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its meetings in the Snuggery, by addressing a speech to the members

of the institution, singing a song, and treating the company to five

gallons of ale--report madly added a bushel of shrimps. The effect on

Mr Plornish of such of these phenomena as he became an eye-witness of in

his faithful visits, made an impression on Little Dorrit only second to

that produced by the phenomena themselves. They seemed to gag and bind

him. He could only stare, and sometimes weakly mutter that it wouldn't

be believed down Bleeding Heart Yard that this was Pancks; but he never

said a word more, or made a sign more, even to Little Dorrit.

Mr Pancks crowned his mysteries by making himself acquainted with Tip

in some unknown manner, and taking a Sunday saunter into the College

on that gentleman's arm. Throughout he never took any notice of Little

Dorrit, save once or twice when he happened to come close to her and

there was no one very near; on which occasions, he said in passing,

with a friendly look and a puff of encouragement, 'Pancks the

gipsy--fortune-telling.'

Little Dorrit worked and strove as usual, wondering at all this, but

keeping her wonder, as she had from her earliest years kept many heavier

loads, in her own breast. A change had stolen, and was stealing yet,

over the patient heart. Every day found her something more retiring

than the day before. To pass in and out of the prison unnoticed, and

elsewhere to be overlooked and forgotten, were, for herself, her chief

desires.

To her own room too, strangely assorted room for her delicate youth

and character, she was glad to retreat as often as she could without

desertion of any duty. There were afternoon times when she was

unemployed, when visitors dropped in to play a hand at cards with her

father, when she could be spared and was better away. Then she would

flit along the yard, climb the scores of stairs that led to her room,

and take her seat at the window. Many combinations did those spikes

upon the wall assume, many light shapes did the strong iron weave itself

into, many golden touches fell upon the rust, while Little Dorrit sat

there musing. New zig-zags sprung into the cruel pattern sometimes, when

she saw it through a burst of tears; but beautified or hardened still,

always over it and under it and through it, she was fain to look in her

solitude, seeing everything with that ineffaceable brand.

A garret, and a Marshalsea garret without compromise, was Little

Dorrit's room. Beautifully kept, it was ugly in itself, and had little

but cleanliness and air to set it off; for what embellishment she had

ever been able to buy, had gone to her father's room. Howbeit, for this

poor place she showed an increasing love; and to sit in it alone became

her favourite rest.

Insomuch, that on a certain afternoon during the Pancks mysteries, when

she was seated at her window, and heard Maggy's well-known step coming

up the stairs, she was very much disturbed by the apprehension of being

summoned away. As Maggy's step came higher up and nearer, she trembled

and faltered; and it was as much as she could do to speak, when Maggy at

length appeared.

'Please, Little Mother,' said Maggy, panting for breath, 'you must come

down and see him. He's here.'

'Who, Maggy?'

'Who, o' course Mr Clennam. He's in your father's room, and he says to

me, Maggy, will you be so kind and go and say it's only me.'

'I am not very well, Maggy. I had better not go. I am going to lie down.

See! I lie down now, to ease my head. Say, with my grateful regard, that

you left me so, or I would have come.'

'Well, it an't very polite though, Little Mother,' said the staring

Maggy, 'to turn your face away, neither!'

Maggy was very susceptible to personal slights, and very ingenious in

inventing them. 'Putting both your hands afore your face too!' she went

on. 'If you can't bear the looks of a poor thing, it would be better to

tell her so at once, and not go and shut her out like that, hurting her

feelings and breaking her heart at ten year old, poor thing!'

'It's to ease my head, Maggy.'

'Well, and if you cry to ease your head, Little Mother, let me cry too.

Don't go and have all the crying to yourself,' expostulated Maggy, 'that

an't not being greedy.' And immediately began to blubber.

It was with some difficulty that she could be induced to go back with

the excuse; but the promise of being told a story--of old her great

delight--on condition that she concentrated her faculties upon the

errand and left her little mistress to herself for an hour longer,

combined with a misgiving on Maggy's part that she had left her good

temper at the bottom of the staircase, prevailed. So away she went,

muttering her message all the way to keep it in her mind, and, at the

appointed time, came back.

'He was very sorry, I can tell you,' she announced, 'and wanted to send

a doctor. And he's coming again to-morrow he is and I don't think he'll

have a good sleep to-night along o' hearing about your head, Little

Mother. Oh my! Ain't you been a-crying!'

'I think I have, a little, Maggy.'

'A little! Oh!'

'But it's all over now--all over for good, Maggy. And my head is much

better and cooler, and I am quite comfortable. I am very glad I did not

go down.'

Her great staring child tenderly embraced her; and having smoothed her

hair, and bathed her forehead and eyes with cold water (offices in which

her awkward hands became skilful), hugged her again, exulted in her

brighter looks, and stationed her in her chair by the window. Over

against this chair, Maggy, with apoplectic exertions that were not

at all required, dragged the box which was her seat on story-telling

occasions, sat down upon it, hugged her own knees, and said, with a

voracious appetite for stories, and with widely-opened eyes:

'Now, Little Mother, let's have a good 'un!'

'What shall it be about, Maggy?'

'Oh, let's have a princess,' said Maggy, 'and let her be a reg'lar one.

Beyond all belief, you know!'

Little Dorrit considered for a moment; and with a rather sad smile upon

her face, which was flushed by the sunset, began:

'Maggy, there was once upon a time a fine King, and he had everything he

could wish for, and a great deal more. He had gold and silver, diamonds

and rubies, riches of every kind. He had palaces, and he had--'

'Hospitals,' interposed Maggy, still nursing her knees. 'Let him have

hospitals, because they're so comfortable. Hospitals with lots of

Chicking.'

'Yes, he had plenty of them, and he had plenty of everything.'

'Plenty of baked potatoes, for instance?' said Maggy.

'Plenty of everything.'

'Lor!' chuckled Maggy, giving her knees a hug. 'Wasn't it prime!'

'This King had a daughter, who was the wisest and most beautiful

Princess that ever was seen. When she was a child she understood all her

lessons before her masters taught them to her; and when she was grown

up, she was the wonder of the world. Now, near the Palace where this

Princess lived, there was a cottage in which there was a poor little

tiny woman, who lived all alone by herself.'

'An old woman,' said Maggy, with an unctuous smack of her lips.

'No, not an old woman. Quite a young one.'

'I wonder she warn't afraid,' said Maggy. 'Go on, please.'

'The Princess passed the cottage nearly every day, and whenever she went

by in her beautiful carriage, she saw the poor tiny woman spinning at

her wheel, and she looked at the tiny woman, and the tiny woman looked

at her. So, one day she stopped the coachman a little way from the

cottage, and got out and walked on and peeped in at the door, and there,

as usual, was the tiny woman spinning at her wheel, and she looked at

the Princess, and the Princess looked at her.'

'Like trying to stare one another out,' said Maggy. 'Please go on,

Little Mother.'

'The Princess was such a wonderful Princess that she had the power of

knowing secrets, and she said to the tiny woman, Why do you keep it

there? This showed her directly that the Princess knew why she lived

all alone by herself spinning at her wheel, and she kneeled down at

the Princess's feet, and asked her never to betray her. So the Princess

said, I never will betray you. Let me see it. So the tiny woman closed

the shutter of the cottage window and fastened the door, and trembling

from head to foot for fear that any one should suspect her, opened a

very secret place and showed the Princess a shadow.'

'Lor!' said Maggy. 'It was the shadow of Some one who had gone by long

before: of Some one who had gone on far away quite out of reach, never,

never to come back. It was bright to look at; and when the tiny woman

showed it to the Princess, she was proud of it with all her heart, as

a great, great treasure. When the Princess had considered it a little

while, she said to the tiny woman, And you keep watch over this every

day? And she cast down her eyes, and whispered, Yes. Then the Princess

said, Remind me why. To which the other replied, that no one so good and

kind had ever passed that way, and that was why in the beginning. She

said, too, that nobody missed it, that nobody was the worse for it, that

Some one had gone on, to those who were expecting him--'

'Some one was a man then?' interposed Maggy.

Little Dorrit timidly said Yes, she believed so; and resumed:

'--Had gone on to those who were expecting him, and that this

remembrance was stolen or kept back from nobody. The Princess made

answer, Ah! But when the cottager died it would be discovered there. The

tiny woman told her No; when that time came, it would sink quietly into

her own grave, and would never be found.'

'Well, to be sure!' said Maggy. 'Go on, please.'

'The Princess was very much astonished to hear this, as you may suppose,

Maggy.' ('And well she might be,' said Maggy.)

'So she resolved to watch the tiny woman, and see what came of it. Every

day she drove in her beautiful carriage by the cottage-door, and there

she saw the tiny woman always alone by herself spinning at her wheel,

and she looked at the tiny woman, and the tiny woman looked at her. At

last one day the wheel was still, and the tiny woman was not to be seen.

When the Princess made inquiries why the wheel had stopped, and where

the tiny woman was, she was informed that the wheel had stopped because

there was nobody to turn it, the tiny woman being dead.'

('They ought to have took her to the Hospital,' said Maggy, and then

she'd have got over it.')

'The Princess, after crying a very little for the loss of the tiny

woman, dried her eyes and got out of her carriage at the place where

she had stopped it before, and went to the cottage and peeped in at the

door. There was nobody to look at her now, and nobody for her to look

at, so she went in at once to search for the treasured shadow. But there

was no sign of it to be found anywhere; and then she knew that the tiny

woman had told her the truth, and that it would never give anybody any

trouble, and that it had sunk quietly into her own grave, and that she

and it were at rest together.

'That's all, Maggy.'

The sunset flush was so bright on Little Dorrit's face when she came

thus to the end of her story, that she interposed her hand to shade it.

'Had she got to be old?' Maggy asked.

'The tiny woman?' 'Ah!'

'I don't know,' said Little Dorrit. 'But it would have been just the

same if she had been ever so old.'

'Would it raly!' said Maggy. 'Well, I suppose it would though.' And sat

staring and ruminating.

She sat so long with her eyes wide open, that at length Little Dorrit,

to entice her from her box, rose and looked out of window. As she

glanced down into the yard, she saw Pancks come in and leer up with the

corner of his eye as he went by.

'Who's he, Little Mother?' said Maggy. She had joined her at the window

and was leaning on her shoulder. 'I see him come in and out often.'

'I have heard him called a fortune-teller,' said Little Dorrit. 'But I

doubt if he could tell many people even their past or present fortunes.'

'Couldn't have told the Princess hers?' said Maggy.

Little Dorrit, looking musingly down into the dark valley of the prison,

shook her head.

'Nor the tiny woman hers?' said Maggy.

'No,' said Little Dorrit, with the sunset very bright upon her. 'But let

us come away from the window.'

CHAPTER 25. Conspirators and Others

The private residence of Mr Pancks was in Pentonville, where he lodged

on the second-floor of a professional gentleman in an extremely small

way, who had an inner-door within the street door, poised on a spring

and starting open with a click like a trap; and who wrote up in the

fan-light, RUGG, GENERAL AGENT, ACCOUNTANT, DEBTS RECOVERED.

This scroll, majestic in its severe simplicity, illuminated a little

slip of front garden abutting on the thirsty high-road, where a few

of the dustiest of leaves hung their dismal heads and led a life of

choking. A professor of writing occupied the first-floor, and enlivened

the garden railings with glass-cases containing choice examples of what

his pupils had been before six lessons and while the whole of his young

family shook the table, and what they had become after six lessons

when the young family was under restraint. The tenancy of Mr Pancks was

limited to one airy bedroom; he covenanting and agreeing with Mr Rugg

his landlord, that in consideration of a certain scale of payments