Chapter 9: Little Mother

Little Dorrit

by Charles Dickens

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 south-west 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 opened.

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 sea-sickness 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 man need look upon.

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
pursuing his discoveries.

At last the lodge-gate 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 the little outer court-yard where he had spoken to
the brother last night.

There was a string of people already straggling in, whom it was
not difficult to identify as the nondescript messengers, go-betweens,
and errand-bearers 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 whitey-brown 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 walking-sticks,
never were seen in Rag Fair. All of them wore the cast-off 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 eyes--hungry, 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 button-holes, leaked
out of their figures in dirty little ends of tape, and issued from
their mouths in alcoholic breathings.

As these people passed him standing still in the court-yard, 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
terms, and brought him to a coffee-shop in the street within a
stone's throw.

'Do you know Miss Dorrit?' asked the new client.

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 same house with herself and uncle.

This changed the client's half-formed design of remaining at the
coffee-shop 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 half-a-crown; and having hastily refreshed
himself at the coffee-shop, repaired with all speed to the
clarionet-player's dwelling.

There were so many lodgers in this house that the doorpost
seemed to be as full of bell-handles as a cathedral organ is of
stops. Doubtful which might be the clarionet-stop, 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'
Academy; also in another line, Evening Tuition; and behind the blind
was a little white-faced boy, with a slice of bread-and-butter and a
battledore.

The window being accessible from the footway, he looked in over
the blind, returned the shuttlecock, and put his question.

'Dorrit?' said the little white-faced boy (Master Cripples in
fact). 'Mr Dorrit? Third bell and one knock.' The pupils of Mr
Cripples appeared to have been making a copy-book of the street-door,
it was so extensively scribbled over in pencil.

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 door was opened by the poor old man
himself.

'Ha!' said he, very slowly remembering Arthur, 'you were shut in
last night?'

'Yes, Mr Dorrit. I hope to meet your niece here presently.'

'Oh!' said he, pondering. 'Out of my brother's way? True.
Would you come up-stairs and wait for her?'

'Thank you.'

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
garret--a sickly room, with a turn-up bedstead in it, so hastily and
recently turned up that the blankets were boiling over, as it were,
and keeping the lid open--a half-finished breakfast of coffee and
toast for two persons was jumbled down anyhow on a rickety table.

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 that it was cold, or that he had any waking idea whether it
was or not.

'What did you think of my brother, sir?' he asked, when he
by-and- by discovered what he was doing, left off, reached over to
the chimney-piece, and took his clarionet case down.

'I was glad,' said Arthur, very much at a loss, for his thoughts
were on the brother before him; 'to find him so well and cheerful.'
'Ha!' muttered the old man, 'yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!'

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
chimney-piece), 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 nerves about the corners of
his eyes and mouth.

'Amy, Mr Clennam. What do you think of her?'

'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 Amy. She is a very
good girl, Amy. She does her duty.'

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 right to expect, and nothing more.

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, dirt-worn
face, and decayed figure, as if he were still drooping in his
chair.

She came up after him, in the usual plain dress, and with the
usual timid manner. Her lips were a little parted, as if her heart
beat faster than usual.

'Mr Clennam, Amy,' said her uncle, 'has been expecting you some
time.'

'I took the liberty of sending you a message.'

'I received the message, sir.'

'Are you going to my mother's this morning? I think not, for it
is past your usual hour.' 'Not to-day, sir. I am not wanted
to-day.'

'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 walking-stick, 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 down-stairs; she first, he following; the uncle standing at
the stair-head, 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 war-paint 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 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. And
wine,' she added timidly. 'Were you ever there?'

'Oh no! Only into the kitchen to fetch hot water.'

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?'

'No, sir.'

He met her eyes raised to his with so much wonder in them (she
was scared when the 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-Coloured 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 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.'

'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 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
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 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?'

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
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
now--where 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, 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 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 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!'

'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 pocketbook. '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 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 mud.

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

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 eight-and-twenty, 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 good-humoured 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 tea-leaf. Her shawl looked
particularly like a tea-leaf after long infusion.

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 were under a gateway into which the majority of the
potatoes had rolled).

'This is Maggy, sir.'

'Maggy, sir,' echoed the personage presented. 'Little
mother!'

'She is the grand-daughter--' said Little Dorrit.

'Grand-daughter,' echoed Maggy.

'Of my old nurse, who has been dead a long time. Maggy, how old
are you?'

'Ten, mother,' said Maggy.

'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 mother.

'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 Little Dorrit, in a lower and triumphant
tone.

'Really does!'

'What is her history?' asked Clennam.

'Think of that, Maggy?' said Little Dorrit, taking her two large
hands and clapping them together. 'A gentleman from thousands of
miles away, wanting to know your history!'

'My history?' cried Maggy. 'Little mother.'

'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, 'Broom-handles
and pokers.'

'When Maggy was ten years old,' said Little Dorrit, watching her
face while she spoke, 'she had a bad fever, sir, and she has never
grown any older ever since.'

'Ten years old,' said Maggy, nodding her head. 'But what a nice
hospital! So comfortable, wasn't it? Oh so nice it was. Such a
Ev'nly place!'

'She had never been at peace before, sir,' said Little Dorrit,
turning towards Arthur for an instant and speaking low, 'and she
always runs off upon that.'

'Such beds there is there!' cried Maggy. 'Such lemonades! Such
oranges! Such d'licious broth and wine! Such Chicking! Oh, ain't
it a delightful place to go and stop at!'

'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, because she was never to be more than
ten years old, however long she lived--'

'However long she lived,' echoed Maggy.

'And because she was very weak; indeed was so weak that when she
began to laugh she couldn't stop herself--which was a great
pity--'

(Maggy mighty grave of a sudden.)

'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 again, 'is Maggy's history, as
Maggy knows!'

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 back to it by these lights. Never, never!

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 Orange-flavoured
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 rain and wind were tired.

The court-yard 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 fluttered
in, he saw it shut again; and then he came away.