up a narrative

how that Bobmany a year dead then, gentle turnkeyhad taken cold, but hoped to be out tomorrow, or

He fell away into a weakness so extreme that he could not raise his hand. But he still protected his brother

according to his long usage; and would say with some complacency, fifty times a day, when he saw him

They tried him with Mrs General, but he had not the faintest knowledge of her. Some injurious suspicion

lodged itself in his brain, that she wanted to supplant Mrs Bangham, and that she was given to drinking. He

charged her with it in no measured terms; and was so urgent with his daughter to go round to the Marshal and

entreat him to turn her out, that she was never reproduced after the first failure. Saving that he once asked 'if

Tip had gone outside?' the remembrance of his two children not present seemed to have departed from him.

But the child who had done so much for him and had been so poorly repaid, was never out of his mind. Not

that he spared her, or was fearful of her being spent by watching and fatigue; he was not more troubled on

that score than he had usually been. No; he loved her in his old way. They were in the jail again, and she

tended him, and he had constant need of her, and could not turn without her; and he even told her, sometimes,

that he was content to have undergone a great deal for her sake. As to her, she bent over his bed with her

When he had been sinking in this painless way for two or three days, she observed him to be troubled by the

ticking of his watch a pompous gold watch that made as great a todo about its going as if nothing else

went but itself and Time. She suffered it to run down; but he was still uneasy, and showed that was not what

he wanted. At length he roused himself to explain that he wanted money to be raised on this watch. He was

quite pleased when she pretended to take it away for the purpose, and afterwards had a relish for his little

He soon made it plain that this was so; for, in another day or two he sent off his sleevebuttons and

fingerrings. He had an amazing satisfaction in entrusting her with these errands, and appeared to consider it

equivalent to making the most methodical and provident arrangements. After his trinkets, or such of them as

he had been able to see about him, were gone, his clothes engaged his attention; and it is as likely as not that

he was kept alive for some days by the satisfaction of sending them, piece by piece, to an imaginary

Thus for ten days Little Dorrit bent over his pillow, laying her cheek against his. Sometimes she was so worn

out that for a few minutes they would slumber together. Then she would awake; to recollect with

fastflowing silent tears what it was that touched her face, and to see, stealing over the cherished face upon

Quietly, quietly, all the lines of the plan of the great Castle melted one after another. Quietly, quietly, the

ruled and cross ruled countenance on which they were traced, became fair and blank.

Quietly, quietly, the reflected marks of the prison bars and of the zigzag iron on the walltop, faded away.

Quietly, quietly, the face subsided into a far younger likeness of her own than she had ever seen under the

At first her uncle was stark distracted. 'O my brother! O William, William! You to go before me; you to go

alone; you to go, and I to remain! You, so far superior, so distinguished, so noble; I, a poor useless creature

The old man was not deaf to the last words. When he did begin to restrain himself, it was that he might spare

her. He had no care for himself; but, with all the remaining power of the honest heart, stunned so long and

'O God,' he cried, before they left the room, with his wrinkled hands clasped over her. 'Thou seest this

daughter of my dear dead brother! All that I have looked upon, with my halfblind and sinful eyes, Thou hast

discerned clearly, brightly. Not a hair of her head shall be harmed before Thee. Thou wilt uphold her here to

They remained in a dim room near, until it was almost midnight, quiet and sad together. At times his grief

would seek relief in a burst like that in which it had found its earliest expression; but, besides that his little

strength would soon have been unequal to such strains, he never failed to recall her words, and to reproach

himself and calm himself. The only utterance with which he indulged his sorrow, was the frequent

exclamation that his brother was gone, alone; that they had been together in the outset of their lives, that they

had fallen into misfortune together, that they had kept together through their many years of poverty, that they

They parted, heavy and sorrowful. She would not consent to leave him anywhere but in his own room, and

she saw him lie down in his clothes upon his bed, and covered him with her own hands. Then she sank upon

her own bed, and fell into a deep sleep: the sleep of exhaustion and rest, though not of complete release from

a pervading consciousness of affliction. Sleep, good Little Dorrit. Sleep through the night!

It was a moonlight night; but the moon rose late, being long past the full. When it was high in the peaceful

firmament, it shone through halfclosed lattice blinds into the solemn room where the stumblings and

wanderings of a life had so lately ended. Two quiet figures were within the room; two figures, equally still

and impassive, equally removed by an untraversable distance from the teeming earth and all that it contains,

One figure reposed upon the bed. The other, kneeling on the floor, drooped over it; the arms easily and

peacefully resting on the coverlet; the face bowed down, so that the lips touched the hand over which with its

last breath it had bent. The two brothers were before their Father; far beyond the twilight judgment of this

The passengers were landing from the packet on the pier at Calais. A lowlying place and a lowspirited

place Calais was, with the tide ebbing out towards low watermark. There had been no more water on the bar

than had sufficed to float the packet in; and now the bar itself, with a shallow break of sea over it, looked like

a lazy marine monster just risen to the surface, whose form was indistinctly shown as it lay asleep. The

meagre lighthouse all in white, haunting the seaboard as if it were the ghost of an edifice that had once had

colour and rotundity, dropped melancholy tears after its late buffeting by the waves. The long rows of gaunt

black piles, slimy and wet and weatherworn, with funeral garlands of seaweed twisted about them by the

late tide, might have represented an unsightly marine cemetery. Every wavedashed, stormbeaten object,

was so low and so little, under the broad grey sky, in the noise of the wind and sea, and before the curling

lines of surf, making at it ferociously, that the wonder was there was any Calais left, and that its low gates

and low wall and low roofs and low ditches and low sandhills and low ramparts and flat streets, had not

yielded long ago to the undermining and besieging sea, like the fortifications children make on the seashore.

After slipping among oozy piles and planks, stumbling up wet steps and encountering many salt difficulties,

the passengers entered on their comfortless peregrination along the pier; where all the French vagabonds and

English outlaws in the town (half the population) attended to prevent their recovery from bewilderment. After

being minutely inspected by all the English, and claimed and reclaimed and counterclaimed as prizes by all

the French in a handtohand scuffle three quarters of a mile long, they were at last free to enter the streets,

Clennam, harassed by more anxieties than one, was among this devoted band. Having rescued the most

defenceless of his compatriots from situations of great extremity, he now went his way alone, or as nearly

alone as he could be, with a native gentleman in a suit of grease and a cap of the same material, giving chase

at a distance of some fifty yards, and continually calling after him, 'Hi! Icesay! You! Seer! Icesay! Nice

Even this hospitable person, however, was left behind at last, and Clennam pursued his way, unmolested.

There was a tranquil air in the town after the turbulence of the Channel and the beach, and its dulness in that

comparison was agreeable. He met new groups of his countrymen, who had all a straggling air of having at

one time overblown themselves, like certain uncomfortable kinds of flowers, and of being now mere weeds.

They had all an air, too, of lounging out a limited round, day after day, which strongly reminded him of the

Marshalsea. But, taking no further note of them than was sufficient to give birth to the reflection, he sought

'So Pancks said,' he murmured to himself, as he stopped before a dull house answering to the address. 'I

suppose his information to be correct and his discovery, among Mr Casby's loose papers, indisputable; but,

A dead sort of house, with a dead wall over the way and a dead gateway at the side, where a pendant

bellhandle produced two dead tinkles, and a knocker produced a dead, flat, surfacetapping, that seemed not

to have depth enough in it to penetrate even the cracked door. However, the door jarred open on a dead sort

of spring; and he closed it behind him as he entered a dull yard, soon brought to a close by another dead wall,

where an attempt had been made to train some creeping shrubs, which were dead; and to make a little

fountain in a grotto, which was dry; and to decorate that with a little statue, which was gone.

The entry to the house was on the left, and it was garnished as the outer gateway was, with two printed bills

in French and English, announcing Furnished Apartments to let, with immediate possession. A strong

cheerful peasant woman, all stocking, petticoat, white cap, and earring, stood here in a dark doorway, and

Clennam, replying in French, said the English lady; he wished to see the English lady. 'Enter then and ascend,

if you please,' returned the peasant woman, in French likewise. He did both, and followed her up a dark bare

staircase to a back room on the first floor. Hence, there was a gloomy view of the yard that was dull, and of

the shrubs that were dead, and of the fountain that was dry, and of the pedestal of the statue that was gone.

Thereupon the woman withdrew and left him to look at the room. It was the pattern of room always to be

found in such a house. Cool, dull, and dark. Waxed floor very slippery. A room not large enough to skate in;

nor adapted to the easy pursuit of any other occupation. Red and white curtained windows, little straw mat,

little round table with a tumultuous assemblage of legs underneath, clumsy rushbottomed chairs, two great

red velvet armchairs affording plenty of space to be uncomfortable in, bureau, chimney glass in several

pieces pretending to be in one piece, pair of gaudy vases of very artificial flowers; between them a Greek

After some pause, a door of communication with another room was opened, and a lady entered. She

manifested great surprise on seeing Clennam, and her glance went round the room in search of some one else.

'No; I know that. Excuse me. I have already had experience that my name does not predispose you to an

'Pray,' she returned, motioning him to a chair so coldly that he remained standing, 'what name was it that you

'It is strange,' she said, frowning, 'that you should still press an undesired interest in me and my

'What can you have to do with the name? What can I have to do with the name? What can you have to do

with my knowing or not knowing any name? I know many names and I have forgotten many more. This may

be in the one class, or it may be in the other, or I may never have heard it. I am acquainted with no reason for

'If you will allow me,' said Clennam, 'I will tell you my reason for pressing the subject. I admit that I do press

it, and I must beg you to forgive me if I do so, very earnestly. The reason is all mine, I do not insinuate that it

'Well, sir,' she returned, repeating a little less haughtily than before her former invitation to him to be seated:

to which he now deferred, as she seated herself. 'I am at least glad to know that this is not another

bondswoman of some friend of yours, who is bereft of free choice, and whom I have spirited away. I will

'First, to identify the person of whom we speak,' said Clennam, 'let me observe that it is the person you met in

London some time back. You will remember meeting him near the riverin the Adelphi!'

'You mix yourself most unaccountably with my business,' she replied, looking full at him with stern

'To be sure it was in the open street,' she observed, after a few moments of less and less angry reflection.

'Nor do I make my having seen it of any moment, nor (otherwise than as an explanation of my coming here)

'Oh! You have to ask a favour! It occurred to me,' and the handsome face looked bitterly at him, 'that your

He was content to protest against this by a slight action without contesting it in words. He then referred to

Blandois' disappearance, of which it was probable she had heard? However probable it was to him, she had

heard of no such thing. Let him look round him (she said) and judge for himself what general intelligence

was likely to reach the ears of a woman who had been shut up there while it was rife, devouring her own

heart. When she had uttered this denial, which he believed to be true, she asked him what he meant by

disappearance? That led to his narrating the circumstances in detail, and expressing something of his anxiety

to discover what had really become of the man, and to repel the dark suspicions that clouded about his

mother's house. She heard him with evident surprise, and with more marks of suppressed interest than he had

seen in her; still they did not overcome her distant, proud, and selfsecluded manner. When he had finished,

'You have not yet told me, sir, what I have to do with it, or what the favour is? Will you be so good as come

'I assume,' said Arthur, persevering, in his endeavour to soften her scornful demeanour, 'that being in

'You may say, of course, whatever you like,' she remarked; 'but I do not subscribe to your assumptions, Mr

'that being, at least in personal communication with him,' said Clennam, changing the form of his position

in the hope of making it unobjectionable, 'you can tell me something of his antecedents, pursuits, habits,

usual place of residence. Can give me some little clue by which to seek him out in the likeliest manner, and

either produce him, or establish what has become of him. This is the favour I ask, and I ask it in a distress of

mind for which I hope you will feel some consideration. If you should have any reason for imposing

'You chanced to see me in the street with the man,' she observed, after being, to his mortification, evidently

more occupied with her own reflections on the matter than with his appeal. 'Then you knew the man before?'

'Not before; afterwards. I never saw him before, but I saw him again on this very night of his disappearance.

In my mother's room, in fact. I left him there. You will read in this paper all that is known of him.'

He handed her one of the printed bills, which she read with a steady and attentive face.

Clennam's looks expressed his heavy disappointment, perhaps his incredulity; for she added in the same

unsympathetic tone: 'You don't believe it. Still, it is so. As to personal communication: it seems that there was

personal communication between him and your mother. And yet you say you believe her declaration that she

A sufficiently expressive hint of suspicion was conveyed in these words, and in the smile by which they were

'Come, sir,' she said, with a cruel pleasure in repeating the stab, 'I will be as open with you as you can desire.

I will confess that if I cared for my credit (which I do not), or had a good name to preserve (which I have not,

for I am utterly indifferent to its being considered good or bad), I should regard myself as heavily

compromised by having had anything to do with this fellow. Yet he never passed in at MY doornever sat

She took her revenge for her old grudge in thus turning his subject against him. Hers was not the nature to

'That he is a low, mercenary wretch; that I first saw him prowling about Italy (where I was, not long ago), and

that I hired him there, as the suitable instrument of a purpose I happened to have; I have no objection to tell

you. In short, it was worth my while, for my own pleasurethe gratification of a strong feelingto pay a

spy who would fetch and carry for money. I paid this creature. And I dare say that if I had wanted to make

such a bargain, and if I could have paid him enough, and if he could have done it in the dark, free from all

risk, he would have taken any life with as little scruple as he took my money. That, at least, is my opinion of

him; and I see it is not very far removed from yours. Your mother's opinion of him, I am to assume

'My mother, let me remind you,' said Clennam, 'was first brought into communication with him in the

'It appears to have been an unlucky course of business that last brought her into communication with him,'

'You imply,' said Arthur, smarting under these coolhanded thrusts, of which he had deeply felt the force

'Mr Clennam,' she composedly interrupted, 'recollect that I do not speak by implication about the man. He is,

I say again without disguise, a low mercenary wretch. I suppose such a creature goes where there is occasion

for him. If I had not had occasion for him, you would not have seen him and me together.'

Wrung by her persistence in keeping that dark side of the case before him, of which there was a halfhidden

'I have spoken of him as still living,' she added, 'but he may have been put out of the way for anything I

She did not rise also, but said, having looked at him in the meanwhile with a fixed look of suspicion, and lips

'He was the chosen associate of your dear friend, Mr Gowan, was he not? Why don't you ask your dear friend

The denial that he was a dear friend rose to Arthur's lips; but he repressed it, remembering his old struggles

'Further than that he has never seen Blandois since Blandois set out for England, Mr Gowan knows nothing

'A chance acquaintance made abroad!' she repeated. 'Yes. Your dear friend has need to divert himself with all

the acquaintances he can make, seeing what a wife he has. I hate his wife, sir.'

The anger with which she said it, the more remarkable for being so much under her restraint, fixed Clennam's

attention, and kept him on the spot. It flashed out of her dark eyes as they regarded him, quivered in her

nostrils, and fired the very breath she exhaled; but her face was otherwise composed into a disdainful

serenity; and her attitude was as calmly and haughtily graceful as if she had been in a mood of complete

'All I will say is, Miss Wade,' he remarked, 'that you can have received no provocation to a feeling in which I

'You may ask your dear friend, if you choose,' she returned, 'for his opinion upon that subject.'

'I am scarcely on those intimate terms with my dear friend,' said Arthur, in spite of his resolutions, 'that would

'I hate him,' she returned. 'Worse than his wife, because I was once dupe enough, and false enough to myself,

almost to love him. You have seen me, sir, only on commonplace occasions, when I dare say you have

thought me a commonplace woman, a little more self willed than the generality. You don't know what I

mean by hating, if you know me no better than that; you can't know, without knowing with what care I have

studied myself and people about me. For this reason I have for some time inclined to tell you what my life

has beennot to propitiate your opinion, for I set no value on it; but that you may comprehend, when you

think of your dear friend and his dear wife, what I mean by hating. Shall I give you something I have written

Arthur begged her to give it to him. She went to the bureau, unlocked it, and took from an inner drawer a few

folded sheets of paper. Without any conciliation of him, scarcely addressing him, rather speaking as if she

were speaking to her own lookingglass for the justification of her own stubbornness, she said, as she gave

'Now you may know what I mean by hating! No more of that. Sir, whether you find me temporarily and

cheaply lodging in an empty London house, or in a Calais apartment, you find Harriet with me. You may like

to see her before you leave. Harriet, come in!' She called Harriet again. The second call produced Harriet,

'Here is Mr Clennam,' said Miss Wade; 'not come for you; he has given you up,I suppose you have, by this

'Not come in search of you, you see; but still seeking some one. He wants that Blandois man.'

'With whom I saw you in the Strand in London,' hinted Arthur. 'If you know anything of him, Harriet, except

that he came from Venicewhich we all knowtell it to Mr Clennam freely.' 'I know nothing more about

He had no reason to disbelieve them; the girl's manner being so natural as to be almost convincing, if he had

He was not going in the same breath; but he had risen before the girl entered, and she evidently thought he

She stopped herself in saying what would have been 'all of them;' glanced at Miss Wade; and said 'Mr and

'They were, when I last heard of them. They are not at home. By the way, let me ask you. Is it true that you

'Where? Where does any one say I was seen?' returned the girl, sullenly casting down her eyes.

'You are wrong, then,' said the girl. 'I went down there the last time we were in London. I went one afternoon

'You poorspirited girl,' returned Miss Wade with infinite contempt; 'does all our companionship, do all our

'There was no harm in looking in at the gate for an instant,' said the girl. 'I saw by the windows that the family

'Because I wanted to see it. Because I felt that I should like to look at it again.'

As each of the two handsome faces looked at the other, Clennam felt how each of the two natures must be

'Oh!' said Miss Wade, coldly subduing and removing her glance; 'if you had any desire to see the place where

you led the life from which I rescued you because you had found out what it was, that is another thing. But is

that your truth to me? Is that your fidelity to me? Is that the common cause I make with you? You are not

worth the confidence I have placed in you. You are not worth the favour I have shown you. You are no higher

than a spaniel, and had better go back to the people who did worse than whip you.'

'If you speak so of them with any one else by to hear, you'll provoke me to take their part,' said the girl.

'You know very well,' retorted Harriet in her turn, 'that I won't go back to them. You know very well that I

have thrown them off, and never can, never shall, never will, go back to them. Let them alone, then, Miss

'You prefer their plenty to your less fat living here,' she rejoined. 'You exalt them, and slight me. What else

'It's not so,' said the girl, flushing high, 'and you don't say what you mean. I know what you mean. You are

reproaching me, underhanded, with having nobody but you to look to. And because I have nobody but you to

look to, you think you are to make me do, or not do, everything you please, and are to put any affront upon

me. You are as bad as they were, every bit. But I will not be quite tamed, and made submissive. I will say

again that I went to look at the house, because I had often thought that I should like to see it once more. I will

ask again how they are, because I once liked them and at times thought they were kind to me.'

Hereupon Clennam said that he was sure they would still receive her kindly, if she should ever desire to

'Never!' said the girl passionately. 'I shall never do that. Nobody knows that better than Miss Wade, though

she taunts me because she has made me her dependent. And I know I am so; and I know she is overjoyed

'A good pretence!' said Miss Wade, with no less anger, haughtiness, and bitterness; 'but too threadbare to

cover what I plainly see in this. My poverty will not bear competition with their money. Better go back at

Arthur Clennam looked at them, standing a little distance asunder in the dull confined room, each proudly

cherishing her own anger; each, with a fixed determination, torturing her own breast, and torturing the other's.

He said a word or two of leavetaking; but Miss Wade barely inclined her head, and Harriet, with the

assumed humiliation of an abject dependent and serf (but not without defiance for all that), made as if she

He came down the dark winding stairs into the yard with an increased sense upon him of the gloom of the

wall that was dead, and of the shrubs that were dead, and of the fountain that was dry, and of the statue that

was gone. Pondering much on what he had seen and heard in that house, as well as on the failure of all his

efforts to trace the suspicious character who was lost, he returned to London and to England by the packet

that had taken him over. On the way he unfolded the sheets of paper, and read in them what is reproduced in

I have the misfortune of not being a fool. From a very early age I have detected what those about me thought

they hid from me. If I could have been habitually imposed upon, instead of habitually discerning the truth, I

My childhood was passed with a grandmother; that is to say, with a lady who represented that relative to me,

and who took that title on herself. She had no claim to it, but Ibeing to that extent a little foolhad no

suspicion of her. She had some children of her own family in her house, and some children of other people.

All girls; ten in number, including me. We all lived together and were educated together.

I must have been about twelve years old when I began to see how determinedly those girls patronised me. I

was told I was an orphan. There was no other orphan among us; and I perceived (here was the first

disadvantage of not being a fool) that they conciliated me in an insolent pity, and in a sense of superiority. I

did not set this down as a discovery, rashly. I tried them often. I could hardly make them quarrel with me.

When I succeeded with any of them, they were sure to come after an hour or two, and begin a reconciliation.

I tried them over and over again, and I never knew them wait for me to begin. They were always forgiving

One of them was my chosen friend. I loved that stupid mite in a passionate way that she could no more

deserve than I can remember without feeling ashamed of, though I was but a child. She had what they called

an amiable temper, an affectionate temper. She could distribute, and did distribute pretty looks and smiles to

every one among them. I believe there was not a soul in the place, except myself, who knew that she did it

Nevertheless, I so loved that unworthy girl that my life was made stormy by my fondness for her. I was

constantly lectured and disgraced for what was called 'trying her;' in other words charging her with her little

perfidy and throwing her into tears by showing her that I read her heart. However, I loved her faithfully; and

She was worse at home than she had been at school. She had a crowd of cousins and acquaintances, and we

had dances at her house, and went out to dances at other houses, and, both at home and out, she tormented my

love beyond endurance. Her plan was, to make them all fond of herand so drive me wild with jealousy. To

be familiar and endearing with them alland so make me mad with envying them. When we were left alone

in our bedroom at night, I would reproach her with my perfect knowledge of her baseness; and then she

would cry and cry and say I was cruel, and then I would hold her in my arms till morning: loving her as much

as ever, and often feeling as if, rather than suffer so, I could so hold her in my arms and plunge to the bottom

It came to an end, and I was relieved. In the family there was an aunt who was not fond of me. I doubt if any

of the family liked me much; but I never wanted them to like me, being altogether bound up in the one girl.

The aunt was a young woman, and she had a serious way with her eyes of watching me. She was an

audacious woman, and openly looked compassionately at me. After one of the nights that I have spoken of, I

came down into a greenhouse before breakfast. Charlotte (the name of my false young friend) had gone down

before me, and I heard this aunt speaking to her about me as I entered. I stopped where I was, among the

The aunt said, 'Charlotte, Miss Wade is wearing you to death, and this must not continue.' I repeat the very

Now, what did she answer? Did she say, 'It is I who am wearing her to death, I who am keeping her on a rack

and am the executioner, yet she tells me every night that she loves me devotedly, though she knows what I

make her undergo?' No; my first memorable experience was true to what I knew her to be, and to all my

experience. She began sobbing and weeping (to secure the aunt's sympathy to herself), and said, 'Dear aunt,

she has an unhappy temper; other girls at school, besides I, try hard to make it better; we all try hard.'

Upon that the aunt fondled her, as if she had said something noble instead of despicable and false, and kept

up the infamous pretence by replying, 'But there are reasonable limits, my dear love, to everything, and I see

that this poor miserable girl causes you more constant and useless distress than even so good an effort

The poor miserable girl came out of her concealment, as you may be prepared to hear, and said, 'Send me

home.' I never said another word to either of them, or to any of them, but 'Send me home, or I will walk home

alone, night and day!' When I got home, I told my supposed grandmother that, unless I was sent away to

finish my education somewhere else before that girl came back, or before any one of them came back, I

would burn my sight away by throwing myself into the fire, rather than I would endure to look at their

I went among young women next, and I found them no better. Fair words and fair pretences; but I penetrated

below those assertions of themselves and depreciations of me, and they were no better. Before I left them, I

learned that I had no grandmother and no recognised relation. I carried the light of that information both into

my past and into my future. It showed me many new occasions on which people triumphed over me, when

A man of business had a small property in trust for me. I was to be a governess; I became a governess; and

went into the family of a poor nobleman, where there were two daughterslittle children, but the parents

wished them to grow up, if possible, under one instructress. The mother was young and pretty. From the first,

she made a show of behaving to me with great delicacy. I kept my resentment to myself; but I knew very well

that it was her way of petting the knowledge that she was my Mistress, and might have behaved differently to

I say I did not resent it, nor did I; but I showed her, by not gratifying her, that I understood her. When she

pressed me to take wine, I took water. If there happened to be anything choice at table, she always sent it to

me: but I always declined it, and ate of the rejected dishes. These disappointments of her patronage were a

I liked the children. They were timid, but on the whole disposed to attach themselves to me. There was a

nurse, however, in the house, a rosyfaced woman always making an obtrusive pretence of being gay and

goodhumoured, who had nursed them both, and who had secured their affections before I saw them. I could

almost have settled down to my fate but for this woman. Her artful devices for keeping herself before the

children in constant competition with me, might have blinded many in my place; but I saw through them

from the first. On the pretext of arranging my rooms and waiting on me and taking care of my wardrobe (all

of which she did busily), she was never absent. The most crafty of her many subtleties was her feint of

seeking to make the children fonder of me. She would lead them to me and coax them to me. 'Come to good

Miss Wade, come to dear Miss Wade, come to pretty Miss Wade. She loves you very much. Miss Wade is a

clever lady, who has read heaps of books, and can tell you far better and more interesting stories than I know.

Come and hear Miss Wade!' How could I engage their attentions, when my heart was burning against these

ignorant designs? How could I wonder, when I saw their innocent faces shrinking away, and their arms

twining round her neck, instead of mine? Then she would look up at me, shaking their curls from her face,

and say, 'They'll come round soon, Miss Wade; they're very simple and loving, ma'am; don't be at all cast

There was another thing the woman did. At times, when she saw that she had safely plunged me into a black

despondent brooding by these means, she would call the attention of the children to it, and would show them

the difference between herself and me. 'Hush! Poor Miss Wade is not well. Don't make a noise, my dears, her

head aches. Come and comfort her. Come and ask her if she is better; come and ask her to lie down. I hope

It became intolerable. Her ladyship, my Mistress, coming in one day when I was alone, and at the height of

feeling that I could support it no longer, I told her I must go. I could not bear the presence of that woman

I knew beforehand she would say so; I was quite prepared for it; I only answered, it was not for me to

'I hope, Miss Wade,' she returned, instantly assuming the tone of superiority she had always so thinly

concealed, 'that nothing I have ever said or done since we have been together, has justified your use of that

disagreeable word, "Mistress." It must have been wholly inadvertent on my part. Pray tell me what it is.'

I replied that I had no complaint to make, either of my Mistress or to my Mistress; but I must go.

She hesitated a moment, and then sat down beside me, and laid her hand on mine. As if that honour would

'Miss Wade, I fear you are unhappy, through causes over which I have no influence.'

I smiled, thinking of the experience the word awakened, and said, 'I have an unhappy temper, I suppose.' 'I

'It may be; but I did not say so. What I wish to approach is something very different. My husband and I have

exchanged some remarks upon the subject, when we have observed with pain that you have not been easy

'I am unfortunate in using a word which may convey a meaningand evidently doesquite opposite to my

intention.' (She had not expected my reply, and it shamed her.) 'I only mean, not happy with us. It is a

difficult topic to enter on; but, from one young woman to another, perhapsin short, we have been

apprehensive that you may allow some family circumstances of which no one can be more innocent than

yourself, to prey upon your spirits. If so, let us entreat you not to make them a cause of grief. My husband

himself, as is well known, formerly had a very dear sister who was not in law his sister, but who was

I saw directly that they had taken me in for the sake of the dead woman, whoever she was, and to have that

boast of me and advantage of me; I saw, in the nurse's knowledge of it, an encouragement to goad me as she

had done; and I saw, in the children's shrinking away, a vague impression, that I was not like other people. I

After one or two short and very similar experiences, which are not to the present purpose, I entered another

family where I had but one pupil: a girl of fifteen, who was the only daughter. The parents here were elderly

people: people of station, and rich. A nephew whom they had brought up was a frequent visitor at the house,

I was resolute in repulsing him; for I had determined when I went there, that no one should pity me or

condescend to me. But he wrote me a letter. It led to our being engaged to be married.

He was a year younger than I, and younglooking even when that allowance was made. He was on absence

from India, where he had a post that was soon to grow into a very good one. In six months we were to be

married, and were to go to India. I was to stay in the house, and was to be married from the house. Nobody

I cannot avoid saying he admired me; but, if I could, I would. Vanity has nothing to do with the declaration,

for his admiration worried me. He took no pains to hide it; and caused me to feel among the rich people as if

he had bought me for my looks, and made a show of his purchase to justify himself. They appraised me in

their own minds, I saw, and were curious to ascertain what my full value was. I resolved that they should not

know. I was immovable and silent before them; and would have suffered any one of them to kill me sooner

He told me I did not do myself justice. I told him I did, and it was because I did and meant to do so to the last,

that I would not stoop to propitiate any of them. He was concerned and even shocked, when I added that I

wished he would not parade his attachment before them; but he said he would sacrifice even the honest

Under that pretence he began to retort upon me. By the hour together, he would keep at a distance from me,

talking to any one rather than to me. I have sat alone and unnoticed, half an evening, while he conversed with

his young cousin, my pupil. I have seen all the while, in people's eyes, that they thought the two looked

nearer on an equality than he and I. I have sat, divining their thoughts, until I have felt that his young

appearance made me ridiculous, and have raged against myself for ever loving him.

For I did love him once. Undeserving as he was, and little as he thought of all these agonies that it cost

meagonies which should have made him wholly and gratefully mine to his life's endI loved him. I bore

with his cousin's praising him to my face, and with her pretending to think that it pleased me, but full well

knowing that it rankled in my breast; for his sake. While I have sat in his presence recalling all my slights and

wrongs, and deliberating whether I should not fly from the house at once and never see him againI have

His aunt (my Mistress you will please to remember) deliberately, wilfully, added to my trials and vexations.

It was her delight to expatiate on the style in which we were to live in India, and on the establishment we

should keep, and the company we should entertain when he got his advancement. My pride rose against this

barefaced way of pointing out the contrast my married life was to present to my then dependent and inferior

position. I suppressed my indignation; but I showed her that her intention was not lost upon me, and I repaid

her annoyance by affecting humility. What she described would surely be a great deal too much honour for

me, I would tell her. I was afraid I might not be able to support so great a change. Think of a mere governess,

her daughter's governess, coming to that high distinction! It made her uneasy, and made them all uneasy,

It was at the time when my troubles were at their highest, and when I was most incensed against my lover for

his ingratitude in caring as little as he did for the innumerable distresses and mortifications I underwent on his

account, that your dear friend, Mr Gowan, appeared at the house. He had been intimate there for a long time,

but had been abroad. He understood the state of things at a glance, and he understood me.

He was the first person I had ever seen in my life who had understood me. He was not in the house three

times before I knew that he accompanied every movement of my mind. In his coldly easy way with all of

them, and with me, and with the whole subject, I saw it clearly. In his light protestations of admiration of my

future husband, in his enthusiasm regarding our engagement and our prospects, in his hopeful congratulations

on our future wealth and his despondent references to his own povertyall equally hollow, and jesting, and

full of mockeryI saw it clearly. He made me feel more and more resentful, and more and more

contemptible, by always presenting to me everything that surrounded me with some new hateful light upon it,

while he pretended to exhibit it in its best aspect for my admiration and his own. He was like the dressedup

Death in the Dutch series; whatever figure he took upon his arm, whether it was youth or age, beauty or

ugliness, whether he danced with it, sang with it, played with it, or prayed with it, he made it ghastly.

You will understand, then, that when your dear friend complimented me, he really condoled with me; that

when he soothed me under my vexations, he laid bare every smarting wound I had; that when he declared my

'faithful swain' to be 'the most loving young fellow in the world, with the tenderest heart that ever beat,' he

touched my old misgiving that I was made ridiculous. These were not great services, you may say. They were

acceptable to me, because they echoed my own mind, and confirmed my own knowledge. I soon began to

When I perceived (which I did, almost as soon) that jealousy was growing out of this, I liked this society still

better. Had I not been subject to jealousy, and were the endurances to be all mine? No. Let him know what it

was! I was delighted that he should know it; I was delighted that he should feel keenly, and I hoped he did.

More than that. He was tame in comparison with Mr Gowan, who knew how to address me on equal terms,

This went on, until the aunt, my Mistress, took it upon herself to speak to me. It was scarcely worth alluding

to; she knew I meant nothing; but she suggested from herself, knowing it was only necessary to suggest, that

I asked her how she could answer for what I meant? She could always answer, she replied, for my meaning

nothing wrong. I thanked her, but said I would prefer to answer for myself and to myself. Her other servants

Other conversation followed, and induced me to ask her how she knew that it was only necessary for her to

make a suggestion to me, to have it obeyed? Did she presume on my birth, or on my hire? I was not bought,

body and soul. She seemed to think that her distinguished nephew had gone into a slavemarket and

It would probably have come, sooner or later, to the end to which it did come, but she brought it to its issue at

once. She told me, with assumed commiseration, that I had an unhappy temper. On this repetition of the old

wicked injury, I withheld no longer, but exposed to her all I had known of her and seen in her, and all I had

undergone within myself since I had occupied the despicable position of being engaged to her nephew. I told

her that Mr Gowan was the only relief I had had in my degradation; that I had borne it too long, and that I

shook it off too late; but that I would see none of them more. And I never did. Your dear friend followed me

to my retreat, and was very droll on the severance of the connection; though he was sorry, too, for the

excellent people (in their way the best he had ever met), and deplored the necessity of breaking mere

houseflies on the wheel. He protested before long, and far more truly than I then supposed, that he was not

worth acceptance by a woman of such endowments, and such power of character; butwell, well!

Your dear friend amused me and amused himself as long as it suited his inclinations; and then reminded me

that we were both people of the world, that we both understood mankind, that we both knew there was no

such thing as romance, that we were both prepared for going different ways to seek our fortunes like people

of sense, and that we both foresaw that whenever we encountered one another again we should meet as the

It was not very long before I found that he was courting his present wife, and that she had been taken away to

be out of his reach. I hated her then, quite as much as I hate her now; and naturally, therefore, could desire

nothing better than that she should marry him. But I was restlessly curious to look at herso curious that I

felt it to be one of the few sources of entertainment left to me. I travelled a little: travelled until I found

myself in her society, and in yours. Your dear friend, I think, was not known to you then, and had not given

In that company I found a girl, in various circumstances of whose position there was a singular likeness to my

own, and in whose character I was interested and pleased to see much of the rising against swollen patronage

and selfishness, calling themselves kindness, protection, benevolence, and other fine names, which I have

described as inherent in my nature. I often heard it said, too, that she had 'an unhappy temper.' Well

understanding what was meant by the convenient phrase, and wanting a companion with a knowledge of what

I knew, I thought I would try to release the girl from her bondage and sense of injustice. I have no occasion to

Arthur Clennam had made his unavailing expedition to Calais in the midst of a great pressure of business. A

certain barbaric Power with valuable possessions on the map of the world, had occasion for the services of

one or two engineers, quick in invention and determined in execution: practical men, who could make the

men and means their ingenuity perceived to be wanted out of the best materials they could find at hand; and

who were as bold and fertile in the adaptation of such materials to their purpose, as in the conception of their

purpose itself. This Power, being a barbaric one, had no idea of stowing away a great national object in a

Circumlocution Office, as strong wine is hidden from the light in a cellar until its fire and youth are gone, and

the labourers who worked in the vineyard and pressed the grapes are dust. With characteristic ignorance, it

acted on the most decided and energetic notions of How to do it; and never showed the least respect for, or

gave any quarter to, the great political science, How not to do it. Indeed it had a barbarous way of striking the

latter art and mystery dead, in the person of any enlightened subject who practised it.

Accordingly, the men who were wanted were sought out and found; which was in itself a most uncivilised

and irregular way of proceeding. Being found, they were treated with great confidence and honour (which

again showed dense political ignorance), and were invited to come at once and do what they had to do. In

short, they were regarded as men who meant to do it, engaging with other men who meant it to be done.

Daniel Doyce was one of the chosen. There was no foreseeing at that time whether he would be absent

months or years. The preparations for his departure, and the conscientious arrangement for him of all the

details and results of their joint business, had necessitated labour within a short compass of time, which had

occupied Clennam day and night. He had slipped across the water in his first leisure, and had slipped as

Him Arthur now showed, with pains and care, the state of their gains and losses, responsibilities and

prospects. Daniel went through it all in his patient manner, and admired it all exceedingly. He audited the

accounts, as if they were a far more ingenious piece of mechanism than he had ever constructed, and

afterwards stood looking at them, weighing his hat over his head by the brims, as if he were absorbed in the

'It's all beautiful, Clennam, in its regularity and order. Nothing can be plainer. Nothing can be better.'

'I am glad you approve, Doyce. Now, as to the management of your capital while you are away, and as to the

conversion of so much of it as the business may need from time to time' His partner stopped him.

'As to that, and as to everything else of that kind, all rests with you. You will continue in all such matters to

act for both of us, as you have done hitherto, and to lighten my mind of a load it is much relieved from.'

'Though, as I often tell you,' returned Clennam, 'you unreasonably depreciate your business qualities.'

'Perhaps so,' said Doyce, smiling. 'And perhaps not. Anyhow, I have a calling that I have studied more than

such matters, and that I am better fitted for. I have perfect confidence in my partner, and I am satisfied that he

will do what is best. If I have a prejudice connected with money and money figures,' continued Doyce, laying

that plastic workman's thumb of his on the lapel of his partner's coat, 'it is against speculating. I don't think I

have any other. I dare say I entertain that prejudice, only because I have never given my mind fully to the

'But you shouldn't call it a prejudice,' said Clennam. 'My dear Doyce, it is the soundest sense.'

'I am glad you think so,' returned Doyce, with his grey eye looking kind and bright.

'It so happens,' said Clennam, 'that just now, not half an hour before you came down, I was saying the same

thing to Pancks, who looked in here. We both agreed that to travel out of safe investments is one of the most

dangerous, as it is one of the most common, of those follies which often deserve the name of vices.'

'Pancks?' said Doyce, tilting up his hat at the back, and nodding with an air of confidence. 'Aye, aye, aye!

'He is a very cautious fellow indeed,' returned Arthur. 'Quite a specimen of caution.'

They both appeared to derive a larger amount of satisfaction from the cautious character of Mr Pancks, than

'And now,' said Daniel, looking at his watch, 'as time and tide wait for no man, my trusty partner, and as I am

ready for starting, bag and baggage, at the gate below, let me say a last word. I want you to grant a request of

'Any request you can makeExcept,' Clennam was quick with his exception, for his partner's face was quick

'I say, No, then. I say positively, No. Now that I have begun, I will have some definite reason, some

responsible statement, something in the nature of a real answer, from those people.'

'You will not,' returned Doyce, shaking his head. 'Take my word for it, you never will.'

'I am not certain of that,' rejoined Doyce, laying his hand persuasively on his shoulder. 'It has done me harm,

my friend. It has aged me, tired me, vexed me, disappointed me. It does no man any good to have his patience

worn out, and to think himself ill used. I fancy, even already, that unavailing attendance on delays and

'Private anxieties may have done that for the moment,' said Clennam, 'but not official harrying. Not yet. I am

'Decidedly, No,' said Clennam. 'I should be ashamed if I submitted to be so soon driven out of the field,

where a much older and a much more sensitively interested man contended with fortitude so long.'

As there was no moving him, Daniel Doyce returned the grasp of his hand, and, casting a farewell look round

the countinghouse, went downstairs with him. Doyce was to go to Southampton to join the small staff of

his fellowtravellers; and a coach was at the gate, well furnished and packed, and ready to take him there.

The workmen were at the gate to see him off, and were mightily proud of him. 'Good luck to you, Mr Doyce!'

said one of the number. 'Wherever you go, they'll find as they've got a man among 'em) a man as knows his

tools and as his tools knows, a man as is willing and a man as is able, and if that's not a man, where is a man!'

This oration from a gruff volunteer in the background, not previously suspected of any powers in that way,

was received with three loud cheers; and the speaker became a distinguished character for ever afterwards. In

the midst of the three loud cheers, Daniel gave them all a hearty 'Good Bye, Men!' and the coach disappeared

from sight, as if the concussion of the air had blown it out of Bleeding Heart Yard.

Mr Baptist, as a grateful little fellow in a position of trust, was among the workmen, and had done as much

towards the cheering as a mere foreigner could. In truth, no men on earth can cheer like Englishmen, who do

so rally one another's blood and spirit when they cheer in earnest, that the stir is like the rush of their whole

history, with all its standards waving at once, from Saxon Alfred's downwards. Mr Baptist had been in a

manner whirled away before the onset, and was taking his breath in quite a scared condition when Clennam

beckoned him to follow upstairs, and return the books and papers to their places.

In the lull consequent on the departurein that first vacuity which ensues on every separation,

foreshadowing the great separation that is always overhanging all mankindArthur stood at his desk,

looking dreamily out at a gleam of sun. But his liberated attention soon reverted to the theme that was

foremost in his thoughts, and began, for the hundredth time, to dwell upon every circumstance that had

impressed itself upon his mind on the mysterious night when he had seen the man at his mother's. Again the

man jostled him in the crooked street, again he followed the man and lost him, again he came upon the man

in the courtyard looking at the house, again he followed the man and stood beside him on the doorsteps.

'Who passes by this road so late? Compagnon de la Majolaine; Who passes by this road so late? Always gay!'

It was not the first time, by many, that he had recalled the song of the child's game, of which the fellow had

hummed @ verse while they stood side by side; but he was so unconscious of having repeated it audibly, that

'Of all the king's knights 'tis the flower, Compagnon de la Majolaine; Of all the king's knights 'tis the flower,

Cavalletto had deferentially suggested the words and tune, supposing him to have stopped short for want of

'By Bacchus, yes, sir! They all know it in France. I have heard it many times, sung by the little children. The

last time when it I have heard,' said Mr Baptist, formerly Cavalletto, who usually went back to his native

construction of sentences when his memory went near home, 'is from a sweet little voice. A little voice, very

'The last time I heard it,' returned Arthur, 'was in a voice quite the reverse of pretty, and quite the reverse of

innocent.' He said it more to himself than to his companion, and added to himself, repeating the man's next

With his rapid native action, his hands made the outline of a high hook nose, pushed his eyes near together,

dishevelled his hair, puffed out his upper lip to represent a thick moustache, and threw the heavy end of an

ideal cloak over his shoulder. While doing this, with a swiftness incredible to one who has not watched an

The whole change passed over him like a flash of light, and he stood in the same instant, pale and astonished,

'In the name of Fate and wonder,' said Clennam, 'what do you mean? Do you know a man of the name of

'You have just now described a man who was by when you heard that song; have you not?'

'No!' said Mr Baptist. 'Altro, Altro, Altro, Altro!' He could not reject the name sufficiently, with his head and

'Stay!' cried Clennam, spreading out the handbill on his desk. 'Was this the man? You can understand what I

Mr Baptist approached, followed every word with his quick eyes, saw and heard it all out with the greatest

impatience, then clapped his two hands flat upon the bill as if he had fiercely caught some noxious creature,

'This is of far greater moment to me' said Clennam, in great agitation, 'than you can imagine. Tell me where

Mr Baptist, releasing the paper very slowly and with much discomfiture, and drawing himself back two or

three paces, and making as though he dusted his hands, returned, very much against his will:

'A prisoner, andAltro! I believe yes!an,' Mr Baptist crept closer again to whisper it, 'Assassin!'

Clennam fell back as if the word had struck him a blow: so terrible did it make his mother's communication

with the man appear. Cavalletto dropped on one knee, and implored him, with a redundancy of gesticulation,

He told with perfect truth how it had come of a little contraband trading, and how he had in time been

released from prison, and how he had gone away from those antecedents. How, at the house of entertainment

called the Break of Day at Chalons on the Saone, he had been awakened in his bed at night by the same

assassin, then assuming the name of Lagnier, though his name had formerly been Rigaud; how the assassin

had proposed that they should join their fortunes together; how he held the assassin in such dread and

aversion that he had fled from him at daylight, and how he had ever since been haunted by the fear of seeing

the assassin again and being claimed by him as an acquaintance. When he had related this, with an emphasis

and poise on the word, 'assassin,' peculiarly belonging to his own language, and which did not serve to render

it less terrible to Clennam, he suddenly sprang to his feet, pounced upon the bill again, and with a vehemence

that would have been absolute madness in any man of Northern origin, cried 'Behold the same assassin! Here

In his passionate raptures, he at first forgot the fact that he had lately seen the assassin in London. On his

remembering it, it suggested hope to Clennam that the recognition might be of later date than the night of the

visit at his mother's; but Cavalletto was too exact and clear about time and place, to leave any opening for

'Listen,' said Arthur, very seriously. 'This man, as we have read here, has wholly disappeared.'

'Of it I am well content!' said Cavalletto, raising his eyes piously. 'A thousand thanks to Heaven! Accursed

'Not so,' returned Clennam; 'for until something more is heard of him, I can never know an hour's peace.'

'Now, Cavalletto,' said Clennam, gently turning him by the arm, so that they looked into each other's eyes. 'I

am certain that for the little I have been able to do for you, you are the most sincerely grateful of men.'

'I know it. If you could find this man, or discover what has become of him, or gain any later intelligence

whatever of him, you would render me a service above any other service I could receive in the world, and

would make me (with far greater reason) as grateful to you as you are to me.' 'I know not where to look,' cried

the little man, kissing Arthur's hand in a transport. 'I know not where to begin. I know not where to go. But,

Left alone, with the expressive looks and gestures of Mr Baptist, otherwise Giovanni Baptista Cavalletto,

vividly before him, Clennam entered on a weary day. It was in vain that he tried to control his attention by

directing it to any business occupation or train of thought; it rode at anchor by the haunting topic, and would

hold to no other idea. As though a criminal should be chained in a stationary boat on a deep clear river,

condemned, whatever countless leagues of water flowed past him, always to see the body of the

fellowcreature he had drowned lying at the bottom, immovable, and unchangeable, except as the eddies

made it broad or long, now expanding, now contracting its terrible lineaments; so Arthur, below the shifting

current of transparent thoughts and fancies which were gone and succeeded by others as soon as come, saw,

steady and dark, and not to be stirred from its place, the one subject that he endeavoured with all his might to

rid himself of, and that he could not fly from. The assurance he now had, that Blandois, whatever his right

name, was one of the worst of characters, greatly augmented the burden of his anxieties. Though the

disappearance should be accounted for tomorrow, the fact that his mother had been in communication with

such a man, would remain unalterable. That the communication had been of a secret kind, and that she had

been submissive to him and afraid of him, he hoped might be known to no one beyond himself; yet, knowing

it, how could he separate it from his old vague fears, and how believe that there was nothing evil in such

relations? Her resolution not to enter on the question with him, and his knowledge of her indomitable

character, enhanced his sense of helplessness. It was like the oppression of a dream to believe that shame and

exposure were impending over her and his father's memory, and to be shut out, as by a brazen wall, from the

possibility of coming to their aid. The purpose he had brought home to his native country, and had ever since

kept in view, was, with her greatest determination, defeated by his mother herself, at the time of all others

when he feared that it pressed most. His advice, energy, activity, money, credit, all his resources whatsoever,

were all made useless. If she had been possessed of the old fabled influence, and had turned those who looked

upon her into stone, she could not have rendered him more completely powerless (so it seemed to him in his

distress of mind) than she did, when she turned her unyielding face to his in her gloomy room.

But the light of that day's discovery, shining on these considerations, roused him to take a more decided

Confident in the rectitude of his purpose, and impelled by a sense of overhanging danger closing in around,

he resolved, if his mother would still admit of no approach, to make a desperate appeal to Affery. If she could

be brought to become communicative, and to do what lay in her to break the spell of secrecy that enshrouded

the house, he might shake off the paralysis of which every hour that passed over his head made him more

acutely sensible. This was the result of his day's anxiety, and this was the decision he put in practice when the

His first disappointment, on arriving at the house, was to find the door open, and Mr Flintwinch smoking a

pipe on the steps. If circumstances had been commonly favourable, Mistress Affery would have opened the

door to his knock. Circumstances being uncommonly unfavourable, the door stood open, and Mr Flintwinch

The smoke came crookedly out of Mr Flintwinch's mouth, as if it circulated through the whole of his wry

figure and came back by his wry throat, before coming forth to mingle with the smoke from the crooked

He looked so grim, as he stood askew, with the knot of his cravat under his ear, that the thought passed into

Clennam's mind, and not for the first time by many, could Flintwinch for a purpose of his own have got rid of

Blandois? Could it have been his secret, and his safety, that were at issue? He was small and bent, and

perhaps not actively strong; yet he was as tough as an old yewtree, and as crusty as an old jackdaw. Such a

man, coming behind a much younger and more vigorous man, and having the will to put an end to him and

While, in the morbid condition of his thoughts, these thoughts drifted over the main one that was always in

Clennam's mind, Mr Flintwinch, regarding the opposite house over the gateway with his neck twisted and one

eye shut up, stood smoking with a vicious expression upon him; more as if he were trying to bite off the stem

of his pipe, than as if he were enjoying it. Yet he was enjoying it in his own way.

'You'll be able to take my likeness, the next time you call, Arthur, I should think,' said Mr Flintwinch, drily,

Rather conscious and confused, Arthur asked his pardon, if he had stared at him unpolitely. 'But my mind

'Hah! Yet I don't see,' returned Mr Flintwinch, quite at his leisure, 'why it should trouble YOU, Arthur.'

'No,' said Mr Flintwinch, very shortly and decidedly: much as if he were of the canine race, and snapped at

'Is it nothing to see those placards about? Is it nothing to me to see my mother's name and residence hawked

'I don't see,' returned Mr Flintwinch, scraping his horny cheek, 'that it need signify much to you. But I'll tell

you what I do see, Arthur,' glancing up at the windows; 'I see the light of fire and candle in your mother's

'Why, sir, I read by it,' said Mr Flintwinch, screwing himself at him, 'that if it's advisable (as the proverb says

it is) to let sleeping dogs lie, it's just as advisable, perhaps, to let missing dogs lie. Let 'em be. They generally

Mr Flintwinch turned short round when he had made this remark, and went into the dark hall. Clennam stood

there, following him with his eyes, as he dipped for a light in the phosphorusbox in the little room at the

side, got one after three or four dips, and lighted the dim lamp against the wall. All the while, Clennam was

pursuing the probabilitiesrather as if they were being shown to him by an invisible hand than as if he

himself were conjuring them upof Mr Flintwinch's ways and means of doing that darker deed, and

'Not alone,' said Mr Flintwinch. 'Mr Casby and his daughter are with her. They came in while I was smoking,

This was the second disappointment. Arthur made no remark upon it, and repaired to his mother's room,

where Mr Casby and Flora had been taking tea, anchovy paste, and hot buttered toast. The relics of those

delicacies were not yet removed, either from the table or from the scorched countenance of Affery, who, with

the kitchen toastingfork still in her hand, looked like a sort of allegorical personage; except that she had a

considerable advantage over the general run of such personages in point of significant emblematical purpose.

Flora had spread her bonnet and shawl upon the bed, with a care indicative of an intention to stay some time.

Mr Casby, too, was beaming near the hob, with his benevolent knobs shining as if the warm butter of the

toast were exuding through the patriarchal skull, and with his face as ruddy as if the colouring matter of the

anchovy paste were mantling in the patriarchal visage. Seeing this, as he exchanged the usual salutations,

It had long been customary, as she never changed her room, for those who had anything to say to her apart, to

wheel her to her desk; where she sat, usually with the back of her chair turned towards the rest of the room,

and the person who talked with her seated in a corner, on a stool which was always set in that place for that

purpose. Except that it was long since the mother and son had spoken together without the intervention of a

third person, it was an ordinary matter of course within the experience of visitors for Mrs Clennam to be

asked, with a word of apology for the interruption, if she could be spoken with on a matter of business, and,

Therefore, when Arthur now made such an apology, and such a request, and moved her to her desk and

seated himself on the stool, Mrs Finching merely began to talk louder and faster, as a delicate hint that she

could overhear nothing, and Mr Casby stroked his long white locks with sleepy calmness.

'Mother, I have heard something today which I feel persuaded you don't know, and which I think you should

She spoke aloud. He had lowered his own voice; but she rejected that advance towards confidence as she

'I have received it on no circuitous information; it has come to me direct.' She asked him, exactly as before, if

She started at the word, and her looks expressed her natural horror. Yet she still spoke aloud, when she

'My case and Flintwinch's, in respect of this other man! I dare say the resemblance is not so exact, though, as

that your informant became known to you through a letter from a correspondent with whom he had deposited

Arthur had no choice but to say that his informant had not become known to him through the agency of any

such credentials, or indeed of any credentials at all. Mrs Clennam's attentive frown expanded by degrees into

a severe look of triumph, and she retorted with emphasis, 'Take care how you judge others, then. I say to you,

Arthur, for your good, take care how you judge!' Her emphasis had been derived from her eyes quite as much

as from the stress she laid upon her words. She continued to look at him; and if, when he entered the house,

he had had any latent hope of prevailing in the least with her, she now looked it out of his heart.

'How can you ask me? You separated yourself from my affairs. It was not my act; it was yours. How can you

consistently ask me such a question? You know that you left me to Flintwinch, and that he occupies your

Glancing at Jeremiah, Clennam saw in his very gaiters that his attention was closely directed to them, though

he stood leaning against the wall scraping his jaw, and pretended to listen to Flora as she held forth in a most

distracting manner on a chaos of subjects, in which mackerel, and Mr F.'s Aunt in a swing, had become

'A prisoner, in a French gaol, on an accusation of murder,' repeated Mrs Clennam, steadily going over what

'And was the fellowprisoner his accomplice and a murderer, too? But, of course, he gives a better account of

himself than of his friend; it is needless to ask. This will supply the rest of them here with something new to

'Stay, mother! Stay, stay!' He interrupted her hastily, for it had not entered his imagination that she would

'I beg you to excuse me, Mr Casbyand you, too, Mrs Finchingfor one other moment with my mother'

He had laid his hand upon her chair, or she would otherwise have wheeled it round with the touch of her foot

upon the ground. They were still face to face. She looked at him, as he ran over the possibilities of some

result he had not intended, and could not foresee, being influenced by Cavalletto's disclosure becoming a

matter of notoriety, and hurriedly arrived at the conclusion that it had best not be talked about; though

perhaps he was guided by no more distinct reason than that he had taken it for granted that his mother would

'I did not mean, mother, that you should repeat what I have communicated. I think you had better not repeat

'Observe, then! It is you who make this a secret,' said she, holding up her hand, 'and not I. It is you, Arthur,

who bring here doubts and suspicions and entreaties for explanations, and it is you, Arthur, who bring secrets

here. What is it to me, do you think, where the man has been, or what he has been? What can it be to me? The

whole world may know it, if they care to know it; it is nothing to me. Now, let me go.'

He yielded to her imperious but elated look, and turned her chair back to the place from which he had

wheeled it. In doing so he saw elation in the face of Mr Flintwinch, which most assuredly was not inspired by

Flora. this turning of his intelligence and of his whole attempt and design against himself, did even more than

his mother's fixedness and firmness to convince him that his efforts with her were idle. Nothing remained but

But even to get the very doubtful and preliminary stage of making the appeal, seemed one of the least

promising of human undertakings. She was so completely under the thrall of the two clever ones, was so

systematically kept in sight by one or other of them, and was so afraid to go about the house besides, that

every opportunity of speaking to her alone appeared to be forestalled. Over and above that, Mistress Affery,

by some means (it was not very difficult to guess, through the sharp arguments of her liege lord), had

acquired such a lively conviction of the hazard of saying anything under any circumstances, that she had

remained all this time in a corner guarding herself from approach with that symbolical instrument of hers; so

that, when a word or two had been addressed to her by Flora, or even by the bottlegreen patriarch himself,

After several abortive attempts to get Affery to look at him while she cleared the table and washed the

teaservice, Arthur thought of an expedient which Flora might originate. To whom he therefore whispered,

Now, poor Flora, being always in fluctuating expectation of the time when Clennam would renew his

boyhood and be madly in love with her again, received the whisper with the utmost delight; not only as

rendered precious by its mysterious character, but as preparing the way for a tender interview in which he

would declare the state of his affections. She immediately began to work out the hint.

'Ah dear me the poor old room,' said Flora, glancing round, 'looks just as ever Mrs Clennam I am touched to

see except for being smokier which was to be expected with time and which we must all expect and reconcile

ourselves to being whether we like it or not as I am sure I have had to do myself if not exactly smokier

dreadfully stouter which is the same or worse, to think of the days when papa used to bring me here the least

of girls a perfect mass of chilblains to be stuck upon a chair with my feet on the rails and stare at

Arthurpray excuse meMr Clennamthe least of boys in the frightfullest of frills and jackets ere yet Mr

F. appeared a misty shadow on the horizon paying attentions like the wellknown spectre of some place in

Germany beginning with a B is a moral lesson inculcating that all the paths in life are similar to the paths

down in the North of England where they get the coals and make the iron and things gravelled with ashes!'

Having paid the tribute of a sigh to the instability of human existence, Flora hurried on with her purpose.

'Not that at any time,' she proceeded, 'its worst enemy could have said it was a cheerful house for that it was

never made to be but always highly impressive, fond memory recalls an occasion in youth ere yet the

judgment was mature when Arthurconfirmed habitMr Clennamtook me down into an unused kitchen

eminent for mouldiness and proposed to secrete me there for life and feed me on what he could hide from his

meals when he was not at home for the holidays and on dry bread in disgrace which at that halcyon period too

frequently occurred, would it be inconvenient or asking too much to beg to be permitted to revive those

Mrs Clennam, who responded with a constrained grace to Mrs Finching's good nature in being there at all,

though her visit (before Arthur's unexpected arrival) was undoubtedly an act of pure good nature and no

selfgratification, intimated that all the house was open to her. Flora rose and looked to Arthur for his escort.

Affery was excusing herself with 'Don't ask nothing of me, Arthur!' when Mr Flintwinch stopped her with

'Why not? Affery, what's the matter with you, woman? Why not, jade!' Thus expostulated with, she came

unwillingly out of her corner, resigned the toastingfork into one of her husband's hands, and took the

'Go before, you fool!' said Jeremiah. 'Are you going up, or down, Mrs Finching?'

'Then go before, and down, you Affery,' said Jeremiah. 'And do it properly, or I'll come rolling down the

Affery headed the exploring party; Jeremiah closed it. He had no intention of leaving them. Clennam looking

back, and seeing him following three stairs behind, in the coolest and most methodical manner exclaimed in a

low voice, 'Is there no getting rid of him!' Flora reassured his mind by replying promptly, 'Why though not

exactly proper Arthur and a thing I couldn't think of before a younger man or a stranger still I don't mind him

if you so particularly wish it and provided you'll have the goodness not to take me too tight.'

Wanting the heart to explain that this was not at all what he meant, Arthur extended his supporting arm round

Flora's figure. 'Oh my goodness me,' said she. 'You are very obedient indeed really and it's extremely

honourable and gentlemanly in you I am sure but still at the same time if you would like to be a little tighter

In this preposterous attitude, unspeakably at variance with his anxious mind, Clennam descended to the

basement of the house; finding that wherever it became darker than elsewhere, Flora became heavier, and that

when the house was lightest she was too. Returning from the dismal kitchen regions, which were as dreary as

they could be, Mistress Affery passed with the light into his father's old room, and then into the old

diningroom; always passing on before like a phantom that was not to be overtaken, and neither turning nor

In the diningroom, a sentimental desire came over Flora to look into the dragon closet which had so often

swallowed Arthur in the days of his boyhoodnot improbably because, as a very dark closet, it was a likely

place to be heavy in. Arthur, fast subsiding into despair, had opened it, when a knock was heard at the outer

'What? You want another dose!' said Mr Flintwinch. 'You shall have it, my woman, you shall have a good

'In the meantime, I am going to the door, sir,' returned the old man so savagely, as to render it clear that in a

choice of difficulties he felt he must go, though he would have preferred not to go. 'Stay here the while, all!

Affery, my woman, move an inch, or speak a word in your foolishness, and I'll treble your dose!'

The moment he was gone, Arthur released Mrs Finching: with some difficulty, by reason of that lady

misunderstanding his intentions, and making arrangements with a view to tightening instead of slackening.

'Don't touch me, Arthur!' she cried, shrinking from him. 'Don't come near me. He'll see you. Jeremiah will.

'He can't see me,' returned Arthur, suiting the action to the word, 'if I blow the candle out.'

'He can't hear me,' returned Arthur, suiting the action to the words again, 'if I draw you into this black closet,

'Because the house is full of mysteries and secrets; because it's full of whisperings and counsellings; because

it's full of noises. There never was such a house for noises. I shall die of 'em, if Jeremiah don't strangle me

'Ah! But you would, though, if you lived in the house, and was obliged to go about it as I am,' said Affery;

'and you'd feel that they was so well worth speaking of, that you'd feel you was nigh bursting through not

'My good Affery, I solemnly declare to you that I can see the light of the open door on the pavement of the

'I durstn't do it,' said Affery, 'I durstn't never, Arthur. I'm always blindfolded when Jeremiah an't a looking,

'He cannot shut the door without my seeing him,' said Arthur. 'You are as safe with me as if he was fifty

'Affery, I want to know what is amiss here; I want some light thrown on the secrets of this house.' 'I tell you,

Arthur,' she interrupted, 'noises is the secrets, rustlings and stealings about, tremblings, treads overhead and

'I don't know,' said Affery. 'Don't ask me no more. Your old sweetheart an't far off, and she's a blabber.'

His old sweetheart, being in fact so near at hand that she was then reclining against him in a flutter, a very

substantial angle of fortyfive degrees, here interposed to assure Mistress Affery with greater earnestness

than directness of asseveration, that what she heard should go no further, but should be kept inviolate, 'if on

no other account on Arthur'ssensible of intruding in being too familiar Doyce and Clennam's.'

'I make an imploring appeal to you, Affery, to you, one of the few agreeable early remembrances I have, for

my mother's sake, for your husband's sake, for my own, for all our sakes. I am sure you can tell me something

'I'll tell you then,' said Affery, after listening, 'that the first time he ever come he heard the noises his own

self. "What's that?" he said to me. "I don't know what it is," I says to him, catching hold of him, "but I have

heard it over and over again." While I says it, he stands a looking at me, all of a shake, he do.'

'Them two clever ones had him all alone to themselves. Jeremiah come a dancing at me sideways, after I had

let you out (he always comes a dancing at me sideways when he's going to hurt me), and he said to me,

"Now, Affery," he said, "I am a coming behind you, my woman, and a going to run you up." So he took and

squeezed the back of my neck in his hand, till it made me open MY mouth, and then he pushed me before

him to bed, squeezing all the way. That's what he calls running me up, he do. Oh, he's a wicked one!'

'I assure you he is still at the door. Those whisperings and counsellings, Affery, that you have spoken of.

'But my dear Affery; unless I can gain some insight into these hidden things, in spite of your husband and in

'Don't ask me nothing,' repeated Affery. 'I have been in a dream for ever so long. Go away, go away!'

'You said that before,' returned Arthur. 'You used the same expression that night, at the door, when I asked

'I an't a going to tell you. Get away! I shouldn't tell you, if you was by yourself; much less with your old

It was equally vain for Arthur to entreat, and for Flora to protest. Affery, who had been trembling and

struggling the whole time, turned a deaf ear to all adjuration, and was bent on forcing herself out of the closet.

'I'd sooner scream to Jeremiah than say another word! I'll call out to him, Arthur, if you don't give over

speaking to me. Now here's the very last word I'll say afore I call to himIf ever you begin to get the better

of them two clever ones your own self (you ought to it, as I told you when you first come home, for you

haven't been a living here long years, to be made afeared of your life as I have), then do you get the better of

'em afore my face; and then do you say to me, Affery tell your dreams! Maybe, then I'll tell 'em!'

The shutting of the door stopped Arthur from replying. They glided into the places where Jeremiah had left

them; and Clennam, stepping forward as that old gentleman returned, informed him that he had accidentally

extinguished the candle. Mr Flintwinch looked on as he relighted it at the lamp in the hall, and preserved a

profound taciturnity respecting the person who had been holding him in conversation. Perhaps his irascibility

demanded compensation for some tediousness that the visitor had expended on him; however that was, he

took such umbrage at seeing his wife with her apron over her head, that he charged at her, and taking her

veiled nose between his thumb and finger, appeared to throw the whole screw power of his person into the

Flora, now permanently heavy, did not release Arthur from the survey of the house, until it had extended even

to his old garret bedchamber. His thoughts were otherwise occupied than with the tour of inspection; yet he

took particular notice at the time, as he afterwards had occasion to remember, of the airlessness and closeness

of the house; that they left the track of their footsteps in the dust on the upper floors; and that there was a

resistance to the opening of one room door, which occasioned Affery to cry out that somebody was hiding

inside, and to continue to believe so, though somebody was sought and not discovered. When they at last

returned to his mother's room, they found her shading her face with her muffled hand, and talking in a low

voice to the Patriarch as he stood before the fire, whose blue eyes, polished head, and silken locks, turning

towards them as they came in, imparted an inestimable value and inexhaustible love of his species to his

'So you have been seeing the premises, seeing the premises premisesseeing the premises!'

it was not in itself a jewel of benevolence or wisdom, yet he made it an exemplar of both that one would have

That illustrious man and great national ornament, Mr Merdle, continued his shining course. It began to be

widely understood that one who had done society the admirable service of making so much money out of it,

could not be suffered to remain a commoner. A baronetcy was spoken of with confidence; a peerage was

frequently mentioned. Rumour had it that Mr Merdle had set his golden face against a baronetcy; that he had

plainly intimated to Lord Decimus that a baronetcy was not enough for him; that he had said, 'Noa

Peerage, or plain Merdle.' This was reported to have plunged Lord Decimus as nigh to his noble chin in a

slough of doubts as so lofty a person could be sunk. For the Barnacles, as a group of themselves in creation,

had an idea that such distinctions belonged to them; and that when a soldier, sailor, or lawyer became

ennobled, they let him in, as it were, by an act of condescension, at the family door, and immediately shut it

again. Not only (said Rumour) had the troubled Decimus his own hereditary part in this impression, but he

also knew of several Barnacle claims already on the file, which came into collision with that of the master

Right or wrong, Rumour was very busy; and Lord Decimus, while he was, or was supposed to be, in stately

excogitation of the difficulty, lent her some countenance by taking, on several public occasions, one of those

elephantine trots of his through a jungle of overgrown sentences, waving Mr Merdle about on his trunk as

Gigantic Enterprise, The Wealth of England, Elasticity, Credit, Capital, Prosperity, and all manner of

So quietly did the mowing of the old scythe go on, that fully three months had passed unnoticed since the two

English brothers had been laid in one tomb in the strangers' cemetery at Rome. Mr and Mrs Sparkler were

established in their own house: a little manSion, rather of the Tite Barnacle class, quite a triumph of

inconvenience, with a perpetual smell in it of the day before yesterday's soup and coachhorses, but

extremely dear, as being exactly in the centre of the habitable globe. In this enviable abode (and envied it

really was by many people), Mrs Sparkler had intended to proceed at once to the demolition of the Bosom,

when active hostilities had been suspended by the arrival of the Courier with his tidings of death. Mrs

Sparkler, who was not unfeeling, had received them with a violent burst of grief, which had lasted twelve

hours; after which, she had arisen to see about her mourning, and to take every precaution that could ensure

its being as becoming as Mrs Merdle's. A gloom was then cast over more than one distinguished family

(according to the politest sources of intelligence), and the Courier went back again.

Mr and Mrs Sparkler had been dining alone, with their gloom cast over them, and Mrs Sparkler reclined on a

drawingroom sofa. It was a hot summer Sunday evening. The residence in the centre of the habitable globe,

at all times stuffed and close as if it had an incurable cold in its head, was that evening particularly stifling.

The bells of the churches had done their worst in the way of clanging among the unmelodious echoes of the

streets, and the lighted windows of the churches had ceased to be yellow in the grey dusk, and had died out

opaque black. Mrs Sparkler, lying on her sofa, looking through an open window at the opposite side of a

narrow street over boxes of mignonette and flowers, was tired of the view. Mrs Sparkler, looking at another

window where her husband stood in the balcony, was tired of that view. Mrs Sparkler, looking at herself in

her mourning, was even tired of that view: though, naturally, not so tired of that as of the other two.

'It's like lying in a well,' said Mrs Sparkler, changing her position fretfully. 'Dear me, Edmund, if you have

Mr Sparkler might have replied with ingenuousness, 'My life, I have nothing to say.' But, as the repartee did

not occur to him, he contented himself with coming in from the balcony and standing at the side of his wife's

'Good gracious, Edmund!' said Mrs Sparkler more fretfully still, you are absolutely putting mignonette up

Mr Sparkler, in absence of mindperhaps in a more literal absence of mind than is usually understood by

the phrasehad smelt so hard at a sprig in his hand as to be on the verge of the offence in question. He

'You make my head ache by remaining in that position, Edmund,' said Mrs Sparkler, raising her eyes to him

after another minute; 'you look so aggravatingly large by this light. Do sit down.'

'If I didn't know that the longest day was past,' said Fanny, yawning in a dreary manner, 'I should have felt

'Is that your fan, my love?' asked Mr Sparkler, picking up one and presenting it.

'Edmund,' returned his wife, more wearily yet, 'don't ask weak questions, I entreat you not. Whose can it be

'Then you shouldn't ask,' retorted Fanny. After a little while she turned on her sofa and exclaimed, 'Dear me,

dear me, there never was such a long day as this!' After another little while, she got up slowly, walked about,

'My dear,' said Mr Sparkler, flashing with an original conception, 'I think you must have got the fidgets.'

'My adorable girl,' urged Mr Sparkler, 'try your aromatic vinegar. I have often seen my mother try it, and it

'Good Gracious!' exclaimed Fanny, starting up again. 'It's beyond all patience! This is the most wearisome

Mr Sparkler looked meekly after her as she lounged about the room, and he appeared to be a little frightened.

When she had tossed a few trifles about, and had looked down into the darkening street out of all the three

'Now Edmund, come here! Come a little nearer, because I want to be able to touch you with my fan, that I

may impress you very much with what I am going to say. That will do. Quite close enough. Oh, you do look

Mr Sparkler apologised for the circumstance, pleaded that he couldn't help it, and said that 'our fellows,'

without more particularly indicating whose fellows, used to call him by the name of Quinbus Flestrin, Junior,

'My dear,' returned Mr Sparkler, rather gratified, 'I didn't know It would interest you, or I would have made a

point of telling you.' 'There! For goodness sake, don't talk,' said Fanny; 'I want to talk, myself. Edmund, we

must not be alone any more. I must take such precautions as will prevent my being ever again reduced to the

'My dear,' answered Mr Sparkler; 'being as you are well known to be, a remarkably fine woman with no'

Mr Sparkler was so discomposed by the energy of this exclamation, accompanied with a flouncing up from

the sofa and a flouncing down again, that a minute or two elapsed before he felt himself equal to saying in

'Calculated to shine in society,' retorted Fanny with great irritability; 'yes, indeed! And then what happens? I

no sooner recover, in a visiting point of view, the shock of poor dear papa's death, and my poor

uncle'sthough I do not disguise from myself that the last was a happy release, for, if you are not

'Edmund, Edmund, you would wear out a Saint. Am I not expressly speaking of my poor uncle?'

'You looked with so much expression at myself, my dear girl,' said Mr Sparkler, 'that I felt a little

'Now you have put me out,' observed Fanny with a resigned toss of her fan, 'and I had better go to bed.'

Fanny took a good deal of time: lying back with her eyes shut, and her eyebrows raised with a hopeless

expression as if she had utterly given up all terrestrial affairs. At length, without the slightest notice, she

'What happens then, I ask! What happens? Why, I find myself at the very period when I might shine most in

society, and should most like for very momentous reasons to shine in societyI find myself in a situation

which to a certain extent disqualifies me for going into society. it's too bad, really!'

'My dear,' said Mr Sparkler. 'I don't think it need keep you at home.' 'Edmund, you ridiculous creature,'

returned Fanny, with great indignation; 'do you suppose that a woman in the bloom of youth and not wholly

devoid of personal attractions, can put herself, at such a time, in competition as to figure with a woman in

every other way her inferior? If you do suppose such a thing, your folly is boundless.'

Mr Sparkler submitted that he had thought 'it might be got over.' 'Got over!' repeated Fanny, with

Honouring the last feeble suggestion with no notice, Mrs Sparkler declared with bitterness that it really was

'However,' she said, when she had in some measure recovered from her sense of personal illusage;

'Edmund,' returned his wife, 'if you have nothing more becoming to do than to attempt to insult the woman

who has honoured you with her hand, when she finds herself in adversity, I think YOU had better go to bed!'

Mr Sparkler was much afflicted by the charge, and offered a most tender and earnest apology. His apology

was accepted; but Mrs Sparkler requested him to go round to the other side of the sofa and sit in the

'Now, Edmund,' she said, stretching out her fan, and touching him with it at arm's length, 'what I was going to

say to you when you began as usual to prose and worry, is, that I shall guard against our being alone any

more, and that when circumstances prevent my going out to my own satisfaction, I must arrange to have

some people or other always here; for I really cannot, and will not, have another such day as this has been.'

Mr Sparkler's sentiments as to the plan were, in brief, that it had no nonsense about it. He added, 'And

'Dearest Amy, yes!' cried Mrs Sparkler with a sigh of affection. 'Darling little thing! Not, however, that Amy

Mr Sparkler was going to say 'No?' interrogatively, but he saw his danger and said it assentingly, 'No, Oh

'No, Edmund. For not only are the virtues of the precious child of that still character that they require a

contrastrequire life and movement around them to bring them out in their right colours and make one love

them of all things; but she will require to be roused, on more accounts than one.'

'Pray don't, Edmund! Your habit of interrupting without having the least thing in the world to say, distracts

one. You must be broken of it. Speaking of Amy;my poor little pet was devotedly attached to poor papa,

and no doubt will have lamented his loss exceedingly, and grieved very much. I have done so myself. I have

felt it dreadfully. But Amy will no doubt have felt it even more, from having been on the spot the whole time,

Here Fanny stopped to weep, and to say, 'Dear, dear, beloved papa! How truly gentlemanly he was! What a

'From the effects of that trying time,' she pursued, 'my good little Mouse will have to be roused. Also, from

the effects of this long attendance upon Edward in his illness; an attendance which is not yet over, which may

even go on for some time longer, and which in the meanwhile unsettles us all by keeping poor dear papa's

affairs from being wound up. Fortunately, however, the papers with his agents here being all sealed up and

locked up, as he left them when he providentially came to England, the affairs are in that state of order that

they can wait until my brother Edward recovers his health in Sicily, sufficiently to come over, and administer,

'He couldn't have a better nurse to bring him round,' Mr Sparkler made bold to opine.

'For a wonder, I can agree with you,' returned his wife, languidly turning her eyelids a little in his direction

(she held forth, in general, as if to the drawingroom furniture), 'and can adopt your words. He couldn't have

a better nurse to bring him round. There are times when my dear child is a little wearing to an active mind;

Mr Sparkler, growing rash on his late success, observed that Edward had had, biggodd, a long bout of it, my

'If Bout, Edmund,' returned Mrs Sparkler, 'is the slang term for indisposition, he has. If it is not, I am unable

to give an opinion on the barbarous language you address to Edward's sister. That he contracted Malaria

Fever somewhere, either by travelling day and night to Rome, where, after all, he arrived too late to see poor

dear papa before his deathor under some other unwholesome circumstancesis indubitable, if that is what

you mean. Likewise that his extremely careless life has made him a very bad subject for it indeed.'

Mr Sparkler considered it a parallel case to that of some of our fellows in the West Indies with Yellow Jack.

Mrs Sparkler closed her eyes again, and refused to have any consciousness of our fellows of the West Indies,

'So, Amy,' she pursued, when she reopened her eyelids, 'will require to be roused from the effects of many

tedious and anxious weeks. And lastly, she will require to be roused from a low tendency which I know very

well to be at the bottom of her heart. Don't ask me what it is, Edmund, because I must decline to tell you.'

'I shall thus have much improvement to effect in my sweet child,' Mrs Sparkler continued, 'and cannot have

her near me too soon. Amiable and dear little Twoshoes! As to the settlement of poor papa's affairs, my

interest in that is not very selfish. Papa behaved very generously to me when I was married, and I have little

or nothing to expect. Provided he had made no will that can come into force, leaving a legacy to Mrs General,

She wept again, but Mrs General was the best of restoratives. The name soon stimulated her to dry her eyes

'It is a highly encouraging circumstance in Edward's illness, I am thankful to think, and gives one the greatest

confidence in his sense not being impaired, or his proper spirit weakeneddown to the time of poor dear

papa's death at all eventsthat he paid off Mrs General instantly, and sent her out of the house. I applaud

him for it. I could forgive him a great deal for doing, with such promptitude, so exactly what I would have

Mrs Sparkler was in the full glow of her gratification, when a double knock was heard at the door. A very odd

knock. Low, as if to avoid making a noise and attracting attention. Long, as if the person knocking were

'Not Amy and Edward without notice and without a carriage!' said Mrs Sparkler. 'Look out.'

The room was dark, but the street was lighter, because of its lamps. Mr Sparkler's head peeping over the

balcony looked so very bulky and heavy that it seemed on the point of overbalancing him and flattening the

'It's one fellow,' said Mr Sparkler. 'I can't see whostop though!' On this second thought he went out into the

balcony again and had another look. He came back as the door was opened, and announced that he believed

he had identified 'his governor's tile.' He was not mistaken, for his governor, with his tile in his hand, was

When the candles were brought in, Mr Merdle was discovered standing behind the door, picking his lips. 'I

thought I'd give you a call,' he said. 'I am rather particularly occupied just now; and, as I happened to be out

He had passed his hand over his yellow forehead and considered, as if he were not sure about it. Something to

eat was proposed. 'No, thank you,' said Mr Merdle, 'I don't feel inclined for it. I was to have dined out along

with Mrs Merdle. But as I didn't feel inclined for dinner, I let Mrs Merdle go by herself just as we were

Would he have tea or coffee? 'No, thank you,' said Mr Merdle. 'I looked in at the Club, and got a bottle of

At this period of his visit, Mr Merdle took the chair.which Edmund Sparkler had offered him, and which he

had hitherto been pushing slowly about before him, like a dull man with a pair of skates on for the first time,

who could not make up his mind to start. He now put his hat upon another chair beside him, and, looking

down into it as if it were some twenty feet deep, said again: 'You see I thought I'd give you a call.'

'Nono,' returned Mr Merdle, who was by this time taking himself into custody under both coatsleeves.

'You have too much to do for that,' said Fanny. 'Having so much to do, Mr Merdle, loss of appetite is a

serious thing with you, and you must have it seen to. You must not be ill.' 'Oh! I am very well,' replied Mr

Merdle, after deliberating about it. 'I am as well as I usually am. I am well enough. I am as well as I want to

The mastermind of the age, true to its characteristic of being at all times a mind that had as little as possible

to say for itself and great difficulty in saying it, became mute again. Mrs Sparkler began to wonder how long

Fanny did not see that; but felt it incumbent on her to continue talking. 'I was saying,' she pursued, 'that my

brother's illness has occasioned a delay in examining and arranging papa's property.'

'Not,' assented Mr Merdle, after having examined the cornice of all that part of the room which was within his

Fanny was delighted to hear him express the opinion. Mr Merdle, after taking another gaze into the depths of

his hat as if he thought he saw something at the bottom, rubbed his hair and slowly appended to his last

As the topic seemed exhausted, and Mr Merdle too, Fanny inquired if he were going to take up Mrs Merdle

'No,' he answered; 'I shall go by the shortest way, and leave Mrs Merdle to' here he looked all over the

palms of both his hands as if he were telling his own fortune'to take care of herself. I dare say she'll

There was then a long silence; during which, Mrs Sparkler, lying back on her sofa again, shut her eyes and

'But, however,' said Mr Merdle, 'I am equally detaining you and myself. I thought I'd give you a call, you

It was an odd thing, Fanny smilingly observed, for her who could seldom prevail upon herself even to write a

letter, to lend to a man of such vast business as Mr Merdle. 'Isn't it?' Mr Merdle acquiesced; 'but I want one;

and I know you have got several little wedding keepsakes about, with scissors and tweezers and such things

'Edmund,' said Mrs Sparkler, 'open (now, very carefully, I beg and beseech, for you are so very awkward) the

mother of pearl box on my little table there, and give Mr Merdle the mother of pearl penknife.'

'Thank you,' said Mr Merdle; 'but if you have got one with a darker handle, I think I should prefer one with a

Edmund accordingly received instructions to open the tortoiseshell box, and give Mr Merdle the

tortoiseshell knife. On his doing so, his wife said to the masterspirit graciously:

The illustrious visitor then put out his coatcuff, and for a moment entombed Mrs Sparkler's hand: wrist,

bracelet, and all. Where his own hand had shrunk to, was not made manifest, but it was as remote from Mrs

Sparkler's sense of touch as if he had been a highly meritorious Chelsea Veteran or Greenwich Pensioner.

Thoroughly convinced, as he went out of the room, that it was the longest day that ever did come to an end at

last, and that there never was a woman, not wholly devoid of personal attractions, so worn out by idiotic and

lumpish people, Fanny passed into the balcony for a breath of air. Waters of vexation filled her eyes; and they

had the effect of making the famous Mr Merdle, in going down the street, appear to leap, and waltz, and

The dinnerparty was at the great Physician's. Bar was there, and in full force. Ferdinand Barnacle was there,

and in his most engaging state. Few ways of life were hidden from Physician, and he was oftener in its

darkest places than even Bishop. There were brilliant ladies about London who perfectly doted on him, my

dear, as the most charming creature and the most delightful person, who would have been shocked to find

themselves so close to him if they could have known on what sights those thoughtful eyes of his had rested

within an hour or two, and near to whose beds, and under what roofs, his composed figure had stood. But

Physician was a composed man, who performed neither on his own trumpet, nor on the trumpets of other

people. Many wonderful things did he see and hear, and much irreconcilable moral contradiction did he pass

his life among; yet his equality of compassion was no more disturbed than the Divine Master's of all healing

was. He went, like the rain, among the just and unjust, doing all the good he could, and neither proclaiming it

As no man of large experience of humanity, however quietly carried it may be, can fail to be invested with an

interest peculiar to the possession of such knowledge, Physician was an attractive man. Even the daintier

gentlemen and ladies who had no idea of his secret, and who would have been startled out of more wits than

they had, by the monstrous impropriety of his proposing to them 'Come and see what I see!' confessed his

attraction. Where he was, something real was. And half a grain of reality, like the smallest portion of some

It came to pass, therefore, that Physician's little dinners always presented people in their least conventional

lights. The guests said to themselves, whether they were conscious of it or no, 'Here is a man who really has

an acquaintance with us as we are, who is admitted to some of us every day with our wigs and paint off, who

hears the wanderings of our minds, and sees the undisguised expression of our faces, when both are past our

control; we may as well make an approach to reality with him, for the man has got the better of us and is too

strong for us.' Therefore, Physician's guests came out so surprisingly at his round table that they were almost

Bar's knowledge of that agglomeration of jurymen which is called humanity was as sharp as a razor; yet a

razor is not a generally convenient instrument, and Physician's plain bright scalpel, though far less keen, was

adaptable to far wider purposes. Bar knew all about the gullibility and knavery of people; but Physician could

have given him a better insight into their tendernesses and affections, in one week of his rounds, than

Westminster Hall and all the circuits put together, in threescore years and ten. Bar always had a suspicion of

this, and perhaps was glad to encourage it (for, if the world were really a great Law Court, one would think

that the last day of Term could not too soon arrive); and so he liked and respected Physician quite as much as

Mr Merdle's default left a Banquo's chair at the table; but, if he had been there, he would have merely made

the difference of Banquo in it, and consequently he was no loss. Bar, who picked up all sorts of odds and

ends about Westminster Hall, much as a raven would have done if he had passed as much of his time there,

had been picking up a great many straws lately and tossing them about, to try which way the Merdle wind

blew. He now had a little talk on the subject with Mrs Merdle herself; sidling up to that lady, of course, with

'A certain bird,' said Bar; and he looked as if it could have been no other bird than a magpie; 'has been

whispering among us lawyers lately, that there is to be an addition to the titled personages of this realm.'

'Yes,' said Bar. 'Has not the bird been whispering in very different ears from oursin lovely ears?' He looked

'I am the last person in the world to hear news,' observed Mrs Merdle, carelessly arranging her stronghold.

'What an admirable witness you would make!' said Bar. 'No jury (unless we could empanel one of blind men)

could resist you, if you were ever so bad a one; but you would be such a good one!'

Bar waved his double eyeglass three or four times between himself and the Bosom, as a rallying answer,

'What am I to call the most elegant, accomplished and charming of women, a few weeks, or it may be a few

'Didn't your bird tell you what to call her?' answered Mrs Merdle. 'Do ask it tomorrow, and tell me the next

This led to further passages of similar pleasantry between the two; but Bar, with all his sharpness, got nothing

out of them. Physician, on the other hand, taking Mrs Merdle down to her carriage and attending on her as

she put on her cloak, inquired into the symptoms with his usual calm directness.

'My dear doctor,' she returned, 'you ask me the very question that I was half disposed to ask you.' 'To ask me!

'Upon my honour, I think Mr Merdle reposes greater confidence in you than in any one.'

'On the contrary, he tells me absolutely nothing, even professionally. You have heard the talk, of course?'

' Of course I have. But you know what Mr Merdle is; you know how taciturn and reserved he is. I assure you

I have no idea what foundation for it there may be. I should like it to be true; why should I deny that to you?

'But whether it is all true, or partly true, or entirely false, I am wholly unable to say. It is a most provoking

situation, a most absurd situation; but you know Mr Merdle, and are not surprised.'

Physician was not surprised, handed her into her carriage, and bade her Good Night. He stood for a moment

at his own hall door, looking sedately at the elegant equipage as it rattled away. On his return upstairs, the

rest of the guests soon dispersed, and he was left alone. Being a great reader of all kinds of literature (and

The clock upon his study table pointed to a few minutes short of twelve, when his attention was called to it by

a ringing at the door bell. A man of plain habits, he had sent his servants to bed and must needs go down to

open the door. He went down, and there found a man without hat or coat, whose shirt sleeves were rolled up

tight to his shoulders. For a moment, he thought the man had been fighting: the rather, as he was much

agitated and out of breath. A second look, however, showed him that the man was particularly clean, and not

He put into the physician's hand a scrap of paper. Physician looked at it, and read his own name and address

written in pencil; nothing more. He looked closer at the writing, looked at the man, took his hat from its peg,

When they came to the warmbaths, all the other people belonging to that establishment were looking out for

them at the door, and running up and down the passages. 'Request everybody else to keep back, if you please,'

said the physician aloud to the master; 'and do you take me straight to the place, my friend,' to the messenger.

The messenger hurried before him, along a grove of little rooms, and turning into one at the end of the grove,

looked round the door. Physician was close upon him, and looked round the door too.

There was a bath in that corner, from which the water had been hastily drained off. Lying in it, as in a grave

or sarcophagus, with a hurried drapery of sheet and blanket thrown across it, was the body of a heavilymade

man, with an obtuse head, and coarse, mean, common features. A skylight had been opened to release the

steam with which the room had been filled; but it hung, condensed into waterdrops, heavily upon the walls,

and heavily upon the face and figure in the bath. The room was still hot, and the marble of the bath still

warm; but the face and figure were clammy to the touch. The white marble at the bottom of the bath was

veined with a dreadful red. On the ledge at the side, were an empty laudanum bottle and a tortoiseshell

'Separation of jugular veindeath rapidbeen dead at least half an hour.' This echo of the physician's words

ran through the passages and little rooms, and through the house while he was yet straightening himself from

having bent down to reach to the bottom of the bath, and while he was yet dabbling his hands in water; redly

He turned his eyes to the dress upon the sofa, and to the watch, money, and pocketbook on the table. A

folded note half buckled up in the pocketbook, and half protruding from it, caught his observant glance. He

looked at it, touched it, pulled it a little further out from among the leaves, said quietly, 'This is addressed to

There were no directions for him to give. The people of the house knew what to do; the proper authorities

were soon brought; and they took an equable businesslike possession of the deceased, and of what had been

his property, with no greater disturbance of manner or countenance than usually attends the windingup of a

clock. Physician was glad to walk out into the night airwas even glad, in spite of his great experience, to sit

Bar was a near neighbour of his, and, when he came to the house, he saw a light in the room where he knew

his friend often sat late getting up his work. As the light was never there when Bar was not, it gave him

assurance that Bar was not yet in bed. In fact, this busy bee had a verdict to get tomorrow, against evidence,

and was improving the shining hours in setting snares for the gentlemen of the jury.

Physician's knock astonished Bar; but, as he immediately suspected that somebody had come to tell him that

somebody else was robbing him, or otherwise trying to get the better of him, he came down promptly and

softly. He had been clearing his head with a lotion of cold water, as a good preparative to providing hot water

for the heads of the jury, and had been reading with the neck of his shirt thrown wide open that he might the

more freely choke the opposite witnesses. In consequence, he came down, looking rather wild. Seeing

Physician, the least expected of men, he looked wilder and said, 'What's the matter?'

'My God!' said Bar, starting back, and clapping his hand upon the other's breast. 'And so have I! I see it in

They went into the nearest room, where Physician gave him the letter to read. He read it through

halfadozen times. There was not much in it as to quantity; but it made a great demand on his close and

continuous attention. He could not sufficiently give utterance to his regret that he had not himself found a

clue to this. The smallest clue, he said, would have made him master of the case, and what a case it would

Physician had engaged to break the intelligence in Harley Street. Bar could not at once return to his

inveiglements of the most enlightened and remarkable jury he had ever seen in that box, with whom, he could

tell his learned friend, no shallow sophistry would go down, and no unhappily abused professional tact and

skill prevail (this was the way he meant to begin with them); so he said he would go too, and would loiter to

and fro near the house while his friend was inside. They walked there, the better to recover selfpossession in

the air; and the wings of day were fluttering the night when Physician knocked at the door.

A footman of rainbow hues, in the public eye, was sitting up for his masterthat is to say, was fast asleep in

the kitchen over a couple of candles and a newspaper, demonstrating the great accumulation of mathematical

odds against the probabilities of a house being set on fire by accident When this serving man was roused,

Physician had still to await the rousing of the Chief Butler. At last that noble creature came into the

diningroom in a flannel gown and list shoes; but with his cravat on, and a Chief Butler all over. It was

morning now. Physician had opened the shutters of one window while waiting, that he might see the light.

'Mrs Merdle's maid must be called, and told to get Mrs Merdle up, and prepare her as gently as she can to see

Thus Physician to the Chief Butler. The latter, who had a candle in his hand, called his man to take it away.

Then he approached the window with dignity; looking on at Physician's news exactly as he had looked on at

'Sir,' said the Chief Butler, 'that is very unpleasant to the feelings of one in my position, as calculated to

'If you are not shocked, are you not surprised, man?' demanded the Physician, warmly.

'Sir, Mr Merdle never was the gentleman, and no ungentlemanly act on Mr Merdle's part would surprise me.

Is there anybody else I can send to you, or any other directions I can give before I leave, respecting what you

When Physician, after discharging himself of his trust upstairs, rejoined Bar in the street, he said no more of

his interview with Mrs Merdle than that he had not yet told her all, but that what he had told her she had

borne pretty well. Bar had devoted his leisure in the street to the construction of a most ingenious man trap

for catching the whole of his jury at a blow; having got that matter settled in his mind, it was lucid on the late

catastrophe, and they walked home slowly, discussing it in every bearing. Before parting at the Physician's

door, they both looked up at the sunny morning sky, into which the smoke of a few early fires and the breath

and voices of a few early stirrers were peacefully rising, and then looked round upon the immense city, and

said, if all those hundreds and thousands of beggared people who were yet asleep could only know, as they

two spoke, the ruin that impended over them, what a fearful cry against one miserable soul would go up to

The report that the great man was dead, got about with astonishing rapidity. At first, he was dead of all the

diseases that ever were known, and of several brannew maladies invented with the speed of Light to meet

the demand of the occasion. He had concealed a dropsy from infancy, he had inherited a large estate of water

on the chest from his grandfather, he had had an operation performed upon him every morning of his life for

eighteen years, he had been subject to the explosion of important veins in his body after the manner of

fireworks, he had had something the matter with his lungs, he had had something the matter with his heart, he

had had something the matter with his brain. Five hundred people who sat down to breakfast entirely

uninformed on the whole subject, believed before they had done breakfast, that they privately and personally

knew Physician to have said to Mr Merdle, 'You must expect to go out, some day, like the snuff of a candle;'

and that they knew Mr Merdle to have said to Physician, 'A man can die but once.' By about eleven o'clock in

the forenoon, something the matter with the brain, became the favourite theory against the field; and by

Pressure was so entirely satisfactory to the public mind, and seemed to make everybody so comfortable, that

it might have lasted all day but for Bar's having taken the real state of the case into Court at halfpast nine.

This led to its beginning to be currently whispered all over London by about one, that Mr Merdle had killed

himself. Pressure, however, so far from being overthrown by the discovery, became a greater favourite than

ever. There was a general moralising upon Pressure, in every street. All the people who had tried to make

money and had not been able to do it, said, There you were! You no sooner began to devote yourself to the

pursuit of wealth than you got Pressure. The idle people improved the occasion in a similar manner. See, said

they, what you brought yourself to by work, work, work! You persisted in working, you overdid it. Pressure

came on, and you were done for! This consideration was very potent in many quarters, but nowhere more so

than among the young clerks and partners who had never been in the slightest danger of overdoing it. These,

one and all, declared, quite piously, that they hoped they would never forget the warning as long as they

lived, and that their conduct might be so regulated as to keep off Pressure, and preserve them, a comfort to

But, at about the time of High 'Change, Pressure began to wane, and appalling whispers to circulate, east,

west, north, and south. At first they were faint, and went no further than a doubt whether Mr Merdle's wealth

would be found to be as vast as had been supposed; whether there might not be a temporary difficulty in

'realising' it; whether there might not even be a temporary suspension (say a month or so), on the part of the

wonderful Bank. As the whispers became louder, which they did from that time every minute, they became

more threatening. He had sprung from nothing, by no natural growth or process that any one could account

for; he had been, after all, a low, ignorant fellow; he had been a downlooking man, and no one had ever

been able to catch his eye; he had been taken up by all sorts of people in quite an unaccountable manner; he

had never had any money of his own, his ventures had been utterly reckless, and his expenditure had been

most enormous. In steady progression, as the day declined, the talk rose in sound and purpose. He had left a

letter at the Baths addressed to his physician, and his physician had got the letter, and the letter would be

produced at the Inquest on the morrow, and it would fall like a thunderbolt upon the multitude he had

deluded. Numbers of men in every profession and trade would be blighted by his insolvency; old people who

had been in easy circumstances all their lives would have no place of repentance for their trust in him but the

workhouse; legions of women and children would have their whole future desolated by the hand of this

mighty scoundrel. Every partaker of his magnificent feasts would be seen to have been a sharer in the plunder

of innumerable homes; every servile worshipper of riches who had helped to set him on his pedestal, would

have done better to worship the Devil pointblank. So, the talk, lashed louder and higher by confirmation on

confirmation, and by edition after edition of the evening papers, swelled into such a roar when night came, as

might have brought one to believe that a solitary watcher on the gallery above the Dome of St Paul's would

have perceived the night air to be laden with a heavy muttering of the name of Merdle, coupled with every

For by that time it was known that the late Mr Merdle's complaint had been simply Forgery and Robbery. He,

the uncouth object of such widespread adulation, the sitter at great men's feasts, the roc's egg of great ladies'

assemblies, the subduer of exclusiveness, the leveller of pride, the patron of patrons, the bargaindriver with

a Minister for Lordships of the Circumlocution Office, the recipient of more acknowledgment within some

ten or fifteen years, at most, than had been bestowed in England upon all peaceful public benefactors, and

upon all the leaders of all the Arts and Sciences, with all their works to testify for them, during two centuries

at leasthe, the shining wonder, the new constellation to be followed by the wise men bringing gifts, until it

stopped over a certain carrion at the bottom of a bath and disappearedwas simply the greatest Forger and

With a precursory sound of hurried breath and hurried feet, Mr Pancks rushed into Arthur Clennam's

Countinghouse. The Inquest was over, the letter was public, the Bank was broken, the other model

structures of straw had taken fire and were turned to smoke. The admired piratical ship had blown up, in the

midst of a vast fleet of ships of all rates, and boats of all sizes; and on the deep was nothing but ruin; nothing

but burning hulls, bursting magazines, great guns selfexploded tearing friends and neighbours to pieces,

drowning men clinging to unseaworthy spars and going down every minute, spent swimmers floating dead,

The usual diligence and order of the Countinghouse at the Works were overthrown. Unopened letters and

unsorted papers lay strewn about the desk. In the midst of these tokens of prostrated energy and dismissed

hope, the master of the Countinghouse stood idle in his usual place, with his arms crossed on the desk, and

Mr Pancks rushed in and saw him, and stood still. In another minute, Mr Pancks's arms were on the desk, and

Mr Pancks's head was bowed down upon them; and for some time they remained in these attitudes, idle and

silent, with the width of the little room between them. Mr Pancks was the first to lift up his head and speak.

You can't say more to me than I say to myself. You can't say more than I deserve.'

'O, Pancks, Pancks!' returned Clennam, 'don't speak of deserving. What do I myself deserve!'

'I,' pursued Clennam, without attending to him, 'who have ruined my partner! Pancks, Pancks, I have ruined

Doyce! The honest, self helpful, indefatigable old man who has worked his way all through his life; the man

who has contended against so much disappointment, and who has brought out of it such a good and hopeful

nature; the man I have felt so much for, and meant to be so true and useful to; I have ruined himbrought

The agony into which the reflection wrought his mind was so distressing to see, that Mr Pancks took hold of

'Reproach me!' cried Pancks. 'Reproach me, sir, or I'll do myself an injury. Say,You fool, you villain.

Say,Ass, how could you do it; Beast, what did you mean by it! Catch hold of me somewhere.

Say something abusive to me!' All the time, Mr Pancks was tearing at his tough hair in a most pitiless and

'If you had never yielded to this fatal mania, Pancks,' said Clennam, more in commiseration than retaliation,

'At me again, sir!' cried Pancks, grinding his teeth in remorse. 'At me again!' 'If you had never gone into those

accursed calculations, and brought out your results with such abominable clearness,' groaned Clennam, 'it

'At me again, sir!' exclaimed Pancks, loosening his hold of his hair; 'at me again, and again!'

Clennam, however, finding him already beginning to be pacified, had said all he wanted to say, and more. He

wrung his hand, only adding, 'Blind leaders of the blind, Pancks! Blind leaders of the blind! But Doyce,

Doyce, Doyce; my injured partner!' That brought his head down on the desk once more.

Their former attitudes and their former silence were once more first encroached upon by Pancks.

'Not been to bed, sir, since it began to get about. Been high and low, on the chance of finding some hope of

Mr Pancks filled up a pause with a groan that came out of the very depths of his soul.

'Only yesterday, Pancks,' said Arthur; 'only yesterday, Monday, I had the fixed intention of selling, realising,

'I can't say as much for myself, sir,' returned Pancks. 'Though it's wonderful how many people I've heard of,

who were going to realise yesterday, of all days in the three hundred and sixtyfive, if it hadn't been too late!'

His steamlike breathings, usually droll in their effect, were more tragic than so many groans: while from

head to foot, he was in that begrimed, besmeared, neglected state, that he might have been an authentic

portrait of Misfortune which could scarcely be discerned through its want of cleaning.

'Mr Clennam, had you laid outeverything?' He got over the break before the last word, and also brought

Mr Pancks took hold of his tough hair again, and gave it such a wrench that he pulled out several prongs of it.

'My course,' said Clennam, brushing away some tears that had been silently dropping down his face, 'must be

taken at once. What wretched amends I can make must be made. I must clear my unfortunate partner's

reputation. I must retain nothing for myself. I must resign to our creditors the power of management I have so

much abused, and I must work out as much of my faultor crimeas is susceptible of being worked out in

'Out of the question. Nothing can be tided over now, Pancks. The sooner the business can pass out of my

hands, the better for it. There are engagements to be met, this week, which would bring the catastrophe before

many days were over, even if I would postpone it for a single day by going on for that space, secretly

knowing what I know. All last night I thought of what I would do; what remains is to do it.'

'Not entirely of yourself?' said Pancks, whose face was as damp as if his steam were turning into water as fast

Mr Pancks put on his hat that moment, and steamed away to Pentonville. While he was gone Arthur never

Mr Pancks brought his friend and professional adviser, Mr Rugg, back with him. Mr Rugg had had such

ample experience, on the road, of Mr Pancks's being at that present in an irrational state of mind, that he

opened his professional mediation by requesting that gentleman to take himself out of the way. Mr Pancks,

'He is not unlike what my daughter was, sir, when we began the Breach of Promise action of Rugg and

Bawkins, in which she was Plaintiff,' said Mr Rugg. 'He takes too strong and direct an interest in the case. His

feelings are worked upon. There is no getting on, in our profession, with feelings worked upon, sir.'

As he pulled off his gloves and put them in his hat, he saw, in a side glance or two, that a great change had

'I am sorry to perceive, sir,' said Mr Rugg, 'that you have been allowing your own feelings to be worked

upon. Now, pray don't, pray don't. These losses are much to be deplored, sir, but we must look 'em in the

face.' 'If the money I have sacrificed had been all my own, Mr Rugg,' sighed Mr Clennam, 'I should have

'You surprise me. That's singular, sir. I have generally found, in my experience, that it's their own money

people are most particular about. I have seen people get rid of a good deal of other people's money, and bear

With these comforting remarks, Mr Rugg seated himself on an office stool at the desk and proceeded to

'Now, Mr Clennam, by your leave, let us go into the matter. Let us see the state of the case. The question is

simple. The question is the usual plain, straightforward, commonsense question. What can we do for

'This is not the question with me, Mr Rugg,' said Arthur. 'You mistake it in the beginning. It is, what can I do

'I am afraid, sir, do you know,' argued Mr Rugg persuasively, 'that you are still allowing your feeling to be

worked upon. I don't like the term "reparation," sir, except as a lever in the hands of counsel. Will you excuse

my saying that I feel it my duty to offer you the caution, that you really must not allow your feelings to be

'Mr Rugg,' said Clennam, nerving himself to go through with what he had resolved upon, and surprising that

gentleman by appearing, in his despondency, to have a settled determination of purpose; 'you give me the

impression that you will not be much disposed to adopt the course I have made up my mind to take. If your

disapproval of it should render you unwilling to discharge such business as it necessitates, I am sorry for it,

and must seek other aid. But I will represent to you at once, that to argue against it with me is useless.'

'Good, sir,' answered Mr Rugg, shrugging his shoulders.'Good, sir. Since the business is to be done by some

hands, let it be done by mine. Such was my principle in the case of Rugg and Bawkins. Such is my principle

Clennam then proceeded to state to Mr Rugg his fixed resolution. He told Mr Rugg that his partner was a

man of great simplicity and integrity, and that in all he meant to do, he was guided above all things by a

knowledge of his partner's character, and a respect for his feelings. He explained that his partner was then

absent on an enterprise of importance, and that it particularly behoved himself publicly to accept the blame of

what he had rashly done, and publicly to exonerate his partner from all participation in the responsibility of it,

lest the successful conduct of that enterprise should be endangered by the slightest suspicion wrongly

attaching to his partner's honour and credit in another country. He told Mr Rugg that to clear his partner

morally, to the fullest extent, and publicly and unreservedly to declare that he, Arthur Clennam, of that Firm,

had of his own sole act, and even expressly against his partner's caution, embarked its resources in the

swindles that had lately perished, was the only real atonement within his power; was a better atonement to the

particular man than it would be to many men; and was therefore the atonement he had first to make. With this

view, his intention was to print a declaration to the foregoing effect, which he had already drawn up; and,

besides circulating it among all who had dealings with the House, to advertise it in the public papers.

Concurrently with this measure (the description of which cost Mr Rugg innumerable wry faces and great

uneasiness in his limbs), he would address a letter to all the creditors, exonerating his partner in a solemn

manner, informing them of the stoppage of the House until their pleasure could be known and his partner

communicated with, and humbly submitting himself to their direction. If, through their consideration for his

partner's innocence, the affairs could ever be got into such train as that the business could be profitably

resumed, and its present downfall overcome, then his own share in it should revert to his partner, as the only

reparation he could make to him in money value for the distress and loss he had unhappily brought upon him,

and he himself, at as mall a salary as he could live upon, would ask to be allowed to serve the business as a

Though Mr Rugg saw plainly there was no preventing this from being done, still the wryness of his face and

the uneasiness of his limbs so sorely required the propitiation of a Protest, that he made one.

'I offer no objection, sir,' said he, 'I argue no point with you. I will carry out your views, sir; but, under

protest.' Mr Rugg then stated, not without prolixity, the heads of his protest. These were, in effect, because

the whole town, or he might say the whole country, was in the first madness of the late discovery, and the

resentment against the victims would be very strong: those who had not been deluded being certain to wax

exceedingly wroth with them for not having been as wise as they were: and those who had been deluded

being certain to find excuses and reasons for themselves, of which they were equally certain to see that other

sufferers were wholly devoid: not to mention the great probability of every individual sufferer persuading

himself, to his violent indignation, that but for the example of all the other sufferers he never would have put

himself in the way of suffering. Because such a declaration as Clennam's, made at such a time, would

certainly draw down upon him a storm of animosity, rendering it impossible to calculate on forbearance in

the creditors, or on unanimity among them; and exposing him a solitary target to a straggling cross fire,

To all this Clennam merely replied that, granting the whole protest, nothing in it lessened the force, or could

lessen the force, of the voluntary and public exoneration of his partner. He therefore, once and for all,

requested Mr Rugg's immediate aid in getting the business despatched. Upon that, Mr Rugg fell to work; and

Arthur, retaining no property to himself but his clothes and books, and a little loose money, placed his small

The disclosure was made, and the storm raged fearfully. Thousands of people were wildly staring about for

somebody alive to heap reproaches on; and this notable case, courting publicity, set the living somebody so

much wanted, on a scaffold. When people who had nothing to do with the case were so sensible of its

flagrancy, people who lost money by it could scarcely be expected to deal mildly with it. Letters of reproach

and invective showered in from the creditors; and Mr Rugg, who sat upon the high stool every day and read

them all, informed his client within a week that he feared there were writs out.

'I must take the consequences of what I have done,' said Clennam. 'The writs will find me here.'

On the very next morning, as he was turning in Bleeding Heart Yard by Mrs Plornish's corner, Mrs Plornish

stood at the door waiting for him, and mysteriously besought him to step into Happy Cottage. There he found

'I thought I'd wait for you here. I wouldn't go on to the Countinghouse this morning if I was you, sir.'

'Yes, but,' said Mr Rugg, getting between him and the door, 'hear reason, hear reason. They'll take you soon

enough, Mr Clennam, I don't doubt; but, hear reason. It almost always happens, in these cases, that some

insignificant matter pushes itself in front and makes much of itself. Now, I find there's a little one outa

mere Palace Court jurisdictionand I have reason to believe that a caption may be made upon that. I

'I'd be taken on a fullgrown one, sir,' said Mr Rugg. 'It's as well to keep up appearances. As your

professional adviser, I should prefer your being taken on a writ from one of the Superior Courts, if you have

'Mr Rugg,' said Arthur, in his dejection, 'my only wish is, that it should be over. I will go on, and take my

'Another word of reason, sir!' cried Mr Rugg. 'Now, this is reason. The other may be taste; but this is reason.

If you should be taken on a little one, sir, you would go to the Marshalsea. Now, you know what the

Marshalsea is. Very close. Excessively confined. Whereas in the King's Bench' Mr Rugg waved his right

hand freely, as expressing abundance of space. 'I would rather,' said Clennam, 'be taken to the Marshalsea

'Do you say so indeed, sir?' returned Mr Rugg. 'Then this is taste, too, and we may be walking.'

He was a little offended at first, but he soon overlooked it. They walked through the Yard to the other end.

The Bleeding Hearts were more interested in Arthur since his reverses than formerly; now regarding him as

one who was true to the place and had taken up his freedom. Many of them came out to look after him, and to

observe to one another, with great unctuousness, that he was 'pulled down by it.' Mrs Plornish and her father

stood at the top of the steps at their own end, much depressed and shaking their heads.

There was nobody visibly in waiting when Arthur and Mr Rugg arrived at the Countinghouse. But an

elderly member of the Jewish persuasion, preserved in rum, followed them close, and looked in at the glass

'Oh!' said Mr Rugg, looking up. 'How do you do? Step inMr Clennam, I think this is the gentleman I was

This gentleman explained the object of his visit to be 'a tyfling madder ob bithznithz,' and executed his legal

'I would rather go alone, thank you. Be so good as send me my clothes.' Mr Rugg in a light airy way replied

in the affirmative, and shook hands with him. He and his attendant then went down stairs, got into the first

'Where I little thought, Heaven forgive me,' said Clennam to himself, 'that I should ever enter thus!'

Mr Chivery was on the Lock, and Young John was in the Lodge: either newly released from it, or waiting to

take his own spell of duty. Both were more astonished on seeing who the prisoner was, than one might have

thought turnkeys would have been. The elder Mr Chivery shook hands with him in a shamefaced kind of

way, and said, 'I don't call to mind, sir, as I was ever less glad to see you.' The younger Mr Chivery, more

distant, did not shake hands with him at all; he stood looking at him in a state of indecision so observable that

it even came within the observation of Clennam with his heavy eyes and heavy heart. Presently afterwards,

As Clennam knew enough of the place to know that he was required to remain in the Lodge a certain time, he

took a seat in a corner, and feigned to be occupied with the perusal of letters from his pocket.

They did not so engross his attention, but that he saw, with gratitude, how the elder Mr Chivery kept the

Lodge clear of prisoners; how he signed to some, with his keys, not to come in, how he nudged others with

Arthur was sitting with his eyes fixed on the floor, recalling the past, brooding over the present, and not

attending to either, when he felt himself touched upon the shoulder. It was by Young John; and he said, 'You

He got up and followed Young John. When they had gone a step or two within the inner irongate, Young

Young John turned again, and took him in at the old doorway, up the old staircase, into the old room. Arthur

stretched out his hand. Young John looked at it, looked at himsternlyswelled, choked, and said:

'I don't know as I can. No, I find I can't. But I thought you'd like the room, and here it is for you.'

Surprise at this inconsistent behaviour yielded when he was gone (he went away directly) to the feelings

which the empty room awakened in Clennam's wounded breast, and to the crowding associations with the

one good and gentle creature who had sanctified it. Her absence in his altered fortunes made it, and him in it,

so very desolate and so much in need of such a face of love and truth, that he turned against the wall to weep,

The day was sunny, and the Marshalsea, with the hot noon striking upon it, was unwontedly quiet. Arthur

Clennam dropped into a solitary armchair, itself as faded as any debtor in the jail, and yielded himself to his

In the unnatural peace of having gone through the dreaded arrest, and got there,the first change of feeling

which the prison most commonly induced, and from which dangerous restingplace so many men had

slipped down to the depths of degradation and disgrace by so many ways,he could think of some passages

in his life, almost as if he were removed from them into another state of existence. Taking into account where

he was, the interest that had first brought him there when he had been free to keep away, and the gentle

presence that was equally inseparable from the walls and bars about him and from the impalpable

remembrances of his later life which no walls or bars could imprison, it was not remarkable that everything

his memory turned upon should bring him round again to Little Dorrit. Yet it was remarkable to him; not

because of the fact itself, but because of the reminder it brought with it, how much the dear little creature had

None of us clearly know to whom or to what we are indebted in this wise, until some marked stop in the

whirling wheel of life brings the right perception with it. It comes with sickness, it comes with sorrow, it

comes with the loss of the dearly loved, it is one of the most frequent uses of adversity. It came to Clennam in

his adversity, strongly and tenderly. 'When I first gathered myself together,' he thought, 'and set something

like purpose before my jaded eyes, whom had I before me, toiling on, for a good object's sake, without

encouragement, without notice, against ignoble obstacles that would have turned an army of received heroes

and heroines? One weak girl! When I tried to conquer my misplaced love, and to be generous to the man who

was more fortunate than I, though he should never know it or repay me with a gracious word, in whom had I

watched patience, selfdenial, selfsubdual, charitable construction, the noblest generosity of the affections?

In the same poor girl! If I, a man, with a man's advantages and means and energies, had slighted the whisper

in my heart, that if my father had erred, it was my first duty to conceal the fault and to repair it, what youthful

figure with tender feet going almost bare on the damp ground, with spare hands ever working, with its slight

shape but half protected from the sharp weather, would have stood before me to put me to shame? Little

Dorrit's.' So always as he sat alone in the faded chair, thinking. Always, Little Dorrit. Until it seemed to him

as if he met the reward of having wandered away from her, and suffered anything to pass between him and

His door was opened, and the head of the elder Chivery was put in a very little way, without being turned

'You'll excuse me opening the door,' said Mr Chivery; 'but I couldn't make you hear.'

Rousing himself, Clennam observed that the prison had awakened from its noontide doze, that the inmates

were loitering about the shady yard, and that it was late in the afternoon. He had been thinking for hours.

'Your things is come,' said Mr Chivery, 'and my son is going to carry 'em up. I should have sent 'em up but

for his wishing to carry 'em himself. Indeed he would have 'em himself, and so I couldn't send 'em up. Mr

'Pray come in,' said Arthur; for Mr Chivery's head was still put in at the door a very little way, and Mr

Chivery had but one ear upon him, instead of both eyes. This was native delicacy in Mr Chivery true

politeness; though his exterior had very much of a turnkey about it, and not the least of a gentleman.

'Thank you, sir,' said Mr Chivery, without advancing; 'it's no odds me coming in. Mr Clennam, don't you take

no notice of my son (if you'll be so good) in case you find him cut up anyways difficult. My son has a 'art,

and my son's 'art is in the right place. Me and his mother knows where to find it, and we find it sitiwated

With this mysterious speech, Mr Chivery took his ear away and shut the door. He might have been gone ten

He was gone before it came to that; but soon returned, saying exactly as before, 'Here's your black box:'

Young John, however, drew back, turning his right wrist in a socket made of his left thumb and

middlefinger and said as he had said at first, 'I don't know as I can. No; I find I can't!' He then stood

regarding the prisoner sternly, though with a swelling humour in his eyes that looked like pity.

'Why are you angry with me,' said Clennam, 'and yet so ready to do me these kind services? There must be

'No mistake, sir,' returned John, turning the wrist backwards and forwards in the socket, for which it was

rather tight. 'No mistake, sir, in the feelings with which my eyes behold you at the present moment! If I was

at all fairly equal to your weight, Mr Clennamwhich I am not; and if you weren't under a cloudwhich

you are; and if it wasn't against all rules of the Marshalsea which it is; those feelings are such, that they

would stimulate me, more to having it out with you in a Round on the present spot than to anything else I

could name.' Arthur looked at him for a moment in some wonder, and some little anger. 'Well, well!' he said.

'A mistake, a mistake!' Turning away, he sat down with a heavy sigh in the faded chair again.

Young John followed him with his eyes, and, after a short pause, cried out, 'I beg your pardon!'

'Freely granted,' said Clennam, waving his hand without raising his sunken head. 'Say no more. I am not

'This furniture, sir,' said Young John in a voice of mild and soft explanation, 'belongs to me. I am in the habit

of letting it out to parties without furniture, that have the room. It an't much, but it's at your service. Free, I

mean. I could not think of letting you have it on any other terms. You're welcome to it for nothing.'

Arthur raised his head again to thank him, and to say he could not accept the favour. John was still turning his

'I decline to name it, sir,' returned Young John, suddenly turning loud and sharp. 'Nothing's the matter.'

Arthur looked at him again, in vain, for an explanation of his behaviour. After a while, Arthur turned away

his head again. Young John said, presently afterwards, with the utmost mildness:

'The little round table, sir, that's nigh your elbow, wasyou know whoseI needn't mention himhe died

a great gentleman. I bought it of an individual that he gave it to, and that lived here after him. But the

individual wasn't any ways equal to him. Most individuals would find it hard to come up to his level.'

'Perhaps you may not be aware, sir,' said Young John, 'that I intruded upon him when he was over here in

London. On the whole he was of opinion that it WAS an intrusion, though he was so good as to ask me to sit

down and to inquire after father and all other old friends. Leastways humblest acquaintances. He looked, to

me, a good deal changed, and I said so when I came back. I asked him if Miss Amy was well'

'I should have thought you would have known without putting the question to such as me,' returned Young

John, after appearing to take a large invisible pill. 'Since you do put me the question, I am sorry I can't answer

it. But the truth is, he looked upon the inquiry as a liberty, and said, "What was that to me?" It was then I

became quite aware I was intruding: of which I had been fearful before. However, he spoke very handsome

They were both silent for several minutes: except that Young John remarked, at about the middle of the

'If it's not a liberty, how long may it be your intentions, sir, to go without eating and drinking?'

'I have not felt the want of anything yet,' returned Clennam. 'I have no appetite just now.'

'The more reason why you should take some support, sir,' urged Young John. 'If you find yourself going on

sitting here for hours and hours partaking of no refreshment because you have no appetite, why then you

should and must partake of refreshment without an appetite. I'm going to have tea in my own apartment. If it's

not a liberty, please to come and take a cup. Or I can bring a tray here in two minutes.'

Feeling that Young John would impose that trouble on himself if he refused, and also feeling anxious to show

that he bore in mind both the elder Mr Chivery's entreaty, and the younger Mr Chivery's apology, Arthur rose

and expressed his willingness to take a cup of tea in Mr john's apartment. Young John locked his door for

him as they went out, slided the key into his pocket with great dexterity, and led the way to his own

It was at the top of the house nearest to the gateway. It was the room to which Clennam had hurried on the

day when the enriched family had left the prison for ever, and where he had lifted her insensible from the

floor. He foresaw where they were going as soon as their feet touched the staircase. The room was so far

changed that it was papered now, and had been repainted, and was far more comfortably furnished; but he

could recall it just as he had seen it in that single glance, when he raised her from the ground and carried her

'I see you recollect the room, Mr Clennam?' 'I recollect it well, Heaven bless her!'

Oblivious of the tea, Young John continued to bite his fingers and to look at his visitor, as long as his visitor

continued to glance about the room. Finally, he made a start at the teapot, gustily rattled a quantity of tea into

it from a canister, and set off for the common kitchen to fill it with hot water.

The room was so eloquent to Clennam in the changed circumstances of his return to the miserable

Marshalsea; it spoke to him so mournfully of her, and of his loss of her; that it would have gone hard with

him to resist it, even though he had not been alone. Alone, he did not try. He had his hand on the insensible

wall as tenderly as if it had been herself that he touched, and pronounced her name in a low voice. He stood

at the window, looking over the prisonparapet with its grim spiked border, and breathed a benediction

through the summer haze towards the distant land where she was rich and prosperous.

Young John was some time absent, and, when he came back, showed that he had been outside by bringing

with him fresh butter in a cabbage leaf, some thin slices of boiled ham in another cabbage leaf, and a little

basket of watercresses and salad herbs. When these were arranged upon the table to his satisfaction, they sat

Clennam tried to do honour to the meal, but unavailingly. The ham sickened him, the bread seemed to turn to

He took a sprig or so of watercress, and tried again; but the bread turned to a heavier sand than before, and

the ham (though it was good enough of itself) seemed to blow a faint simoom of ham through the whole

'Try a little more something green, sir,' said Young John; and again handed the basket.

It was so like handing green meat into the cage of a dull imprisoned bird, and John had so evidently brought

the little basket as a handful of fresh relief from the stale hot paving stones and bricks of the jail, that

Clennam said, with a smile, 'It was very kind of you to think of putting this between the wires; but I cannot

As if the difficulty were contagious, Young John soon pushed away his own plate, and fell to folding the

cabbageleaf that had contained the ham. When he had folded it into a number of layers, one over another, so

that it was small in the palm of his hand, he began to flatten it between both his hands, and to eye Clennam

attentively. 'I wonder,' he at length said, compressing his green packet with some force, 'that if it's not worth

your while to take care of yourself for your own sake, it's not worth doing for some one else's.'

'Mr Clennam,' said John, warmly, 'I am surprised that a gentleman who is capable of the straightforwardness

that you are capable of, should be capable of the mean action of making me such an answer. Mr Clennam, I

am surprised that a gentleman who is capable of having a heart of his own, should be capable of the

heartlessness of treating mine in that way. I am astonished at it, sir. Really and truly I am astonished!'

Having got upon his feet to emphasise his concluding words, Young John sat down again, and fell to rolling

his green packet on his right leg; never taking his eyes off Clennam, but surveying him with a fixed look of

'I had got over it, sir,' said John. 'I had conquered it, knowing that it must be conquered, and had come to the

resolution to think no more about it. I shouldn't have given my mind to it again, I hope, if to this prison you

had not been brought, and in an hour unfortunate for me, this day!' (In his agitation Young John adopted his

mother's powerful construction of sentences.) 'When you first came upon me, sir, in the Lodge, this day, more

as if a Upas tree had been made a capture of than a private defendant, such mingled streams of feelings broke

loose again within me, that everything was for the first few minutes swept away before them, and I was going

round and round in a vortex. I got out of it. I struggled, and got out of it. If it was the last word I had to speak,

against that vortex with my utmost powers I strove, and out of it I came. I argued that if I had been rude,

apologies was due, and those apologies without a question of demeaning, I did make. And now, when I've

been so wishful to show that one thought is next to being a holy one with me and goes before all

othersnow, after all, you dodge me when I ever so gently hint at it, and throw me back upon myself. For,

do not, sir,' said Young John, 'do not be so base as to deny that dodge you do, and thrown me back upon

All amazement, Arthur gazed at him like one lost, only saying, 'What is it? What do you mean, John?' But,

John, being in that state of mind in which nothing would seem to be more impossible to a certain class of

'I hadn't,' John declared, 'no, I hadn't, and I never had the audaciousness to think, I am sure, that all was

anything but lost. I hadn't, no, why should I say I hadn't if I ever had, any hope that it was possible to be so

blest, not after the words that passed, not even if barriers insurmountable had not been raised! But is that a

reason why I am to have no memory, why I am to have no thoughts, why I am to have no sacred spots, nor

'It's all very well to trample on it, sir,' John went on, scouring a very prairie of wild words, 'if a person can

make up his mind to be guilty of the action. It's all very well to trample on it, but it's there. It may be that it

couldn't be trampled upon if it wasn't there. But that doesn't make it gentlemanly, that doesn't make it

honourable, that doesn't justify throwing a person back upon himself after he has struggled and strived out of

himself like a butterfly. The world may sneer at a turnkey, but he's a man when he isn't a woman, which

Ridiculous as the incoherence of his talk was, there was yet a truthfulness in Young john's simple,

sentimental character, and a sense of being wounded in some very tender respect, expressed in his burning

face and in the agitation of his voice and manner, which Arthur must have been cruel to disregard. He turned

his thoughts back to the startingpoint of this unknown injury; and in the meantime Young John, having

rolled his green packet pretty round, cut it carefully into three pieces, and laid it on a plate as if it were some

'It seems to me just possible,' said Arthur, when he had retraced the conversation to the watercresses and

'I don't understand it. I hope I may not be so unlucky as to make you think I mean to offend you again, for I

'Sir,' said Young John, 'will you have the perfidy to deny that you know and long have known that I felt

towards Miss Dorrit, call it not the presumption of love, but adoration and sacrifice ?'

'Indeed, John, I will not have any perfidy if I know it; why you should suspect me of it I am at a loss to think.

'I will tell you. I was solicitous to promote Miss Dorrit's happiness; and if I could have supposed that Miss

Poor John Chivery turned crimson to the tips of his ears. 'Miss Dorrit never did, sir. I wish to be honourable

and true, so far as in my humble way I can, and I would scorn to pretend for a moment that she ever did, or

that she ever led me to believe she did; no, nor even that it was ever to be expected in any cool reason that she

would or could. She was far above me in all respects at all times. As likewise,' added John, 'similarly was her

genteel family.' His chivalrous feeling towards all that belonged to her made him so very respectable, in

spite of his small stature and his rather weak legs, and his very weak hair, and his poetical temperament, that

a Goliath might have sat in his place demanding less consideration at Arthur's hands.

He was quick with this unexpected retort, and it again made Arthur regard him with a wondering expression

'Leastways,' said John, stretching his hand across the teatray, 'if too strong a remark, withdrawn! But, why

not, why not? When I say to you, Mr Clennam, take care of yourself for some one else's sake, why not be

open, though a turnkey? Why did I get you the room which I knew you'd like best? Why did I carry up your

Not that I found 'em heavy; I don't mention 'em on that accounts; far from it. Why have I cultivated you in the

manner I have done since the morning? On the ground of your own merits? No. They're very great, I've no

doubt at all; but not on the ground of them. Another's merits have had their weight, and have had far more

'Unaffectedly, John,' said Clennam, 'you are so good a fellow and I have so true a respect for your character,

that if I have appeared to be less sensible than I really am of the fact that the kind services you have rendered

me today are attributable to my having been trusted by Miss Dorrit as her friendI confess it to be a fault,

Look at me. Consider the trouble I have been in. Is it likely that I would wilfully add to my other

selfreproaches, that of being ungrateful or treacherous to you. I do not understand you.'

john's incredulous face slowly softened into a face of doubt. He rose, backed into the garretwindow of the

room, beckoned Arthur to come there, and stood looking at him thoughtfully. 'Mr Clennam, do you mean to

'Lord,' said Young John, appealing with a gasp to the spikes on the wall. 'He says, What!'

Clennam looked at the spikes, and looked at John; and looked at the spikes, and looked at John.

'He says What! And what is more,' exclaimed Young John, surveying him in a doleful maze, 'he appears to

'That wall opposite, and that yard down below? They have all been witnesses of it, from day to day, from

night to night, from week to week, from month to month. For how often have I seen Miss Dorrit here when

'You,' said John. And touched him with the back of his hand upon the breast, and backed to his chair, and sat

If he had dealt Clennam a heavy blow, instead of laying that light touch upon him, its effect could not have

been to shake him more. He stood amazed; his eyes looking at John; his lips parted, and seeming now and

then to form the word 'Me!' without uttering it; his hands dropped at his sides; his whole appearance that of a

man who has been awakened from sleep, and stupefied by intelligence beyond his full comprehension.

He did what he could to muster a smile, and returned, 'Your fancy. You are completely mistaken.'

'I mistaken, sir!' said Young John. '_I_ completely mistaken on that subject! No, Mr Clennam, don't tell me

so. On any other, if you like, for I don't set up to be a penetrating character, and am well aware of my own

deficiencies. But, _I_ mistaken on a point that has caused me more smart in my breast than a flight of

savages' arrows could have done! _I_ mistaken on a point that almost sent me into my grave, as I sometimes

wished it would, if the grave could only have been made compatible with the tobacco business and father

and mother's feelings! I mistaken on a point that, even at the present moment, makes me take out my pocket

handkercher like a great girl, as people say: though I am sure I don't know why a great girl should be a term

of reproach, for every rightly constituted male mind loves 'em great and small. Don't tell me so, don't tell me

Still highly respectable at bottom, though absurd enough upon the surface, Young John took out his

pockethandkerchief with a genuine absence both of display and concealment, which is only to be seen in a

man with a great deal of good in him, when he takes out his pockethandkerchief for the purpose of wiping

his eyes. Having dried them, and indulged in the harmless luxury of a sob and a sniff, he put it up again.

The touch was still in its influence so like a blow that Arthur could not get many words together to close the

subject with. He assured John Chivery when he had returned his handkerchief to his pocket, that he did all

honour to his disinterestedness and to the fidelity of his remembrance of Miss Dorrit. As to the impression on

his mind, of which he had just relieved ithere John interposed, and said, 'No impression! Certainty!'as to

that, they might perhaps speak of it at another time, but would say no more now. Feeling lowspirited and

weary, he would go back to his room, with john's leave, and come out no more that night. John assented, and

The feeling of the blow was still so strong upon him that, when the dirty old woman was gone whom he

found sitting on the stairs outside his door, waiting to make his bed, and who gave him to understand while

doing it, that she had received her instructions from Mr Chivery, 'not the old 'un but the young 'un,' he sat

down in the faded armchair, pressing his head between his hands, as if he had been stunned. Little Dorrit

Consider the improbability. He had been accustomed to call her his child, and his dear child, and to invite her

confidence by dwelling upon the difference in their respective ages, and to speak of himself as one who was

turning old. Yet she might not have thought him old. Something reminded him that he had not thought

He had her two letters among other papers in his box, and he took them out and read them. There seemed to

be a sound in them like the sound of her sweet voice. It fell upon his ear with many tones of tenderness, that

were not insusceptible of the new meaning. Now it was that the quiet desolation of her answer,'No, No, No,'

made to him that night in that very roomthat night when he had been shown the dawn of her altered

fortune, and when other words had passed between them which he had been destined to remember in

But it had a preponderating tendency, when considered, to become fainter. There was another and a curious

inquiry of his own heart's that concurrently became stronger. In the reluctance he had felt to believe that she

loved any one; in his desire to set that question at rest; in a halfformed consciousness he had had that there

would be a kind of nobleness in his helping her love for any one, was there no suppressed something on his

own side that he had hushed as it arose? Had he ever whispered to himself that he must not think of such a

thing as her loving him, that he must not take advantage of her gratitude, that he must keep his experience in

remembrance as a warning and reproof; that he must regard such youthful hopes as having passed away, as

his friend's dead daughter had passed away; that he must be steady in saying to himself that the time had gone

He had kissed her when he raised her from the ground on the day when she had been so consistently and

expressively forgotten. Quite as he might have kissed her, if she had been conscious? No difference?

The darkness found him occupied with these thoughts. The darkness also found Mr and Mrs Plornish

knocking at his door. They brought with them a basket, filled with choice selections from that stock in trade

which met with such a quick sale and produced such a slow return. Mrs Plornish was affected to tears. Mr

Plornish amiably growled, in his philosophical but not lucid manner, that there was ups you see, and there

was downs. It was in vain to ask why ups, why downs; there they was, you know. He had heerd it given for a

truth that accordin' as the world went round, which round it did rewolve undoubted, even the best of

gentlemen must take his turn of standing with his ed upside down and all his air a flying the wrong way into

what you might call Space. Wery well then. What Mr Plornish said was, wery well then. That gentleman's ed

would come upards when his turn come, that gentleman's air would be a pleasure to look upon being all

It has been already stated that Mrs Plornish, not being philosophical, wept. It further happened that Mrs

Plornish, not being philosophical, was intelligible. It may have arisen out of her softened state of mind, out of

her sex's wit, out of a woman's quick association of ideas, or out of a woman's no association of ideas, but it

further happened somehow that Mrs Plornish's intelligibility displayed itself upon the very subject of Arthur's

'The way father has been talking about you, Mr Clennam,' said Mrs Plornish, 'you hardly would believe. It's

made him quite poorly. As to his voice, this misfortune has took it away. You know what a sweet singer

father is; but he couldn't get a note out for the children at tea, if you'll credit what I tell you.'

While speaking, Mrs Plornish shook her head, and wiped her eyes, and looked retrospectively about the

'As to Mr Baptist,' pursued Mrs Plornish, 'whatever he'll do when he comes to know of it, I can't conceive nor

yet imagine. He'd have been here before now, you may be sure, but that he's away on confidential business of

your own. The persevering manner in which he follows up that business, and gives himself no rest from itit

really do,' said Mrs Plornish, winding up in the Italian manner, 'as I say to him, Mooshattonisha padrona.'

Though not conceited, Mrs Plornish felt that she had turned this Tuscan sentence with peculiar elegance. Mr

'But what I say is, Mr Clennam,' the good woman went on, 'there's always something to be thankful for, as I

am sure you will yourself admit. Speaking in this room, it's not hard to think what the present something is.

It's a thing to be thankful for, indeed, that Miss Dorrit is not here to know it.'

'It's a thing,' reiterated Mrs Plornish, 'to be thankful for, indeed, that Miss Dorrit is far away. It's to be hoped

she is not likely to hear of it. If she had been here to see it, sir, it's not to be doubted that the sight of you,' Mrs

Plornish repeated those words'not to be doubted, that the sight of youin misfortune and trouble, would

have been almost too much for her affectionate heart. There's nothing I can think of, that would have touched

Of a certainty Mrs Plornish did look at him now, with a sort of quivering defiance in her friendly emotion.

'Yes!' said she. 'And it shows what notice father takes, though at his time of life, that he says to me this

afternoon, which Happy Cottage knows I neither make it up nor any ways enlarge, "Mary, it's much to be

rejoiced in that Miss Dorrit is not on the spot to behold it." Those were father's words. Father's own words

was, "Much to be rejoiced in, Mary, that Miss Dorrit is not on the spot to behold it." I says to father then, I

says to him, "Father, you are right!" That,' Mrs Plornish concluded, with the air of a very precise legal

witness, 'is what passed betwixt father and me. And I tell you nothing but what did pass betwixt me and

Mr Plornish, as being of a more laconic temperament, embraced this opportunity of interposing with the

suggestion that she should now leave Mr Clennam to himself. 'For, you see,' said Mr Plornish, gravely, 'I

know what it is, old gal;' repeating that valuable remark several times, as if it appeared to him to include

Happily, if it ever had been so, it was over, and better over. Granted that she had loved him, and he had

known it and had suffered himself to love her, what a road to have led her away uponthe road that would

have brought her back to this miserable place! He ought to be much comforted by the reflection that she was

quit of it forever; that she was, or would soon be, married (vague rumours of her father's projects in that

direction had reached Bleeding Heart Yard, with the news of her sister's marriage); and that the Marshalsea

gate had shut for ever on all those perplexed possibilities of a time that was gone.

Looking back upon his own poor story, she was its vanishingpoint. Every thing in its perspective led to her

innocent figure. He had travelled thousands of miles towards it; previous unquiet hopes and doubts had

worked themselves out before it; it was the centre of the interest of his life; it was the termination of

everything that was good and pleasant in it; beyond, there was nothing but mere waste and darkened sky.

As ill at ease as on the first night of his lying down to sleep within those dreary walls, he wore the night out

with such thoughts. What time Young John lay wrapt in peaceful slumber, after composing and arranging the

The opinion of the community outside the prison gates bore hard on Clennam as time went on, and he made

no friends among the community within. Too depressed to associate with the herd in the yard, who got

together to forget their cares; too retiring and too unhappy to join in the poor socialities of the tavern; he kept

his own room, and was held in distrust. Some said he was proud; some objected that he was sullen and

reserved; some were contemptuous of him, for that he was a poorspirited dog who pined under his debts.

The whole population were shy of him on these various counts of indictment, but especially the last, which

involved a species of domestic treason; and he soon became so confirmed in his seclusion, that his only time

for walking up and down was when the evening Club were assembled at their songs and toasts and

Imprisonment began to tell upon him. He knew that he idled and moped. After what he had known of the

influences of imprisonment within the four small walls of the very room he occupied, this consciousness

made him afraid of himself. Shrinking from the observation of other men, and shrinking from his own, he

began to change very sensibly. Anybody might see that the shadow of the wall was dark upon him.

One day when he might have been some ten or twelve weeks in jail, and when he had been trying to read and

had not been able to release even the imaginary people of the book from the Marshalsea, a footstep stopped at

his door, and a hand tapped at it. He arose and opened it, and an agreeable voice accosted him with 'How do

It was the sprightly young Barnacle, Ferdinand. He looked very goodnatured and prepossessing, though

'You are surprised to see me, Mr Clennam,' he said, taking the seat which Clennam offered him.

'Thank you. Frankly,' said the engaging young Barnacle, 'I have been excessively sorry to hear that you were

under the necessity of a temporary retirement here, and I hope (of course as between two private gentlemen)

Upon my life,' said the vivacious young Barnacle, 'I am heartily glad to know it. It is quite a relief to me to

hear you say it. I should have so exceedingly regretted our place having had anything to do with your

'That's right,' said Ferdinand. 'I am very happy to hear it. I was rather afraid in my own mind that we might

have helped to floor you, because there is no doubt that it is our misfortune to do that kind of thing now and

then. We don't want to do it; but if men will be gravelled, whywe can't help it.'

'Without giving an unqualified assent to what you say,' returned Arthur, gloomily, 'I am much obliged to you

'No, but really! Our place is,' said the easy young Barnacle, 'the most inoffensive place possible. You'll say

we are a humbug. I won't say we are not; but all that sort of thing is intended to be, and must be. Don't you

'You don't regard it from the right point of view. It is the point of view that is the essential thing. Regard our

place from the point of view that we only ask you to leave us alone, and we are as capital a Department as

'You exactly hit it,' returned Ferdinand. 'It is there with the express intention that everything shall be left

alone. That is what it means. That is what it's for. No doubt there's a certain form to be kept up that it's for

something else, but it's only a form. Why, good Heaven, we are nothing but forms! Think what a lot of our

'Look at it from the right point of view, and there you have us official and effectual. It's like a limited game

of cricket. A field of outsiders are always going in to bowl at the Public Service, and we block the balls.'

Clennam asked what became of the bowlers? The airy young Barnacle replied that they grew tired, got dead

beat, got lamed, got their backs broken, died off, gave it up, went in for other games.

'And this occasions me to congratulate myself again,' he pursued, 'on the circumstance that our place has had

nothing to do with your temporary retirement. It very easily might have had a hand in it; because it is

undeniable that we are sometimes a most unlucky place, in our effects upon people who will not leave us

alone. Mr Clennam, I am quite unreserved with you. As between yourself and myself, I know I may be. I was

so, when I first saw you making the mistake of not leaving us alone; because I perceived that you were

inexperienced and sanguine, and hadI hope you'll not object to my sayingsome simplicity.'

'Some simplicity. Therefore I felt what a pity it was, and I went out of my way to hint to you (which really

was not official, but I never am official when I can help it) something to the effect that if I were you, I

wouldn't bother myself. However, you did bother yourself, and you have since bothered yourself. Now, don't

'Oh yes, you are! You'll leave here. Everybody leaves here. There are no ends of ways of leaving here. Now,

don't come back to us. That entreaty is the second object of my call. Pray, don't come back to us. Upon my

honour,' said Ferdinand in a very friendly and confiding way, 'I shall be greatly vexed if you don't take

'My good fellow,' returned Ferdinand, 'if you'll excuse the freedom of that form of address, nobody wants to

'Nor out of it. Everybody is ready to dislike and ridicule any invention. You have no idea how many people

You have no idea how the Genius of the country (overlook the Parliamentary nature of the phrase, and don't

be bored by it) tends to being left alone. Believe me, Mr Clennam,' said the sprightly young Barnacle in his

pleasantest manner, 'our place is not a wicked Giant to be charged at full tilt; but only a windmill showing

you, as it grinds immense quantities of chaff, which way the country wind blows.'

'If I could believe that,' said Clennam, 'it would be a dismal prospect for all of us.'

'Oh! Don't say so!' returned Ferdinand. 'It's all right. We must have humbug, we all like humbug, we couldn't

A little humbug, and a groove, and everything goes on admirably, if you leave it alone.'

With this hopeful confession of his faith as the head of the rising Barnacles who were born of woman, to be

followed under a variety of watchwords which they utterly repudiated and disbelieved, Ferdinand rose.

Nothing could be more agreeable than his frank and courteous bearing, or adapted with a more gentlemanly

'Is it fair to ask,' he said, as Clennam gave him his hand with a real feeling of thankfulness for his candour

and goodhumour, 'whether it is true that our late lamented Merdle is the cause of this passing

'A consummate rascal, of course,' said Ferdinand, 'but remarkably clever! One cannot help admiring the

fellow. Must have been such a master of humbug. Knew people so wellgot over them so completelydid

'I hope,' said Arthur, 'that he and his dupes may be a warning to people not to have so much done with them

'My dear Mr Clennam,' returned Ferdinand, laughing, 'have you really such a verdant hope? The next man

who has as large a capacity and as genuine a taste for swindling, will succeed as well. Pardon me, but I think

you really have no idea how the human bees will swarm to the beating of any old tin kettle; in that fact lies

the complete manual of governing them. When they can be got to believe that the kettle is made of the

precious metals, in that fact lies the whole power of men like our late lamented. No doubt there are here and

there,' said Ferdinand politely, 'exceptional cases, where people have been taken in for what appeared to them

to be much better reasons; and I need not go far to find such a case; but they don't invalidate the rule. Good

day! I hope that when I have the pleasure of seeing you, next, this passing cloud will have given place to

sunshine. Don't come a step beyond the door. I know the way out perfectly. Good day!'

With those words, the best and brightest of the Barnacles went downstairs, hummed his way through the

Lodge, mounted his horse in the front courtyard, and rode off to keep an appointment with his noble

kinsman, who wanted a little coaching before he could triumphantly answer certain infidel Snobs who were

He must have passed Mr Rugg on his way out, for, a minute or two afterwards, that ruddyheaded gentleman

'How do you do today, sir?' said Mr Rugg. 'Is there any little thing I can do for you today, sir?'

Mr Rugg's enjoyment of embarrassed affairs was like a housekeeper's enjoyment in pickling and preserving,

or a washerwoman's enjoyment of a heavy wash, or a dustman's enjoyment of an overflowing dust bin, or

'I still look round, from time to time, sir,' said Mr Rugg, cheerfully, 'to see whether any lingering Detainers

are accumulating at the gate. They have fallen in pretty thick, sir; as thick as we could have expected.'

He remarked upon the circumstance as if it were matter of congratulation: rubbing his hands briskly, and

'As thick,' repeated Mr Rugg, 'as we could reasonably have expected. Quite a showerbath of 'em. I don't

often intrude upon you now, when I look round, because I know you are not inclined for company, and that if

you wished to see me, you would leave word in the Lodge. But I am here pretty well every day, sir. Would

this be an unseasonable time, sir,' asked Mr Rugg, coaxingly, 'for me to offer an observation?'

'Might it not be advisable, sir,' said Mr Rugg, more coaxingly yet, 'now to make, at last and after all, a trifling

concession to public opinion? We all do it in one way or another. The fact is, we must do it.'

'I cannot set myself right with it, Mr Rugg, and have no business to expect that I ever shall.'

'Don't say that, sir, don't say that. The cost of being moved to the Bench is almost insignificant, and if the

'I thought you had settled, Mr Rugg,' said Arthur, 'that my determination to remain here was a matter of taste.'

'Well, sir, well! But is it good taste, is it good taste? That's the Question.' Mr Rugg was so soothingly

persuasive as to be quite pathetic. 'I was almost going to say, is it good feeling? This is an extensive affair of

yours; and your remaining here where a man can come for a pound or two, is remarked upon as not in

keeping. It is not in keeping. I can't tell you, sir, in how many quarters I heard it mentioned. I heard

comments made upon it last night in a Parlour frequented by what I should call, if I did not look in there now

and then myself, the best legal companyI heard, there, comments on it that I was sorry to hear. They hurt

me on your account. Again, only this morning at breakfast. My daughter (but a woman, you'll say: yet still

with a feeling for these things, and even with some little personal experience, as the plaintiff in Rugg and

Now under these circumstances, and considering that none of us can quite set ourselves above public opinion,

wouldn't a trifling concession to that opinion be Come, sir,' said Rugg, 'I will put it on the lowest ground of

Arthur's thoughts had once more wandered away to Little Dorrit, and the question remained unanswered.

'As to myself, sir,' said Mr Rugg, hoping that his eloquence had reduced him to a state of indecision, 'it is a

principle of mine not to consider myself when a client's inclinations are in the scale. But, knowing your

considerate character and general wish to oblige, I will repeat that I should prefer your being in the Bench.

Your case has made a noise; it is a creditable case to be professionally concerned in; I should feel on a better

standing with my connection, if you went to the Bench. Don't let that influence you, sir. I merely state the

So errant had the prisoner's attention already grown in solitude and dejection, and so accustomed had it

become to commune with only one silent figure within the everfrowning walls, that Clennam had to shake

off a kind of stupor before he could look at Mr Rugg, recall the thread of his talk, and hurriedly say, 'I am

unchanged, and unchangeable, in my decision. Pray, let it be; let it be!' Mr Rugg, without concealing that he

'Oh! Beyond a doubt, sir. I have travelled out of the record, sir, I am aware, in putting the point to you. But

really, when I herd it remarked in several companies, and in very good company, that however worthy of a

foreigner, it is not worthy of the spirit of an Englishman to remain in the Marshalsea when the glorious

liberties of his island home admit of his removal to the Bench, I thought I would depart from the narrow

professional line marked out to me, and mention it. Personally,' said Mr Rugg, 'I have no opinion on the

unwilling, some minutes ago, to see a client of mine visited in this place by a gentleman of a high family

riding a saddlehorse. But it was not my business. If I had, I might have wished to be now empowered to

exterior at present waiting in the Lodge, that my client had never intended to remain here, and was on the eve

of removal to a superior abode. But my course as a professional machine is clear; I have nothing to do with it.

'I did take that unprofessional liberty, sir. Hearing that I was your professional adviser, he declined to

interpose before my very limited function was performed. Happily,' said Mr Rugg, with sarcasm, 'I did not so

'Then it IS your good pleasure, sir?' retorted Rugg. 'Am I honoured by your instructions to mention as much

to the gentleman, as I pass out? I am? Thank you, sir. I take my leave.' His leave he took accordingly, in

The gentleman of military exterior had so imperfectly awakened Clennam's curiosity, in the existing state of

his mind, that a halfforgetfulness of such a visitor's having been referred to, was already creeping over it as

a part of the sombre veil which almost always dimmed it now, when a heavy footstep on the stairs aroused

him. It appeared to ascend them, not very promptly or spontaneously, yet with a display of stride and clatter

meant to be insulting. As it paused for a moment on the landing outside his door, he could not recall his

association with the peculiarity of its sound, though he thought he had one. Only a moment was given him for

consideration. His door was immediately swung open by a thump, and in the doorway stood the missing

Before Arthur could speak to him in his indignant wonder, Cavalletto followed him into the room. Mr Pancks

followed Cavalletto. Neither of the two had been there since its present occupant had had possession of it. Mr

Pancks, breathing hard, sidled near the window, put his hat on the ground, stirred his hair up with both hands,

and folded his arms, like a man who had come to a pause in a hard day's work. Mr Baptist, never taking his

eyes from his dreaded chum of old, softly sat down on the floor with his back against the door and one of his

ankles in each hand: resuming the attitude (except that it was now expressive of unwinking watchfulness) in

which he had sat before the same man in the deeper shade of another prison, one hot morning at Marseilles. 'I

have it on the witnessing of these two madmen,' said Monsieur Blandois, otherwise Lagnier, otherwise

Rigaud, 'that you want me, brotherbird. Here I am!' Glancing round contemptuously at the bedstead, which

was turned up by day, he leaned his back against it as a restingplace, without removing his hat from his

'You villain of illomen!' said Arthur. 'You have purposely cast a dreadful suspicion upon my mother's

Monsieur Rigaud, after frowning at him for a moment, laughed. 'Hear this noble gentleman! Listen, all the

world, to this creature of Virtue! But take care, take care. It is possible, my friend, that your ardour is a little

'Signore!' interposed Cavalletto, also addressing Arthur: 'for to commence, hear me! I received your

'I go, consequentementally,'it would have given Mrs Plornish great concern if she could have been

persuaded that his occasional lengthening of an adverb in this way, was the chief fault of his English,'first

among my countrymen. I ask them what news in Londra, of foreigners arrived. Then I go among the French.

Then I go among the Germans. They all tell me. The great part of us know well the other, and they all tell me.

But!no person can tell me nothing of him, Rigaud. Fifteen times,' said Cavalletto, thrice throwing out his

left hand with all its fingers spread, and doing it so rapidly that the sense of sight could hardly follow the

action, 'I ask of him in every place where go the foreigners; and fifteen times,' repeating the same swift

performance, 'they know nothing. But!' At this significant Italian rest on the word 'But,' his backhanded

shake of his right forefinger came into play; a very little, and very cautiously.

'But!After a long time when I have not been able to find that he is here in Londra, some one tells me of a

soldier with white hair hey?not hair like this that he carrieswhitewho lives retired

secrettementally, in a certain place. But!' with another rest upon the word, 'who sometimes in the

afterdinner, walks, and smokes. It is necessary, as they say in Italy (and as they know, poor people), to have

patience. I have patience. I ask where is this certain place. One. believes it is here, one believes it is there. Eh

well! It is not here, it is not there. I wait patientissamentally. At last I find it. Then I watch; then I hide, until

he walks and smokes. He is a soldier with grey hair But!' a very decided rest indeed, and a very

vigorous play from side to side of the backhanded forefinger'he is also this man that you see.'

It was noticeable, that, in his old habit of submission to one who had been at the trouble of asserting

superiority over him, he even then bestowed upon Rigaud a confused bend of his head, after thus pointing

'Eh well, Signore!' he cried in conclusion, addressing Arthur again. 'I waited for a good opportunity. I writed

some words to Signor Panco,' an air of novelty came over Mr Pancks with this designation, 'to come and help.

I showed him, Rigaud, at his window, to Signor Panco, who was often the spy in the day. I slept at night near

the door of the house. At last we entered, only this today, and now you see him! As he would not come up

in presence of the illustrious Advocate,' such was Mr Baptist's honourable mention of Mr Rugg, 'we waited

At the close of this recital, Arthur turned his eyes upon the impudent and wicked face. As it met his, the nose

came down over the moustache and the moustache went up under the nose. When nose and moustache had

settled into their places again, Monsieur Rigaud loudly snapped his fingers halfadozen times; bending

forward to jerk the snaps at Arthur, as if they were palpable missiles which he jerked into his face.

'I want to know,' returned Arthur, without disguising his abhorrence, 'how you dare direct a suspicion of

'Dare!' cried Rigaud. 'Ho, ho! Hear him! Dare? Is it dare? By Heaven, my small boy, but you are a little

'I want that suspicion to be cleared away,' said Arthur. 'You shall be taken there, and be publicly seen. I want

to know, moreover, what business you had there when I had a burning desire to fling you downstairs. Don't

frown at me, man! I have seen enough of you to know that you are a bully and coward. I need no revival of

my spirits from the effects of this wretched place to tell you so plain a fact, and one that you know so well.'

White to the lips, Rigaud stroked his moustache, muttering, 'By Heaven, my small boy, but you are a little

compromising of my lady, your respectable mother'and seemed for a minute undecided how to act. His

indecision was soon gone. He sat himself down with a threatening swagger, and said:

'Give me a bottle of wine. You can buy wine here. Send one of your madmen to get me a bottle of wine. I

'Fetch him what he wants, Cavalletto,' said Arthur, scornfully, producing the money.

'Contraband beast,' added Rigaud, 'bring Port wine! I'll drink nothing but PortoPorto.'

The contraband beast, however, assuring all present, with his significant finger, that he peremptorily declined

to leave his post at the door, Signor Panco offered his services. He soon returned with the bottle of wine:

which, according to the custom of the place, originating in a scarcity of corkscrews among the Collegians (in

Signor Panco put a tumbler before him; not without a visible conflict of feeling on the question of throwing it

A gentleman from the beginning, and a gentleman to the end. What the Devil! A gentleman must be waited

He half filled the tumbler as he said it, and drank off the contents when he had done saying it.

'Hah!' smacking his lips. 'Not a very old prisoner that! I judge by your looks, brave sir, that imprisonment will

subdue your blood much sooner than it softens this hot wine. You are mellowing losing body and colour

He tossed off another half glass: holding it up both before and afterwards, so as to display his small, white

'To business,' he then continued. 'To conversation. You have shown yourself more free of speech than body,

'I have used the freedom of telling you what you know yourself to be. You know yourself, as we all know

'Add, always a gentleman, and it's no matter. Except in that regard, we are all alike. For example: you

couldn't for your life be a gentleman; I couldn't for my life be otherwise. How great the difference! Let us go

on. Words, sir, never influence the course of the cards, or the course of the dice. Do you know that? You do?

Now that he was confronted with Cavalletto, and knew that his story was knownwhatever thin disguise he

had worn, he dropped; and faced it out, with a bare face, as the infamous wretch he was.

'No, my son,' he resumed, with a snap of his fingers. 'I play my game to the end in spite of words; and Death

of my Body and Death of my Soul! I'll win it. You want to know why I played this little trick that you have

interrupted? Know then that I had, and that I havedo you understand me? havea commodity to sell to

my lady your respectable mother. I described my precious commodity, and fixed my price. Touching the

bargain, your admirable mother was a little too calm, too stolid, too immovable and statuelike. In fine, your

admirable mother vexed me. To make variety in my position, and to amuse myselfwhat! a gentleman must

be amused at somebody's expense!I conceived the happy idea of disappearing. An idea, see you, that your

characteristic mother and my Flintwinch would have been well enough pleased to execute. Ah! Bah, bah,

bah, don't look as from high to low at me! I repeat it. Well enough pleased, excessively enchanted, and with

He threw out the lees of his glass on the ground, so that they nearly spattered Cavalletto. This seemed to draw

'I'll not fill it. What! I am born to be served. Come then, you Cavalletto, and fill!'

The little man looked at Clennam, whose eyes were occupied with Rigaud, and, seeing no prohibition, got up

from the ground, and poured out from the bottle into the glass. The blending, as he did so, of his old

submission with a sense of something humorous; the striving of that with a certain smouldering ferocity,

which might have flashed fire in an instant (as the born gentleman seemed to think, for he had a wary eye

upon him); and the easy yielding of all to a goodnatured, careless, predominant propensity to sit down on

'This happy idea, brave sir,' Rigaud resumed after drinking, 'was a happy idea for several reasons. It amused

me, it worried your dear mama and my Flintwinch, it caused you agonies (my terms for a lesson in politeness

towards a gentleman), and it suggested to all the amiable persons interested that your entirely devoted is a

man to fear. By Heaven, he is a man to fear! Beyond this; it might have restored her wit to my lady your

mothermight, under the pressing little suspicion your wisdom has recognised, have persuaded her at last to

announce, covertly, in the journals, that the difficulties of a certain contract would be removed by the

appearance of a certain important party to it. Perhaps yes, perhaps no. But that, you have interrupted. Now,

Never had Clennam felt more acutely that he was a prisoner in bonds, than when he saw this man before him,

and could not accompany him to his mother's house. All the undiscernible difficulties and dangers he had

'Perhaps, my friend, philosopher, man of virtue, Imbecile, what you will; perhaps,' said Rigaud, pausing in his

drink to look out of his glass with his horrible smile, 'you would have done better to leave me alone?'

'No! At least,' said Clennam, 'you are known to be alive and unharmed. At least you cannot escape from these

two witnesses; and they can produce you before any public authorities, or before hundreds of people!'

'But will not produce me before one,' said Rigaud, snapping his fingers again with an air of triumphant

menace. 'To the Devil with your witnesses! To the Devil with your produced! To the Devil with yourself!

What! Do I know what I know, for that? Have I my commodity on sale, for that? Bah, poor debtor! You have

interrupted my little project. Let it pass. How then? What remains? To you, nothing; to me, all. Produce me!

Cavalletto got up again as before, and laid them before him in his former manner. Rigaud, after some

'Dear Madam,I am in despair to be informed today by our prisoner here (who has had the goodness to

employ spies to seek me, living for politic reasons in retirement), that you have had fears for my safety.

'With the greatest impatience I should fly to your house, but that I foresee it to be possible, under the

circumstances, that you will not yet have quite definitively arranged the little proposition I have had the

honour to submit to you. I name one week from this day, for a last final visit on my part; when you will

'I suppress my ardour to embrace you and achieve this interesting business, in order that you may have leisure

'In the meanwhile, it is not too much to propose (our prisoner having deranged my housekeeping), that my

expenses of lodging and nourishment at an hotel shall be paid by you. 'Receive, dear madam, the assurance of

When he had finished this epistle, Rigaud folded it and tossed it with a flourish at Clennam's feet. 'Hola you!

Apropos of producing, let somebody produce that at its address, and produce the answer here.'

But, Cavalletto's significant finger again expressing that his post was at the door to keep watch over Rigaud,

now he had found him with so much trouble, and that the duty of his post was to sit on the floor backed up by

the door, looking at Rigaud and holding his own ankles,Signor Panco once more volunteered. His services

being accepted, Cavalletto suffered the door to open barely wide enough to admit of his squeezing himself

'Touch me with a finger, touch me with an epithet, question my superiority as I sit here drinking my wine at

my pleasure,' said Rigaud, 'and I follow the letter and cancel my week's grace. You wanted me? You have got

'You know,' returned Clennam, with a bitter sense of his helplessness, 'that when I sought you, I was not a

'To the Devil with you and your prison,' retorted Rigaud, leisurely, as he took from his pocket a case

containing the materials for making cigarettes, and employed his facile hands in folding a few for present use;

Again Cavalletto got up, and gave him what he wanted. There had been something dreadful in the noiseless

skill of his cold, white hands, with the fingers lithely twisting about and twining one over another like

serpents. Clennam could not prevent himself from shuddering inwardly, as if he had been looking on at a nest

'Hola, Pig!' cried Rigaud, with a noisy stimulating cry, as if Cavalletto were an Italian horse or mule. 'What!

The infernal old jail was a respectable one to this. There was dignity in the bars and stones of that place. It

He smoked his cigarette out, with his ugly smile so fixed upon his face that he looked as though he were

smoking with his drooping beak of a nose, rather than with his mouth; like a fancy in a weird picture. When

he had lighted a second cigarette at the still burning end of the first, he said to Clennam:

'One must pass the time in the madman's absence. One must talk. One can't drink strong wine all day long, or

I would have another bottle. She's handsome, sir. Though not exactly to my taste, still, by the Thunder and

Rigaud took his cigarette from his mouth, and eyed him with a momentary revelation of surprise. But he put

'I sell anything that commands a price. How do your lawyers live, your politicians, your intriguers, your men

of the Exchange? How do you live? How do you come here? Have you sold no friend? Lady of mine! I rather

Clennam turned away from him towards the window, and sat looking out at the wall.

'Effectively, sir,' said Rigaud, 'Society sells itself and sells me: and I sell Society. I perceive you have

acquaintance with another lady. Also handsome. A strong spirit. Let us see. How do they call her? Wade.'

'Yes,' he went on, 'that handsome lady and strong spirit addresses me in the street, and I am not insensible. I

respond. That handsome lady and strong spirit does me the favour to remark, in full confidence, "I have my

curiosity, and I have my chagrins. You are not more than ordinarily honourable, perhaps?" I announce

myself, "Madame, a gentleman from the birth, and a gentleman to the death; but NOT more than ordinarily

honourable. I despise such a weak fantasy." Thereupon she is pleased to compliment. "The difference

between you and the rest is," she answers, "that you say so." For she knows Society. I accept her

congratulations with gallantry and politeness. Politeness and little gallantries are inseparable from my

character. She then makes a proposition, which is, in effect, that she has seen us much together; that it

appears to her that I am for the passing time the cat of the house, the friend of the family; that her curiosity

and her chagrins awaken the fancy to be acquainted with their movements, to know the manner of their life,

how the fair Gowana is beloved, how the fair Gowana is cherished, and so on. She is not rich, but offers such

and such little recompenses for the little cares and derangements of such services; and I graciouslyto do

everything graciously is a part of my characterconsent to accept them. O yes! So goes the world. It is the

Though Clennam's back was turned while he spoke, and thenceforth to the end of the interview, he kept those

glittering eyes of his that were too near together, upon him, and evidently saw in the very carriage of the

head, as he passed with his braggart recklessness from clause to clause of what he said, that he was saying

'Whoof! The fair Gowana!' he said, lighting a third cigarette with a sound as if his lightest breath could blow

her away. 'Charming, but imprudent! For it was not well of the fair Gowana to make mysteries of letters from

old lovers, in her bedchamber on the mountain, that her husband might not see them. No, no. That was not

'I earnestly hope,' cried Arthur aloud, 'that Pancks may not be long gone, for this man's presence pollutes the

'Ah! But he'll flourish here, and everywhere,' said Rigaud, with an exulting look and snap of his fingers. 'He

always has; he always will!' Stretching his body out on the only three chairs in the room besides that on

which Clennam sat, he sang, smiting himself on the breast as the gallant personage of the song.

'Who passes by this road so late? Compagnon de la Majolaine! Who passes by this road so late? Always gay!

'Sing the Refrain, pig! You could sing it once, in another jail. Sing it! Or, by every Saint who was stoned to

death, I'll be affronted and compromising; and then some people who are not dead yet, had better have been

'Of all the king's knights 'tis the flower, Compagnon de la Majolaine! Of all the king's knights 'tis the flower,

Partly in his old habit of submission, partly because his not doing it might injure his benefactor, and partly

because he would as soon do it as anything else, Cavalletto took up the Refrain this time. Rigaud laughed,

Possibly another quarter of an hour elapsed before Mr Pancks's step was heard upon the stairs, but the

interval seemed to Clennam insupportably long. His step was attended by another step; and when Cavalletto

opened the door, he admitted Mr Pancks and Mr Flintwinch. The latter was no sooner visible, than Rigaud

'How do you find yourself, sir?' said Mr Flintwinch, as soon as he could disengage himself, which he

struggled to do with very little ceremony. 'Thank you, no; I don't want any more.' This was in reference to

'Well, Arthur. You remember what I said to you about sleeping dogs and missing ones. It's come true, you

He was as imperturbable as ever, to all appearance, and nodded his head in a moralising way as he looked

'And this is the Marshalsea prison for debt!' said Mr Flintwinch. 'Hah! you have brought your pigs to a very

If Arthur had patience, Rigaud had not. He took his little Flintwinch, with fierce playfulness, by the two

'To the Devil with the Market, to the Devil with the Pigs, and to the Devil with the PigDriver! Now! Give

'If you can make it convenient to let go a moment, sir,' returned Mr Flintwinch, 'I'll first hand Mr Arthur a

He did so. It was in his mother's maimed writing, on a slip of paper, and contained only these words:

'I hope it is enough that you have ruined yourself. Rest contented without more ruin. Jeremiah Flintwinch is

Clennam read this twice, in silence, and then tore it to pieces. Rigaud in the meanwhile stepped into a chair,

'Now, Beau Flintwinch,' he said, when he had closely watched the note to its destruction, 'the answer to my

'Mrs Clennam did not write, Mr Blandois, her hands being cramped, and she thinking it as well to send it

verbally by me.' Mr Flintwinch screwed this out of himself, unwillingly and rustily. 'She sends her

compliments, and says she doesn't on the whole wish to term you unreasonable, and that she agrees. But

Monsieur Rigaud, after indulging in a fit of laughter, descended from his throne, saying, 'Good! I go to seek

an hotel!' But, there his eyes encountered Cavalletto, who was still at his post.

'Come, Pig,' he added, 'I have had you for a follower against my will; now, I'll have you against yours. I tell

you, my little reptiles, I am born to be served. I demand the service of this contrabandist as my domestic until

In answer to Cavalletto's look of inquiry, Clennam made him a sign to go; but he added aloud, 'unless you are

afraid of him.' Cavalletto replied with a very emphatic fingernegative.'No, master, I am not afraid of him,

when I no more keep it secrettementally that he was once my comrade.' Rigaud took no notice of either

'Afraid of him,' he said then, looking round upon them all. 'Whoof! My children, my babies, my little dolls,

you are all afraid of him. You give him his bottle of wine here; you give him meat, drink, and lodging there;

you dare not touch him with a finger or an epithet. No. It is his character to triumph! Whoof!

With this adaptation of the Refrain to himself, he stalked out of the room closely followed by Cavalletto,

whom perhaps he had pressed into his service because he tolerably well knew it would not be easy to get rid

of him. Mr Flintwinch, after scraping his chin, and looking about with caustic disparagement of the Pig

Market, nodded to Arthur, and followed. Mr Pancks, still penitent and depressed, followed too; after

receiving with great attention a secret word or two of instructions from Arthur, and whispering back that he

The prisoner, with the feeling that he was more despised, more scorned and repudiated, more helpless,

Haggard anxiety and remorse are bad companions to be barred up with. Brooding all day, and resting very

little indeed at night, t will not arm a man against misery. Next morning, Clennam felt that his health was

sinking, as his spirits had already sunk and that the weight under which he bent was bearing him down.

Night after night he had risen from his bed of wretchedness at twelve or one o'clock, and had sat at his

window watching the sickly lamps in the yard, and looking upward for the first wan trace of day, hours

before it was possible that the sky could show it to him. Now when the night came, he could not even

For a burning restlessness set in, an agonised impatience of the prison, and a conviction that he was going to

break his heart and die there, which caused him indescribable suffering. His dread and hatred of the place

became so intense that he felt it a labour to draw his breath in it. The sensation of being stifled sometimes so

overpowered him, that he would stand at the window holding his throat and gasping. At the same time a

longing for other air, and a yearning to be beyond the blind blank wall, made him feel as if he must go mad

Many other prisoners had had experience of this condition before him, and its violence and continuity had

worn themselves out in their cases, as they did in his. Two nights and a day exhausted it. It came back by fits,

but those grew fainter and returned at lengthening intervals. A desolate calm succeeded; and the middle of the

With Cavalletto and Pancks away, he had no visitors to fear but Mr and Mrs Plornish. His anxiety, in

reference to that worthy pair, was that they should not come near him; for, in the morbid state of his nerves,

he sought to be left alone, and spared the being seen so subdued and weak. He wrote a note to Mrs Plornish

representing himself as occupied with his affairs, and bound by the necessity of devoting himself to them, to

remain for a time even without the pleasant interruption of a sight of her kind face. As to Young John, who

looked in daily at a certain hour, when the turnkeys were relieved, to ask if he could do anything for him; he

always made a pretence of being engaged in writing, and to answer cheerfully in the negative. The subject of

their only long conversation had never been revived between them. Through all these changes of

The sixth day of the appointed week was a moist, hot, misty day. It seemed as though the prison's poverty,

and shabbiness, and dirt, were growing in the sultry atmosphere. With an aching head and a weary heart,

Clennam had watched the miserable night out, listening to the fall of rain on the yard pavement, thinking of

its softer fall upon the country earth. A blurred circle of yellow haze had risen up in the sky in lieu of sun, and

he had watched the patch it put upon his wall, like a bit of the prison's raggedness. He had heard the gates

open; and the badly shod feet that waited outside shuffle in; and the sweeping, and pumping, and moving

about, begin, which commenced the prison morning. So ill and faint that he was obliged to rest many times in

the process of getting himself washed, he had at length crept to his chair by the open window. In it he sat

dozing, while the old woman who arranged his room went through her morning's work.

Light of head with want of sleep and want of food (his appetite, and even his sense of taste, having forsaken

him), he had been two or three times conscious, in the night, of going astray. He had heard fragments of tunes

and songs in the warm wind, which he knew had no existence. Now that he began to doze in exhaustion, he

heard them again; and voices seemed to address him, and he answered, and started.

Dozing and dreaming, without the power of reckoning time, so that a minute might have been an hour and an

hour a minute, some abiding impression of a garden stole over hima garden of flowers, with a damp warm

wind gently stirring their scents. It required such a painful effort to lift his head for the purpose of inquiring

into this, or inquiring into anything, that the impression appeared to have become quite an old and

importunate one when he looked round. Beside the teacup on his table he saw, then, a blooming nosegay: a

Nothing had ever appeared so beautiful in his sight. He took them up and inhaled their fragrance, and he

lifted them to his hot head, and he put them down and opened his parched hands to them, as cold hands are

opened to receive the cheering of a fire. It was not until he had delighted in them for some time, that he

wondered who had sent them; and opened his door to ask the woman who must have put them there, how

they had come into her hands. But she was gone, and seemed to have been long gone; for the tea she had left

for him on the table was cold. He tried to drink some, but could not bear the odour of it: so he crept back to

his chair by the open window, and put the flowers on the little round table of old.

When the first faintness consequent on having moved about had left him, he subsided into his former state.

One of the nighttunes was playing in the wind, when the door of his room seemed to open to a light touch,

and, after a moment's pause, a quiet figure seemed to stand there, with a black mantle on it. It seemed to draw

the mantle off and drop it on the ground, and then it seemed to be his Little Dorrit in her old, worn dress. It

seemed to tremble, and to clasp its hands, and to smile, and to burst into tears.

He roused himself, and cried out. And then he saw, in the loving, pitying, sorrowing, dear face, as in a mirror,

how changed he was; and she came towards him; and with her hands laid on his breast to keep him in his

chair, and with her knees upon the floor at his feet, and with her lips raised up to kiss him, and with her tears

dropping on him as the rain from Heaven had dropped upon the flowers, Little Dorrit, a living presence,

'O, my best friend! Dear Mr Clennam, don't let me see you weep! Unless you weep with pleasure to see me. I

hope you do. Your own poor child come back!' So faithful, tender, and unspoiled by Fortune. In the sound of

her voice, in the light of her eyes, in the touch of her hands, so Angelically comforting and true!

As he embraced her, she said to him, 'They never told me you were ill,' and drawing an arm softly round his

neck, laid his head upon her bosom, put a hand upon his head, and resting her cheek upon that hand, nursed

him as lovingly, and GOD knows as innocently, as she had nursed her father in that room when she had been

When he could speak, he said, 'Is it possible that you have come to me? And in this dress?'

'I hoped you would like me better in this dress than any other. I have always kept it by me, to remind me:

though I wanted no reminding. I am not alone, you see. I have brought an old friend with me.'

Looking round, he saw Maggy in her big cap which had been long abandoned, with a basket on her arm as in

'It was only yesterday evening that I came to London with my brother. I sent round to Mrs Plornish almost as

soon as we arrived, that I might hear of you and let you know I had come. Then I heard that you were here.

Did you happen to think of me in the night? I almost believe you must have thought of me a little. I thought

'I have thought of you' he hesitated what to call her. She perceived it in an instant.

'You have not spoken to me by my right name yet. You know what my right name always is with you.'

'I have thought of you, Little Dorrit, every day, every hour, every minute, since I have been here.'

He saw the bright delight of her face, and the flush that kindled in it, with a feeling of shame. He, a broken,

'I was here before the gates were opened, but I was afraid to come straight to you. I should have done you

more harm than good, at first; for the prison was so familiar and yet so strange, and it brought back so many

remembrances of my poor father, and of you too, that at first it overpowered me. But we went to Mr Chivery

before we came to the gate, and he brought us in, and got john's room for usmy poor old room, you

knowand we waited there a little. I brought the flowers to the door, but you didn't hear me.' She looked

something more womanly than when she had gone away, and the ripening touch of the Italian sun was visible

upon her face. But, otherwise, she was quite unchanged. The same deep, timid earnestness that he had always

seen in her, and never without emotion, he saw still. If it had a new meaning that smote him to the heart, the

She took off her old bonnet, hung it in the old place, and noiselessly began, with Maggy's help, to make his

room as fresh and neat as it could be made, and to sprinkle it with a pleasant smelling water. When that was

done, the basket, which was filled with grapes and other fruit, was unpacked, and all its contents were quietly

put away. When that was done, a moment's whisper despatched Maggy to despatch somebody else to fill the

basket again; which soon came back replenished with new stores, from which a present provision of cooling

drink and jelly, and a prospective supply of roast chicken and wine and water, were the first extracts. These

various arrangements completed, she took out her old needlecase to make him a curtain for his window; and

thus, with a quiet reigning in the room, that seemed to diffuse itself through the else noisy prison, he found

To see the modest head again bent down over its task, and the nimble fingers busy at their old workthough

she was not so absorbed in it, but that her compassionate eyes were often raised to his face, and, when they

drooped again had tears in themto be so consoled and comforted, and to believe that all the devotion of this

great nature was turned to him in his adversity to pour out its inexhaustible wealth of goodness upon him, did

not steady Clennam's trembling voice or hand, or strengthen him in his weakness. Yet it inspired him with an

inward fortitude, that rose with his love. And how dearly he loved her now, what words can tell!

As they sat side by side in the shadow of the wall, the shadow fell like light upon him. She would not let him

speak much, and he lay back in his chair, looking at her. Now and again she would rise and give him the glass

that he might drink, or would smooth the restingplace of his head; then she would gently resume her seat by

The shadow moved with the sun, but she never moved from his side, except to wait upon him. The sun went

down and she was still there. She had done her work now, and her hand, faltering on the arm of his chair

since its last tending of him, was hesitating there yet. He laid his hand upon it, and it clasped him with a

'Dear Mr Clennam, I must say something to you before I go. I have put it off from hour to hour, but I must

'I too, dear Little Dorrit. I have put off what I must say.' She nervously moved her hand towards his lips as if

'I am not going abroad again. My brother is, but I am not. He was always attached to me, and he is so grateful

to me nowso much too grateful, for it is only because I happened to be with him in his illnessthat he

says I shall be free to stay where I like best, and to do what I like best. He only wishes me to be happy, he

There was one bright star shining in the sky. She looked up at it While she spoke, as if it were the fervent

'You will understand, I dare say, without my telling you, that my brother has come home to find my dear

father's will, and to take possession of his property. He says, if there is a will, he is sure i shall be left rich;

'I have no use for money, I have no wish for it. It would be of no value at all to me but for your sake. I could

not be rich, and you here. I must always be much worse than poor, with you distressed. Will you let me lend

you all I have? Will you let me give it you? Will you let me show you that I have never forgotten, that I never

can forget, your protection of me when this was my home? Dear Mr Clennam, make me of all the world the

happiest, by saying Yes. Make me as happy as I can be in leaving you here, by saying nothing tonight, and

letting me go away with the hope that you will think of it kindly; and that for my sakenot for yours, for

mine, for nobody's but mine!you will give me the greatest joy I can experience on earth, the joy of

knowing that I have been serviceable to you, and that I have paid some little of the great debt of my affection

and gratitude. I can't say what I wish to say. I can't visit you here where I have lived so long, I can't think of

you here where I have seen so much, and be as calm and comforting as I ought. My tears will make their way.

I cannot keep them back. But pray, pray, pray, do not turn from your Little Dorrit, now, in your affliction!

Pray, pray, pray, I beg you and implore you with all my grieving heart, my friendmy dear!take all I

The star had shone on her face until now, when her face sank upon his hand and her own.

It had grown darker when he raised her in his encircling arm, and softly answered her.

'No, darling Little Dorrit. No, my child. I must not hear of such a sacrifice. Liberty and hope would be so

dear, bought at such a price, that I could never support their weight, never bear the reproach of possessing

them. But with what ardent thankfulness and love I say this, I may call Heaven to witness!'

'Say, dearest Little Dorrit, and yet I will try to be faithful to you. If, in the bygone days when this was your

home and when this was your dress, I had understood myself (I speak only of myself) better, and had read the

secrets of my own breast more distinctly; if, through my reserve and selfmistrust, I had discerned a light that

I see brightly now when it has passed far away, and my weak footsteps can never overtake it; if I had then

known, and told you that I loved and honoured you, not as the poor child I used to call you, but as a woman

whose true hand would raise me high above myself and make me a far happier and better man; if I had so

used the opportunity there is no recallingas I wish I had, O I wish I had!and if something had kept us

apart then, when I was moderately thriving, and when you were poor; I might have met your noble offer of

your fortune, dearest girl, with other words than these, and still have blushed to touch it. But, as it is, I must

She besought him, more pathetically and earnestly, with her little supplicatory hand, than she could have

'I am disgraced enough, my Little Dorrit. I must not descend so low as that, and carry youso dear, so

generous, so gooddown with me. GOD bless you, GOD reward you! It is past.' He took her in his arms, as

'Always so much older, so much rougher, and so much less worthy, even what I was must be dismissed by

both of us, and you must see me only as I am. I put this parting kiss upon your cheek, my childwho might

have been more near to me, who never could have been more deara ruined man far removed from you, for

ever separated from you, whose course is run while yours is but beginning. I have not the courage to ask to be

The bell began to ring, warning visitors to depart. He took her mantle from the wall, and tenderly wrapped it

'One other word, my Little Dorrit. A hard one to me, but it is a necessary one. The time when you and this

'O! you will never say to me,' she cried, weeping bitterly, and holding up her clasped hands in entreaty, 'that I

'I would say it, if I could; but I have not the courage quite to shut out this dear face, and abandon all hope of

its return. But do not come soon, do not come often! This is now a tainted place, and I well know the taint of

it clings to me. You belong to much brighter and better scenes. You are not to look back here, my Little

Dorrit; you are to look away to very different and much happier paths. Again, GOD bless you in them! GOD

Maggy, who had fallen into very low spirits, here cried, 'Oh get him into a hospital; do get him into a

hospital, Mother! He'll never look like hisself again, if he an't got into a hospital. And then the little woman

as was always a spinning at her wheel, she can go to the cupboard with the Princess, and say, what do you

keep the Chicking there for? and then they can take it out and give it to him, and then all be happy!'

The interruption was seasonable, for the bell had nearly rung itself out. Again tenderly wrapping her mantle

about her, and taking her on his arm (though, but for her visit, he was almost too weak to walk), Arthur led

Little Dorrit downstairs. She was the last visitor to pass out at the Lodge, and the gate jarred heavily and

With the funeral clang that it sounded into Arthur's heart, his sense of weakness returned. It was a toilsome

journey upstairs to his room, and he reentered its dark solitary precincts in unutterable misery.

When it was almost midnight, and the prison had long been quiet, a cautious creak came up the stairs, and a

cautious tap of a key was given at his door. It was Young John. He glided in, in his stockings, and held the

'It's against all rules, but I don't mind. I was determined to come through, and come to you.'

'Nothing's the matter, sir. I was waiting in the courtyard for Miss Dorrit when she came out. I thought you'd

'I saw her to her hotel. The same that Mr Dorrit was at. Miss Dorrit walked all the way, and talked to me so

'To talk about you. She said to me, "John, you was always honourable, and if you'll promise me that you will

take care of him, and never let him want for help and comfort when I am not there, my mind will be at rest so

'Before I take it,' said John, looking at it, without coming from the door, 'guess what message Miss Dorrit

'"Tell him,"' repeated John, in a distinct, though quavering voice, '"that his Little Dorrit sent him her undying

After a hearty squeeze, he disappeared with the same cautious creak upon the stair, crept shoeless over the

pavement of the yard, and, locking the gates behind him, passed out into the front where he had left his shoes.

If the same way had been paved with burning ploughshares, it is not at all improbable that John would have

The last day of the appointed week touched the bars of the Marshalsea gate. Black, all night, since the gate

had clashed upon Little Dorrit, its iron stripes were turned by the earlyglowing sun into stripes of gold. Far

aslant across the city, over its jumbled roofs, and through the open tracery of its church towers, struck the

Throughout the day the old house within the gateway remained untroubled by any visitors. But, when the sun

Rigaud was the first, and walked by himself smoking. Mr Baptist was the second, and jogged close after him,

looking at no other object. Mr Pancks was the third, and carried his hat under his arm for the liberation of his

restive hair; the weather being extremely hot. They all came together at the doorsteps.

'We don't mean to,' said Mr Pancks. Giving him a dark glance in acknowledgment of his answer, Rigaud

knocked loudly. He had charged himself with drink, for the playing out of his game, and was impatient to

begin. He had hardly finished one long resounding knock, when he turned to the knocker again and began

another. That was not yet finished when Jeremiah Flintwinch opened the door, and they all clanked into the

stone hall. Rigaud, thrusting Mr Flintwinch aside, proceeded straight upstairs. His two attendants followed

him, Mr Flintwinch followed them, and they all came trooping into Mrs Clennam's quiet room. It was in its

usual state; except that one of the windows was wide open, and Affery sat on its oldfashioned windowseat,

mending a stocking. The usual articles were on the little table; the usual deadened fire was in the grate; the

bed had its usual pall upon it; and the mistress of all sat on her black bierlike sofa, propped up by her black

Yet there was a nameless air of preparation in the room, as if it were strung up for an occasion. From what

the room derived it every one of its small variety of objects being in the fixed spot it had occupied for

yearsno one could have said without looking attentively at its mistress, and that, too, with a previous

knowledge of her face. Although her unchanging black dress was in every plait precisely as of old, and her

unchanging attitude was rigidly preserved, a very slight additional setting of her features and contraction of

her gloomy forehead was so powerfully marked, that it marked everything about her.

'Who are these?' she said, wonderingly, as the two attendants entered. 'What do these people want here?'

'Who are these, dear madame, is it?' returned Rigaud. 'Faith, they are friends of your son the prisoner. And

what do they want here, is it? Death, madame, I don't know. You will do well to ask them.'

'And you know you told me at the door, you didn't mean to go,' retorted Rigaud. 'In a word, madame, permit

me to present two spies of the prisoner'smadmen, but spies. If you wish them to remain here during our

'Why should I wish them to remain here?' said Mrs Clennam. 'What have I to do with them?'

'Then, dearest madame,' said Rigaud, throwing himself into an arm chair so heavily that the old room

trembled, 'you will do well to dismiss them. It is your affair. They are not my spies, not my rascals.'

'Hark! You Pancks,' said Mrs Clennam, bending her brows upon him angrily, 'you Casby's clerk! Attend to

your employer's business and your own. Go. And take that other man with you.' 'Thank you, ma'am,' returned

Mr Pancks, 'I am glad to say I see no objection to our both retiring. We have done all we undertook to do for

Mr Clennam. His constant anxiety has been (and it grew worse upon him when he became a prisoner), that

this agreeable gentleman should be brought back here to the place from which he slipped away. Here he

isbrought back. And I will say,' added Mr Pancks, 'to his illlooking face, that in my opinion the world

'I am sorry not to leave you in better company, ma'am,' said Pancks; 'and sorry, too, that Mr Clennam can't be

'No, I mean mine, ma'am,' said Pancks,'for it was my misfortune to lead him into a ruinous investment.' (Mr

Pancks still clung to that word, and never said speculation.) 'Though I can prove by figures,' added Mr

Pancks, with an anxious countenance, 'that it ought to have been a good investment. I have gone over it since

it failed, every day of my life, and it comes outregarded as a question of figurestriumphant. The present

is not a time or place,' Mr Pancks pursued, with a longing glance into his hat, where he kept his calculations,

'for entering upon the figures; but the figures are not to be disputed. Mr Clennam ought to have been at this

moment in his carriage and pair, and I ought to have been worth from three to five thousand pound.'

Mr Pancks put his hair erect with a general aspect of confidence that could hardly have been surpassed, if he

had had the amount in his pocket. These incontrovertible figures had been the occupation of every moment of

his leisure since he had lost his money, and were destined to afford him consolation to the end of his days.

'However,' said Mr Pancks, 'enough of that. Altro, old boy, you have seen the figures, and you know how

they come out.' Mr Baptist, who had not the slightest arithmetical power of compensating himself in this way,

'Oh! it's you, is it? I thought I remembered your face, but I wasn't certain till I saw your teeth. Ah! yes, to be

sure. It was this officious refugee,' said Jeremiah to Mrs Clennam, 'who came knocking at the door on the

night when Arthur and Chatterbox were here, and who asked me a whole Catechism of questions about Mr

'It is true,' Mr Baptist cheerfully admitted. 'And behold him, padrone! I have found him consequentementally.'

'I shouldn't have objected,' returned Mr Flintwinch, 'to your having broken your neck consequentementally.'

'And now,' said Mr Pancks, whose eye had often stealthily wandered to the windowseat and the stocking

that was being mended there, 'I've only one other word to say before I go. If Mr Clennam was herebut

unfortunately, though he has so far got the better of this fine gentleman as to return him to this place against

his will, he is ill and in prisonill and in prison, poor fellowif he was here,' said Mr Pancks, taking one

step aside towards the windowseat, and laying his right hand upon the stocking; 'he would say, "Affery, tell

Mr Pancks held up his right forefinger between his nose and the stocking with a ghostly air of warning,

turned, steamed out and towed Mr Baptist after him. The housedoor was heard to close upon them, their

steps were heard passing over the dull pavement of the echoing courtyard, and still nobody had added a

word. Mrs Clennam and Jeremiah had exchanged a look; and had then looked, and looked still, at Affery,

'Come!' said Mr Flintwinch at length, screwing himself a curve or two in the direction of the windowseat,

and rubbing the palms of his hands on his coattail as if he were preparing them to do something: 'Whatever

has to be said among us had better be begun to be said without more loss of time.So, Affery, my woman,

In a moment Affery had thrown the stocking down, started up, caught hold of the windowsill with her right

hand, lodged herself upon the windowseat with her right knee, and was flourishing her left hand, beating

'No, I won't, Jeremiahno, I won'tno, I won't! I won't go! I'll stay here. I'll hear all I don't know, and say

Mr Flintwinch, stiffening with indignation and amazement, moistened the fingers of one hand at his lips,

softly described a circle with them in the palm of the other hand, and continued with a menacing grin to

screw himself in the direction of his wife; gasping some remark as he advanced, of which, in his choking

'Not a bit nearer, Jeremiah!' cried Affery, never ceasing to beat the air. 'Don't come a bit nearer to me, or I'll

rouse the neighbourhood! I'll throw myself out of window. I'll scream Fire and Murder! I'll wake the dead!

The determined voice of Mrs Clennam echoed 'Stop!' Jeremiah had stopped already. 'It is closing in,

Flintwinch. Let her alone. Affery, do you turn against me after these many years?'

'I do, if it's turning against you to hear what I don't know, and say what I know. I have broke out now, and I

can't go back. I am determined to do it. I will do it, I will, I will, I will! If that's turning against you, yes, I

turn against both of you two clever ones. I told Arthur when he first come home to stand up against you. I

told him it was no reason, because I was afeard of my life of you, that he should be. All manner of things

have been agoing on since then, and I won't be run up by Jeremiah, nor yet I won't be dazed and scared, nor

made a party to I don't know what, no more. I won't, I won't, I won't! I'll up for Arthur when he has nothing

left, and is ill, and in prison, and can't up for himself. I will, I will, I will, I will!'

'How do you know, you heap of confusion,' asked Mrs Clennam sternly, 'that in doing what you are doing

'I don't know nothing rightly about anything,' said Affery; 'and if ever you said a true word in your life, it's

when you call me a heap of confusion, for you two clever ones have done your most to make me such. You

married me whether I liked it or not, and you've led me, pretty well ever since, such a life of dreaming and

frightening as never was known, and what do you expect me to be but a heap of confusion? You wanted to

make me such, and I am such; but I won't submit no longer; no, I won't, I won't, I won't, I won't!' She was

After gazing at her in silence, Mrs Clennam turned to Rigaud. 'You see and hear this foolish creature. Do you

'I do not,' she said, gloomily. 'There is little left to choose now. Flintwinch, it is closing in.'

Mr Flintwinch replied by directing a look of red vengeance at his wife, and then, as if to pinion himself from

falling upon her, screwed his crossed arms into the breast of his waistcoat, and with his chin very near one of

his elbows stood in a corner, watching Rigaud in the oddest attitude. Rigaud, for his part, arose from his

chair, and seated himself on the table with his legs dangling. In this easy attitude, he met Mrs Clennam's set

'Of whom,' she interrupted in her steady tones, 'I have heard disparagement, in connection with a French jail

'Perfectly. Exactly. Of a lady too! What absurdity! How incredible! I had the honour of making a great

success then; I hope to have the honour of making a great success now. I kiss your hands. Madame, I am a

gentleman (I was going to observe), who when he says, "I will definitely finish this or that affair at the

present sitting," does definitely finish it. I announce to you that we are arrived at our last sitting on our little

'Further, I am a gentleman to whom mere mercenary tradebargains are unknown, but to whom money is

always acceptable as the means of pursuing his pleasures. You do me the favour to follow, and to

'Further, I am a gentleman of the softest and sweetest disposition, but who, if trifled with, becomes enraged.

Noble natures under such circumstances become enraged. I possess a noble nature. When the lion is

awakenedthat is to say, when I enragethe satisfaction of my animosity is as acceptable to me as money.

'Do not let me derange you; pray be tranquil. I have said we are now arrived at our last sitting. Allow me to

'Death, madame,' he burst out, 'it's my fancy! Besides, it clears the way. The first sitting was limited. I had the

honour of making your acquaintanceof presenting my letter; I am a Knight of Industry, at your service,

madame, but my polished manners had won me so much of success, as a master of languages, among your

compatriots who are as stiff as their own starch is to one another, but are ready to relax to a foreign

gentleman of polished manners and of observing one or two little things,' he glanced around the room and

smiled, 'about this honourable house, to know which was necessary to assure me, and to convince me that I

had the distinguished pleasure of making the acquaintance of the lady I sought. I achieved this. I gave my

word of honour to our dear Flintwinch that I would return. I gracefully departed.'

Her face neither acquiesced nor demurred. The same when he paused, and when he spoke, it as yet showed

him always the one attentive frown, and the dark revelation before mentioned of her being nerved for the

'I say, gracefully departed, because it was graceful to retire without alarming a lady. To be morally graceful,

not less than physically, is a part of the character of Rigaud Blandois. It was also politic, as leaving you with

something overhanging you, to expect me again with a little anxiety on a day not named. But your slave is

politic. By Heaven, madame, politic! Let us return. On the day not named, I have again the honour to render

myself at your house. I intimate that I have something to sell, which, if not bought, will compromise madame

whom I highly esteem. I explain myself generally. I demandI think it was a thousand pounds. Will you

Thus forced to speak, she replied with constraint, 'You demanded as much as a thousand pounds.'

'I demand at present, Two. Such are the evils of delay. But to return once more. We are not accordant; we

differ on that occasion. I am playful; playfulness is a part of my amiable character. Playfully, I become as one

slain and hidden. For, it may alone be worth half the sum to madame, to be freed from the suspicions that my

droll idea awakens. Accident and spies intermix themselves against my playfulness, and spoil the fruit,

perhaps who knows? only you and Flintwinchwhen it is just ripe. Thus, madame, I am here for the last

As he struck his straggling bootheels against the flap of the table, meeting her frown with an insolent gaze,

'Bah! Stop an instant! Let us advance by steps. Here is my Hotelnote to be paid, according to contract. Five

minutes hence we may be at daggers' points. I'll not leave it till then, or you'll cheat me. Pay it! Count me the

He spirted it into Mr Flintwinch's face when the old man advanced to take it, and held forth his hand,

repeating noisily, 'Pay it! Count it out! Good money!' Jeremiah picked the bill up, looked at the total with a

bloodshot eye, took a small canvas bag from his pocket, and told the amount into his hand.

Rigaud chinked the money, weighed it in his hand, threw it up a little way and caught it, chinked it again.

'The sound of it, to the bold Rigaud Blandois, is like the taste of fresh meat to the tiger. Say, then, madame.

He turned upon her suddenly with a menacing gesture of the weighted hand that clenched the money, as if he

'I tell you again, as I told you before, that we are not rich here, as you suppose us to be, and that your demand

is excessive. I have not the present means of complying with such a demand, if I had ever so great an

'If!' cried Rigaud. 'Hear this lady with her If! Will you say that you have not the inclination?'

'Say it then. As to the inclination. Quick! Come to the inclination, and I know what to do.'

She was no quicker, and no slower, in her reply. 'It would seem that you have obtained possession of a

Rigaud, with a loud laugh, drummed his heels against the table, and chinked his money. 'I think so! I believe

'The paper might be worth, to me, a sum of money. I cannot say how much, or how little.'

'No! I will not out of my scanty meansfor I tell you again, we are poor here, and not richI will not offer

any price for a power that I do not know the worst and the fullest extent of. This is the third time of your

hinting and threatening. You must speak explicitly, or you may go where you will, and do what you will. It is

better to be torn to pieces at a spring, than to be a mouse at the caprice of such a cat.'

He looked at her so hard with those eyes too near together that the sinister sight of each, crossing that of the

other, seemed to make the bridge of his hooked nose crooked. After a long survey, he said, with the further

'Flintwinch, say nothing to him. It is for him to say, here and now, all he can; or to go hence, and do all he

She did not shrink under his evil leer, or avoid it. He turned it upon her again, but she remained steady at the

point to which she had fixed herself. He got off the table, placed a chair near the sofa, sat down in it, and

leaned an arm upon the sofa close to her own, which he touched with his hand. Her face was ever frowning,

'It is your pleasure then, madame, that I shall relate a morsel of family history in this little family society,'

said Rigaud, with a warning play of his lithe fingers on her arm. 'I am something of a doctor. Let me touch

She suffered him to take her wrist in his hand. Holding it, he proceeded to say:

'A history of a strange marriage, and a strange mother, and a revenge, and a suppression.Aye, aye, aye?

this pulse is beating curiously! It appears to me that it doubles while I touch it. Are these the usual changes of

There was a struggle in her maimed arm as she twisted it away, but there was none in her face. On his face

'I have lived an adventurous life. I am an adventurous character. I have known many adventurers; interesting

spiritsamiable society! To one of them I owe my knowledge and my proofsI repeat it, estimable

ladyproofsof the ravishing little family history I go to commence. You will be charmed with it. But,

bah! I forget. One should name a history. Shall I name it the history of a house? But, bah, again. There are so

Leaning over the sofa, poised on two legs of his chair and his left elbow; that hand often tapping her arm to

beat his words home; his legs crossed; his right hand sometimes arranging his hair, sometimes smoothing his

moustache, sometimes striking his nose, always threatening her whatever it did; coarse, insolent, rapacious,

'In fine, then, I name it the history of this house. I commence it. There live here, let us suppose, an uncle and

nephew. The uncle, a rigid old gentleman of strong force of character; the nephew, habitually timid,

Mistress Affery, fixedly attentive in the windowseat, biting the rolled up end of her apron, and trembling

from head to foot, here cried out,'Jeremiah, keep off from me! I've heerd, in my dreams, of Arthur's father

and his uncle. He's a talking of them. It was before my time here; but I've heerd in my dreams that Arthur's

father was a poor, irresolute, frightened chap, who had had everything but his orphan life scared out of him

when he was young, and that he had no voice in the choice of his wife even, but his uncle chose her. There

As Mr Flintwinch shook his fist at her, and as Mrs Clennam gazed upon her, Rigaud kissed his hand to her.

'I don't want none of your praises,' returned Affery. 'I don't want to have nothing at all to say to you. But

Jeremiah said they was dreams, and I'll tell 'em as such!' Here she put her apron in her mouth again, as if she

were stopping somebody else's mouth perhaps jeremiah's, which was chattering with threats as if he were

'Our beloved Madame Flintwinch,' said Rigaud, 'developing all of a sudden a fine susceptibility and

spirituality, is right to a marvel. Yes. So runs the history. Monsieur, the uncle, commands the nephew to

marry. Monsieur says to him in effect, "My nephew, I introduce to you a lady of strong force of character,

like myselfa resolved lady, a stern lady, a lady who has a will that can break the weak to powder: a lady

without pity, without love, implacable, revengeful, cold as the stone, but raging as the fire."

Ah! what fortitude! Ah, what superiority of intellectual strength! Truly, a proud and noble character that I

describe in the supposed words of Monsieur, the uncle. Ha, ha, ha! Death of my soul, I love the sweet lady!'

Mrs Clennam's face had changed. There was a remarkable darkness of colour on it, and the brow was more

contracted. 'Madame, madame,' said Rigaud, tapping her on the arm, as if his cruel hand were sounding a

musical instrument, 'I perceive I interest you. I perceive I awaken your sympathy. Let us go on.'

The drooping nose and the ascending moustache had, however, to be hidden for a moment with the white

'The nephew, being, as the lucid Madame Flintwinch has remarked, a poor devil who has had everything but

his orphan life frightened and famished out of himthe nephew abases his head, and makes response: "My

uncle, it is to you to command. Do as you will!" Monsieur, the uncle, does as he will. It is what he always

does. The auspicious nuptials take place; the newly married come home to this charming mansion; the lady is

Jeremiah, with his eyes upon his mistress, made no reply. Rigaud looked from one to the other, struck his

'Soon the lady makes a singular and exciting discovery. Thereupon, full of anger, full of jealousy, full of

vengeance, she formssee you, madame!a scheme of retribution, the weight of which she ingeniously

forces her crushed husband to bear himself, as well as execute upon her enemy. What superior intelligence!'

'Keep off, Jeremiah!' cried the palpitating Affery, taking her apron from her mouth again. 'But it was one of

my dreams, that you told her, when you quarrelled with her one winter evening at dusk there she sits and

you looking at herthat she oughtn't to have let Arthur when he come home, suspect his father only; that she

had always had the strength and the power; and that she ought to have stood up more to Arthur, for his father.

It was in the same dream where you said to her that she was notnot something, but I don't know what, for

she burst out tremendous and stopped you. You know the dream as well as I do. When you come downstairs

into the kitchen with the candle in your hand, and hitched my apron off my head. When you told me I had

been dreaming. When you wouldn't believe the noises.' After this explosion Affery put her apron into her

mouth again; always keeping her hand on the windowsill and her knee on the windowseat, ready to cry out

'Haha!' he cried, lifting his eyebrows, folding his arms, and leaning back in his chair. 'Assuredly, Madame

Flintwinch is an oracle! How shall we interpret the oracle, you and I and the old intriguer? He said that you

were not? And you burst out and stopped him! What was it you were not? What is it you are not? Say then,

Under this ferocious banter, she sat breathing harder, and her mouth was disturbed. Her lips quivered and

'Come then, madame! Speak, then! Our old intriguer said that you were not and you stopped him. He was

going to say that you were notwhat? I know already, but I want a little confidence from you. How, then?

She tried again to repress herself, but broke out vehemently, 'Not Arthur's mother!'

With the set expression of her face all torn away by the explosion of her passion, and with a bursting, from

every rent feature, of the smouldering fire so long pent up, she cried out: 'I will tell it myself! I will not hear it

from your lips, and with the taint of your wickedness upon it. Since it must be seen, I will have it seen by the

'Unless you are a more obstinate and more persisting woman than even I know you to be,' Mr Flintwinch

interposed, 'you had better leave Mr Rigaud, Mr Blandois, Mr Beelzebub, to tell it in his own way. What does

'He knows all he cares about it,' Mr Flintwinch testily urged. 'He does not know me.'

'What do you suppose he cares for you, you conceited woman?' said Mr Flintwinch.

'I tell you, Flintwinch, I will speak. I tell you when it has come to this, I will tell it with my own lips, and will

express myself throughout it. What! Have I suffered nothing in this room, no deprivation, no imprisonment,

that I should condescend at last to contemplate myself in such a glass as that. Can you see him? Can you hear

him? If your wife were a hundred times the ingrate that she is, and if I were a thousand times more hopeless

than I am of inducing her to be silent if this man is silenced, I would tell it myself, before I would bear the

Rigaud pushed his chair a little back; pushed his legs out straight before him; and sat with his arms folded

'You do not know what it is,' she went on addressing him, 'to be brought up strictly and straitly. I was so

brought up. Mine was no light youth of sinful gaiety and pleasure. Mine were days of wholesome repression,

punishment, and fear. The corruption of our hearts, the evil of our ways, the curse that is upon us, the terrors

that surround usthese were the themes of my childhood. They formed my character, and filled me with an

abhorrence of evil doers. When old Mr Gilbert Clennam proposed his orphan nephew to my father for my

husband, my father impressed upon me that his bringingup had been, like mine, one of severe restraint. He

told me, that besides the discipline his spirit had undergone, he had lived in a starved house, where rioting

and gaiety were unknown, and where every day was a day of toil and trial like the last. He told me that he had

been a man in years long before his uncle had acknowledged him as one; and that from his schooldays to

that hour, his uncle's roof has been a sanctuary to him from the contagion of the irreligious and dissolute.

When, within a twelvemonth of our marriage, I found my husband, at that time when my father spoke of him,

to have sinned against the Lord and outraged me by holding a guilty creature in my place, was I to doubt that

it had been appointed to me to make the discovery, and that it was appointed to me to lay the hand of

punishment upon that creature of perdition? Was I to dismiss in a momentnot my own wrongswhat was

I! but all the rejection of sin, and all the war against it, in which I had been bred?' She laid her wrathful hand

'No! "Do not forget." The initials of those words are within here now, and were within here then. I was

appointed to find the old letter that referred to them, and that told me what they meant, and whose work they

were, and why they were worked, lying with this watch in his secret drawer. But for that appointment there

would have been no discovery. "Do not forget." It spoke to me like a voice from an angry cloud. Do not

forget the deadly sin, do not forget the appointed discovery, do not forget the appointed suffering. I did not

forget. Was it my own wrong I remembered? Mine! I was but a servant and a minister. What power could I

have over them, but that they were bound in the bonds of their sin, and delivered to me!'

More than forty years had passed over the grey head of this determined woman, since the time she recalled.

More than forty years of strife and struggle with the whisper that, by whatever name she called her vindictive

pride and rage, nothing through all eternity could change their nature. Yet, gone those more than forty years,

and come this Nemesis now looking her in the face, she still abided by her old impietystill reversed the

order of Creation, and breathed her own breath into a clay image of her Creator. Verily, verily, travellers have

seen many monstrous idols in many countries; but no human eyes have ever seen more daring, gross, and

shocking images of the Divine nature than we creatures of the dust make in our own likenesses, of our own

'When I forced him to give her up to me, by her name and place of abode,' she went on in her torrent of

indignation and defence; 'when I accused her, and she fell hiding her face at my feet, was it my injury that I

asserted, were they my reproaches that I poured upon her? Those who were appointed of old to go to wicked

kings and accuse themwere they not ministers and servants? And had not I, unworthy and farremoved

from them, sin to denounce? When she pleaded to me her youth, and his wretched and hard life (that was her

phrase for the virtuous training he had belied), and the desecrated ceremony of marriage there had secretly

been between them, and the terrors of want and shame that had overwhelmed them both when I was first

appointed to be the instrument of their punishment, and the love (for she said the word to me, down at my

feet) in which she had abandoned him and left him to me, was it my enemy that became my footstool, were

they the words of my wrath that made her shrink and quiver! Not unto me the strength be ascribed; not unto

Many years had come and gone since she had had the free use even of her fingers; but it was noticeable that

she had already more than once struck her clenched hand vigorously upon the table, and that when she said

these words she raised her whole arm in the air, as though it had been a common action with her.

'And what was the repentance that was extorted from the hardness of her heart and the blackness of her

depravity? I, vindictive and implacable? It may be so, to such as you who know no righteousness, and no

appointment except Satan's. Laugh; but I will be known as I know myself, and as Flintwinch knows me,

'Add, to yourself, madame,' said Rigaud. 'I have my little suspicions that madame is rather solicitous to be

'It is false. It is not so. I have no need to be,' she said, with great energy and anger.

"You have a child; I have none. You love that child. Give him to me. He shall believe himself to be my son,

and he shall be believed by every one to be my son. To save you from exposure, his father shall swear never

to see or communicate with you more; equally to save him from being stripped by his uncle, and to save your

child from being a beggar, you shall swear never to see or communicate with either of them more. That done,

and your present means, derived from my husband, renounced, I charge myself with your support. You may,

with your place of retreat unknown, then leave, if you please, uncontradicted by me, the lie that when you

passed out of all knowledge but mine, you merited a good name." That was all. She had to sacrifice her sinful

and shameful affections; no more. She was then free to bear her load of guilt in secret, and to break her heart

in secret; and through such present misery (light enough for her, I think!) to purchase her redemption from

endless misery, if she could. If, in this, I punished her here, did I not open to her a way hereafter? If she knew

herself to be surrounded by insatiable vengeance and unquenchable fires, were they mine? If I threatened her,

then and afterwards, with the terrors that encompassed her, did I hold them in my right hand?'

She turned the watch upon the table, and opened it, and, with an unsoftening face, looked at the worked

'They did not forget. It is appointed against such offences that the offenders shall not be able to forget. If the

presence of Arthur was a daily reproach to his father, and if the absence of Arthur was a daily agony to his

mother, that was the just dispensation of Jehovah. As well might it be charged upon me, that the stings of an

awakened conscience drove her mad, and that it was the will of the Disposer of all things that she should live

so, many years. I devoted myself to reclaim the otherwise predestined and lost boy; to give him the reputation

of an honest origin; to bring him up in fear and trembling, and in a life of practical contrition for the sins that

were heavy on his head before his entrance into this condemned world. Was that a cruelty? Was I, too, not

visited with consequences of the original offence in which I had no complicity? Arthur's father and I lived no

further apart, with half the globe between us, than when we were together in this house. He died, and sent this

watch back to me, with its Do not forget. I do NOT forget, though I do not read it as he did. I read in it, that I

was appointed to do these things. I have so read these three letters since I have had them lying on this table,

and I did so read them, with equal distinctness, when they were thousands of miles away.'

As she took the watchcase in her hand, with that new freedom in the use of her hand of which she showed

no consciousness whatever, bending her eyes upon it as if she were defying it to move her, Rigaud cried with

a loud and contemptuous snapping of his fingers. 'Come, madame! Time runs out. Come, lady of piety, it

must be! You can tell nothing I don't know. Come to the money stolen, or I will! Death of my soul, I have

'Wretch that you are,' she answered, and now her hands clasped her head: 'through what fatal error of

Flintwinch's, through what incompleteness on his part, who was the only other person helping in these things

and trusted with them, through whose and what bringing together of the ashes of a burnt paper, you have

become possessed of that codicil, I know no more than how you acquired the rest of your power here'

'And yet,' interrupted Rigaud, 'it is my odd fortune to have by me, in a convenient place that I know of, that

same short little addition to the will of Monsieur Gilbert Clennam, written by a lady and witnessed by the

same lady and our old intriguer! Ah, bah, old intriguer, crooked little puppet! Madame, let us go on. Time

'I!' she answered, with increased determination, if it were possible. 'I, because I will not endure to be shown

myself, and have myself shown to any one, with your horrible distortion upon me. You, with your practices

of infamous foreign prisons and galleys would make it the money that impelled me. It was not the money.'

'Bah, bah, bah! I repudiate, for the moment, my politeness, and say, Lies, lies, lies. You know you suppressed

'Not for the money's sake, wretch!' She made a struggle as if she were starting up; even as if, in her

vehemence, she had almost risen on her disabled feet. 'If Gilbert Clennam, reduced to imbecility, at the point

of death, and labouring under the delusion of some imaginary relenting towards a girl of whom he had heard

that his nephew had once had a fancy for her which he had crushed out of him, and that she afterwards

drooped away into melancholy and withdrawal from all who knew herif, in that state of weakness, he

dictated to me, whose life she had darkened with her sin, and who had been appointed to know her

wickedness from her own hand and her own lips, a bequest meant as a recompense to her for supposed

unmerited suffering; was there no difference between my spurning that injustice, and coveting mere

moneya thing which you, and your comrades in the prisons, may steal from anyone?'

'If this house was blazing from the roof to the ground,' she returned, 'I would stay in it to justify myself

Rigaud snapped his fingers tauntingly in her face. 'One thousand guineas to the little beauty you slowly

hunted to death. One thousand guineas to the youngest daughter her patron might have at fifty, or (if he had

none) brother's youngest daughter, on her coming of age, "as the remembrance his disinterestedness may like

best, of his protection of a friendless young orphan girl." Two thousand guineas. What! You will never come

'That Frederick Dorrit was the beginning of it all. If he had not been a player of music, and had not kept, in

those days of his youth and prosperity, an idle house where singers, and players, and suchlike children of

Evil turned their backs on the Light and their faces to the Darkness, she might have remained in her lowly

station, and might not have been raised out of it to be cast down. But, no. Satan entered into that Frederick

Dorrit, and counselled him that he was a man of innocent and laudable tastes who did kind actions, and that

here was a poor girl with a voice for singing music with. Then he is to have her taught. Then Arthur's father,

who has all along been secretly pining in the ways of virtuous ruggedness for those accursed snares which are

called the Arts, becomes acquainted with her. And so, a graceless orphan, training to be a singing girl, carries

it, by that Frederick Dorrit's agency, against me, and I am humbled and deceived!Not I, that is to say,' she

Jeremiah Flintwinch, who had been gradually screwing himself towards her, and who was now very near her

elbow without her knowing it, made a specially wry face of objection when she said these words, and

moreover twitched his gaiters, as if such pretensions were equivalent to little barbs in his legs.

'Lastly,' she continued, 'for I am at the end of these things, and I will say no more of them, and you shall say

no more of them, and all that remains will be to determine whether the knowledge of them can be kept among

us who are here present; lastly, when I suppressed that paper, with the knowledge of Arthur's father'

'Who said with his consent?' She started to find Jeremiah so near her, and drew back her head, looking at him

with some rising distrust. 'You were often enough between us when he would have had me produce it and I

would not, to have contradicted me if I had said, with his consent. I say, when I suppressed that paper, I made

no effort to destroy it, but kept it by me, here in this house, many years. The rest of the Gilbert property being

left to Arthur's father, I could at any time, without unsettling more than the two sums, have made a pretence

of finding it. But, besides that I must have supported such pretence by a direct falsehood (a great

responsibility), I have seen no new reason, in all the time I have been tried here, to bring it to light. It was a

rewarding of sin; the wrong result of a delusion. I did what I was appointed to do, and I have undergone,

within these four walls, what I was appointed to undergo. When the paper was at last destroyedas I

thoughtin my presence, she had long been dead, and her patron, Frederick Dorrit, had long been

deservedly ruined and imbecile. He had no daughter. I had found the niece before then; and what I did for

her, was better for her far than the money of which she would have had no good.' She added, after a moment,

as though she addressed the watch: 'She herself was innocent, and I might not have forgotten to relinquish it

'Shall I recall something to you, worthy madame?' said Rigaud. 'The little paper was in this house on the night

when our friend the prisonerjailcomrade of my soulcame home from foreign countries. Shall I recall

yet something more to you? The little singingbird that never was fledged, was long kept in a cage by a

guardian of your appointing, well enough known to our old intriguer here. Shall we coax our old intriguer to

'I'll tell you!' cried Affery, unstopping her mouth. 'I dreamed it, first of all my dreams. Jeremiah, if you come

anigh me now, I'll scream to be heard at St Paul's! The person as this man has spoken of, was jeremiah's

own twin brother; and he was here in the dead of the night, on the night when Arthur come home, and

Jeremiah with his own hands give him this paper, along with I don't know what more, and he took it away in

Mr Flintwinch had made a run at her, but Rigaud had caught him in his arms midway. After a moment's

'What!' cried Rigaud, rallying him as he poked and jerked him back with his elbows, 'assault a lady with such

a genius for dreaming! Ha, ha, ha! Why, she'll be a fortune to you as an exhibition. All that she dreams comes

true. Ha, ha, ha! You're so like him, Little Flintwinch. So like him, as I knew him (when I first spoke English

for him to the host) in the Cabaret of the Three Billiard Tables, in the little street of the high roofs, by the

wharf at Antwerp! Ah, but he was a brave boy to drink. Ah, but he was a brave boy to smoke! Ah, but he

lived in a sweet bachelor apartmentfurnished, on the fifth floor, above the wood and charcoal merchant's,

and the dressmaker's, and the chairmaker's, and the maker of tubswhere I knew him too, and wherewith

his cognac and tobacco, he had twelve sleeps a day and one fit, until he had a fit too much, and ascended to

the skies. Ha, ha, ha! What does it matter how I took possession of the papers in his iron box? Perhaps he

confided it to my hands for you, perhaps it was locked and my curiosity was piqued, perhaps I suppressed it.

Ha, ha, ha! What does it matter, so that I have it safe? We are not particular here; hey, Flintwinch? We are

Retiring before him with vicious counterjerks of his own elbows, Mr Flintwinch had got back into his

corner, where he now stood with his hands in his pockets, taking breath, and returning Mrs Clennam's stare.

'Ha, ha, ha! But what's this?' cried Rigaud. 'It appears as if you don't know, one the other. Permit me,

Mr Flintwinch, unpocketing one of his hands to scrape his jaw, advanced a step or so in that attitude, still

'Now, I know what you mean by opening your eyes so wide at me, but you needn't take the trouble, because I

don't care for it. I've been telling you for how many years that you're one of the most opinionated and

obstinate of women. That's what YOU are. You call yourself humble and sinful, but you are the most

Bumptious of your sex. That's what YOU are. I have told you, over and over again when we have had a tiff,

that you wanted to make everything go down before you, but I wouldn't go down before youthat you

wanted to swallow up everybody alive, but I wouldn't be swallowed up alive. Why didn't you destroy the

I advised you to; but no, it's not your way to take advice. You must keep it forsooth. Perhaps you may carry it

out at some other time, forsooth. As if I didn't know better than that! I think I see your pride carrying it out,

with a chance of being suspected of having kept it by you. But that's the way you cheat yourself. just as you

cheat yourself into making out that you didn't do all this business because you were a rigorous woman, all

slight, and spite, and power, and unforgiveness, but because you were a servant and a minister, and were

appointed to do it. Who are you, that you should be appointed to do it? That may be your religion, but it's my

gammon. And to tell you all the truth while I am about it,' said Mr Flintwinch, crossing his arms, and

becoming the express image of irascible doggedness, 'I have been raspedrasped these forty yearsby your

taking such high ground even with me, who knows better; the effect of it being coolly to put me on low

ground. I admire you very much; you are a woman of strong head and great talent; but the strongest head, and

the greatest talent, can't rasp a man for forty years without making him sore. So I don't care for your present

eyes. Now, I am coming to the paper, and mark what I say. You put it away somewhere, and you kept your

own counsel where. You're an active woman at that time, and if you want to get that paper, you can get it.

But, mark. There comes a time when you are struck into what you are now, and then if you want to get that

paper, you can't get it. So it lies, long years, in its hidingplace. At last, when we are expecting Arthur home

every day, and when any day may bring him home, and it's impossible to say what rummaging he may make

about the house, I recommend you five thousand times, if you can't get at it, to let me get at it, that it may be

put in the fire. But nono one but you knows where it is, and that's power; and, call yourself whatever

humble names you will, I call you a female Lucifer in appetite for power! On a Sunday night, Arthur comes

home. He has not been in this room ten minutes, when he speaks of his father's watch. You know very well

that the Do Not Forget, at the time when his father sent that watch to you, could only mean, the rest of the

story being then all dead and over, Do Not Forget the suppression. Make restitution! Arthur's ways have

frightened you a bit, and the paper shall be burnt after all. So, before that jumping jade and Jezebel,' Mr

Flintwinch grinned at his wife, 'has got you into bed, you at last tell me where you have put the paper, among

the old ledgers in the cellars, where Arthur himself went prowling the very next morning. But it's not to be

burnt on a Sunday night. No; you are strict, you are; we must wait over twelve o'clock, and get into Monday.

Now, all this is a swallowing of me up alive that rasps me; so, feeling a little out of temper, and not being as

strict as yourself, I take a look at the document before twelve o'clock to refresh my memory as to its

appearancefold up one of the many yellow old papers in the cellars like itand afterwards, when we have

got into Monday morning, and I have, by the light of your lamp, to walk from you, lying on that bed, to this

grate, make a little exchange like the conjuror, and burn accordingly. My brother Ephraim, the lunatickeeper

(I wish he had had himself to keep in a straitwaistcoat), had had many jobs since the close of the long job he

got from you, but had not done well. His wife died (not that that was much; mine might have died instead,

and welcome), he speculated unsuccessfully in lunatics, he got into difficulty about overroasting a patient to

bring him to reason, and he got into debt. He was going out of the way, on what he had been able to scrape

up, and a trifle from me. He was here that early Monday morning, waiting for the tide; in short, he was going

to Antwerp, where (I am afraid you'll be shocked at my saying, And be damned to him!) he made the

acquaintance of this gentleman. He had come a long way, and, I thought then, was only sleepy; but, I suppose

now, was drunk. When Arthur's mother had been under the care of him and his wife, she had been always

writing, incessantly writing,mostly letters of confession to you, and Prayers for forgiveness. My brother

had handed, from time to time, lots of these sheets to me. I thought I might as well keep them to myself as

have them swallowed up alive too; so I kept them in a box, looking over them when I felt in the humour.

Convinced that it was advisable to get the paper out of the place, with Arthur coming about it, I put it into this

same box, and I locked the whole up with two locks, and I trusted it to my brother to take away and keep, till

I should write about it. I did write about it, and never got an answer. I didn't know what to make of it, till this

gentleman favoured us with his first visit. Of course, I began to suspect how it was, then; and I don't want his

word for it now to understand how he gets his knowledge from my papers, and your paper, and my brother's

cognac and tobacco talk (I wish he'd had to gag himself). Now, I have only one thing more to say, you

hammer headed woman, and that is, that I haven't altogether made up my mind whether I might, or might

not, have ever given you any trouble about the codicil. I think not; and that I should have been quite satisfied

with knowing I had got the better of you, and that I held the power over you. In the present state of

circumstances, I have no more explanation to give you till this time tomorrow night. So you may as well,'

said Mr Flintwinch, terminating his oration with a screw, 'keep your eyes open at somebody else, for it's no

She slowly withdrew them when he had ceased, and dropped her forehead on her hand. Her other hand

pressed hard upon the table, and again the curious stir was observable in her, as if she were going to rise.

This knowledge can never be of the same profit to you, sold to any other person, as sold to me. But I have not

the present means of raising the sum you have demanded. I have not prospered. What will you take now, and

'My angel,' said Rigaud, 'I have said what I will take, and time presses. Before coming here, I placed copies

of the most important of these papers in another hand. Put off the time till the Marshalsea gate shall be shut

for the night, and it will be too late to treat. The prisoner will have read them.'

She put her two hands to her head again, uttered a loud exclamation, and started to her feet. She staggered for

Before her ghostly figure, so long unused to its erect attitude, and so stiffened in it, Rigaud fell back and

dropped his voice. It was, to all the three, almost as if a dead woman had risen.

'Miss Dorrit,' answered Rigaud, 'the little niece of Monsieur Frederick, whom I have known across the water,

is attached to the prisoner. Miss Dorrit, little niece of Monsieur Frederick, watches at this moment over the

prisoner, who is ill. For her I with my own hands left a packet at the prison, on my way here, with a letter of

instructions, "FOR HIS SAKE"she will do anything for his saketo keep it without breaking the seal, in

case of its being reclaimed before the hour of shutting up tonightif it should not be reclaimed before the

ringing of the prison bell, to give it to him; and it encloses a second copy for herself, which he must give to

her. What! I don't trust myself among you, now we have got so far, without giving my secret a second life.

And as to its not bringing me, elsewhere, the price it will bring here, say then, madame, have you limited and

settled the price the little niece will givefor his saketo hush it up? Once more I say, time presses. The

packet not reclaimed before the ringing of the bell tonight, you cannot buy. I sell, then, to the little girl!'

Once more the stir and struggle in her, and she ran to a closet, tore the door open, took down a hood or shawl,

and wrapped it over her head. Affery, who had watched her in terror, darted to her in the middle of the room,

'Don't, don't, don't! What are you doing? Where are you going? You're a fearful woman, but I don't bear you

no illwill. I can do poor Arthur no good now, that I see; and you needn't be afraid of me. I'll keep your

secret. Don't go out, you'll fall dead in the street. Only promise me, that, if it's the poor thing that's kept here

secretly, you'll let me take charge of her and be her nurse. Only promise me that, and never be afraid of me.'

Mrs Clennam stood still for an instant, at the height of her rapid haste, saying in stern amazement:

'Kept here? She has been dead a score of years or more. Ask Flintwinchask HIM. They can both tell you

'So much the worse,' said Affery, with a shiver, 'for she haunts the house, then. Who else rustles about it,

making signals by dropping dust so softly? Who else comes and goes, and marks the walls with long crooked

touches when we are all abed? Who else holds the door sometimes? But don't go outdon't go out!

Her mistress only disengaged her dress from the beseeching hands, said to Rigaud, 'Wait here till I come

back!' and ran out of the room. They saw her, from the window, run wildly through the court yard and out at

For a few moments they stood motionless. Affery was the first to move, and she, wringing her hands, pursued

her mistress. Next, Jeremiah Flintwinch, slowly backing to the door, with one hand in a pocket, and the other

rubbing his chin, twisted himself out in his reticent way, speechlessly. Rigaud, left alone, composed himself

upon the windowseat of the open window, in the old Marseillesjail attitude. He laid his cigarettes and

'Whoof! Almost as dull as the infernal old jail. Warmer, but almost as dismal. Wait till she comes back? Yes,

certainly; but where is she gone, and how long will she be gone? No matter! Rigaud Lagnier Blandois, my

amiable subject, you will get your money. You will enrich yourself. You have lived a gentleman; you will die

a gentleman. You triumph, my little boy; but it is your character to triumph. Whoof!' In the hour of his

triumph, his moustache went up and his nose came down, as he ogled a great beam over his head with

The sun had set, and the streets were dim in the dusty twilight, when the figure so long unused to them

hurried on its way. In the immediate neighbourhood of the old house it attracted little attention, for there were

only a few straggling people to notice it; but, ascending from the river by the crooked ways that led to

London Bridge, and passing into the great main road, it became surrounded by astonishment.

Resolute and wild of look, rapid of foot and yet weak and uncertain, conspicuously dressed in its black

garments and with its hurried headcovering, gaunt and of an unearthly paleness, it pressed forward, taking

no more heed of the throng than a sleep walker. More remarkable by being so removed from the crowd it

was among than if it had been lifted on a pedestal to be seen, the figure attracted all eyes. Saunterers pricked

up their attention to observe it; busy people, crossing it, slackened their pace and turned their heads;

companions pausing and standing aside, whispered one another to look at this spectral woman who was

coming by; and the sweep of the figure as it passed seemed to create a vortex, drawing the most idle and most

Made giddy by the turbulent irruption of this multitude of staring faces into her cell of years, by the confusing

sensation of being in the air, and the yet more confusing sensation of being afoot, by the unexpected changes

in halfremembered objects, and the want of likeness between the controllable pictures her imagination had

often drawn of the life from which she was secluded and the overwhelming rush of the reality, she held her

way as if she were environed by distracting thoughts, rather than by external humanity and observation. But,

having crossed the bridge and gone some distance straight onward, she remembered that she must ask for a

direction; and it was only then, when she stopped and turned to look about her for a promising place of

None of those who were nearest answered; but from the outer ring there arose a shrill cry of ''Cause you're

The shrill outer circle again retorted, 'Then that 'ud show you was mad if nothing else did, 'cause it's right

A short, mild, quietlooking young man made his way through to her, as a whooping ensued on this reply,

and said: 'Was it the Marshalsea you wanted? I'm going on duty there. Come across with me.'

She laid her hand upon his arm, and he took her over the way; the crowd, rather injured by the near prospect

of losing her, pressing before and behind and on either side, and recommending an adjournment to Bedlam.

After a momentary whirl in the outer court yard, the prisondoor opened, and shut upon them. In the Lodge,

which seemed by contrast with the outer noise a place of refuge and peace, a yellow lamp was already

'Nothing, father; only this lady not knowing her way, and being badgered by the boys. Who did you want,

The young man became more interested. 'Yes, she is here. What might your name be?'

She pressed her lips together, and hesitated. 'Yes. She had better be told it is his mother.'

'You see,' said the young man,'the Marshal's family living in the country at present, the Marshal has given

Miss Dorrit one of the rooms in his house to use when she likes. Don't you think you had better come up

She signified her assent, and he unlocked a door and conducted her up a side staircase into a dwellinghouse

above. He showed her into a darkening room, and left her. The room looked down into the darkening

prisonyard, with its inmates strolling here and there, leaning out of windows communing as much apart as

they could with friends who were going away, and generally wearing out their imprisonment as they best

might that summer evening. The air was heavy and hot; the closeness of the place, oppressive; and from

without there arose a rush of free sounds, like the jarring memory of such things in a headache and heartache.

She stood at the window, bewildered, looking down into this prison as it were out of her own different prison,

when a soft word or two of surprise made her start, and Little Dorrit stood before her.

Little Dorrit stopped, for there was neither happiness nor health in the face that turned to her. 'This is not

recovery; it is not strength; I don't know what it is.' With an agitated wave of her hand, she put all that aside.

'You have a packet left with you which you were to give to Arthur, if it was not reclaimed before this place

Little Dorrit took it from her bosom, and gave it into her hand, which remained stretched out after receiving

Frightened by her being there with that new power Of Movement in her, which, as she said herself, was not

strength, and which was unreal to look upon, as though a picture or statue had been animated, Little Dorrit

Little Dorrit took the packet from the still outstretched hand, and broke the seal. Mrs Clennam then gave her

the inner packet that was addressed to herself, and held the other. The shadow of the wall and of the prison

buildings, which made the room sombre at noon, made it too dark to read there, with the dusk deepening

apace, save in the window. In the window, where a little of the bright summer evening sky could shine upon

her, Little Dorrit stood, and read. After a broken exclamation or so of wonder and of terror, she read in

silence. When she had finished, she looked round, and her old mistress bowed herself before her.

'I think so. I am afraid so; though my mind is so hurried, and so sorry, and has so much to pity that it has not

'I will restore to you what I have withheld from you. Forgive me. Can you forgive me?'

'I can, and Heaven knows I do! Do not kiss my dress and kneel to me; you are too old to kneel to me; I

'Not in that posture,' said Little Dorrit. 'It is unnatural to see your grey hair lower than mine. Pray rise; let me

help you.' With that she raised her up, and stood rather shrinking from her, but looking at her earnestly.

'The great petition that I make to you (there is another which grows out of it), the great supplication that I

address to your merciful and gentle heart, is, that you will not disclose this to Arthur until I am dead. If you

think, when you have had time for consideration, that it can do him any good to know it while I am yet alive,

then tell him. But you will not think that; and in such case, will you promise me to spare me until I am dead?'

'I am so sorry, and what I have read has so confused my thoughts,' returned Little Dorrit, 'that I can scarcely

give you a steady answer. If I should be quite sure that to be acquainted with it will do Mr Clennam no

'I know you are attached to him, and will make him the first consideration. It is right that he should be the

first consideration. I ask that. But, having regarded him, and still finding that you may spare me for the little

She stood in the shadow so that she was only a veiled form to Little Dorrit in the light; but the sound of her

voice, in saying those three grateful words, was at once fervent and brokenbroken by emotion as

'You will wonder, perhaps,' she said in a stronger tone, 'that I can better bear to be known to you whom I have

wronged, than to the son of my enemy who wronged me.For she did wrong me! She not only sinned

grievously against the Lord, but she wronged me. What Arthur's father was to me, she made him. From our

marriage day I was his dread, and that she made me. I was the scourge of both, and that is referable to her.

You love Arthur (I can see the blush upon your face; may it be the dawn of happier days to both of you!), and

you will have thought already that he is as merciful and kind as you, and why do I not trust myself to him as

'No thought,' said Little Dorrit, 'can be quite a stranger to my heart, that springs out of the knowledge that Mr

'I do not doubt it. Yet Arthur is, of the whole world, the one person from whom I would conceal this, while I

am in it. I kept over him as a child, in the days of his first remembrance, my restraining and correcting hand. I

was stern with him, knowing that the transgressions of the parents are visited on their offspring, and that there

was an angry mark upon him at his birth. I have sat with him and his father, seeing the weakness of his father

yearning to unbend to him; and forcing it back, that the child might work out his release in bondage and

hardship. I have seen him, with his mother's face, looking up at me in awe from his little books, and trying to

The shrinking of her auditress stopped her for a moment in her flow of words, delivered in a retrospective

'For his good. Not for the satisfaction of my injury. What was I, and what was the worth of that, before the

curse of Heaven! I have seen that child grow up; not to be pious in a chosen way (his mother's influence lay

too heavy on him for that), but still to be just and upright, and to be submissive to me. He never loved me, as

I once halfhoped he mightso frail we are, and so do the corrupt affections of the flesh war with our trusts

and tasks; but he always respected me and ordered himself dutifully to me. He does to this hour. With an

empty place in his heart that he has never known the meaning of, he has turned away from me and gone his

separate road; but even that he has done considerately and with deference. These have been his relations

towards me. Yours have been of a much slighter kind, spread over a much shorter time. When you have sat at

your needle in my room, you have been in fear of me, but you have supposed me to have been doing you a

kindness; you are better informed now, and know me to have done you an injury. Your misconstruction and

misunderstanding of the cause in which, and the motives with which, I have worked out this work, is lighter

to endure than his would be. I would not, for any worldly recompense I can imagine, have him in a moment,

however blindly, throw me down from the station I have held before him all his life, and change me

altogether into something he would cast out of his respect, and think detected and exposed. Let him do it, if it

must be done, when I am not here to see it. Let me never feel, while I am still alive, that I die before his face,

and utterly perish away from him, like one consumed by lightning and swallowed by an earthquake.'

Her pride was very strong in her, the pain of it and of her old passions was very sharp with her, when she thus

Little Dorrit could not gainsay it. She tried not to show it, but she recoiled with dread from the state of mind

that had burnt so fiercely and lasted so long. It presented itself to her, with no sophistry upon it, in its own

'I have done,' said Mrs Clennam,'what it was given to me to do. I have set myself against evil; not against

good. I have been an instrument of severity against sin. Have not mere sinners like myself been

'Even if my own wrong had prevailed with me, and my own vengeance had moved me, could I have found no

justification? None in the old days when the innocent perished with the guilty 2 a thousand to one? When the

wrath of the hater of the unrighteous was not slaked even in blood, and yet found favour?'

'O, Mrs Clennam, Mrs Clennam,' said Little Dorrit, 'angry feelings and unforgiving deeds are no comfort and

no guide to you and me. My life has been passed in this poor prison, and my teaching has been very

defective; but let me implore you to remember later and better days. Be guided only by the healer of the sick,

the raiser of the dead, the friend of all who were afflicted and forlorn, the patient Master who shed tears of

compassion for our infirmities. We cannot but be right if we put all the rest away, and do everything in

remembrance of Him. There is no vengeance and no infliction of suffering in His life, I am sure. There can be

no confusion in following Him, and seeking for no other footsteps, I am certain.'

In the softened light of the window, looking from the scene of her early trials to the shining sky, she was not

in stronger opposition to the black figure in the shade than the life and doctrine on which she rested were to

that figure's history. It bent its head low again, and said not a word. It remained thus, until the first warning

It is one that does not admit of delay. The man who brought you this packet and possesses these proofs, is

now waiting at my house to be bought off. I can keep this from Arthur, only by buying him off. He asks a

large sum; more than I can get together to pay him without having time. He refuses to make any abatement,

because his threat is, that if he fails with me, he will come to you. Will you return with me and show him that

you already know it? Will you return with me and try to prevail with him? Will you come and help me with

him? Do not refuse what I ask in Arthur's name, though I dare not ask it for Arthur's sake!'

Little Dorrit yielded willingly. She glided away into the prison for a few moments, returned, and said she was

ready to go. They went out by another staircase, avoiding the lodge; and coming into the front courtyard,

It was one of those summer evenings when there is no greater darkness than a long twilight. The vista of

street and bridge was plain to see, and the sky was serene and beautiful. People stood and sat at their doors,

playing with children and enjoying the evening; numbers were walking for air; the worry of the day had

almost worried itself out, and few but themselves were hurried. As they crossed the bridge, the clear steeples

of the many churches looked as if they had advanced out of the murk that usually enshrouded them, and come

much nearer. The smoke that rose into the sky had lost its dingy hue and taken a brightness upon it. The

beauties of the sunset had not faded from the long light films of cloud that lay at peace in the horizon. From a

radiant centre, over the whole length and breadth of the tranquil firmament, great shoots of light streamed

among the early stars, like signs of the blessed later covenant of peace and hope that changed the crown of

Less remarkable, now that she was not alone and it was darker, Mrs Clennam hurried on at Little Dorrit's

side, unmolested. They left the great thoroughfare at the turning by which she had entered it, and wound their

way down among the silent, empty, crossstreets. Their feet were at the gateway, when there was a sudden

In one swift instant the old house was before them, with the man lying smoking in the window; another

thundering sound, and it heaved, surged outward, opened asunder in fifty places, collapsed, and fell.

Deafened by the noise, stifled, choked, and blinded by the dust, they hid their faces and stood rooted to the

spot. The dust storm, driving between them and the placid sky, parted for a moment and showed them the

stars. As they looked up, wildly crying for help, the great pile of chimneys, which was then alone left

standing like a tower in a whirlwind, rocked, broke, and hailed itself down upon the heap of ruin, as if every

So blackened by the flying particles of rubbish as to be unrecognisable, they ran back from the gateway into

the street, crying and shrieking. There, Mrs Clennam dropped upon the stones; and she never from that hour

moved so much as a finger again, or had the power to speak one word. For upwards of three years she

reclined in a wheeled chair, looking attentively at those about her and appearing to understand what they said;

but the rigid silence she had so long held was evermore enforced upon her, and except that she could move

her eyes and faintly express a negative and affirmative with her head, she lived and died a statue.

Affery had been looking for them at the prison, and had caught sight of them at a distance on the bridge. She

came up to receive her old mistress in her arms, to help to carry her into a neighbouring house, and to be

faithful to her. The mystery of the noises was out now; Affery, like greater people, had always been right in

When the storm of dust had cleared away and the summer night was calm again, numbers of people choked

up every avenue of access, and parties of diggers were formed to relieve one another in digging among the

ruins. There had been a hundred people in the house at the time of its fall, there had been fifty, there had been

fifteen, there had been two. Rumour finally settled the number at two; the foreigner and Mr Flintwinch. The

diggers dug all through the short night by flaring pipes of gas, and on a level with the early sun, and deeper

and deeper below it as it rose into its zenith, and aslant of it as it declined, and on a level with it again as it

departed. Sturdy digging, and shovelling, and carrying away, in carts, barrows, and baskets, went on without

intermission, by night and by day; but it was night for the second time when they found the dirty heap of

rubbish that had been the foreigner before his head had been shivered to atoms, like so much glass, by the

Still, they had not come upon Flintwinch yet; so the sturdy digging and shovelling and carrying away went on

without intermission by night and by day. It got about that the old house had had famous cellarage (which

indeed was true), and that Flintwinch had been in a cellar at the moment, or had had time to escape into one,

and that he was safe under its strong arch, and even that he had been heard to cry, in hollow, subterranean,

suffocated notes, 'Here I am!' At the opposite extremity of the town it was even known that the excavators

had been able to open a communication with him through a pipe, and that he had received both soup and

brandy by that channel, and that he had said with admirable fortitude that he was All right, my lads, with the

exception of his collarbone. But the digging and shovelling and carrying away went on without

intermission, until the ruins were all dug out, and the cellars opened to the light; and still no Flintwinch,

It began then to be perceived that Flintwinch had not been there at the time of the fall; and it began then to be

perceived that he had been rather busy elsewhere, converting securities into as much money as could be got

for them on the shortest notice, and turning to his own exclusive account his authority to act for the Firm.

Affery, remembering that the clever one had said he would explain himself further in fourandtwenty hours'

time, determined for her part that his taking himself off within that period with all he could get, was the final

satisfactory sum and substance of his promised explanation; but she held her peace, devoutly thankful to be

quit of him. As it seemed reasonable to conclude that a man who had never been buried could not be

unburied, the diggers gave him up when their task was done, and did not dig down for him into the depths of

This was taken in ill part by a great many people, who persisted in believing that Flintwinch was lying

somewhere among the London geological formation. Nor was their belief much shaken by repeated

intelligence which came over in course of time, that an old man who wore the tie of his neckcloth under one

ear, and who was very well known to be an Englishman, consorted with the Dutchmen on the quaint banks of

the canals of the Hague and in the drinkingshops of Amsterdam, under the style and designation of Mynheer

Arthur continuing to lie very ill in the Marshalsea, and Mr Rugg descrying no break in the legal sky affording

a hope of his enlargement, Mr Pancks suffered desperately from selfreproaches. If it had not been for those

infallible figures which proved that Arthur, instead of pining in imprisonment, ought to be promenading in a

carriage and pair, and that Mr Pancks, instead of being restricted to his clerkly wages, ought to have from

three to five thousand pounds of his own at his immediate disposal, that unhappy arithmetician would

probably have taken to his bed, and there have made one of the many obscure persons who turned their faces

to the wall and died, as a last sacrifice to the late Mr Merdle's greatness. Solely supported by his

unimpugnable calculations, Mr Pancks led an unhappy and restless life; constantly carrying his figures about

with him in his hat, and not only going over them himself on every possible occasion, but entreating every

human being he could lay hold of to go over them with him, and observe what a clear case it was. Down in

Bleeding Heart Yard there was scarcely an inhabitant of note to whom Mr Pancks had not imparted his

demonstration, and, as figures are catching, a kind of cyphering measles broke out in that locality, under the

The more restless Mr Pancks grew in his mind, the more impatient he became of the Patriarch. In their later

conferences his snorting assumed an irritable sound which boded the Patriarch no good; likewise, Mr Pancks

had on several occasions looked harder at the Patriarchal bumps than was quite reconcilable with the fact of

However, he steamed in and out of his little back Dock according as he was wanted or not wanted in the

Patriarchal presence, and business had gone on in its customary course. Bleeding Heart Yard had been

harrowed by Mr Pancks, and cropped by Mr Casby, at the regular seasons; Mr Pancks had taken all the

drudgery and all the dirt of the business as his share; Mr Casby had taken all the profits, all the ethereal

vapour, and all the moonshine, as his share; and, in the form of words which that benevolent beamer

generally employed on Saturday evenings, when he twirled his fat thumbs after striking the week's balance,

'everything had been satisfactory to all partiesall partiessatisfactory, sir, to all parties.'

The Dock of the SteamTug, Pancks, had a leaden roof, which, frying in the very hot sunshine, may have

heated the vessel. Be that as it may, one glowing Saturday evening, on being hailed by the lumbering

bottlegreen ship, the Tug instantly came working out of the Dock in a highly heated condition. 'Mr Pancks,'

The Patriarchal state, always a state of calmness and composure, was so particularly serene that evening as to

be provoking. Everybody else within the bills of mortality was hot; but the Patriarch was perfectly cool.

Everybody was thirsty, and the Patriarch was drinking. There was a fragrance of limes or lemons about him;

and he made a drink of golden sherry, which shone in a large tumbler as if he were drinking the evening

sunshine. this was bad, but not the worst. The worst was, that with his big blue eyes, and his polished head,

and his long white hair, and his bottlegreen legs stretched out before him, terminating in his easy shoes

easily crossed at the instep, he had a radiant appearance of having in his extensive benevolence made the

drink for the human species, while he himself wanted nothing but his own milk of human kindness.

Wherefore, Mr Pancks said, 'What do you mean by that?' and put his hair up with both hands, in a highly

'I mean, Mr Pancks, that you must be sharper with the people, sharper with the people, much sharper with the

people, sir. You don't squeeze them. You don't squeeze them. Your receipts are not up to the mark. You must

squeeze them, sir, or our connection will not continue to be as satisfactory as I could wish it to be to all

'You are made for nothing else, Mr Pancks. You are made to do your duty, but you don't do your duty. You

are paid to squeeze, and you must squeeze to pay.' The Patriarch so much surprised himself by this brilliant

turn, after Dr Johnson, which he had not in the least expected or intended, that he laughed aloud; and repeated

with great satisfaction, as he twirled his thumbs and nodded at his youthful portrait, 'Paid to squeeze, sir, and

'Yes, sir, yes, sir. Something more. You will please, Mr Pancks, to squeeze the Yard again, the first thing on

'Oh!' said Pancks, watching him as he benevolently gulped down a good draught of his mixture. 'Anything

'Yes, sir, yes, sir, something more. I am not at all pleased, Mr Pancks, with my daughter; not at all pleased.

Besides calling much too often to inquire for Mrs Clennam, Mrs Clennam, who is not just now in

circumstances that are by any means calculated toto be satisfactory to all parties, she goes, Mr Pancks,

'Pooh, pooh, Mr Pancks. She has nothing to do with that, nothing to do with that. I can't allow it. Let him pay

Although Mr Pancks's hair was standing up like strong wire, he gave it another doublehanded impulse in the

'You will please to mention to my daughter, Mr Pancks, that I can't allow it, can't allow it,' said the Patriarch

'No, sir, no; you are paid to mention it,' the blundering old booby could not resist the temptation of trying it

'Yes, sir. It appears to me, Mr Pancks, that you yourself are too often and too much in that direction, that

direction. I recommend you, Mr Pancks, to dismiss from your attention both your own losses and other

Mr Pancks acknowledged this recommendation with such an extraordinarily abrupt, short, and loud utterance

of the monosyllable 'Oh!' that even the unwieldy Patriarch moved his blue eyes in something of a hurry, to

look at him. Mr Pancks, with a sniff of corresponding intensity, then added, 'Anything more?'

'Not at present, sir, not at present. I am going,' said the Patriarch, finishing his mixture, and rising with an

amiable air, 'to take a little stroll, a little stroll. Perhaps I shall find you here when I come back. If not, sir,

Mr Pancks, after another stiffening of his hair, looked on at the Patriarchal assumption of the broadbrimmed

hat, with a momentary appearance of indecision contending with a sense of injury. He was also hotter than at

first, and breathed harder. But he suffered Mr Casby to go out, without offering any further remark, and then

took a peep at him over the little green windowblinds. 'I thought so,' he observed. 'I knew where you were

bound to. Good!' He then steamed back to his Dock, put it carefully in order, took down his hat, looked round

the Dock, said 'Goodbye!' and puffed away on his own account. He steered straight for Mrs Plornish's end

of Bleeding Heart Yard, and arrived there, at the top of the steps, hotter than ever.

At the top of the steps, resisting Mrs Plornish's invitations to come and sit along with father in Happy

Cottagewhich to his relief were not so numerous as they would have been on any other night than

Saturday, when the connection who so gallantly supported the business with everything but money gave their

orders freelyat the top of the steps Mr Pancks remained until he beheld the Patriarch, who always entered

the Yard at the other end, slowly advancing, beaming, and surrounded by suitors. Then Mr Pancks descended

The Patriarch, approaching with his usual benignity, was surprised to see Mr Pancks, but supposed him to

have been stimulated to an immediate squeeze instead of postponing that operation until Monday. The

population of the Yard were astonished at the meeting, for the two powers had never been seen there

together, within the memory of the oldest Bleeding Heart. But they were overcome by unutterable amazement

when Mr Pancks, going close up to the most venerable of men and halting in front of the bottlegreen

waistcoat, made a trigger of his right thumb and forefinger, applied the same to the brim of the

broadbrimmed hat, and, with singular smartness and precision, shot it off the polished head as if it had been

Having taken this little liberty with the Patriarchal person, Mr Pancks further astounded and attracted the

Bleeding Hearts by saying in an audible voice, 'Now, you sugary swindler, I mean to have it out with you!'

Mr Pancks and the Patriarch were instantly the centre of a press, all eyes and ears; windows were thrown

'What do you pretend to be?' said Mr Pancks. 'What's your moral game? What do you go in for? Benevolence,

an't it? You benevolent!' Here Mr Pancks, apparently without the intention of hitting him, but merely to

relieve his mind and expend his superfluous power in wholesome exercise, aimed a blow at the bumpy head,

which the bumpy head ducked to avoid. This singular performance was repeated, to the everincreasing

admiration of the spectators, at the end of every succeeding article of Mr Pancks's oration.

'I have discharged myself from your service,' said Pancks, 'that I may tell you what you are. You're one of a

lot of impostors that are the worst lot of all the lots to be met with. Speaking as a sufferer by both, I don't

know that I wouldn't as soon have the Merdle lot as your lot. You're a driver in disguise, a screwer by deputy,

a wringer, and squeezer, and shaver by substitute. You're a philanthropic sneak. You're a shabby deceiver!'

(The repetition of the performance at this point was received with a burst of laughter.)

'Ask these good people who's the hard man here. They'll tell you Pancks, I believe.'

'But I tell you, good peopleCasby! This mound of meekness, this lump of love, this bottlegreen smiler,

this is your driver!' said Pancks. 'If you want to see the man who would flay you alivehere he is! Don't

look for him in me, at thirty shillings a week, but look for him in Casby, at I don't know how much a year!'

'Hear Mr Pancks?' cried that gentleman (after repeating the popular performance). 'Yes, I should think so! It's

almost time to hear Mr Pancks. Mr Pancks has come down into the Yard tonight on purpose that you should

The audience would have gone over to Mr Pancks, as one man, woman, and child, but for the long, grey,

'Here's the Stop,' said Pancks, 'that sets the tune to be ground. And there is but one tune, and its name is

Grind, Grind, Grind! Here's the Proprietor, and here's his Grubber. Why, good people, when he comes

smoothly spinning through the Yard tonight, like a slowgoing benevolent HummingTop, and when you

come about him with your complaints of the Grubber, you don't know what a cheat the Proprietor is! What do

you think of his showing himself tonight, that I may have all the blame on Monday? What do you think of

his having had me over the coals this very evening, because I don't squeeze you enough? What do you think

of my being, at the present moment, under special orders to squeeze you dry on Monday?'

'Shabby?' snorted Pancks. 'Yes, I should think so! The lot that your Casby belongs to, is the shabbiest of all

the lots. Setting their Grubbers on, at a wretched pittance, to do what they're ashamed and afraid to do and

pretend not to do, but what they will have done, or give a man no rest! Imposing on you to give their

Grubbers nothing but blame, and to give them nothing but credit! Why, the worstlooking cheat in all this

town who gets the value of eighteenpence under false pretences, an't half such a cheat as this signpost of

'And see what you get of these fellows, besides,' said Pancks' 'See what more you get of these precious

HummingTops, revolving among you with such smoothness that you've no idea of the pattern painted on

'em, or the little window in 'em. I wish to call your attention to myself for a moment. I an't an agreeable style

The auditory were divided on this point; its more uncompromising members crying, 'No, you are not,' and its

'I am, in general,' said Mr Pancks, 'a dry, uncomfortable, dreary Plodder and Grubber. That's your humble

servant. There's his fulllength portrait, painted by himself and presented to you, warranted a likeness! But

what's a man to be, with such a man as this for his Proprietor? What can be expected of him? Did anybody

None of the Bleeding Hearts ever had, it was clear from the alacrity of their response.

'Well,' said Mr Pancks, 'and neither will you find in Grubbers like myself, under Proprietors like this, pleasant

qualities. I've been a Grubber from a boy. What has my life been? Fag and grind, fag and grind, turn the

wheel, turn the wheel! I haven't been agreeable to myself, and I haven't been likely to be agreeable to

anybody else. If I was a shilling a week less useful in ten years' time, this impostor would give me a shilling a

week less; if as useful a man could be got at sixpence cheaper, he would be taken in my place at sixpence

cheaper. Bargain and sale, bless you! Fixed principles! It's a mighty fine signpost, is The Casby's Head,' said

Mr Pancks, surveying it with anything rather than admiration; 'but the real name of the House is the Sham's

Arms. Its motto is, Keep the Grubber always at it. Is any gentleman present,' said Mr Pancks, breaking off

'It's no matter,' said Mr Pancks, 'I merely wish to remark that the task this Proprietor has set me, has been

never to leave off conjugating the Imperative Mood Present Tense of the verb To keep always at it. Keep

thou always at it. Let him keep always at it. Keep we or do we keep always at it. Keep ye or do ye or you

keep always at it. Let them keep always at it. Here is your benevolent Patriarch of a Casby, and there is his

golden rule. He is uncommonly improving to look at, and I am not at all so. He is as sweet as honey, and I am

as dull as ditchwater. He provides the pitch, and I handle it, and it sticks to me. Now,' said Mr Pancks,

closing upon his late Proprietor again, from whom he had withdrawn a little for the better display of him to

the Yard; 'as I am not accustomed to speak in public, and as I have made a rather lengthy speech, all

circumstances considered, I shall bring my observations to a close by requesting you to get out of this.'

The Last of the Patriarchs had been so seized by assault, and required so much room to catch an idea in, an so

much more room to turn it in, that he had not a word to offer in reply. He appeared to be meditating some

Patriarchal way out of his delicate position, when Mr Pancks, once more suddenly applying the trigger to his

hat, shot it off again with his former dexterity. On the preceding occasion, one or two of the Bleeding Heart

Yarders had obsequiously picked it up and handed it to its owner; but Mr Pancks had now so far impressed

Quick as lightning, Mr Pancks, who, for some moments, had had his right hand in his coat pocket, whipped

out a pair of shears, swooped upon the Patriarch behind, and snipped off short the sacred locks that flowed

upon his shoulders. In a paroxysm of animosity and rapidity, Mr Pancks then caught the broadbrimmed hat

out of the astounded Patriarch's hand, cut it down into a mere stewpan, and fixed it on the Patriarch's head.

Before the frightful results of this desperate action, Mr Pancks himself recoiled in consternation. A

barepolled, goggleeyed, bigheaded lumbering personage stood staring at him, not in the least impressive,

not in the least venerable, who seemed to have started out of the earth to ask what was become of Casby.

After staring at this phantom in return, in silent awe, Mr Pancks threw down his shears, and fled for a place of

hiding, where he might lie sheltered from the consequences of his crime. Mr Pancks deemed it prudent to use

all possible despatch in making off, though he was pursued by nothing but the sound of laughter in Bleeding

The changes of a fevered room are slow and fluctuating; but the changes of the fevered world are rapid and

It was Little Dorrit's lot to wait upon both kinds of change. The Marshalsea walls, during a portion of every

day, again embraced her in their shadows as their child, while she thought for Clennam, worked for him,

watched him, and only left him, still to devote her utmost love and care to him. Her part in the life outside the

gate urged its pressing claims upon her too, and her patience untiringly responded to them. Here was Fanny,

proud, fitful, whimsical, further advanced in that disqualified state for going into society which had so much

fretted her on the evening of the tortoiseshell knife, resolved always to want comfort, resolved not to be

comforted, resolved to be deeply wronged, and resolved that nobody should have the audacity to think her so.

Here was her brother, a weak, proud, tipsy, young old man, shaking from head to foot, talking as indistinctly

as if some of the money he plumed himself upon had got into his mouth and couldn't be got out, unable to

walk alone in any act of his life, and patronising the sister whom he selfishly loved (he always had that

negative merit, illstarred and illlaunched Tip!) because he suffered her to lead him. Here was Mrs Merdle

in gauzy mourningthe original cap whereof had possibly been rent to pieces in a fit of grief, but had

certainly yielded to a highly becoming article from the Parisian marketwarring with Fanny foot to foot,

and breasting her with her desolate bosom every hour in the day. Here was poor Mr Sparkler, not knowing

how to keep the peace between them, but humbly inclining to the opinion that they could do no better than

agree that they were both remarkably fine women, and that there was no nonsense about either of themfor

which gentle recommendation they united in falling upon him frightfully. Then, too, here was Mrs General,

got home from foreign parts, sending a Prune and a Prism by post every other day, demanding a new

Testimonial by way of recommendation to some vacant appointment or other. Of which remarkable

gentlewoman it may be finally observed, that there surely never was a gentlewoman of whose transcendent

fitness for any vacant appointment on the face of this earth, so many people were (as the warmth of her

Testimonials evinced) so perfectly satisfiedor who was so very unfortunate in having a large circle of

ardent and distinguished admirers, who never themselves happened to want her in any capacity.

On the first crash of the eminent Mr Merdle's decease, many important persons had been unable to determine

whether they should cut Mrs Merdle, or comfort her. As it seemed, however, essential to the strength of their

own case that they should admit her to have been cruelly deceived, they graciously made the admission, and

continued to know her. It followed that Mrs Merdle, as a woman of fashion and good breeding who had been

sacrificed to the wiles of a vulgar barbarian (for Mr Merdle was found out from the crown of his head to the

sole of his foot, the moment he was found out in his pocket), must be actively championed by her order for

her order's sake. She returned this fealty by causing it to be understood that she was even more incensed

against the felonious shade of the deceased than anybody else was; thus, on the whole, she came out of her

Mr Sparkler's lordship was fortunately one of those shelves on which a gentleman is considered to be put

away for life, unless there should be reasons for hoisting him up with the Barnacle crane to a more lucrative

height. That patriotic servant accordingly stuck to his colours (the Standard of four Quarterings), and was a

perfect Nelson in respect of nailing them to the mast. On the profits of his intrepidity, Mrs Sparkler and Mrs

Merdle, inhabiting different floors of the genteel little temple of inconvenience to which the smell of the day

before yesterday's soup and coachhorses was as constant as Death to man, arrayed themselves to fight it out

in the lists of Society, sworn rivals. And Little Dorrit, seeing all these things as they developed themselves,

could not but wonder, anxiously, into what back corner of the genteel establishment Fanny's children would

Arthur being far too ill to be spoken with on subjects of emotion or anxiety, and his recovery greatly

depending on the repose into which his weakness could be hushed, Little Dorrit's sole reliance during this

heavy period was on Mr Meagles. He was still abroad; but she had written to him through his daughter,

immediately after first seeing Arthur in the Marshalsea and since, confiding her uneasiness to him on the

points on which she was most anxious, but especially on one. To that one, the continued absence of Mr

Meagles abroad, instead of his comforting presence in the Marshalsea, was referable.

Without disclosing the precise nature of the documents that had fallen into Rigaud's hands, Little Dorrit had

confided the general outline of that story to Mr Meagles, to whom she had also recounted his fate. The old

cautious habits of the scales and scoop at once showed Mr Meagles the importance of recovering the original

papers; wherefore he wrote back to Little Dorrit, strongly confirming her in the solicitude she expressed on

that head, and adding that he would not come over to England 'without making some attempt to trace them

By this time Mr Henry Gowan had made up his mind that it would be agreeable to him not to know the

Meagleses. He was so considerate as to lay no injunctions on his wife in that particular; but he mentioned to

Mr Meagles that personally they did not appear to him to get on together, and that he thought it would be a

good thing ifpolitely, and without any scene, or anything of that sortthey agreed that they were the best

fellows in the world, but were best apart. Poor Mr Meagles, who was already sensible that he did not advance

his daughter's happiness by being constantly slighted in her presence, said 'Good, Henry! You are my Pet's

husband; you have displaced me, in the course of nature; if you wish it, good!' This arrangement involved the

contingent advantage, which perhaps Henry Gowan had not foreseen, that both Mr and Mrs Meagles were

more liberal than before to their daughter, when their communication was only with her and her young child:

and that his high spirit found itself better provided with money, without being under the degrading necessity

Mr Meagles, at such a period, naturally seized an occupation with great ardour. He knew from his daughter

the various towns which Rigaud had been haunting, and the various hotels at which he had been living for

some time back. The occupation he set himself was to visit these with all discretion and speed, and, in the

event of finding anywhere that he had left a bill unpaid, and a box or parcel behind, to pay such bill, and

With no other attendant than Mother, Mr Meagles went upon his pilgrimage, and encountered a number of

adventures. Not the least of his difficulties was, that he never knew what was said to him, and that he pursued

his inquiries among people who never knew what he said to them. Still, with an unshaken confidence that the

English tongue was somehow the mother tongue of the whole world, only the people were too stupid to know

it, Mr Meagles harangued innkeepers in the most voluble manner, entered into loud explanations of the most

complicated sort, and utterly renounced replies in the native language of the respondents, on the ground that

they were 'all bosh.' Sometimes interpreters were called in; whom Mr Meagles addressed in such idiomatic

terms of speech, as instantly to extinguish and shut upwhich made the matter worse. On a balance of the

account, however, it may be doubted whether he lost much; for, although he found no property, he found so

many debts and various associations of discredit with the proper name, which was the only word he made

intelligible, that he was almost everywhere overwhelmed with injurious accusations. On no fewer than four

occasions the police were called in to receive denunciations of Mr Meagles as a Knight of Industry, a

goodfor nothing, and a thief, all of which opprobrious language he bore with the best temper (having no

idea what it meant), and was in the most ignominious manner escorted to steamboats and public carriages,

to be got rid of, talking all the while, like a cheerful and fluent Briton as he was, with Mother under his arm.

But, in his own tongue, and in his own head, Mr Meagles was a clear, shrewd, persevering man. When he had

'worked round,' as he called it, to Paris in his pilgrimage, and had wholly failed in it so far, he was not

disheartened. 'The nearer to England I follow him, you see, Mother,' argued Mr Meagles, 'the nearer I am

likely to come to the papers, whether they turn up or no. Because it is only reasonable to conclude that he

would deposit them somewhere where they would be safe from people over in England, and where they

At Paris Mr Meagles found a letter from Little Dorrit, lying waiting for him; in which she mentioned that she

had been able to talk for a minute or two with Mr Clennam about this man who was no more; and that when

she told Mr Clennam that his friend Mr Meagles, who was on his way to see him, had an interest in

ascertaining something about the man if he could, he had asked her to tell Mr Meagles that he had been

known to Miss Wade, then living in such a street at Calais. 'Oho!' said Mr Meagles.

As soon afterwards as might be in those Diligence days, Mr Meagles rang the cracked bell at the cracked

gate, and it jarred open, and the peasantwoman stood in the dark doorway, saying, 'Icesay! Seer! Who?' In

acknowledgment of whose address, Mr Meagles murmured to himself that there was some sense about these

Calais people, who really did know something of what you and themselves were up to; and returned, 'Miss

'It's some time since we met,' said Mr Meagles, clearing his throat; 'I hope you have been pretty well, Miss

Without hoping that he or anybody else had been pretty well, Miss Wade asked him to what she was indebted

for the honour of seeing him again? Mr Meagles, in the meanwhile, glanced all round the room without

'Why, the truth is, Miss Wade,' said Mr Meagles, in a comfortable, managing, not to say coaxing voice, 'it is

possible that you may be able to throw a light upon a little something that is at present dark. Any unpleasant

bygones between us are bygones, I hope. Can't be helped now. You recollect my daughter? Time changes so!

In his innocence, Mr Meagles could not have struck a worse key note. He paused for any expression of

'That is not the subject you wished to enter on?' she said, after a cold silence.

'I thought you knew,' she interrupted, with a smile, 'that my good nature is not to be calculated upon?'

'Don't say so,' said Mr Meagles; 'you do yourself an injustice. However, to come to the point.' For he was

sensible of having gained nothing by approaching it in a roundabout way. 'I have heard from my friend

'that you had some knowledge of one Blandois, lately killed in London by a violent accident. Now, don't

mistake me! I know it was a slight knowledge,' said Mr Meagles, dexterously forestalling an angry

interruption which he saw about to break. 'I am fully aware of that. It was a slight knowledge, I know. But the

question is,' Mr Meagles's voice here became comfortable again, 'did he, on his way to England last time,

leave a box of papers, or a bundle of papers, or some papers or other in some receptacle or otherany

paperswith you: begging you to allow him to leave them here for a short time, until he wanted them?'

'Mine,' said Mr Meagles. 'And not only mine but Clennam's question, and other people's question. Now, I am

sure,' continued Mr Meagles, whose heart was overflowing with Pet, 'that you can't have any unkind feeling

towards my daughter; it's impossible. Well! It's her question, too; being one in which a particular friend of

hers is nearly interested. So here I am, frankly to say that is the question, and to ask, Now, did he?'

'Upon my word,' she returned, 'I seem to be a mark for everybody who knew anything of a man I once in my

'Now, don't,' remonstrated Mr Meagles, 'don't! Don't take offence, because it's the plainest question in the

world, and might be asked of any one. The documents I refer to were not his own, were wrongfully obtained,

might at some time or other be troublesome to an innocent person to have in keeping, and are sought by the

people to whom they really belong. He passed through Calais going to London, and there were reasons why

he should not take them with him then, why he should wish to be able to put his hand upon them readily, and

why he should distrust leaving them with people of his own sort. Did he leave them here? I declare if I knew

how to avoid giving you offence, I would take any pains to do it. I put the question personally, but there's

nothing personal in it. I might put it to any one; I have put it already to many people. Did he leave them here?

'I know nothing about them. I have now answered your unaccountable question. He did not leave them here,

'There!' said Mr Meagles rising. 'I am sorry for it; that's over; and I hope there is not much harm

'I have put my foot in it again,' said Mr Meagles, thus corrected. 'I can't keep my foot out of it here, it seems.

Perhaps, if I had thought twice about it, I might never have given her the jingling name. But, when one means

to be goodnatured and sportive with young people, one doesn't think twice. Her old friend leaves a kind

She said nothing as to that; and Mr Meagles, taking his honest face out of the dull room, where it shone like a

sun, took it to the Hotel where he had left Mrs Meagles, and where he made the Report: 'Beaten, Mother; no

effects!' He took it next to the London Steam Packet, which sailed in the night; and next to the Marshalsea.

The faithful John was on duty when Father and Mother Meagles presented themselves at the wicket towards

nightfall. Miss Dorrit was not there then, he said; but she had been there in the morning, and invariably came

in the evening. Mr Clennam was slowly mending; and Maggy and Mrs Plornish and Mr Baptist took care of

him by turns. Miss Dorrit was sure to come back that evening before the bell rang. There was the room the

Marshal had lent her, upstairs, in which they could wait for her, if they pleased. Mistrustful that it might be

hazardous to Arthur to see him without preparation, Mr Meagles accepted the offer; and they were left shut

The cramped area of the prison had such an effect on Mrs Meagles that she began to weep, and such an effect

on Mr Meagles that he began to gasp for air. He was walking up and down the room, panting, and making

himself worse by laboriously fanning himself with her handkerchief, when he turned towards the opening

'Eh? Good gracious!' said Mr Meagles, 'this is not Miss Dorrit! Why, Mother, look! Tattycoram!'

No other. And in Tattycoram's arms was an iron box some two feet square. Such a box had Affery Flintwinch

seen, in the first of her dreams, going out of the old house in the dead of the night under Double's arm. This,

Tattycoram put on the ground at her old master's feet: this, Tattycoram fell on her knees by, and beat her

hands upon, crying half in exultation and half in despair, half in laughter and half in tears, 'Pardon, dear

'What you wanted!' said Tattycoram. 'Here it is! I was put in the next room not to see you. I heard you ask her

about it, I heard her say she hadn't got it, I was there when he left it, and I took it at bedtime and brought it

'Why, my girl,' cried Mr Meagles, more breathless than before, 'how did you come over?'

'I came in the boat with you. I was sitting wrapped up at the other end. When you took a coach at the wharf, I

took another coach and followed you here. She never would have given it up after what you had said to her

about its being wanted; she would sooner have sunk it in the sea, or burnt it. But, here it is!'

'She never wanted it to be left, I must say that for her; but he left it, and I knew well that after what you said,

and after her denying it, she never would have given it up. But here it is! Dear Master, dear Mistress, take me

back again, and give me back the dear old name! Let this intercede for me. Here it is!'

Father and Mother Meagles never deserved their names better than when they took the headstrong

'Oh! I have been so wretched,' cried Tattycoram, weeping much more, 'always so unhappy, and so repentant!

I was afraid of her from the first time I saw her. I knew she had got a power over me through understanding

what was bad in me so well. It was a madness in me, and she could raise it whenever she liked. I used to

think, when I got into that state, that people were all against me because of my first beginning; and the kinder

they were to me, the worse fault I found in them. I made it out that they triumphed above me, and that they

wanted to make me envy them, when I knowwhen I even knew thenthat they never thought of such a

thing. And my beautiful young mistress not so happy as she ought to have been, and I gone away from her!

Such a brute and a wretch as she must think me! But you'll say a word to her for me, and ask her to be as

forgiving as you two are? For I am not so bad as I was,' pleaded Tattycoram; 'I am bad enough, but not so bad

as I was, indeed. I have had Miss Wade before me all this time, as if it was my own self grown ripeturning

everything the wrong way, and twisting all good into evil. I have had her before me all this time, finding no

pleasure in anything but keeping me as miserable, suspicious, and tormenting as herself. Not that she had

much to do, to do that,' cried Tattycoram, in a closing great burst of distress, 'for I was as bad as bad could be.

I only mean to say, that, after what I have gone through, I hope I shall never be quite so bad again, and that I

shall get better by very slow degrees. I'll try very hard. I won't stop at fiveandtwenty, sir, I'll count

Another opening of the door, and Tattycoram subsided, and Little Dorrit came in, and Mr Meagles with pride

and joy produced the box, and her gentle face was lighted up with grateful happiness and joy.

The secret was safe now! She could keep her own part of it from him; he should never know of her loss; in

time to come he should know all that was of import to himself; but he should never know what concerned her

'Now, my dear Miss Dorrit,' said Mr Meagles; 'I am a man of businessor at least wasand I am going to

'I think not tonight. I will go to his room and ascertain how he is. But I think it will be better not to see him

'I am much of your opinion, my dear,' said Mr Meagles, 'and therefore I have not been any nearer to him than

this dismal room. Then I shall probably not see him for some little time to come. But I'll explain what I mean

She left the room. Mr Meagles, looking through the bars of the window, saw her pass out of the Lodge below

him into the prison yard. He said gently, 'Tattycoram, come to me a moment, my good girl.'

'You see that young lady who was here just nowthat little, quiet, fragile figure passing along there, Tatty?

Look. The people stand out of the way to let her go by. The mensee the poor, shabby fellowspull off

their hats to her quite politely, and now she glides in at that doorway. See her, Tattycoram?'

'I have heard tell, Tatty, that she was once regularly called the child of this place. She was born here, and

'If she had constantly thought of herself, and settled with herself that everybody visited this place upon her,

turned it against her, and cast it at her, she would have led an irritable and probably an useless existence. Yet

I have heard tell, Tattycoram, that her young life has been one of active resignation, goodness, and noble

service. Shall I tell you what I consider those eyes of hers, that were here just now, to have always looked at,

'Duty, Tattycoram. Begin it early, and do it well; and there is no antecedent to it, in any origin or station, that

They remained at the window, Mother joining them and pitying the prisoners, until she was seen coming

back. She was soon in the room, and recommended that Arthur, whom she had left calm and composed,

'Good!' said Mr Meagles, cheerily. 'I have not a doubt that's best. I shall trust my remembrances then, my

sweet nurse, in your hands, and I well know they couldn't be in better. I am off again tomorrow morning.'

'My dear,' said Mr Meagles, 'I can't live without breathing. This place has taken my breath away, and I shall

'You shall understand,' said Mr Meagles. 'Tonight we three will put up at a City Hotel. Tomorrow

morning, Mother and Tattycoram will go down to Twickenham, where Mrs Tickit, sitting attended by Dr

Buchan in the parlourwindow, will think them a couple of ghosts; and I shall go abroad again for Doyce.

We must have Dan here. Now, I tell you, my love, it's of no use writing and planning and conditionally

speculating upon this and that and the other, at uncertain intervals and distances; we must have Doyce here. I

devote myself at daybreak tomorrow morning, to bringing Doyce here. It's nothing to me to go and find

him. I'm an old traveller, and all foreign languages and customs are alike to meI never understand anything

about any of 'em. Therefore I can't be put to any inconvenience. Go at once I must, it stands to reason;

because I can't live without breathing freely; and I can't breathe freely until Arthur is out of this Marshalsea. I

am stifled at the present moment, and have scarcely breath enough to say this much, and to carry this precious

They got into the street as the bell began to ring, Mr Meagles carrying the box. Little Dorrit had no

conveyance there: which rather surprised him. He called a coach for her and she got into it, and he placed the

box beside her when she was seated. In her joy and gratitude she kissed his hand.

'I don't like that, my dear,' said Mr Meagles. 'It goes against my feeling of what's right, that YOU should do

'You remind me of the days,' said Mr Meagles, suddenly drooping 'but she's very fond of him, and hides

his faults, and thinks that no one sees themand he certainly is well connected and of a very good family!'

It was the only comfort he had in the loss of his daughter, and if he made the most of it, who could blame

On a healthy autumn day, the Marshalsea prisoner, weak but otherwise restored, sat listening to a voice that

read to him. On a healthy autumn day; when the golden fields had been reaped and ploughed again, when the

summer fruits had ripened and waned, when the green perspectives of hops had been laid low by the busy

pickers, when the apples clustering in the orchards were russet, and the berries of the mountain ash were

crimson among the yellowing foliage. Already in the woods, glimpses of the hardy winter that was coming

were to be caught through unaccustomed openings among the boughs where the prospect shone defined and

clear, free from the bloom of the drowsy summer weather, which had rested on it as the bloom lies on the

plum. So, from the seashore the ocean was no longer to be seen lying asleep in the heat, but its thousand

sparkling eyes were open, and its whole breadth was in joyful animation, from the cool sand on the beach to

the little sails on the horizon, drifting away like autumntinted leaves that had drifted from the trees.

Changeless and barren, looking ignorantly at all the seasons with its fixed, pinched face of poverty and care,

the prison had not a touch of any of these beauties on it. Blossom what would, its bricks and bars bore

uniformly the same dead crop. Yet Clennam, listening to the voice as it read to him, heard in it all that great

Nature was doing, heard in it all the soothing songs she sings to man. At no Mother's knee but hers had he

ever dwelt in his youth on hopeful promises, on playful fancies, on the harvests of tenderness and humility

that lie hidden in the earlyfostered seeds of the imagination; on the oaks of retreat from blighting winds, that

But, in the tones of the voice that read to him, there were memories of an old feeling of such things, and

echoes of every merciful and loving whisper that had ever stolen to him in his life.

When the voice stopped, he put his hand over his eyes, murmuring that the light was strong upon them.

Little Dorrit put the book by, and presently arose quietly to shade the window. Maggy sat at her needlework

in her old place. The light softened, Little Dorrit brought her chair closer to his side.

'This will soon be over now, dear Mr Clennam. Not only are Mr Doyce's letters to you so full of friendship

and encouragement, but Mr Rugg says his letters to him are so full of help, and that everybody (now a little

anger is past) is so considerate, and speaks so well of you, that it will soon be over now.'

'You praise me far too much. And yet it is such an exquisite pleasure to me to hear you speak so feelingly,

and toand to see,' said Little Dorrit, raising her eyes to his, 'how deeply you mean it, that I cannot say

'I think,' said Little Dorrit, after hesitating, 'that I have been here at least twice every day.' He might have

released the little light hand after fervently kissing it again; but that, with a very gentle lingering where it was,

it seemed to court being retained. He took it in both of his, and it lay softly on his breast.

'Dear Little Dorrit, it is not my imprisonment only that will soon be over. This sacrifice of you must be

ended. We must learn to part again, and to take our different ways so wide asunder. You have not forgotten

'O no, I have not forgotten it. But something has beenYou feel quite strong today, don't you?'

'I shall be very glad to be told. No fortune can be too great or good for Little Dorrit.'

'I have been anxiously waiting to tell you. I have been longing and longing to tell you. You are sure you will

As she looked at him silently, there was something in her affectionate face that he did not quite comprehend:

something that could have broken into tears in a moment, and yet that was happy and proud.

'You will be sorry to hear what I have to tell you about Fanny. Poor Fanny has lost everything. She has

nothing left but her husband's income. All that papa gave her when she married was lost as your money was

Arthur was more shocked than surprised to hear it. 'I had hoped it might not be so bad,' he said: 'but I had

feared a heavy loss there, knowing the connection between her husband and the defaulter.'

'Yes. It is all gone. I am very sorry for Fanny; very, very, very sorry for poor Fanny. My poor brother too!'

As Arthur looked at her inquiringly, with a new apprehension on him, she withdrew her hand, and laid her

'I have nothing in the world. I am as poor as when I lived here. When papa came over to England, he

confided everything he had to the same hands, and it is all swept away. O my dearest and best, are you quite

Locked in his arms, held to his heart, with his manly tears upon her own cheek, she drew the slight hand

I never was rich before, I never was proud before, I never was happy before, I am rich in being taken by you,

I am proud in having been resigned by you, I am happy in being with you in this prison, as I should be happy

in coming back to it with you, if it should be the will of GOD, and comforting and serving you with all my

love and truth. I am yours anywhere, everywhere! I love you dearly! I would rather pass my life here with

you, and go out daily, working for our bread, than I would have the greatest fortune that ever was told, and be

the greatest lady that ever was honoured. O, if poor papa may only know how blest at last my heart is, in this

Maggy had of course been staring from the first, and had of course been crying her eyes out long before this.

Maggy was now so overjoyed that, after hugging her little mother with all her might, she went downstairs

like a cloghornpipe to find somebody or other to whom to impart her gladness. Whom should Maggy meet

but Flora and Mr F.'s Aunt opportunely coming in? And whom else, as a consequence of that meeting, should

Little Dorrit find waiting for herself, when, a good two or three hours afterwards, she went out?

Flora's eyes were a little red, and she seemed rather out of spirits. Mr F.'s Aunt was so stiffened that she had

the appearance of being past bending by any means short of powerful mechanical pressure. Her bonnet was

cocked up behind in a terrific manner; and her stony reticule was as rigid as if it had been petrified by the

Gorgon's head, and had got it at that moment inside. With these imposing attributes, Mr F.'s Aunt, publicly

seated on the steps of the Marshal's official residence, had been for the two or three hours in question a great

boon to the younger inhabitants of the Borough, whose sallies of humour she had considerably flushed herself

'Painfully aware, Miss Dorrit, I am sure,' said Flora, 'that to propose an adjournment to any place to one so far

removed by fortune and so courted and caressed by the best society must ever appear intruding even if not a

pieshop far below your present sphere and a backparlour though a civil man but if for the sake of

Arthurcannot overcome it more improper now than ever late Doyce and Clennamone last remark I

might wish to make one last explanation I might wish to offer perhaps your good nature might excuse under

Rightly interpreting this rather obscure speech, Little Dorrit returned that she was quite at Flora's disposition.

Flora accordingly led the way across the road to the pieshop in question: Mr F.'s Aunt stalking across in the

rear, and putting herself in the way of being run over, with a perseverance worthy of a better cause.

When the 'three kidney ones,' which were to be a blind to the conversation, were set before them on three

little tin platters, each kidney one ornamented with a hole at the top, into which the civil man poured hot

gravy out of a spouted can as if he were feeding three lamps, Flora took out her pockethandkerchief.

'If Fancy's fair dreams,' she began, 'have ever pictured that when Arthurcannot overcome it pray excuse

mewas restored to freedom even a pie as far from flaky as the present and so deficient in kidney as to be in

that respect like a minced nutmeg might not prove unacceptable if offered by the hand of true regard such

visions have for ever fled and all is cancelled but being aware that tender relations are in contemplation beg

to state that I heartily wish well to both and find no fault with either not the least, it may be withering to know

that ere the hand of Time had made me much less slim than formerly and dreadfully red on the slightest

exertion particularly after eating I well know when it takes the form of a rash, it might have been and was not

through the interruption of parents and mental torpor succeeded until the mysterious clue was held by Mr F.

'Call it not kindness,' returned Flora, giving her an honest kiss, 'for you always were the best and dearest little

thing that ever was if I may take the liberty and even in a money point of view a saving being Conscience

itself though I must add much more agreeable than mine ever was to me for though not I hope more burdened

than other people's yet I have always found it far readier to make one uncomfortable than comfortable and

evidently taking a greater pleasure in doing it but I am wandering, one hope I wish to express ere yet the

closing scene draws in and it is that I do trust for the sake of old times and old sincerity that Arthur will know

that I didn't desert him in his misfortunes but that I came backwards and forwards constantly to ask if I could

do anything for him and that I sat in the pieshop where they very civilly fetched something warm in a

tumbler from the hotel and really very nice hours after hours to keep him company over the way without his

'Over and above which,' said Flora, 'I earnestly beg you as the dearest thing that ever was if you'll still excuse

the familiarity from one who moves in very different circles to let Arthur understand that I don't know after

all whether it wasn't all nonsense between us though pleasant at the time and trying too and certainly Mr F.

did work a change and the spell being broken nothing could be expected to take place without weaving it

afresh which various circumstances have combined to prevent of which perhaps not the least powerful was

that it was not to be, I am not prepared to say that if it had been agreeable to Arthur and had brought itself

about naturally in the first instance I should not have been very glad being of a lively disposition and moped

at home where papa undoubtedly is the most aggravating of his sex and not improved since having been cut

down by the hand of the Incendiary into something of which I never saw the counterpart in all my life but

Without having been able closely to follow Mrs Finching through this labyrinth, Little Dorrit understood its

'The withered chaplet my dear,' said Flora, with great enjoyment, 'is then perished the column is crumbled

and the pyramid is standing upside down upon its what'shisname call it not giddiness call it not weakness

call it not folly I must now retire into privacy and look upon the ashes of departed joys no more but taking a

further liberty of paying for the pastry which has formed the humble pretext of our interview will for ever say

Mr F.'s Aunt, who had eaten her pie with great solemnity, and who had been elaborating some grievous

scheme of injury in her mind since her first assumption of that public position on the Marshal's steps, took the

present opportunity of addressing the following Sibyllic apostrophe to the relict of her late nephew.

Flora tried in vain to soothe the excellent woman by explaining that they were going home to dinner. Mr F.'s

Aunt persisted in replying, 'Bring him for'ard and I'll chuck him out o' winder!' Having reiterated this demand

an immense number of times, with a sustained glare of defiance at Little Dorrit, Mr F.'s Aunt folded her arms,

and sat down in the corner of the pieshop parlour; steadfastly refusing to budge until such time as 'he' should

have been 'brought for'ard,' and the chucking portion of his destiny accomplished.

In this condition of things, Flora confided to Little Dorrit that she had not seen Mr F.'s Aunt so full of life and

character for weeks; that she would find it necessary to remain there 'hours perhaps,' until the inexorable old

lady could be softened; and that she could manage her best alone. They parted, therefore, in the friendliest

Mr F.'s Aunt holding out like a grim fortress, and Flora becoming in need of refreshment, a messenger was

despatched to the hotel for the tumbler already glanced at, which was afterwards replenished. With the aid of

its content, a newspaper, and some skimming of the cream of the piestock, Flora got through the remainder

of the day in perfect good humour; though occasionally embarrassed by the consequences of an idle rumour

which circulated among the credulous infants of the neighbourhood, to the effect that an old lady had sold

herself to the pieshop to be made up, and was then sitting in the pieshop parlour, declining to complete her

contract. This attracted so many young persons of both sexes, and, when the shades of evening began to fall,

occasioned so much interruption to the business, that the merchant became very pressing in his proposals that

Mr F.'s Aunt should be removed. A conveyance was accordingly brought to the door, which, by the joint

efforts of the merchant and Flora, this remarkable woman was at last induced to enter; though not without

even then putting her head out of the window, and demanding to have him 'brought for'ard' for the purpose

originally mentioned. As she was observed at this time to direct baleful glances towards the Marshalsea, it

has been supposed that this admirably consistent female intended by 'him,' Arthur Clennam.

This, however, is mere speculation; who the person was, who, for the satisfaction of Mr F.'s Aunt's mind,

ought to have been brought forward and never was brought forward, will never be positively known.

The autumn days went on, and Little Dorrit never came to the Marshalsea now and went away without seeing

One morning, as Arthur listened for the light feet that every morning ascended winged to his heart, bringing

the heavenly brightness of a new love into the room where the old love had wrought so hard and been so true;

'Dear Arthur,' said her delighted voice outside the door, 'I have some one here. May I bring some one in?'

He had thought from the tread there were two with her. He answered 'Yes,' and she came in with Mr Meagles.

Sunbrowned and jolly Mr Meagles looked, and he opened his arms and folded Arthur in them, like a

'Now I am all right,' said Mr Meagles, after a minute or so. 'Now it's over. Arthur, my dear fellow, confess at

once that you expected me before.' 'I did,' said Arthur; 'but Amy told me' 'Little Dorrit. Never any other

'But my Little Dorrit told me that, without asking for any further explanation, I was not to expect you until

'And now you see me, my boy,' said Mr Meagles, shaking him by the hand stoutly; 'and now you shall have

any explanation and every explanation. The fact is, I was herecame straight to you from the Allongers and

Marshongers, or I should be ashamed to look you in the face this day,but you were not in company trim at

'He's not poor; he's doing well enough. Doyce is a wonderful fellow over there. I assure you he is making out

his case like a house afire. He has fallen on his legs, has Dan. Where they don't want things done and find a

man to do 'em, that man's off his legs; but where they do want things done and find a man to do 'em, that

man's on his legs. You won't have occasion to trouble the Circumlocution Office any more. Let me tell you,

'What a load you take from my mind!' cried Arthur. 'What happiness you give me!'

'Happiness?' retorted Mr Meagles. 'Don't talk about happiness till you see Dan. I assure you Dan is directing

works and executing labours over yonder, that it would make your hair stand on end to look at. He's no public

offender, bless you, now! He's medalled and ribboned, and starred and crossed, and I don'tknowwhat all'd,

'Oh, egad!' said Mr Meagles, shaking his head very seriously, 'he must hide all those things under lock and

key when he comes over here. They won't do over here. In that particular, Britannia is a Britannia in the

Mangerwon't give her children such distinctions herself, and won't allow them to be seen when they are

given by other countries. No, no, Dan!' said Mr Meagles, shaking his head again. 'That won't do here!'

'If you had brought me (except for Doyce's sake) twice what I have lost,' cried Arthur, 'you would not have

given me the pleasure that you give me in this news.' 'Why, of course, of course,' assented Mr Meagles. 'Of

course I know that, my good fellow, and therefore I come out with it in the first burst. Now, to go back, about

catching Doyce. I caught Doyce. Ran against him among a lot of those dirty brown dogs in women's

nightcaps a great deal too big for 'em, calling themselves Arabs and all sorts of incoherent races. YOU know

'em! Well! He was coming straight to me, and I was going to him, and so we came back together.'

'There!' said Mr Meagles, throwing open his arms. 'I am the worst man in the world to manage a thing of this

sort. I don't know what I should have done if I had been in the diplomatic lineright, perhaps! The long and

short of it is, Arthur, we have both been in England this fortnight. And if you go on to ask where Doyce is at

the present moment, why, my plain answer ishere he is! And now I can breathe again at last!'

Doyce darted in from behind the door, caught Arthur by both hands, and said the rest for himself.

'There are only three branches of my subject, my dear Clennam,' said Doyce, proceeding to mould them

severally, with his plastic thumb, on the palm of his hand, 'and they're soon disposed of. First, not a word

more from you about the past. There was an error in your calculations. I know what that is. It affects the

whole machine, and failure is the consequence. You will profit by the failure, and will avoid it another time. I

have done a similar thing myself, in construction, often. Every failure teaches a man something, if he will

learn; and you are too sensible a man not to learn from this failure. So much for firstly. Secondly. I was sorry

you should have taken it so heavily to heart, and reproached yourself so severely; I was travelling home night

and day to put matters right, with the assistance of our friend, when I fell in with our friend as he has

informed you. Thirdly. We two agreed, that, after what you had undergone, after your distress of mind, and

after your illness, it would be a pleasant surprise if we could so far keep quiet as to get things perfectly

arranged without your knowledge, and then come and say that all the affairs were smooth, that everything

was right, that the business stood in greater want of you than ever it did, and that a new and prosperous career

was opened before you and me as partners. That's thirdly. But you know we always make an allowance for

friction, and so I have reserved space to close in. My dear Clennam, I thoroughly confide in you; you have it

in your power to be quite as useful to me as I have, or have had, it in my power to be useful to you; your old

place awaits you, and wants you very much; there is nothing to detain you here one halfhour longer.'

There was silence, which was not broken until Arthur had stood for some time at the window with his back

towards them, and until his little wife that was to be had gone to him and stayed by him.

'I made a remark a little while ago,' said Daniel Doyce then, 'which I am inclined to think was an incorrect

one. I said there was nothing to detain you here, Clennam, half an hour longer. Am I mistaken in supposing

that you would rather not leave here till tomorrow morning? Do I know, without being very wise, where you

'Very well!' said Doyce. 'Then, if this young lady will do me the honour of regarding me for fourandtwenty

hours in the light of a father, and will take a ride with me now towards Saint Paul's Churchyard, I dare say I

Little Dorrit and he went out together soon afterwards, and Mr Meagles lingered behind to say a word to his

'I think, Arthur, you will not want Mother and me in the morning and we will keep away. It might set Mother

thinking about Pet; she's a softhearted woman. She's best at the Cottage, and I'll stay there and keep her

With that they parted for the time. And the day ended, and the night ended, and the morning came, and Little

Dorrit, simply dressed as usual and having no one with her but Maggy, came into the prison with the

sunshine. The poor room was a happy room that morning. Where in the world was there a room so full of

'My dear love,' said Arthur. 'Why does Maggy light the fire? We shall be gone directly.'

'I asked her to do it. I have taken such an odd fancy. I want you to burn something for me.'

'Only this folded paper. If you will put it in the fire with your own hand, just as it is, my fancy will be

'It is anything you like best, my own,' she answered, laughing with glistening eyes and standing on tiptoe to

So they stood before the fire, waiting: Clennam with his arm about her waist, and the fire shining, as fire in

that same place had often shone, in Little Dorrit's eyes. 'Is it bright enough now?' said Arthur. 'Quite bright

enough now,' said Little Dorrit. 'Does the charm want any words to be said?' asked Arthur, as he held the

paper over the flame. 'You can say (if you don't mind) "I love you!' answered Little Dorrit. So he said it, and

They passed very quietly along the yard; for no one was there, though many heads were stealthily peeping

Only one face, familiar of old, was in the Lodge. When they had both accosted it, and spoken many kind

words, Little Dorrit turned back one last time with her hand stretched out, saying, 'Goodbye, good John! I

Then they went up the steps of the neighbouring Saint George's Church, and went up to the altar, where

Daniel Doyce was waiting in his paternal character. And there was Little Dorrit's old friend who had given

her the Burial Register for a pillow; full of admiration that she should come back to them to be married, after

And they were married with the sun shining on them through the painted figure of Our Saviour on the

window. And they went into the very room where Little Dorrit had slumbered after her party, to sign the

Marriage Register. And there, Mr Pancks, (destined to be chief clerk to Doyce and Clennam, and afterwards

partner in the house), sinking the Incendiary in the peaceful friend, looked in at the door to see it done, with

Flora gallantly supported on one arm and Maggy on the other, and a background of John Chivery and father

and other turnkeys who had run round for the moment, deserting the parent Marshalsea for its happy child.

Nor had Flora the least signs of seclusion upon her, notwithstanding her recent declaration; but, on the

contrary, was wonderfully smart, and enjoyed the ceremonies mightily, though in a fluttered way.

Little Dorrit's old friend held the inkstand as she signed her name, and the clerk paused in taking off the good

clergyman's surplice, and all the witnesses looked on with special interest. 'For, you see,' said Little Dorrit's

old friend, 'this young lady is one of our curiosities, and has come now to the third volume of our Registers.

Her birth is in what I call the first volume; she lay asleep, on this very floor, with her pretty head on what I

call the second volume; and she's now awriting her little name as a bride in what I call the third volume.'

They all gave place when the signing was done, and Little Dorrit and her husband walked out of the church

alone. They paused for a moment on the steps of the portico, looking at the fresh perspective of the street in

Went down into a modest life of usefulness and happiness. Went down to give a mother's care, in the fulness

of time, to Fanny's neglected children no less than to their own, and to leave that lady going into Society for

ever and a day. Went down to give a tender nurse and friend to Tip for some few years, who was never vexed

by the great exactions he made of her in return for the riches he might have given her if he had ever had them,

and who lovingly closed his eyes upon the Marshalsea and all its blighted fruits. They went quietly down into

the roaring streets, inseparable and blessed; and as they passed along in sunshine and shade, the noisy and the

eager, and the arrogant and the froward and the vain, fretted and chafed, and made their usual uproar.