He had a lighted cigar in his hand, and brought with him airs of ale and tobacco smoke.

"Paucks the gipsey," 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 favorite introduction of himself, "Pa-ancks the gi-ipsey, fortune-telling."

"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 the same, if you're loud enough."

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 berry.

"How d'ye do, Miss Dorrit ?" said Pancks. "I thought you wouldn't mind my running round, and looking in for a moment. Mr. Clennam I heard was here, from Mr. Dorrit. How are you, sir ?"

Clennam thanked him, and said he was glad to see him so gay.

"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 'em to miss me. -Eh, Miss Dorrit ?"

He seemed to have an insatiate delight in appealing to her, and looking at her; excitedly sticking his hair up at the same moment, like a dark species of cockatoo.

"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 to-morrow.— Eh, Miss Dorrit ?"

His little black eyes sparkled electrically. His very hair seemed to sparkle, as he roughened it. He was in that highly-charged state that one might have expected to draw sparks and snaps from him by presenting a knuckle to any part of his figure.

"Capital company here," said Pancks.-"Eh, Miss Dorrit ?"

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, saw this, and observed that they exchanged quick looks.

"I was making a remark," said Pancks, "but I declare I forget

what it was. Oh, I know! Capital company here. I've been treating 'em all round.-Eh, Miss Dorrit ?"

"Very generous of you," she returned, noticing another of the quick looks between the two.

"Don't mention it.

"Not at all," said Pancks. 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 plum pudding for every one. Quart of double stout a head. Pint of wine too, if they like it, and the authorities give permission.-Eh, Miss Dorrit ?"

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. Pancks), that she only moved her lips in answer, without forming any word.

"And oh, by-the-by!" said Pancks. "You were to live to know what was behind us on that little hand of yours. And so you shall, you shall, my darling.-Eh, Miss Dorrit?"

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 last change of a great firework, was a wonderful mystery.

"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.

66

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 moment. Come to the pump."

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 blowing to some purpose, and dried himself on his handkerchief.

"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 to give me a back, Mr. Rugg-a little higher, sir-that'll do!"

Ring

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 button-hole, 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.

Stay!" said Clennam in a whisper.

covery.

"You have made a dis

Mr. Pancks answered, with an unction which there is no language to convey, We rather think so."

"Does it implicate any one?"

"How implicate, sir?"

"In any suppression, or wrong dealing of any kind?"
"Not a bit of it."

"Thank God!" said Clennam to himself. "Now, show me."
"You are to understand"-snorted Pancks, feverishly unfolding
papers, and speaking in short high-pressure blasts of sentences,
"Where's the Pedigree? Where's Schedule number four, Mr. Rugg?
Oh! 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 what you'll
have to break to her. That man's your Father of the Marshalsea!"

CHAPTER XXXIII.

MRS. MERDLE'S COMPLAINT.

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 considerations.

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 altar-railing by his father-in-law. 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 her sagacious mind.

Among her connexions 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 labored; 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 he who had made the difficulty, and who at length gave way; and that the sacrifice was hers-not his. The same feint, with the same polite dexterity, she foisted on Mrs. Meagles, as a conjurer might have forced a card on that innocent lady; and, when her future daughter-in-law 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

U

inwardly, for the show of composure with which she bore her misfortune.

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 Merdlo 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 much like Treasury, Bar, and Bishop, and all the rest of them.

To Mrs. Merdle, Mrs. Gowan repaired on a visit of self-condolence, after having given the gracious consent aforesaid. She drove into town for the purpose, in a one-horse carriage, irreverently called at that period of English history, a pill-box. 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 job-master should betray personal knowledge of nobody but the jobber in possession. So, the Circumlocution Barnacles, who were the largest job-masters in the universe, always pretended to know of no other job but the job immediately in hand.

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.

66

'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 show-window 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 looked rather like one), had wound up the exposition with a shriek.

"Cases there are," said Mrs. Merdle, delicately crooking the little finger of her favourite hand, and making her remarks neater by that neat action; (6 cases there are where a man is not young or elegant, and is rich, and has a handsome establishment already. Those are of a different kind. In such cases

Mrs. Merdle shrugged her snowy shoulders and put her hand upon the jewel-stand, checking a little cough, as though to add, "why a