"No," said Arthur, "I know of your kind offices at second hand, but on the best authority. Through Little Dorrit.--I mean," he explained, "Miss Dorrit."

Mr. Clennam, is it? Oh! I've heard of you, sir." "And I of you," said Arthur.

"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 resented her claiming to know people of such distinction.

"It was her father that I got acquainted with first. And through getting acquainted with him, you see-why-I got acquainted with her," said Plornish tautologically.

"I see."

"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 round the room. "Dursn't let him know it, they dursn't!"

"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 about it for a moment, and gave it up.

"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."

"True. Pray how did you introduce her at my mother's?"

Mr. Plornish picked a bit of lime out of his whisker, put it between his lips, turned it with his tongue like a sugar-plum, considered, found himself unequal to the task of lucid explanation, and appealing to his wife, said, "Sally, you may as well mention how it was, old woman."

"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 ill-conwenience," (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 likeways 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 the little hand as she kissed it.

"The landlord of the Yard," said Arthur Clennam, "is

"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 connexion 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. too! An old acquaintance of mine, long ago!

"Mr. Casby,

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 horses-and 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 stable-yard in High Holborn, where a remarkably fine grey gelding, worth, at the lowest figure, seventy-five 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 twenty-pound 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 snapper-up of a good thing, who might look in at that address as per advertisement. This gentleman, happening also to be he 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 twenty-pound 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 up 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 banking-house, 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 the prisoner.

"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 sister also."

"The last reason, sir," said Plornish, "would be quite sufficient. Your wishes shall be attended to.”

A

"A Friend has obtained his discharge, you can say if you please. Friend who hopes that for his sister's sake, if for no one else's, he will make good use of his 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 ckally a pleasure and a—it'll be ekally a pleasure and a-." Finding himself unable to balance his sentence after two efforts, Mr. Plornish wisely dropped it. He took Clennam's card, and appropriate pecuniary compliment.

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 1 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 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 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 mollancholly 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 mollancholly mad. You was always at it-if 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 shoe-binding, 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 all-often 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 nd treated altogether, than-Mr. Plornish said manufacturers, but Lappeared 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.

CHAPTER XIII.

PATRIARCHAL.

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 enquiry 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 enquiry 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 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 ourselves—that is to say, how people in general, our profounder selves excepted, deceive themselves-as to motives of action.

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 cruptive summer-houses, that it had meant to run over in no time.

"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 rose-leaves and lavender seems to come upon me even here."

When his knock, at the bright brass knocker of obsolete 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 Mutes in the Eastern manner-and the door, closing again, seemed to shut out sound and motion. The furniture was formal, grave, and quaker-like, but well-kept; 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 parlor-fire ticked in the grate. There was only one person on the parlor-hearth, and the loud watch in his pocket ticked audibly.

The servant-maid 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 arm-chair, with his list shoes on the rug, and his thumbs slowly revolving over one another. This was old Christopher Casby-recognisable at a glance-as unchanged in twenty years and upwards, as his own solid furniture-as little touched by the influence of the varying seasons, as the old rose-leaves and old lavender in his porcelain jars.

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