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.please, to keep my secret.
you please.
-sake, if for no one else’s, he will make good use of his
-hand, with your left.
.Yard? i>VVhy, take a look at ’em and sec. There was the
come‘! Here's the last ‘I’ve got to say to you‘. -You shall
give’me-Vanotlier tenidown, and I'll run my ‘pen clean
throuvh it.” ‘ Then - said Captain Maroon, when that
wouldOn’t suit, “Now, l’lI tell you what it is, and this
shuts, it up ; he has used me bad,,but I’ll let him off for
’.another iivevdown 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"iirst offer, gave a receipt infull and discharged the
‘prisoner. . V
‘.-'1‘! Mr. Plornis ,” said‘ Arthur, “ I trust to you, if you
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
')vliou1'you are not at libertytto name, you will not only
do me a. service, but may do him one, and his sister
.also.” .1 ,
“ The last reason, sir,” said Plornisli, ‘.‘ would be quite
sufiicient. ' Your Wishes shall be attended to.” i V
g “ A Friend has obtained his discharge, you can say if
A Friend who hopes that for his sister’s
liberty.”
“ Your wishes, sir, shall be attended to.”
- “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 feel
under an obligation to you.”
“ Don’t name it, sir,” returned Plornish, “it’ll be
..ekally a pleasure and a-it'll be ekally a. pleasure and
-a-”- Finding himself unable to balance his sentence
after twoiefforts, Mr. Plornisli wisely dropped it. He
took Clennam’s ‘card, and appropriate pecuniary compli-
ment. . y '
7 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.
Theywas‘ all hard up.tl1ere, Mr. Plornish said, uncom-
mom hard"up,.to be sure. lV.ell, he couldn’t say how it
was ; he didn’t know as anybody could say how it was;
alllie know'd was, that so it was. lVl1en a man felt, on
his own back and in his own belly, that he was poor, that
man (Mr. Plornish gave it as his decided belief) know’d
well. that poor he. was somehow or another, and you
could’t talk it out of him, no more than you could talk
Beef into him. Then you see, some people as was bet-
ter off said, and a. good many such people lived pretty
close up to the mark themselves, if not beyond it so lie’d
heard, that they was “ improvident” (that was the fa-
ivourite word) down the Yard.’ For instance, if they see
-a man with his wife and children going to Hampton
Court in a lVan, perhaps once in a. year, they says
‘. “Hallo! ‘ Ithoiight you was ‘poor, my improvident
.friend 1”. “Vlly,'LOI‘d, how hard it was upon a man!
-lyliat was a man to do? He couldn’t go mollancliolly
- mad, and even if he did, you wouldn’t be the better for
it. w In Mr. Plornish’s judgment you would be the worse
for it.’ -Yet you seemed to want to make a man mellan-
cholly mad. You was always at it-if not with your right
YVhat was they a doing in the
girls and their mothers 3. working at their sewing, or
:their shoe.-binding, or their trimming, or their waistcoat
Jnakinrr,
I than able to keep body and soul togetlier after all-often
day and night and night and day, and not more
not somuch. There was people of pretty well all sorts
of trades you could name, all wanting to work, and yet
=not able toget it. rTl1eX"(3 was old people, after working
all their lives, going and being shut up in the workliouse,
much worsefed and‘ lodged and treated altogether; than
,',-Mr.1Plornish ‘said manufacturers, but appeared to
mean malefactors. VVliy, a man didn’t know where to
,tLll‘nlllX11Self,' for a,crnn-ib of comfort. As to who was
to blame for it,‘ Mr. Plornisli didn’t know who was to
blame for.it.' ‘ He could tell youwlio 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
LITTLE’ D ORBIT.‘
755
out? He only ‘know’d that it wasn’t‘put rightby them
what undertook that line of business, auditliat it didn't
come right of itself. ’And in'brlef his illogical opinion
was, that if you couldit do nothing for him, you had bet-
ter take nothing from him for doing of it ; so far as he
could make out, that was about what it cometo. ‘Thus,
in .a prolix, gently-growling, foolish way, did Plornisli
tum the tangled skein of his estate about andvabout, like
to find some beginning or ‘
a blindeman who was tryin
end to it ; until they reaclie the prison gate.‘ There, he
left his Principal alone; to wonder, as he rode away,
how many thousand Plornishes there might be withiua
day or two's journey of the Circumlocution Office, play-
ing sundry curious variations on the same tune,.which
were not known by ear in that glorious institution. ; ;--;
CHAPTER XIII. I ”
Patriarchal.
THE mention of Mr. Casby again revived, in Clennamfs
memory, the smouldering embers of curiosity and inter-
est 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
wooden-headed old Christopher (so he was still occasion-
ally 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 he richin
weekly tenants, and tovget a good quantity of blood out
of the stones of several unpromising courts and alleys. ,
After some days of inquiry and research, Arthur Cleu-
nam 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. .110
had no hopeful inquiry to make, at. present, concerning
Little Dorrit either ; but he argued with himself that it
might, for anything he knew it might be serviceable-.to
the poor child, if he renewed this acquaintance. ‘ It is
hardly necessary to add. that beyond all doubtlie would
have presented himself at Mr. Casby’s door, if there had
been no Little Dorritin existence : for we all know how
we all deceive ourselves-that is to say, how people in
general, our profounder selves excepted, deceive them-
selves-eas to motives of action. - .
VVith a comfortable impression upon him, and quite an
honest one in its way, that lie 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 valle , and
‘up again to the top of Pentonville Hill ; but wliic 1 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 summer-
houses, that it had meant to run over in no time. .-
" The house,” thought Cleunam, as he crossed to the
door, “is as little changed as my mother's, and looks
almost as gloomy. 'But thelikeness ends outside. I know
its staid repose within. The smell of its jars of old rose-
leaves and lavender seems to come upon me even herelx’
VVhen his knock,,at the bright brass knocker of obso-
lete shape, brought a woman-servant 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, air-tight house-one
might have fancied it to have been stifled by. Mates in
the Eastern manner-and the door, closing again, seemed
to shut out sound and motion. The furniture was for-
mal, grave, and quaker-like, but well-kept ; and had as
prepossessing an aspect, as.anytliing,: from a human
creature to a wooden stool, that is meant. for much use
and is preserved for little, can ever wear. There was fl.
grave clock, ticking somewhere up the staircase; and
there was a songlcss bird in the same direction, pecking
at his cage as if lie.were ticking too. . Tlie.parlour-
tire ticked in the grate.
There was only.one person on