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 E

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 six for the purpose.

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 she seemed young in his.

"I am sorry to hear you were so inconvenienced last night, sir, as to be locked in. It was very unfortunate."

It was nothing, he returned. He had had a very good bed.
Oh yes!" she said quickly; "she believed there were excellent
beds at the coffee-house." He noticed that the coffee-house 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.
wine," she added timidly.

"Were you ever there?"

"Oh no! Only into the kitchen, to fetch hot-water."

And

To think of growing up with a kind of awe upon one as to the luxuries of that superb establishment, the Marshalsea hotel!

"I asked you last night," said Clennam, "how you had become acquainted with my mother. Did you ever hear her name before she sent for you?"

“No, sir."

"Do you think your father ever did?"

64 'No, sir."

He met her eyes raised to his with so much wonder in them (she was scared when that encounter took place, and shrunk away again), that he felt it necessary to say:

"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 father's life was my name of Clennam ever familiar to him?" "No, sir."

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 lead-colored sky, the smoke and mist raced after them, the dark tide ran fierce and strong in the same direction. Little Dorrit seemed the least, the quietest, and weakest of Heaven's creatures.

"Let me put you in a coach," said Arthur Clennam, very nearly adding, "my poor child."

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 hesitated and trembled, and tears rose in her eyes, but did not fall.

"To say to me— -?"

"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 different in some things since."

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My thoughts will never be unjust or harsh towards him, believe me." "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 All that he said was be fairly remembered. may 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 any one else. He is far more thought of than the Marshal is."

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 quarter of a century, and be prosperous!"

What affection in her words, what compassion in her repressed tears, what a great soul of fidelity within her, how true the light that shed false brightness round him!

"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 kind-hearted 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

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 think—indeed I don't wish it at all, unless I should have spoken so confusedly, that-that you can scarcely understand me, which I am afraid may be the case."

He told her with perfect truth that it was not the case; and putting himself between her and the sharp wind and rain, sheltered her as well as he could.

"I feel permitted now," he said, "to ask you a little more concerning your father. Has he many creditors?"

"Oh! a great number."

"I mean detaining creditors, who keep him where he is?" "Oh yes! a great number."

"Can you

tell me I can get the information, no doubt, elsewhere, if you cannot-who is the most influential of them?"

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 Government-high 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 mentioned him.

"It can do no harm," thought Arthur, "if I see this Mr. Tite Barnacle."

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 father out, but you don't know how hopeless it is.”

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 da 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, trembled as they clasped each other.

"It would be a new distress to him even to know that I earn a little

money, and that Fanny carns a little money. He is so anxious about us, you see, feeling helplessly shut up there. Such a good, good

father!"

gone.

He let the little burst of feeling go by before he spoke. It was soon 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 quiet as if she had been plying her needle in his mother's room. "You would be glad to have your brother set at liberty?"

"Oh very, very glad, sir!"

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Well, we will hope for him at least. You told me last night of a friend you had?"

His name was Plornish, Little Dorrit said.

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 him, and to have something like a promise from her that she would cherish it.

"There is one friend!" he said, putting up his pocket-book. “As I take you back-you are going back?"

"Oh yes! going straight home."

"As I take you back," the word home jarred upon him, "let me ask you to persuade yourself that you have another friend. I make no professions, and say no more."

"You are truly kind to me, sir. I am sure I need no more."

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 old 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!" 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 mud.

"Oh, Maggy," said Dorrit, "what a clumsy child you are!"

Maggy was not hurt, but picked herself up immediately, and then