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difference. My dear child, when we get rid of Uncle, you shall know all

about it. We'll drop him at the cook's shop where he is going to dine.'

They walked on with him until they came to a dirty shop window in a

dirty street, which was made almost opaque by the steam of hot meats,

vegetables, and puddings. But glimpses were to be caught of a roast leg

of pork bursting into tears of sage and onion in a metal reservoir full

of gravy, of an unctuous piece of roast beef and blisterous Yorkshire

pudding, bubbling hot in a similar receptacle, of a stuffed fillet of

veal in rapid cut, of a ham in a perspiration with the pace it was going

at, of a shallow tank of baked potatoes glued together by their own

richness, of a truss or two of boiled greens, and other substantial

delicacies. Within, were a few wooden partitions, behind which such

customers as found it more convenient to take away their dinners in

stomachs than in their hands, Packed their purchases in solitude. Fanny

opening her reticule, as they surveyed these things, produced from that

repository a shilling and handed it to Uncle. Uncle, after not looking

at it a little while, divined its object, and muttering 'Dinner? Ha!

Yes, yes, yes!' slowly vanished from them into the mist.

'Now, Amy,' said her sister, 'come with me, if you are not too tired to

walk to Harley Street, Cavendish Square.'

The air with which she threw off this distinguished address and the toss

she gave to her new bonnet (which was more gauzy than serviceable), made

her sister wonder; however, she expressed her readiness to go to Harley

Street, and thither they directed their steps. Arrived at that grand

destination, Fanny singled out the handsomest house, and knocking at the

door, inquired for Mrs Merdle. The footman who opened the door, although

he had powder on his head and was backed up by two other footmen

likewise powdered, not only admitted Mrs Merdle to be at home, but asked

Fanny to walk in. Fanny walked in, taking her sister with her; and they

went up-stairs with powder going before and powder stopping behind,

and were left in a spacious semicircular drawing-room, one of several

drawing-rooms, where there was a parrot on the outside of a golden cage

holding on by its beak, with its scaly legs in the air, and putting

itself into many strange upside-down postures. This peculiarity has been

observed in birds of quite another feather, climbing upon golden wires.

The room was far more splendid than anything Little Dorrit had ever

imagined, and would have been splendid and costly in any eyes. She

looked in amazement at her sister and would have asked a question,

but that Fanny with a warning frown pointed to a curtained doorway of

communication with another room. The curtain shook next moment, and a

lady, raising it with a heavily ringed hand, dropped it behind her again

as she entered.

The lady was not young and fresh from the hand of Nature, but was young

and fresh from the hand of her maid. She had large unfeeling handsome

eyes, and dark unfeeling handsome hair, and a broad unfeeling handsome

bosom, and was made the most of in every particular. Either because she

had a cold, or because it suited her face, she wore a rich white

fillet tied over her head and under her chin. And if ever there were

an unfeeling handsome chin that looked as if, for certain, it had never

been, in familiar parlance, 'chucked' by the hand of man, it was the

chin curbed up so tight and close by that laced bridle.

'Mrs Merdle,' said Fanny. 'My sister, ma'am.'

'I am glad to see your sister, Miss Dorrit. I did not remember that you

had a sister.'

'I did not mention that I had,' said Fanny.

'Ah!' Mrs Merdle curled the little finger of her left hand as who should

say, 'I have caught you. I know you didn't!' All her action was usually

with her left hand because her hands were not a pair; and left being

much the whiter and plumper of the two. Then she added: 'Sit down,' and

composed herself voluptuously, in a nest of crimson and gold cushions,

on an ottoman near the parrot.

'Also professional?' said Mrs Merdle, looking at Little Dorrit through

an eye-glass.

Fanny answered No. 'No,' said Mrs Merdle, dropping her glass. 'Has not a

professional air. Very pleasant; but not professional.'

'My sister, ma'am,' said Fanny, in whom there was a singular mixture

of deference and hardihood, 'has been asking me to tell her, as between

sisters, how I came to have the honour of knowing you. And as I had

engaged to call upon you once more, I thought I might take the liberty

of bringing her with me, when perhaps you would tell her. I wish her to

know, and perhaps you will tell her?' 'Do you think, at your sister's

age--' hinted Mrs Merdle.

'She is much older than she looks,' said Fanny; 'almost as old as I am.'

'Society,' said Mrs Merdle, with another curve of her little finger,

'is so difficult to explain to young persons (indeed is so difficult to

explain to most persons), that I am glad to hear that.

I wish Society was not so arbitrary, I wish it was not so

exacting--Bird, be quiet!'

The parrot had given a most piercing shriek, as if its name were Society

and it asserted its right to its exactions.

'But,' resumed Mrs Merdle, 'we must take it as we find it. We know it is

hollow and conventional and worldly and very shocking, but unless we

are Savages in the Tropical seas (I should have been charmed to be one

myself--most delightful life and perfect climate, I am told), we

must consult it. It is the common lot. Mr Merdle is a most extensive

merchant, his transactions are on the vastest scale, his wealth and

influence are very great, but even he--Bird, be quiet!'

The parrot had shrieked another shriek; and it filled up the sentence so

expressively that Mrs Merdle was under no necessity to end it.

'Since your sister begs that I would terminate our personal

acquaintance,' she began again, addressing Little Dorrit, 'by relating

the circumstances that are much to her credit, I cannot object to comply

with her request, I am sure. I have a son (I was first married extremely

young) of two or three-and-twenty.'

Fanny set her lips, and her eyes looked half triumphantly at her sister.

'A son of two or three-and-twenty. He is a little gay, a thing Society

is accustomed to in young men, and he is very impressible. Perhaps he

inherits that misfortune. I am very impressible myself, by nature. The

weakest of creatures--my feelings are touched in a moment.'

She said all this, and everything else, as coldly as a woman of snow;

quite forgetting the sisters except at odd times, and apparently

addressing some abstraction of Society; for whose behoof, too, she

occasionally arranged her dress, or the composition of her figure upon

the ottoman.

'So he is very impressible. Not a misfortune in our natural state I dare

say, but we are not in a natural state. Much to be lamented, no doubt,

particularly by myself, who am a child of nature if I could but show it;

but so it is. Society suppresses us and dominates us--Bird, be quiet!'

The parrot had broken into a violent fit of laughter, after twisting

divers bars of his cage with his crooked bill, and licking them with his

black tongue.

'It is quite unnecessary to say to a person of your good sense, wide

range of experience, and cultivated feeling,' said Mrs Merdle from her

nest of crimson and gold--and there put up her glass to refresh her

memory as to whom she was addressing,--'that the stage sometimes has

a fascination for young men of that class of character. In saying the

stage, I mean the people on it of the female sex. Therefore, when I

heard that my son was supposed to be fascinated by a dancer, I knew what

that usually meant in Society, and confided in her being a dancer at the

Opera, where young men moving in Society are usually fascinated.'

She passed her white hands over one another, observant of the sisters

now; and the rings upon her fingers grated against each other with a

hard sound.

'As your sister will tell you, when I found what the theatre was I was

much surprised and much distressed. But when I found that your sister,

by rejecting my son's advances (I must add, in an unexpected manner),

had brought him to the point of proposing marriage, my feelings were

of the profoundest anguish--acute.' She traced the outline of her left

eyebrow, and put it right.

'In a distracted condition, which only a mother--moving in Society--can

be susceptible of, I determined to go myself to the theatre, and

represent my state of mind to the dancer. I made myself known to your

sister. I found her, to my surprise, in many respects different from

my expectations; and certainly in none more so, than in meeting me

with--what shall I say--a sort of family assertion on her own part?' Mrs

Merdle smiled.

'I told you, ma'am,' said Fanny, with a heightening colour, 'that

although you found me in that situation, I was so far above the rest,

that I considered my family as good as your son's; and that I had a

brother who, knowing the circumstances, would be of the same opinion,

and would not consider such a connection any honour.'

'Miss Dorrit,' said Mrs Merdle, after frostily looking at her through

her glass, 'precisely what I was on the point of telling your sister,

in pursuance of your request. Much obliged to you for recalling it

so accurately and anticipating me. I immediately,' addressing Little

Dorrit, '(for I am the creature of impulse), took a bracelet from my

arm, and begged your sister to let me clasp it on hers, in token of

the delight I had in our being able to approach the subject so far on

a common footing.' (This was perfectly true, the lady having bought a

cheap and showy article on her way to the interview, with a general eye

to bribery.)

'And I told you, Mrs Merdle,' said Fanny, 'that we might be unfortunate,

but we are not common.'

'I think, the very words, Miss Dorrit,' assented Mrs Merdle.

'And I told you, Mrs Merdle,' said Fanny, 'that if you spoke to me

of the superiority of your son's standing in Society, it was barely

possible that you rather deceived yourself in your suppositions about my

origin; and that my father's standing, even in the Society in which

he now moved (what that was, was best known to myself), was eminently

superior, and was acknowledged by every one.'

'Quite accurate,' rejoined Mrs Merdle. 'A most admirable memory.'

'Thank you, ma'am. Perhaps you will be so kind as to tell my sister the

rest.'

'There is very little to tell,' said Mrs Merdle, reviewing the breadth

of bosom which seemed essential to her having room enough to be

unfeeling in, 'but it is to your sister's credit. I pointed out to your

sister the plain state of the case; the impossibility of the Society

in which we moved recognising the Society in which she moved--though

charming, I have no doubt; the immense disadvantage at which she would

consequently place the family she had so high an opinion of, upon which

we should find ourselves compelled to look down with contempt, and

from which (socially speaking) we should feel obliged to recoil with

abhorrence. In short, I made an appeal to that laudable pride in your

sister.'

'Let my sister know, if you please, Mrs Merdle,' Fanny pouted, with a

toss of her gauzy bonnet, 'that I had already had the honour of telling

your son that I wished to have nothing whatever to say to him.'

'Well, Miss Dorrit,' assented Mrs Merdle, 'perhaps I might have

mentioned that before. If I did not think of it, perhaps it was because

my mind reverted to the apprehensions I had at the time that he might

persevere and you might have something to say to him.

I also mentioned to your sister--I again address the non-professional

Miss Dorrit--that my son would have nothing in the event of such a

marriage, and would be an absolute beggar. (I mention that merely as

a fact which is part of the narrative, and not as supposing it to have

influenced your sister, except in the prudent and legitimate way

in which, constituted as our artificial system is, we must all be

influenced by such considerations.) Finally, after some high words

and high spirit on the part of your sister, we came to the complete

understanding that there was no danger; and your sister was so obliging

as to allow me to present her with a mark or two of my appreciation at

my dressmaker's.'

Little Dorrit looked sorry, and glanced at Fanny with a troubled face.

'Also,' said Mrs Merdle, 'as to promise to give me the present pleasure

of a closing interview, and of parting with her on the best of terms.

On which occasion,' added Mrs Merdle, quitting her nest, and putting

something in Fanny's hand, 'Miss Dorrit will permit me to say Farewell

with best wishes in my own dull manner.'

The sisters rose at the same time, and they all stood near the cage of

the parrot, as he tore at a claw-full of biscuit and spat it out, seemed

to mock them with a pompous dance of his body without moving his feet,

and suddenly turned himself upside down and trailed himself all over

the outside of his golden cage, with the aid of his cruel beak and black

tongue.

'Adieu, Miss Dorrit, with best wishes,' said Mrs Merdle. 'If we could

only come to a Millennium, or something of that sort, I for one might

have the pleasure of knowing a number of charming and talented persons

from whom I am at present excluded. A more primitive state of society

would be delicious to me. There used to be a poem when I learnt lessons,

something about Lo the poor Indians whose something mind! If a few

thousand persons moving in Society, could only go and be Indians, I