prompt:
Chapter: 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
accurately defined, and on certain verbal notice duly given, he should
be at liberty to elect to share the Sunday breakfast, dinner, tea, or
supper, or each or any or all of those repasts or meals of Mr and Miss
Rugg (his daughter) in the back-parlour.

Miss Rugg was a lady of a little property which she had acquired,
     together with much distinction in the neighbourhood, by having her
     heart severely lacerated and her feelings mangled by a middle-aged baker
     resident in the vicinity, against whom she had, by the agency of Mr
     Rugg, found it necessary to proceed at law to recover damages for a
     breach of promise of marriage. The baker having been, by the counsel for
     Miss Rugg, witheringly denounced on that occasion up to the full amount
     of twenty guineas, at the rate of about eighteen-pence an epithet, and
     having been cast in corresponding damages, still suffered occasional
     persecution from the youth of Pentonville. But Miss Rugg, environed by
     the majesty of the law, and having her damages invested in the public
     securities, was regarded with consideration.

     In the society of Mr Rugg, who had a round white visage, as if all his
     blushes had been drawn out of him long ago, and who had a ragged yellow
     head like a worn-out hearth broom; and in the society of Miss Rugg, who
     had little nankeen spots, like shirt buttons, all over her face, and
     whose own yellow tresses were rather scrubby than luxuriant; Mr Pancks
     had usually dined on Sundays for some few years, and had twice a week,
     or so, enjoyed an evening collation of bread, Dutch cheese, and porter.
     Mr Pancks was one of the very few marriageable men for whom Miss Rugg
     had no terrors, the argument with which he reassured himself being
     twofold; that is to say, firstly, 'that it wouldn't do twice,' and
     secondly, 'that he wasn't worth it.' Fortified within this double
     armour, Mr Pancks snorted at Miss Rugg on easy terms.

     Up to this time, Mr Pancks had transacted little or no business at his
     quarters in Pentonville, except in the sleeping line; but now that he
     had become a fortune-teller, he was often closeted after midnight
     with Mr Rugg in his little front-parlour office, and even after those
     untimely hours, burnt tallow in his bed-room. Though his duties as his
     proprietor's grubber were in no wise lessened; and though that service
     bore no greater resemblance to a bed of roses than was to be discovered
     in its many thorns; some new branch of industry made a constant demand
     upon him. When he cast off the Patriarch at night, it was only to take
     an anonymous craft in tow, and labour away afresh in other waters.

     The advance from a personal acquaintance with the elder Mr Chivery to
     an introduction to his amiable wife and disconsolate son, may have been
     easy; but easy or not, Mr Pancks soon made it. He nestled in the bosom
     of the tobacco business within a week or two after his first appearance
     in the College, and particularly addressed himself to the cultivation of
     a good understanding with Young John. In this endeavour he so prospered
     as to lure that pining shepherd forth from the groves, and tempt him
     to undertake mysterious missions; on which he began to disappear at
     uncertain intervals for as long a space as two or three days together.
     The prudent Mrs Chivery, who wondered greatly at this change, would have
     protested against it as detrimental to the Highland typification on the
     doorpost but for two forcible reasons; one, that her John was roused to
     take strong interest in the business which these starts were supposed
     to advance--and this she held to be good for his drooping spirits;
     the other, that Mr Pancks confidentially agreed to pay her, for the
     occupation of her son's time, at the handsome rate of seven and sixpence
     per day. The proposal originated with himself, and was couched in the
     pithy terms, 'If your John is weak enough, ma'am, not to take it,
     that is no reason why you should be, don't you see? So, quite between
     ourselves, ma'am, business being business, here it is!'

     What Mr Chivery thought of these things, or how much or how little he
     knew about them, was never gathered from himself. It has been already
     remarked that he was a man of few words; and it may be here observed
     that he had imbibed a professional habit of locking everything up. He
     locked himself up as carefully as he locked up the Marshalsea debtors.
     Even his custom of bolting his meals may have been a part of an uniform
     whole; but there is no question, that, as to all other purposes, he kept
     his mouth as he kept the Marshalsea door. He never opened it without
     occasion. When it was necessary to let anything out, he opened it a
     little way, held it open just as long as sufficed for the purpose, and
     locked it again. Even as he would be sparing of his trouble at the
     Marshalsea door, and would keep a visitor who wanted to go out, waiting
     for a few moments if he saw another visitor coming down the yard, so
     that one turn of the key should suffice for both, similarly he would
     often reserve a remark if he perceived another on its way to his lips,
     and would deliver himself of the two together. As to any key to his
     inner knowledge being to be found in his face, the Marshalsea key was as
     legible as an index to the individual characters and histories upon
     which it was turned.

     That Mr Pancks should be moved to invite any one to dinner at
     Pentonville, was an unprecedented fact in his calendar. But he invited
     Young John to dinner, and even brought him within range of the dangerous
     (because expensive) fascinations of Miss Rugg. The banquet was appointed
     for a Sunday, and Miss Rugg with her own hands stuffed a leg of mutton
     with oysters on the occasion, and sent it to the baker's--not _the_
     baker's but an opposition establishment. Provision of oranges, apples,
     and nuts was also made. And rum was brought home by Mr Pancks on
     Saturday night, to gladden the visitor's heart.

     The store of creature comforts was not the chief part of the visitor's
     reception. Its special feature was a foregone family confidence and
     sympathy. When Young John appeared at half-past one without the ivory
     hand and waistcoat of golden sprigs, the sun shorn of his beams by
     disastrous clouds, Mr Pancks presented him to the yellow-haired Ruggs as
     the young man he had so often mentioned who loved Miss Dorrit.

     'I am glad,' said Mr Rugg, challenging him specially in that character,
     'to have the distinguished gratification of making your acquaintance,
     sir. Your feelings do you honour. You are young; may you never outlive
     your feelings! If I was to outlive my own feelings, sir,' said Mr Rugg,
     who was a man of many words, and was considered to possess a remarkably
     good address; 'if I was to outlive my own feelings, I'd leave fifty
     pound in my will to the man who would put me out of existence.'

     Miss Rugg heaved a sigh.

     'My daughter, sir,' said Mr Rugg. 'Anastatia, you are no stranger to the
     state of this young man's affections. My daughter has had her trials,
     sir'--Mr Rugg might have used the word more pointedly in the singular
     number--'and she can feel for you.'

     Young John, almost overwhelmed by the touching nature of this greeting,
     professed himself to that effect.

     'What I envy you, sir, is,' said Mr Rugg, 'allow me to take your hat--we
     are rather short of pegs--I'll put it in the corner, nobody will tread
     on it there--What I envy you, sir, is the luxury of your own feelings. I
     belong to a profession in which that luxury is sometimes denied us.'

     Young John replied, with acknowledgments, that he only hoped he did what
     was right, and what showed how entirely he was devoted to Miss Dorrit.
     He wished to be unselfish; and he hoped he was. He wished to do anything
     as laid in his power to serve Miss Dorrit, altogether putting himself
     out of sight; and he hoped he did. It was but little that he could do,
     but he hoped he did it.

     'Sir,' said Mr Rugg, taking him by the hand, 'you are a young man that
     it does one good to come across. You are a young man that I should
     like to put in the witness-box, to humanise the minds of the legal
     profession. I hope you have brought your appetite with you, and intend
     to play a good knife and fork?'

     'Thank you, sir,' returned Young John, 'I don't eat much at present.'

     Mr Rugg drew him a little apart. 'My daughter's case, sir,' said he, 'at
     the time when, in vindication of her outraged feelings and her sex, she
     became the plaintiff in Rugg and Bawkins. I suppose I could have put it
     in evidence, Mr Chivery, if I had thought it worth my while, that the
     amount of solid sustenance my daughter consumed at that period did not
     exceed ten ounces per week.'

     'I think I go a little beyond that, sir,' returned the other,
     hesitating, as if he confessed it with some shame.

     'But in your case there's no fiend in human form,' said Mr Rugg, with
     argumentative smile and action of hand. 'Observe, Mr Chivery!
     No fiend in human form!'

     'No, sir, certainly,' Young John added with simplicity, 'I should be
     very sorry if there was.'

     'The sentiment,' said Mr Rugg, 'is what I should have expected from your
     known principles. It would affect my daughter greatly, sir, if she heard
     it. As I perceive the mutton, I am glad she didn't hear it. Mr Pancks,
     on this occasion, pray face me. My dear, face Mr Chivery. For what we
     are going to receive, may we (and Miss Dorrit) be truly thankful!'

     But for a grave waggishness in Mr Rugg's manner of delivering this
     introduction to the feast, it might have appeared that Miss Dorrit was
     expected to be one of the company. Pancks recognised the sally in
     his usual way, and took in his provender in his usual way. Miss Rugg,
     perhaps making up some of her arrears, likewise took very kindly to
     the mutton, and it rapidly diminished to the bone. A bread-and-butter
     pudding entirely disappeared, and a considerable amount of cheese and
     radishes vanished by the same means. Then came the dessert.

     Then also, and before the broaching of the rum and water, came Mr
     Pancks's note-book. The ensuing business proceedings were brief but
     curious, and rather in the nature of a conspiracy. Mr Pancks looked over
     his note-book, which was now getting full, studiously; and picked out
     little extracts, which he wrote on separate slips of paper on the table;
     Mr Rugg, in the meanwhile, looking at him with close attention, and
     Young John losing his uncollected eye in mists of meditation. When Mr
     Pancks, who supported the character of chief conspirator, had completed
     his extracts, he looked them over, corrected them, put up his note-book,
     and held them like a hand at cards.

     'Now, there's a churchyard in Bedfordshire,' said Pancks. 'Who takes
     it?'

     'I'll take it, sir,' returned Mr Rugg, 'if no one bids.'

     Mr Pancks dealt him his card, and looked at his hand again.

     'Now, there's an Enquiry in York,' said Pancks. 'Who takes it?'

     'I'm not good for York,' said Mr Rugg.

     'Then perhaps,' pursued Pancks, 'you'll be so obliging, John Chivery?'

     Young John assenting, Pancks dealt him his card, and consulted his hand
     again.

     'There's a Church in London; I may as well take that. And a Family
     Bible; I may as well take that, too. That's two to me. Two to me,'
     repeated Pancks, breathing hard over his cards. 'Here's a Clerk at
     Durham for you, John, and an old seafaring gentleman at Dunstable for
     you, Mr Rugg. Two to me, was it? Yes, two to me. Here's a Stone; three
     to me. And a Still-born Baby; four to me. And all, for the present,
     told.'

     When he had thus disposed of his cards, all being done very quietly and
     in a suppressed tone, Mr Pancks puffed his way into his own
     breast-pocket and tugged out a canvas bag; from which, with a sparing
     hand, he told forth money for travelling expenses in two little
     portions. 'Cash goes out fast,' he said anxiously, as he pushed a
     portion to each of his male companions, 'very fast.'

     'I can only assure you, Mr Pancks,' said Young John, 'that I deeply
     regret my circumstances being such that I can't afford to pay my own
     charges, or that it's not advisable to allow me the time necessary for
     my doing the distances on foot; because nothing would give me greater
     satisfaction than to walk myself off my legs without fee or reward.'

     This young man's disinterestedness appeared so very ludicrous in
     the eyes of Miss Rugg, that she was obliged to effect a precipitate
     retirement from the company, and to sit upon the stairs until she had
     had her laugh out. Meanwhile Mr Pancks, looking, not without some pity,
     at Young John, slowly and thoughtfully twisted up his canvas bag as if
     he were wringing its neck. The lady, returning as he restored it to his
     pocket, mixed rum and water for the party, not forgetting her fair self,
     and handed to every one his glass. When all were supplied, Mr Rugg rose,
     and silently holding out his glass at arm's length above the centre of
     the table, by that gesture invited the other three to add theirs, and to
     unite in a general conspiratorial clink. The ceremony was effective up
     to a certain point, and would have been wholly so throughout, if Miss
     Rugg, as she raised her glass to her lips in completion of it, had not
     happened to look at Young John; when she was again so overcome by the
     contemptible comicality of his disinterestedness as to splutter some
     ambrosial drops of rum and water around, and withdraw in confusion.

     Such was the dinner without precedent, given by Pancks at Pentonville;
     and such was the busy and strange life Pancks led. The only waking
     moments at which he appeared to relax from his cares, and to recreate
     himself by going anywhere or saying anything without a pervading object,
     were when he showed a dawning interest in the lame foreigner with the
     stick, down Bleeding Heart Yard.

     The foreigner, by name John Baptist Cavalletto--they called him Mr
     Baptist in the Yard--was such a chirping, easy, hopeful little fellow,
     that his attraction for Pancks was probably in the force of contrast.
     Solitary, weak, and scantily acquainted with the most necessary words
     of the only language in which he could communicate with the people about
     him, he went with the stream of his fortunes, in a brisk way that was
     new in those parts. With little to eat, and less to drink, and nothing
     to wear but what he wore upon him, or had brought tied up in one of the
     smallest bundles that ever were seen, he put as bright a face upon it as
     if he were in the most flourishing circumstances when he first hobbled
     up and down the Yard, humbly propitiating the general good-will with his
     white teeth.

     It was uphill work for a foreigner, lame or sound, to make his way with
     the Bleeding Hearts. In the first place, they were vaguely persuaded
     that every foreigner had a knife about him; in the second, they held it
     to be a sound constitutional national axiom that he ought to go home to
     his own country. They never thought of inquiring how many of their own
     countrymen would be returned upon their hands from divers parts of the
     world, if the principle were generally recognised; they considered it
     particularly and peculiarly British. In the third place, they had a
     notion that it was a sort of Divine visitation upon a foreigner that he
     was not an Englishman, and that all kinds of calamities happened to
     his country because it did things that England did not, and did not do
     things that England did. In this belief, to be sure, they had long been
     carefully trained by the Barnacles and Stiltstalkings, who were always
     proclaiming to them, officially, that no country which failed to submit
     itself to those two large families could possibly hope to be under the
     protection of Providence; and who, when they believed it, disparaged
     them in private as the most prejudiced people under the sun.

     This, therefore, might be called a political position of the Bleeding
     Hearts; but they entertained other objections to having foreigners
     in the Yard. They believed that foreigners were always badly off; and
     though they were as ill off themselves as they could desire to be,
     that did not diminish the force of the objection. They believed that
     foreigners were dragooned and bayoneted; and though they certainly got
     their own skulls promptly fractured if they showed any ill-humour, still
     it was with a blunt instrument, and that didn't count. They believed
     that foreigners were always immoral; and though they had an occasional
     assize at home, and now and then a divorce case or so, that had nothing
     to do with it. They believed that foreigners had no independent spirit,
     as never being escorted to the poll in droves by Lord Decimus Tite
     Barnacle, with colours flying and the tune of Rule Britannia playing.
     Not to be tedious, they had many other beliefs of a similar kind.

     Against these obstacles, the lame foreigner with the stick had to make
     head as well as he could; not absolutely single-handed, because Mr
     Arthur Clennam had recommended him to the Plornishes (he lived at the
             top of the same house), but still at heavy odds. However, the Bleeding
     Hearts were kind hearts; and when they saw the little fellow cheerily
     limping about with a good-humoured face, doing no harm, drawing no
     knives, committing no outrageous immoralities, living chiefly on
     farinaceous and milk diet, and playing with Mrs Plornish's children of
     an evening, they began to think that although he could never hope to be
     an Englishman, still it would be hard to visit that affliction on his
     head. They began to accommodate themselves to his level, calling him 'Mr
     Baptist,' but treating him like a baby, and laughing immoderately at his
     lively gestures and his childish English--more, because he didn't mind
     it, and laughed too. They spoke to him in very loud voices as if he
     were stone deaf. They constructed sentences, by way of teaching him the
     language in its purity, such as were addressed by the savages to Captain
     Cook, or by Friday to Robinson Crusoe. Mrs Plornish was particularly
     ingenious in this art; and attained so much celebrity for saying 'Me ope
     you leg well soon,' that it was considered in the Yard but a very short
     remove indeed from speaking Italian. Even Mrs Plornish herself began to
     think that she had a natural call towards that language. As he became
     more popular, household objects were brought into requisition for his
     instruction in a copious vocabulary; and whenever he appeared in the
     Yard ladies would fly out at their doors crying 'Mr Baptist--tea-pot!'
     'Mr Baptist--dust-pan!' 'Mr Baptist--flour-dredger!' 'Mr
     Baptist--coffee-biggin!' At the same time exhibiting those articles,
     and penetrating him with a sense of the appalling difficulties of the
     Anglo-Saxon tongue.

     It was in this stage of his progress, and in about the third week of his
     occupation, that Mr Pancks's fancy became attracted by the little man.
     Mounting to his attic, attended by Mrs Plornish as interpreter, he found
     Mr Baptist with no furniture but his bed on the ground, a table, and a
     chair, carving with the aid of a few simple tools, in the blithest way
     possible.

     'Now, old chap,' said Mr Pancks, 'pay up!'

     He had his money ready, folded in a scrap of paper, and laughingly
     handed it in; then with a free action, threw out as many fingers of his
     right hand as there were shillings, and made a cut crosswise in the air
     for an odd sixpence.

     'Oh!' said Mr Pancks, watching him, wonderingly. 'That's it, is it?
     You're a quick customer. It's all right. I didn't expect to receive it,
     though.'

     Mrs Plornish here interposed with great condescension, and explained to
     Mr Baptist. 'E please. E glad get money.'

     The little man smiled and nodded. His bright face seemed uncommonly
     attractive to Mr Pancks. 'How's he getting on in his limb?' he asked Mrs
     Plornish.

     'Oh, he's a deal better, sir,' said Mrs Plornish. 'We expect next week
     he'll be able to leave off his stick entirely.' (The opportunity
             being too favourable to be lost, Mrs Plornish displayed her great
             accomplishment by explaining with pardonable pride to Mr Baptist, 'E ope
             you leg well soon.')

     'He's a merry fellow, too,' said Mr Pancks, admiring him as if he were a
     mechanical toy. 'How does he live?'

     'Why, sir,' rejoined Mrs Plornish, 'he turns out to have quite a power
     of carving them flowers that you see him at now.' (Mr Baptist, watching
             their faces as they spoke, held up his work. Mrs Plornish interpreted in
             her Italian manner, on behalf of Mr Pancks, 'E please. Double good!')

     'Can he live by that?' asked Mr Pancks.

     'He can live on very little, sir, and it is expected as he will be able,
     in time, to make a very good living. Mr Clennam got it him to do, and
     gives him odd jobs besides in at the Works next door--makes 'em for him,
     in short, when he knows he wants 'em.'

     'And what does he do with himself, now, when he ain't hard at it?' said
     Mr Pancks.

     'Why, not much as yet, sir, on accounts I suppose of not being able to
     walk much; but he goes about the Yard, and he chats without particular
     understanding or being understood, and he plays with the children,
     and he sits in the sun--he'll sit down anywhere, as if it was an
     arm-chair--and he'll sing, and he'll laugh!'

     'Laugh!' echoed Mr Pancks. 'He looks to me as if every tooth in his head
     was always laughing.'

     'But whenever he gets to the top of the steps at t'other end of the
     Yard,' said Mrs Plornish, 'he'll peep out in the curiousest way! So that
     some of us thinks he's peeping out towards where his own country is, and
     some of us thinks he's looking for somebody he don't want to see, and
     some of us don't know what to think.'

     Mr Baptist seemed to have a general understanding of what she said; or
     perhaps his quickness caught and applied her slight action of peeping.
     In any case he closed his eyes and tossed his head with the air of a man
     who had sufficient reasons for what he did, and said in his own tongue,
     it didn't matter. Altro!

     'What's Altro?' said Pancks.

     'Hem! It's a sort of a general kind of expression, sir,' said Mrs
     Plornish.

     'Is it?' said Pancks. 'Why, then Altro to you, old chap. Good afternoon.
     Altro!'

     Mr Baptist in his vivacious way repeating the word several times, Mr
     Pancks in his duller way gave it him back once. From that time it became
     a frequent custom with Pancks the gipsy, as he went home jaded at night,
     to pass round by Bleeding Heart Yard, go quietly up the stairs, look in
     at Mr Baptist's door, and, finding him in his room, to say, 'Hallo, old
     chap! Altro!' To which Mr Baptist would reply with innumerable bright
     nods and smiles, 'Altro, signore, altro, altro, altro!' After this
     highly condensed conversation, Mr Pancks would go his way with an
     appearance of being lightened and refreshed.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: OK, mysterious meeting time at Pancks's house. His landlord, Mr. Rugg, is there. So is Miss Rugg, Mr. Rugg's daughter, whose main claim to fame is that she sued a former fiance for breach of contract for breaking off an engagement - and won! That's right, folks - that was the law back then. Also there is Young John Chivery - the dude who's in love with Little Dorrit. Turns out, Pancks has been working overtime sending these people out to mysterious destinations all over the greater metropolitan London area. We don't know why. They all drink a toast to their new assignments, and all is well. The other thing Pancks likes to do is check up on Cavalletto, who has moved into Bleeding Heart Yard and is now being called Mr. Baptist by the people who live there . He's a constantly happy guy, despite the fact that he is clearly dirt poor. It's a good thing he's so good-natured, because the English? They aren't the most foreigner-friendly of people. Mrs. Plornish talks to him in a crazy-sounding broken English that makes her sound very smart to her neighbors and very idiotic to the reader. But he doesn't mind and takes everything in stride. Mr. Baptist has his rent on time. Apparently he whittles little flowers to sell, and Arthur gives him odd jobs every now and again. But, Mrs. Plornish tells Pancks that sometimes Mr. Baptist gets scared and starts peering around the corners of buildings as if he's looking for someone he doesn't want to see. Hmm... who could that be?


prompt:
Chapter: If Arthur Clennam had not arrived at that wise decision firmly to
restrain himself from loving Pet, he would have lived on in a state of
much perplexity, involving difficult struggles with his own heart. Not
the least of these would have been a contention, always waging within
it, between a tendency to dislike Mr Henry Gowan, if not to regard
him with positive repugnance, and a whisper that the inclination was
unworthy. A generous nature is not prone to strong aversions, and is
slow to admit them even dispassionately; but when it finds ill-will
gaining upon it, and can discern between-whiles that its origin is not
dispassionate, such a nature becomes distressed.

Therefore Mr Henry Gowan would have clouded Clennam's mind, and would
have been far oftener present to it than more agreeable persons and
subjects but for the great prudence of his decision aforesaid. As it
was, Mr Gowan seemed transferred to Daniel Doyce's mind; at all events,
    it so happened that it usually fell to Mr Doyce's turn, rather than
    to Clennam's, to speak of him in the friendly conversations they held
    together. These were of frequent occurrence now; as the two partners
    shared a portion of a roomy house in one of the grave old-fashioned City
    streets, lying not far from the Bank of England, by London Wall.

    Mr Doyce had been to Twickenham to pass the day. Clennam had excused
    himself. Mr Doyce was just come home. He put in his head at the door of
    Clennam's sitting-room to say Good night.

    'Come in, come in!' said Clennam.

    'I saw you were reading,' returned Doyce, as he entered, 'and thought
    you might not care to be disturbed.'

    But for the notable resolution he had made, Clennam really might not
    have known what he had been reading; really might not have had his eyes
    upon the book for an hour past, though it lay open before him. He shut
    it up, rather quickly.

    'Are they well?' he asked.

    'Yes,' said Doyce; 'they are well. They are all well.'

    Daniel had an old workmanlike habit of carrying his pocket-handkerchief
    in his hat. He took it out and wiped his forehead with it, slowly
    repeating, 'They are all well. Miss Minnie looking particularly well, I
    thought.'

    'Any company at the cottage?'

    'No, no company.'

    'And how did you get on, you four?' asked Clennam gaily.

    'There were five of us,' returned his partner. 'There was
    What's-his-name. He was there.'

    'Who is he?' said Clennam.

    'Mr Henry Gowan.'

    'Ah, to be sure!' cried Clennam with unusual vivacity, 'Yes!--I forgot
    him.'

    'As I mentioned, you may remember,' said Daniel Doyce, 'he is always
    there on Sunday.'

    'Yes, yes,' returned Clennam; 'I remember now.'

    Daniel Doyce, still wiping his forehead, ploddingly repeated. 'Yes. He
    was there, he was there. Oh yes, he was there. And his dog. _He_ was
    there too.'

    'Miss Meagles is quite attached to--the--dog,' observed Clennam.

    'Quite so,' assented his partner. 'More attached to the dog than I am to
    the man.'

    'You mean Mr--?'

    'I mean Mr Gowan, most decidedly,' said Daniel Doyce.

    There was a gap in the conversation, which Clennam devoted to winding up
    his watch.

    'Perhaps you are a little hasty in your judgment,' he said. 'Our
    judgments--I am supposing a general case--'

    'Of course,' said Doyce.

    'Are so liable to be influenced by many considerations, which, almost
    without our knowing it, are unfair, that it is necessary to keep a guard
    upon them. For instance, Mr--'

    'Gowan,' quietly said Doyce, upon whom the utterance of the name almost
    always devolved.

    'Is young and handsome, easy and quick, has talent, and has seen a
    good deal of various kinds of life. It might be difficult to give an
    unselfish reason for being prepossessed against him.'

    'Not difficult for me, I think, Clennam,' returned his partner. 'I see
    him bringing present anxiety, and, I fear, future sorrow, into my old
    friend's house. I see him wearing deeper lines into my old friend's
    face, the nearer he draws to, and the oftener he looks at, the face
    of his daughter. In short, I see him with a net about the pretty and
    affectionate creature whom he will never make happy.'

    'We don't know,' said Clennam, almost in the tone of a man in pain,
    'that he will not make her happy.'

    'We don't know,' returned his partner, 'that the earth will last another
    hundred years, but we think it highly probable.'

    'Well, well!' said Clennam, 'we must be hopeful, and we must at least
    try to be, if not generous (which, in this case, we have no opportunity
            of being), just. We will not disparage this gentleman, because he is
    successful in his addresses to the beautiful object of his ambition; and
    we will not question her natural right to bestow her love on one whom
    she finds worthy of it.'

    'Maybe, my friend,' said Doyce. 'Maybe also, that she is too young and
    petted, too confiding and inexperienced, to discriminate well.'

    'That,' said Clennam, 'would be far beyond our power of correction.'

    Daniel Doyce shook his head gravely, and rejoined, 'I fear so.'

    'Therefore, in a word,' said Clennam, 'we should make up our minds that
    it is not worthy of us to say any ill of Mr Gowan. It would be a poor
    thing to gratify a prejudice against him. And I resolve, for my part,
    not to depreciate him.'

    'I am not quite so sure of myself, and therefore I reserve my privilege
    of objecting to him,' returned the other. 'But, if I am not sure of
    myself, I am sure of you, Clennam, and I know what an upright man you
    are, and how much to be respected. Good night, _my_ friend and partner!'
    He shook his hand in saying this, as if there had been something serious
    at the bottom of their conversation; and they separated.

    By this time they had visited the family on several occasions, and had
    always observed that even a passing allusion to Mr Henry Gowan when
    he was not among them, brought back the cloud which had obscured Mr
    Meagles's sunshine on the morning of the chance encounter at the Ferry.
    If Clennam had ever admitted the forbidden passion into his breast,
    this period might have been a period of real trial; under the actual
    circumstances, doubtless it was nothing--nothing.

    Equally, if his heart had given entertainment to that prohibited guest,
    his silent fighting of his way through the mental condition of this
    period might have been a little meritorious. In the constant effort not
    to be betrayed into a new phase of the besetting sin of his experience,
    the pursuit of selfish objects by low and small means, and to hold
    instead to some high principle of honour and generosity, there might
    have been a little merit. In the resolution not even to avoid Mr
    Meagles's house, lest, in the selfish sparing of himself, he should
    bring any slight distress upon the daughter through making her the cause
    of an estrangement which he believed the father would regret, there
    might have been a little merit. In the modest truthfulness of always
    keeping in view the greater equality of Mr Gowan's years and the greater
    attractions of his person and manner, there might have been a little
    merit. In doing all this and much more, in a perfectly unaffected way
    and with a manful and composed constancy, while the pain within him
    (peculiar as his life and history) was very sharp, there might have been
    some quiet strength of character. But, after the resolution he had made,
    of course he could have no such merits as these; and such a state of
    mind was nobody's--nobody's.

    Mr Gowan made it no concern of his whether it was nobody's or
    somebody's. He preserved his perfect serenity of manner on all
    occasions, as if the possibility of Clennam's presuming to have debated
    the great question were too distant and ridiculous to be imagined. He
    had always an affability to bestow on Clennam and an ease to treat
    him with, which might of itself (in the supposititious case of his
            not having taken that sagacious course) have been a very uncomfortable
    element in his state of mind.

    'I quite regret you were not with us yesterday,' said Mr Henry Gowan,
    calling on Clennam the next morning. 'We had an agreeable day up the
    river there.'

    So he had heard, Arthur said.

    'From your partner?' returned Henry Gowan. 'What a dear old fellow he
    is!'

    'I have a great regard for him.'

    'By Jove, he is the finest creature!' said Gowan. 'So fresh, so green,
    trusts in such wonderful things!'

    Here was one of the many little rough points that had a tendency to
    grate on Clennam's hearing. He put it aside by merely repeating that he
    had a high regard for Mr Doyce.

    'He is charming! To see him mooning along to that time of life,
    laying down nothing by the way and picking up nothing by the way, is
    delightful. It warms a man. So unspoilt, so simple, such a good soul!
    Upon my life Mr Clennam, one feels desperately worldly and wicked in
    comparison with such an innocent creature. I speak for myself, let me
    add, without including you. You are genuine also.'

    'Thank you for the compliment,' said Clennam, ill at ease; 'you are too,
    I hope?'

    'So so,' rejoined the other. 'To be candid with you, tolerably. I am
    not a great impostor. Buy one of my pictures, and I assure you,
    in confidence, it will not be worth the money. Buy one of another
    man's--any great professor who beats me hollow--and the chances are that
    the more you give him, the more he'll impose upon you. They all do it.'

    'All painters?'

    'Painters, writers, patriots, all the rest who have stands in the
    market. Give almost any man I know ten pounds, and he will impose upon
    you to a corresponding extent; a thousand pounds--to a corresponding
    extent; ten thousand pounds--to a corresponding extent. So great the
    success, so great the imposition. But what a capital world it is!' cried
    Gowan with warm enthusiasm. 'What a jolly, excellent, lovable world it
    is!'

    'I had rather thought,' said Clennam, 'that the principle you mention
    was chiefly acted on by--'

    'By the Barnacles?' interrupted Gowan, laughing.

    'By the political gentlemen who condescend to keep the Circumlocution
    Office.'

    'Ah! Don't be hard upon the Barnacles,' said Gowan, laughing afresh,
    'they are darling fellows! Even poor little Clarence, the born idiot of
    the family, is the most agreeable and most endearing blockhead! And by
    Jupiter, with a kind of cleverness in him too that would astonish you!'

    'It would. Very much,' said Clennam, drily.

    'And after all,' cried Gowan, with that characteristic balancing of his
    which reduced everything in the wide world to the same light weight,
    'though I can't deny that the Circumlocution Office may ultimately
    shipwreck everybody and everything, still, that will probably not be in
    our time--and it's a school for gentlemen.'

    'It's a very dangerous, unsatisfactory, and expensive school to the
    people who pay to keep the pupils there, I am afraid,' said Clennam,
    shaking his head.

    'Ah! You are a terrible fellow,' returned Gowan, airily. 'I can
    understand how you have frightened that little donkey, Clarence, the
    most estimable of moon-calves (I really love him) nearly out of his
    wits. But enough of him, and of all the rest of them. I want to present
    you to my mother, Mr Clennam. Pray do me the favour to give me the
    opportunity.'

    In nobody's state of mind, there was nothing Clennam would have desired
    less, or would have been more at a loss how to avoid.

    'My mother lives in a most primitive manner down in that dreary
    red-brick dungeon at Hampton Court,' said Gowan. 'If you would make
    your own appointment, suggest your own day for permitting me to take
    you there to dinner, you would be bored and she would be charmed. Really
    that's the state of the case.'

    What could Clennam say after this? His retiring character included a
    great deal that was simple in the best sense, because unpractised and
    unused; and in his simplicity and modesty, he could only say that he was
    happy to place himself at Mr Gowan's disposal. Accordingly he said it,
    and the day was fixed. And a dreaded day it was on his part, and a very
    unwelcome day when it came and they went down to Hampton Court together.

    The venerable inhabitants of that venerable pile seemed, in those times,
    to be encamped there like a sort of civilised gipsies. There was a
    temporary air about their establishments, as if they were going away the
    moment they could get anything better; there was also a dissatisfied air
    about themselves, as if they took it very ill that they had not already
    got something much better. Genteel blinds and makeshifts were more or
    less observable as soon as their doors were opened; screens not half
    high enough, which made dining-rooms out of arched passages, and warded
    off obscure corners where footboys slept at nights with their heads
    among the knives and forks; curtains which called upon you to believe
    that they didn't hide anything; panes of glass which requested you
    not to see them; many objects of various forms, feigning to have no
    connection with their guilty secret, a bed; disguised traps in walls,
    which were clearly coal-cellars; affectations of no thoroughfares, which
    were evidently doors to little kitchens. Mental reservations and artful
    mysteries grew out of these things. Callers looking steadily into the
    eyes of their receivers, pretended not to smell cooking three feet off;
    people, confronting closets accidentally left open, pretended not to see
    bottles; visitors with their heads against a partition of thin canvas,
    and a page and a young female at high words on the other side, made
    believe to be sitting in a primeval silence. There was no end to the
    small social accommodation-bills of this nature which the gipsies of
    gentility were constantly drawing upon, and accepting for, one another.

    Some of these Bohemians were of an irritable temperament, as constantly
    soured and vexed by two mental trials: the first, the consciousness
    that they had never got enough out of the public; the second, the
    consciousness that the public were admitted into the building. Under the
    latter great wrong, a few suffered dreadfully--particularly on Sundays,
    when they had for some time expected the earth to open and swallow
    the public up; but which desirable event had not yet occurred, in
    consequence of some reprehensible laxity in the arrangements of the
    Universe.

    Mrs Gowan's door was attended by a family servant of several years'
    standing, who had his own crow to pluck with the public concerning a
    situation in the Post-Office which he had been for some time expecting,
    and to which he was not yet appointed. He perfectly knew that the public
    could never have got him in, but he grimly gratified himself with the
    idea that the public kept him out. Under the influence of this injury
    (and perhaps of some little straitness and irregularity in the matter
     of wages), he had grown neglectful of his person and morose in mind;
    and now beholding in Clennam one of the degraded body of his oppressors,
    received him with ignominy.

    Mrs Gowan, however, received him with condescension. He found her a
    courtly old lady, formerly a Beauty, and still sufficiently
    well-favoured to have dispensed with the powder on her nose and a
    certain impossible bloom under each eye. She was a little lofty with
    him; so was another old lady, dark-browed and high-nosed, and who must
    have had something real about her or she could not have existed, but it
    was certainly not her hair or her teeth or her figure or her complexion;
    so was a grey old gentleman of dignified and sullen appearance; both of
    whom had come to dinner. But, as they had all been in the British
    Embassy way in sundry parts of the earth, and as a British Embassy
    cannot better establish a character with the Circumlocution Office than
    by treating its compatriots with illimitable contempt (else it would
            become like the Embassies of other countries), Clennam felt that on the
    whole they let him off lightly.

    The dignified old gentleman turned out to be Lord Lancaster
    Stiltstalking, who had been maintained by the Circumlocution Office for
    many years as a representative of the Britannic Majesty abroad.
    This noble Refrigerator had iced several European courts in his time,
    and had done it with such complete success that the very name of
    Englishman yet struck cold to the stomachs of foreigners who had the
    distinguished honour of remembering him at a distance of a quarter of a
    century.

    He was now in retirement, and hence (in a ponderous white cravat, like
            a stiff snow-drift) was so obliging as to shade the dinner. There was a
    whisper of the pervading Bohemian character in the nomadic nature of
    the service and its curious races of plates and dishes; but the noble
    Refrigerator, infinitely better than plate or porcelain, made it superb.
    He shaded the dinner, cooled the wines, chilled the gravy, and blighted
    the vegetables.

    There was only one other person in the room: a microscopically small
    footboy, who waited on the malevolent man who hadn't got into the
    Post-Office. Even this youth, if his jacket could have been unbuttoned
    and his heart laid bare, would have been seen, as a distant adherent of
    the Barnacle family, already to aspire to a situation under Government.

    Mrs Gowan with a gentle melancholy upon her, occasioned by her son's
    being reduced to court the swinish public as a follower of the low Arts,
    instead of asserting his birthright and putting a ring through its nose
    as an acknowledged Barnacle, headed the conversation at dinner on the
    evil days. It was then that Clennam learned for the first time what
    little pivots this great world goes round upon.

    'If John Barnacle,' said Mrs Gowan, after the degeneracy of the times
    had been fully ascertained, 'if John Barnacle had but abandoned his most
    unfortunate idea of conciliating the mob, all would have been well, and
    I think the country would have been preserved.'

    The old lady with the high nose assented; but added that if Augustus
    Stiltstalking had in a general way ordered the cavalry out with
    instructions to charge, she thought the country would have been
    preserved.

    The noble Refrigerator assented; but added that if William Barnacle and
    Tudor Stiltstalking, when they came over to one another and formed
    their ever-memorable coalition, had boldly muzzled the newspapers,
    and rendered it penal for any Editor-person to presume to discuss the
    conduct of any appointed authority abroad or at home, he thought the
    country would have been preserved.

    It was agreed that the country (another word for the Barnacles and
            Stiltstalkings) wanted preserving, but how it came to want preserving
    was not so clear. It was only clear that the question was all about
    John Barnacle, Augustus Stiltstalking, William Barnacle and Tudor
    Stiltstalking, Tom, Dick, or Harry Barnacle or Stiltstalking, because
    there was nobody else but mob. And this was the feature of the
    conversation which impressed Clennam, as a man not used to it, very
    disagreeably: making him doubt if it were quite right to sit there,
    silently hearing a great nation narrowed to such little bounds.
    Remembering, however, that in the Parliamentary debates, whether on the
    life of that nation's body or the life of its soul, the question was
    usually all about and between John Barnacle, Augustus Stiltstalking,
    William Barnacle and Tudor Stiltstalking, Tom, Dick, or Harry Barnacle
    or Stiltstalking, and nobody else; he said nothing on the part of mob,
    bethinking himself that mob was used to it.

    Mr Henry Gowan seemed to have a malicious pleasure in playing off the
    three talkers against each other, and in seeing Clennam startled by what
    they said. Having as supreme a contempt for the class that had thrown
    him off as for the class that had not taken him on, he had no personal
    disquiet in anything that passed. His healthy state of mind appeared
    even to derive a gratification from Clennam's position of embarrassment
    and isolation among the good company; and if Clennam had been in that
    condition with which Nobody was incessantly contending, he would have
    suspected it, and would have struggled with the suspicion as a meanness,
    even while he sat at the table.

    In the course of a couple of hours the noble Refrigerator, at no time
    less than a hundred years behind the period, got about five centuries
    in arrears, and delivered solemn political oracles appropriate to that
    epoch. He finished by freezing a cup of tea for his own drinking,
    and retiring at his lowest temperature.

    Then Mrs Gowan, who had been accustomed in her days of a vacant
    arm-chair beside her to which to summon state to retain her devoted
    slaves, one by one, for short audiences as marks of her especial favour,
    invited Clennam with a turn of her fan to approach the presence. He
    obeyed, and took the tripod recently vacated by Lord Lancaster
    Stiltstalking.

    'Mr Clennam,' said Mrs Gowan, 'apart from the happiness I have in
    becoming known to you, though in this odiously inconvenient place--a
    mere barrack--there is a subject on which I am dying to speak to you. It
    is the subject in connection with which my son first had, I believe, the
    pleasure of cultivating your acquaintance.'

    Clennam inclined his head, as a generally suitable reply to what he did
    not yet quite understand.

    'First,' said Mrs Gowan, 'now, is she really pretty?'

    In nobody's difficulties, he would have found it very difficult to
    answer; very difficult indeed to smile, and say 'Who?'

    'Oh! You know!' she returned. 'This flame of Henry's. This unfortunate
    fancy. There! If it is a point of honour that I should originate the
    name--Miss Mickles--Miggles.'

    'Miss Meagles,' said Clennam, 'is very beautiful.'

    'Men are so often mistaken on those points,' returned Mrs Gowan, shaking
    her head, 'that I candidly confess to you I feel anything but sure of
    it, even now; though it is something to have Henry corroborated with so
    much gravity and emphasis. He picked the people up at Rome, I think?'

    The phrase would have given nobody mortal offence. Clennam replied,
    'Excuse me, I doubt if I understand your expression.'

    'Picked the people up,' said Mrs Gowan, tapping the sticks of her closed
    fan (a large green one, which she used as a hand-screen) on her little
    table. 'Came upon them. Found them out. Stumbled against them.'

    'The people?'

    'Yes. The Miggles people.'

    'I really cannot say,' said Clennam, 'where my friend Mr Meagles first
    presented Mr Henry Gowan to his daughter.'

    'I am pretty sure he picked her up at Rome; but never mind
    where--somewhere. Now (this is entirely between ourselves), is she very
    plebeian?'

    'Really, ma'am,' returned Clennam, 'I am so undoubtedly plebeian myself,
    that I do not feel qualified to judge.'

    'Very neat!' said Mrs Gowan, coolly unfurling her screen. 'Very happy!
    From which I infer that you secretly think her manner equal to her
    looks?'

    Clennam, after a moment's stiffness, bowed.

    'That's comforting, and I hope you may be right. Did Henry tell me you
    had travelled with them?'

    'I travelled with my friend Mr Meagles, and his wife and daughter,
    during some months.' (Nobody's heart might have been wrung by the
            remembrance.)

    'Really comforting, because you must have had a large experience of
    them. You see, Mr Clennam, this thing has been going on for a long time,
    and I find no improvement in it. Therefore to have the opportunity of
    speaking to one so well informed about it as yourself, is an immense
    relief to me. Quite a boon. Quite a blessing, I am sure.'

    'Pardon me,' returned Clennam, 'but I am not in Mr Henry Gowan's
    confidence. I am far from being so well informed as you suppose me to
    be. Your mistake makes my position a very delicate one. No word on this
    topic has ever passed between Mr Henry Gowan and myself.'

    Mrs Gowan glanced at the other end of the room, where her son was
    playing ecarte on a sofa, with the old lady who was for a charge of
    cavalry.

    'Not in his confidence? No,' said Mrs Gowan. 'No word has passed between
    you? No. That I can imagine. But there are unexpressed confidences, Mr
    Clennam; and as you have been together intimately among these people, I
    cannot doubt that a confidence of that sort exists in the present case.
    Perhaps you have heard that I have suffered the keenest distress of
    mind from Henry's having taken to a pursuit which--well!' shrugging her
    shoulders, 'a very respectable pursuit, I dare say, and some artists
    are, as artists, quite superior persons; still, we never yet in our
    family have gone beyond an Amateur, and it is a pardonable weakness to
    feel a little--'

    As Mrs Gowan broke off to heave a sigh, Clennam, however resolute to
    be magnanimous, could not keep down the thought that there was mighty
    little danger of the family's ever going beyond an Amateur, even as it
    was.

    'Henry,' the mother resumed, 'is self-willed and resolute; and as these
    people naturally strain every nerve to catch him, I can entertain very
    little hope, Mr Clennam, that the thing will be broken off. I apprehend
    the girl's fortune will be very small; Henry might have done much
    better; there is scarcely anything to compensate for the connection:
    still, he acts for himself; and if I find no improvement within a short
    time, I see no other course than to resign myself and make the best of
    these people. I am infinitely obliged to you for what you have told
    me.'

    As she shrugged her shoulders, Clennam stiffly bowed again. With an
    uneasy flush upon his face, and hesitation in his manner, he then said
    in a still lower tone than he had adopted yet:

    'Mrs Gowan, I scarcely know how to acquit myself of what I feel to be a
    duty, and yet I must ask you for your kind consideration in
    attempting to discharge it. A misconception on your part, a very great
    misconception if I may venture to call it so, seems to require setting
    right. You have supposed Mr Meagles and his family to strain every
    nerve, I think you said--'

    'Every nerve,' repeated Mrs Gowan, looking at him in calm obstinacy,
    with her green fan between her face and the fire.

    'To secure Mr Henry Gowan?'

    The lady placidly assented.

    'Now that is so far,' said Arthur, 'from being the case, that I know
    Mr Meagles to be unhappy in this matter; and to have interposed all
    reasonable obstacles with the hope of putting an end to it.'

    Mrs Gowan shut up her great green fan, tapped him on the arm with it,
    and tapped her smiling lips. 'Why, of course,' said she. 'Just what I
    mean.'

    Arthur watched her face for some explanation of what she did mean.

    'Are you really serious, Mr Clennam? Don't you see?'

    Arthur did not see; and said so.

    'Why, don't I know my son, and don't I know that this is exactly the way
    to hold him?' said Mrs Gowan, contemptuously; 'and do not these Miggles
    people know it, at least as well as I? Oh, shrewd people, Mr Clennam:
    evidently people of business! I believe Miggles belonged to a Bank. It
    ought to have been a very profitable Bank, if he had much to do with its
    management. This is very well done, indeed.'

    'I beg and entreat you, ma'am--' Arthur interposed.

    'Oh, Mr Clennam, can you really be so credulous?'

    It made such a painful impression upon him to hear her talking in this
    haughty tone, and to see her patting her contemptuous lips with her
    fan, that he said very earnestly, 'Believe me, ma'am, this is unjust, a
    perfectly groundless suspicion.'

    'Suspicion?' repeated Mrs Gowan. 'Not suspicion, Mr Clennam, Certainty.
    It is very knowingly done indeed, and seems to have taken _you_ in
    completely.' She laughed; and again sat tapping her lips with her fan,
    and tossing her head, as if she added, 'Don't tell me. I know such
    people will do anything for the honour of such an alliance.'

    At this opportune moment, the cards were thrown up, and Mr Henry Gowan
    came across the room saying, 'Mother, if you can spare Mr Clennam for
    this time, we have a long way to go, and it's getting late.' Mr Clennam
    thereupon rose, as he had no choice but to do; and Mrs Gowan showed him,
    to the last, the same look and the same tapped contemptuous lips.

    'You have had a portentously long audience of my mother,' said Gowan, as
    the door closed upon them. 'I fervently hope she has not bored you?'

    'Not at all,' said Clennam.

    They had a little open phaeton for the journey, and were soon in it on
    the road home. Gowan, driving, lighted a cigar; Clennam declined one. Do
    what he would, he fell into such a mood of abstraction that Gowan said
    again, 'I am very much afraid my mother has bored you?' To which he
    roused himself to answer, 'Not at all!' and soon relapsed again.

    In that state of mind which rendered nobody uneasy, his thoughtfulness
    would have turned principally on the man at his side. He would have
    thought of the morning when he first saw him rooting out the stones with
    his heel, and would have asked himself, 'Does he jerk me out of the
    path in the same careless, cruel way?' He would have thought, had this
    introduction to his mother been brought about by him because he knew
    what she would say, and that he could thus place his position before
    a rival and loftily warn him off, without himself reposing a word of
    confidence in him? He would have thought, even if there were no such
    design as that, had he brought him there to play with his repressed
    emotions, and torment him? The current of these meditations would have
    been stayed sometimes by a rush of shame, bearing a remonstrance to
    himself from his own open nature, representing that to shelter such
    suspicions, even for the passing moment, was not to hold the high,
    unenvious course he had resolved to keep. At those times, the striving
    within him would have been hardest; and looking up and catching Gowan's
    eyes, he would have started as if he had done him an injury.

    Then, looking at the dark road and its uncertain objects, he would have
    gradually trailed off again into thinking, 'Where are we driving, he
    and I, I wonder, on the darker road of life? How will it be with us, and
    with her, in the obscure distance?' Thinking of her, he would have been
    troubled anew with a reproachful misgiving that it was not even loyal to
    her to dislike him, and that in being so easily prejudiced against him
    he was less deserving of her than at first.

    'You are evidently out of spirits,' said Gowan; 'I am very much afraid
    my mother must have bored you dreadfully.'

    'Believe me, not at all,' said Clennam. 'It's nothing--nothing!'

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Oh, Arthur, Arthur. He's still trying to convince himself that he's not in love with Pet Meagles. This means that not only is he stressed about the Gowan situation, he's also stressed about pretending not to be stressed about the Gowan situation. Oh yeah. It's like an onion. Layers. Doyce is on to Arthur's poorly kept secret, and they talk about how much Gowan obviously sucks, how much Pet clearly likes him, and how annoyed Meagles is every time he sees how much Pet likes Gowan. The next time he visits the Meagleses, Arthur runs into Gowan, who does his totally annoying alpha-male jock thing of constantly giving Arthur and Doyce backhanded compliments. Then Gowan runs down himself and his crappy paintings - which would be a nice self-deprecating thing to do, except the next thing Gowan does is say that every single other artist is also a talentless hack. Basically, according to Gowan, everything sort of sucks, and also nothing particularly matters. In art, in literature - and also in government. According to Gowan, the fact that the Circumlocution Office is horrendous, corrupt, and totally ineffectual is kind of the point of it. He's infuriating, especially to a goody-goody like Arthur. Gowan invites Arthur to meet Mrs. Gowan, his mom. The Gowans are a poor offshoot of a rich and powerful family, so they live in the poor offshoot of a rich and powerful neighborhood in a gross old house. Mrs. Gowan is about as stuck-up a person as can be imagined. She's very sad that Gowan is forced to work for a living. By which, hardy-har, she's apparently talking about his lazy painting, which he kind of does and mostly doesn't do. Also, she is sad about the idea of a democratically elected government. Finally, she takes Arthur aside and tells him she's also sad about the potential marriage between Gowan and Pet. According to Mrs. Gowan, the Meagleses have done their utmost to entrap the desirably high-born Gowan into this marriage. Arthur is totally scandalized to hear Mrs. Gowan talking about the Meagleses this way but she pointedly ignores him. Finally, Gowan takes Arthur home, and Arthur realizes that he was only invited to meet Mrs. Gowan because this is what she would say to him. Meaning Gowan wanted to: 1) make Arthur feel bad by hearing the Meagleses insulted, and 2) warn Arthur to back off Pet since Gowan is already in there. This seems a little paranoid, but it rings true, because that's how Gowan rolls.


prompt:
Chapter: A frequently recurring doubt, whether Mr Pancks's desire to collect
information relative to the Dorrit family could have any possible
bearing on the misgivings he had imparted to his mother on his return
from his long exile, caused Arthur Clennam much uneasiness at this
period. What Mr Pancks already knew about the Dorrit family, what more
he really wanted to find out, and why he should trouble his busy head
about them at all, were questions that often perplexed him. Mr Pancks
was not a man to waste his time and trouble in researches prompted by
idle curiosity. That he had a specific object Clennam could not doubt.
And whether the attainment of that object by Mr Pancks's industry might
bring to light, in some untimely way, secret reasons which had induced
his mother to take Little Dorrit by the hand, was a serious speculation.

Not that he ever wavered either in his desire or his determination to
repair a wrong that had been done in his father's time, should a
wrong come to light, and be reparable. The shadow of a supposed act
of injustice, which had hung over him since his father's death, was
so vague and formless that it might be the result of a reality widely
remote from his idea of it. But, if his apprehensions should prove to
be well founded, he was ready at any moment to lay down all he had, and
begin the world anew. As the fierce dark teaching of his childhood had
never sunk into his heart, so that first article in his code of morals
was, that he must begin, in practical humility, with looking well to
his feet on Earth, and that he could never mount on wings of words to
Heaven. Duty on earth, restitution on earth, action on earth; these
first, as the first steep steps upward. Strait was the gate and narrow
was the way; far straiter and narrower than the broad high road paved
with vain professions and vain repetitions, motes from other men's eyes
and liberal delivery of others to the judgment--all cheap materials
costing absolutely nothing.

No. It was not a selfish fear or hesitation that rendered him
uneasy, but a mistrust lest Pancks might not observe his part of the
understanding between them, and, making any discovery, might take some
course upon it without imparting it to him. On the other hand, when he
recalled his conversation with Pancks, and the little reason he had to
suppose that there was any likelihood of that strange personage being
on that track at all, there were times when he wondered that he made so
much of it. Labouring in this sea, as all barks labour in cross seas, he
tossed about and came to no haven.

The removal of Little Dorrit herself from their customary association,
    did not mend the matter. She was so much out, and so much in her own
    room, that he began to miss her and to find a blank in her place. He had
    written to her to inquire if she were better, and she had written
    back, very gratefully and earnestly telling him not to be uneasy on her
    behalf, for she was quite well; but he had not seen her, for what, in
    their intercourse, was a long time.

    He returned home one evening from an interview with her father, who had
    mentioned that she was out visiting--which was what he always said
    when she was hard at work to buy his supper--and found Mr Meagles in an
    excited state walking up and down his room. On his opening the door, Mr
    Meagles stopped, faced round, and said:

    'Clennam!--Tattycoram!'

    'What's the matter?'

    'Lost!'

    'Why, bless my heart alive!' cried Clennam in amazement. 'What do you
    mean?'

    'Wouldn't count five-and-twenty, sir; couldn't be got to do it; stopped
    at eight, and took herself off.'

    'Left your house?'

    'Never to come back,' said Mr Meagles, shaking his head. 'You don't know
    that girl's passionate and proud character. A team of horses couldn't
    draw her back now; the bolts and bars of the old Bastille couldn't keep
    her.'

    'How did it happen? Pray sit down and tell me.'

    'As to how it happened, it's not so easy to relate: because you must
    have the unfortunate temperament of the poor impetuous girl herself,
    before you can fully understand it. But it came about in this way. Pet
    and Mother and I have been having a good deal of talk together of late.
    I'll not disguise from you, Clennam, that those conversations have not
    been of as bright a kind as I could wish; they have referred to our
    going away again. In proposing to do which, I have had, in fact, an
    object.'

    Nobody's heart beat quickly.

    'An object,' said Mr Meagles, after a moment's pause, 'that I will not
    disguise from you, either, Clennam. There's an inclination on the part
    of my dear child which I am sorry for. Perhaps you guess the person.
    Henry Gowan.'

    'I was not unprepared to hear it.'

    'Well!' said Mr Meagles, with a heavy sigh, 'I wish to God you had never
    had to hear it. However, so it is. Mother and I have done all we could
    to get the better of it, Clennam. We have tried tender advice, we
    have tried time, we have tried absence. As yet, of no use. Our late
    conversations have been upon the subject of going away for another year
    at least, in order that there might be an entire separation and breaking
    off for that term. Upon that question, Pet has been unhappy, and
    therefore Mother and I have been unhappy.'

    Clennam said that he could easily believe it.

    'Well!' continued Mr Meagles in an apologetic way, 'I admit as a
    practical man, and I am sure Mother would admit as a practical woman,
    that we do, in families, magnify our troubles and make mountains of our
    molehills in a way that is calculated to be rather trying to people who
    look on--to mere outsiders, you know, Clennam. Still, Pet's happiness
    or unhappiness is quite a life or death question with us; and we may be
    excused, I hope, for making much of it. At all events, it might have
    been borne by Tattycoram. Now, don't you think so?'

    'I do indeed think so,' returned Clennam, in most emphatic recognition
    of this very moderate expectation.

    'No, sir,' said Mr Meagles, shaking his head ruefully. 'She couldn't
    stand it. The chafing and firing of that girl, the wearing and tearing
    of that girl within her own breast, has been such that I have
    softly said to her again and again in passing her, "Five-and-twenty,
    Tattycoram, five-and-twenty!" I heartily wish she could have gone
    on counting five-and-twenty day and night, and then it wouldn't have
    happened.'

    Mr Meagles with a despondent countenance in which the goodness of his
    heart was even more expressed than in his times of cheerfulness and
    gaiety, stroked his face down from his forehead to his chin, and shook
    his head again.

    'I said to Mother (not that it was necessary, for she would have thought
            it all for herself), we are practical people, my dear, and we know her
    story; we see in this unhappy girl some reflection of what was raging in
    her mother's heart before ever such a creature as this poor thing was
    in the world; we'll gloss her temper over, Mother, we won't notice it at
    present, my dear, we'll take advantage of some better disposition in her
    another time. So we said nothing. But, do what we would, it seems as if
    it was to be; she broke out violently one night.'

    'How, and why?'

    'If you ask me Why,' said Mr Meagles, a little disturbed by the
    question, for he was far more intent on softening her case than the
    family's, 'I can only refer you to what I have just repeated as having
    been pretty near my words to Mother. As to How, we had said Good night
    to Pet in her presence (very affectionately, I must allow), and she
    had attended Pet up-stairs--you remember she was her maid. Perhaps Pet,
    having been out of sorts, may have been a little more inconsiderate than
    usual in requiring services of her: but I don't know that I have any
    right to say so; she was always thoughtful and gentle.'

    'The gentlest mistress in the world.'

    'Thank you, Clennam,' said Mr Meagles, shaking him by the hand; 'you
    have often seen them together. Well! We presently heard this unfortunate
    Tattycoram loud and angry, and before we could ask what was the matter,
    Pet came back in a tremble, saying she was frightened of her. Close
    after her came Tattycoram in a flaming rage. "I hate you all three,"
    says she, stamping her foot at us. "I am bursting with hate of the whole
    house."'

    'Upon which you--?'

    'I?' said Mr Meagles, with a plain good faith that might have commanded
    the belief of Mrs Gowan herself. 'I said, count five-and-twenty,
    Tattycoram.'

    Mr Meagles again stroked his face and shook his head, with an air of
    profound regret.

    'She was so used to do it, Clennam, that even then, such a picture of
    passion as you never saw, she stopped short, looked me full in the face,
    and counted (as I made out) to eight. But she couldn't control herself
    to go any further. There she broke down, poor thing, and gave the other
    seventeen to the four winds. Then it all burst out. She detested us, she
    was miserable with us, she couldn't bear it, she wouldn't bear it, she
    was determined to go away. She was younger than her young mistress, and
    would she remain to see her always held up as the only creature who was
    young and interesting, and to be cherished and loved? No. She wouldn't,
    she wouldn't, she wouldn't! What did we think she, Tattycoram, might
    have been if she had been caressed and cared for in her childhood, like
    her young mistress? As good as her? Ah! Perhaps fifty times as good.
    When we pretended to be so fond of one another, we exulted over her;
    that was what we did; we exulted over her and shamed her. And all in
    the house did the same. They talked about their fathers and mothers, and
    brothers and sisters; they liked to drag them up before her face. There
    was Mrs Tickit, only yesterday, when her little grandchild was with her,
    had been amused by the child's trying to call her (Tattycoram) by the
    wretched name we gave her; and had laughed at the name. Why, who didn't;
    and who were we that we should have a right to name her like a dog or a
    cat? But she didn't care. She would take no more benefits from us; she
    would fling us her name back again, and she would go. She would leave
    us that minute, nobody should stop her, and we should never hear of her
    again.'

    Mr Meagles had recited all this with such a vivid remembrance of his
    original, that he was almost as flushed and hot by this time as he
    described her to have been.

    'Ah, well!' he said, wiping his face. 'It was of no use trying reason
    then, with that vehement panting creature (Heaven knows what her
            mother's story must have been); so I quietly told her that she should
    not go at that late hour of night, and I gave her my hand and took her
    to her room, and locked the house doors. But she was gone this morning.'

    'And you know no more of her?'

    'No more,' returned Mr Meagles. 'I have been hunting about all day. She
    must have gone very early and very silently. I have found no trace of
    her down about us.'

    'Stay! You want,' said Clennam, after a moment's reflection, 'to see
    her? I assume that?'

    'Yes, assuredly; I want to give her another chance; Mother and Pet
    want to give her another chance; come! You yourself,' said Mr Meagles,
    persuasively, as if the provocation to be angry were not his own at all,
    'want to give the poor passionate girl another chance, I know, Clennam.'

    'It would be strange and hard indeed if I did not,' said Clennam, 'when
    you are all so forgiving. What I was going to ask you was, have you
    thought of that Miss Wade?'

    'I have. I did not think of her until I had pervaded the whole of our
    neighbourhood, and I don't know that I should have done so then but
    for finding Mother and Pet, when I went home, full of the idea that
    Tattycoram must have gone to her. Then, of course, I recalled what she
    said that day at dinner when you were first with us.'

    'Have you any idea where Miss Wade is to be found?'

    'To tell you the truth,' returned Mr Meagles, 'it's because I have an
    addled jumble of a notion on that subject that you found me waiting
    here. There is one of those odd impressions in my house, which do
    mysteriously get into houses sometimes, which nobody seems to have
    picked up in a distinct form from anybody, and yet which everybody seems
    to have got hold of loosely from somebody and let go again, that she
    lives, or was living, thereabouts.' Mr Meagles handed him a slip of
    paper, on which was written the name of one of the dull by-streets in
    the Grosvenor region, near Park Lane.

    'Here is no number,' said Arthur looking over it.

    'No number, my dear Clennam?' returned his friend. 'No anything! The
    very name of the street may have been floating in the air; for, as I
    tell you, none of my people can say where they got it from. However,
    it's worth an inquiry; and as I would rather make it in company than
    alone, and as you too were a fellow-traveller of that immovable woman's,
    I thought perhaps--' Clennam finished the sentence for him by taking up
    his hat again, and saying he was ready.

    It was now summer-time; a grey, hot, dusty evening. They rode to the top
    of Oxford Street, and there alighting, dived in among the great streets
    of melancholy stateliness, and the little streets that try to be as
    stately and succeed in being more melancholy, of which there is a
    labyrinth near Park Lane. Wildernesses of corner houses, with barbarous
    old porticoes and appurtenances; horrors that came into existence under
    some wrong-headed person in some wrong-headed time, still demanding
    the blind admiration of all ensuing generations and determined to do
    so until they tumbled down; frowned upon the twilight. Parasite little
    tenements, with the cramp in their whole frame, from the dwarf hall-door
    on the giant model of His Grace's in the Square to the squeezed window
    of the boudoir commanding the dunghills in the Mews, made the evening
    doleful. Rickety dwellings of undoubted fashion, but of a capacity to
    hold nothing comfortably except a dismal smell, looked like the last
    result of the great mansions' breeding in-and-in; and, where their
    little supplementary bows and balconies were supported on thin iron
    columns, seemed to be scrofulously resting upon crutches. Here and
    there a Hatchment, with the whole science of Heraldry in it, loomed down
    upon the street, like an Archbishop discoursing on Vanity. The shops,
    few in number, made no show; for popular opinion was as nothing to them.
    The pastrycook knew who was on his books, and in that knowledge could be
    calm, with a few glass cylinders of dowager peppermint-drops in his
    window, and half-a-dozen ancient specimens of currant-jelly. A few
    oranges formed the greengrocer's whole concession to the vulgar mind. A
    single basket made of moss, once containing plovers' eggs, held all that
    the poulterer had to say to the rabble. Everybody in those streets
    seemed (which is always the case at that hour and season) to be gone out
    to dinner, and nobody seemed to be giving the dinners they had gone to.
    On the doorsteps there were lounging footmen with bright parti-coloured
    plumage and white polls, like an extinct race of monstrous birds; and
    butlers, solitary men of recluse demeanour, each of whom appeared
    distrustful of all other butlers. The roll of carriages in the Park was
    done for the day; the street lamps were lighting; and wicked little
    grooms in the tightest fitting garments, with twists in their legs
    answering to the twists in their minds, hung about in pairs, chewing
    straws and exchanging fraudulent secrets. The spotted dogs who went out
    with the carriages, and who were so associated with splendid equipages
    that it looked like a condescension in those animals to come out without
    them, accompanied helpers to and fro on messages. Here and there was a
    retiring public-house which did not require to be supported on the
    shoulders of the people, and where gentlemen out of livery were not much
    wanted.

    This last discovery was made by the two friends in pursuing their
    inquiries. Nothing was there, or anywhere, known of such a person as
    Miss Wade, in connection with the street they sought. It was one of the
    parasite streets; long, regular, narrow, dull and gloomy; like a brick
    and mortar funeral. They inquired at several little area gates, where
    a dejected youth stood spiking his chin on the summit of a precipitous
    little shoot of wooden steps, but could gain no information. They walked
    up the street on one side of the way, and down it on the other, what
    time two vociferous news-sellers, announcing an extraordinary event that
    had never happened and never would happen, pitched their hoarse voices
    into the secret chambers; but nothing came of it. At length they stood
    at the corner from which they had begun, and it had fallen quite dark,
    and they were no wiser.

    It happened that in the street they had several times passed a dingy
    house, apparently empty, with bills in the windows, announcing that it
    was to let. The bills, as a variety in the funeral procession, almost
    amounted to a decoration. Perhaps because they kept the house separated
    in his mind, or perhaps because Mr Meagles and himself had twice agreed
    in passing, 'It is clear she don't live there,' Clennam now proposed
    that they should go back and try that house before finally going away.
    Mr Meagles agreed, and back they went.

    They knocked once, and they rang once, without any response. 'Empty,'
    said Mr Meagles, listening. 'Once more,' said Clennam, and knocked
    again. After that knock they heard a movement below, and somebody
    shuffling up towards the door.

    The confined entrance was so dark that it was impossible to make out
    distinctly what kind of person opened the door; but it appeared to be an
    old woman. 'Excuse our troubling you,' said Clennam. 'Pray can you
    tell us where Miss Wade lives?' The voice in the darkness unexpectedly
    replied, 'Lives here.'

    'Is she at home?'

    No answer coming, Mr Meagles asked again. 'Pray is she at home?'

    After another delay, 'I suppose she is,' said the voice abruptly; 'you
    had better come in, and I'll ask.'

    They were summarily shut into the close black house; and the figure
    rustling away, and speaking from a higher level, said, 'Come up, if you
    please; you can't tumble over anything.' They groped their way up-stairs
    towards a faint light, which proved to be the light of the street
    shining through a window; and the figure left them shut in an airless
    room.

    'This is odd, Clennam,' said Mr Meagles, softly.

    'Odd enough,' assented Clennam in the same tone, 'but we have succeeded;
    that's the main point. Here's a light coming!'

    The light was a lamp, and the bearer was an old woman: very dirty, very
    wrinkled and dry. 'She's at home,' she said (and the voice was the same
            that had spoken before); 'she'll come directly.' Having set the lamp
    down on the table, the old woman dusted her hands on her apron, which
    she might have done for ever without cleaning them, looked at the
    visitors with a dim pair of eyes, and backed out.

    The lady whom they had come to see, if she were the present occupant
    of the house, appeared to have taken up her quarters there as she might
    have established herself in an Eastern caravanserai. A small square
    of carpet in the middle of the room, a few articles of furniture that
    evidently did not belong to the room, and a disorder of trunks and
    travelling articles, formed the whole of her surroundings. Under some
    former regular inhabitant, the stifling little apartment had broken out
    into a pier-glass and a gilt table; but the gilding was as faded as last
    year's flowers, and the glass was so clouded that it seemed to hold in
    magic preservation all the fogs and bad weather it had ever reflected.
    The visitors had had a minute or two to look about them, when the door
    opened and Miss Wade came in.

    She was exactly the same as when they had parted, just as handsome, just
    as scornful, just as repressed. She manifested no surprise in seeing
    them, nor any other emotion. She requested them to be seated; and
    declining to take a seat herself, at once anticipated any introduction
    of their business.

    'I apprehend,' she said, 'that I know the cause of your favouring me
    with this visit. We may come to it at once.'

    'The cause then, ma'am,' said Mr Meagles, 'is Tattycoram.'

    'So I supposed.'

    'Miss Wade,' said Mr Meagles, 'will you be so kind as to say whether you
    know anything of her?'

    'Surely. I know she is here with me.'

    'Then, ma'am,' said Mr Meagles, 'allow me to make known to you that I
    shall be happy to have her back, and that my wife and daughter will
    be happy to have her back. She has been with us a long time: we don't
    forget her claims upon us, and I hope we know how to make allowances.'

    'You hope to know how to make allowances?' she returned, in a level,
    measured voice. 'For what?'

    'I think my friend would say, Miss Wade,' Arthur Clennam interposed,
    seeing Mr Meagles rather at a loss, 'for the passionate sense that
    sometimes comes upon the poor girl, of being at a disadvantage. Which
    occasionally gets the better of better remembrances.'

    The lady broke into a smile as she turned her eyes upon him. 'Indeed?'
    was all she answered.

    She stood by the table so perfectly composed and still after this
    acknowledgment of his remark that Mr Meagles stared at her under a sort
    of fascination, and could not even look to Clennam to make another move.
    After waiting, awkwardly enough, for some moments, Arthur said:

    'Perhaps it would be well if Mr Meagles could see her, Miss Wade?'

    'That is easily done,' said she. 'Come here, child.' She had opened a
    door while saying this, and now led the girl in by the hand. It was
    very curious to see them standing together: the girl with her disengaged
    fingers plaiting the bosom of her dress, half irresolutely, half
    passionately; Miss Wade with her composed face attentively regarding
    her, and suggesting to an observer, with extraordinary force, in her
    composure itself (as a veil will suggest the form it covers), the
    unquenchable passion of her own nature.

    'See here,' she said, in the same level way as before. 'Here is your
    patron, your master. He is willing to take you back, my dear, if you are
    sensible of the favour and choose to go. You can be, again, a foil to
    his pretty daughter, a slave to her pleasant wilfulness, and a toy in
    the house showing the goodness of the family. You can have your droll
    name again, playfully pointing you out and setting you apart, as it is
    right that you should be pointed out and set apart. (Your birth, you
            know; you must not forget your birth.) You can again be shown to this
    gentleman's daughter, Harriet, and kept before her, as a living reminder
    of her own superiority and her gracious condescension. You can recover
    all these advantages and many more of the same kind which I dare say
    start up in your memory while I speak, and which you lose in taking
    refuge with me--you can recover them all by telling these gentlemen how
    humbled and penitent you are, and by going back to them to be forgiven.
    What do you say, Harriet? Will you go?'

    The girl who, under the influence of these words, had gradually risen
    in anger and heightened in colour, answered, raising her lustrous black
    eyes for the moment, and clenching her hand upon the folds it had been
    puckering up, 'I'd die sooner!'

    Miss Wade, still standing at her side holding her hand, looked quietly
    round and said with a smile, 'Gentlemen! What do you do upon that?'

    Poor Mr Meagles's inexpressible consternation in hearing his motives and
    actions so perverted, had prevented him from interposing any word until
    now; but now he regained the power of speech.

    'Tattycoram,' said he, 'for I'll call you by that name still, my good
    girl, conscious that I meant nothing but kindness when I gave it to you,
    and conscious that you know it--'

    'I don't!' said she, looking up again, and almost rending herself with
    the same busy hand.

    'No, not now, perhaps,' said Mr Meagles; 'not with that lady's eyes so
    intent upon you, Tattycoram,' she glanced at them for a moment, 'and
    that power over you, which we see she exercises; not now, perhaps, but
    at another time. Tattycoram, I'll not ask that lady whether she believes
    what she has said, even in the anger and ill blood in which I and my
    friend here equally know she has spoken, though she subdues herself,
    with a determination that any one who has once seen her is not likely
    to forget. I'll not ask you, with your remembrance of my house and all
    belonging to it, whether you believe it. I'll only say that you have
    no profession to make to me or mine, and no forgiveness to entreat;
    and that all in the world that I ask you to do, is, to count
    five-and-twenty, Tattycoram.'

    She looked at him for an instant, and then said frowningly, 'I won't.
    Miss Wade, take me away, please.'

    The contention that raged within her had no softening in it now; it
    was wholly between passionate defiance and stubborn defiance. Her rich
    colour, her quick blood, her rapid breath, were all setting themselves
    against the opportunity of retracing their steps. 'I won't. I won't.
    I won't!' she repeated in a low, thick voice. 'I'd be torn to pieces
    first. I'd tear myself to pieces first!'

    Miss Wade, who had released her hold, laid her hand protectingly on the
    girl's neck for a moment, and then said, looking round with her former
    smile and speaking exactly in her former tone, 'Gentlemen! What do you
    do upon that?'

    'Oh, Tattycoram, Tattycoram!' cried Mr Meagles, adjuring her besides
    with an earnest hand. 'Hear that lady's voice, look at that lady's face,
    consider what is in that lady's heart, and think what a future lies
    before you. My child, whatever you may think, that lady's influence
    over you--astonishing to us, and I should hardly go too far in saying
    terrible to us to see--is founded in passion fiercer than yours, and
    temper more violent than yours. What can you two be together? What can
    come of it?'

    'I am alone here, gentlemen,' observed Miss Wade, with no change of
    voice or manner. 'Say anything you will.'

    'Politeness must yield to this misguided girl, ma'am,' said Mr Meagles,
    'at her present pass; though I hope not altogether to dismiss it,
    even with the injury you do her so strongly before me. Excuse me for
    reminding you in her hearing--I must say it--that you were a mystery
    to all of us, and had nothing in common with any of us when she
    unfortunately fell in your way. I don't know what you are, but you don't
    hide, can't hide, what a dark spirit you have within you. If it should
    happen that you are a woman, who, from whatever cause, has a perverted
    delight in making a sister-woman as wretched as she is (I am old enough
            to have heard of such), I warn her against you, and I warn you against
    yourself.'

    'Gentlemen!' said Miss Wade, calmly. 'When you have concluded--Mr
    Clennam, perhaps you will induce your friend--'

    'Not without another effort,' said Mr Meagles, stoutly. 'Tattycoram,
    my poor dear girl, count five-and-twenty.'

    'Do not reject the hope, the certainty, this kind man offers you,' said
    Clennam in a low emphatic voice. 'Turn to the friends you have not
    forgotten. Think once more!'

    'I won't! Miss Wade,' said the girl, with her bosom swelling high, and
    speaking with her hand held to her throat, 'take me away!'

    'Tattycoram,' said Mr Meagles. 'Once more yet! The only thing I ask of
    you in the world, my child! Count five-and-twenty!'

    She put her hands tightly over her ears, confusedly tumbling down her
    bright black hair in the vehemence of the action, and turned her face
    resolutely to the wall. Miss Wade, who had watched her under this final
    appeal with that strange attentive smile, and that repressing hand
    upon her own bosom with which she had watched her in her struggle at
    Marseilles, then put her arm about her waist as if she took possession
    of her for evermore.

    And there was a visible triumph in her face when she turned it to
    dismiss the visitors.

    'As it is the last time I shall have the honour,' she said, 'and as you
    have spoken of not knowing what I am, and also of the foundation of my
    influence here, you may now know that it is founded in a common cause.
    What your broken plaything is as to birth, I am. She has no name, I have
    no name. Her wrong is my wrong. I have nothing more to say to you.'

    This was addressed to Mr Meagles, who sorrowfully went out. As Clennam
    followed, she said to him, with the same external composure and in the
    same level voice, but with a smile that is only seen on cruel faces: a
    very faint smile, lifting the nostril, scarcely touching the lips, and
    not breaking away gradually, but instantly dismissed when done with:

    'I hope the wife of your dear friend Mr Gowan, may be happy in the
    contrast of her extraction to this girl's and mine, and in the high good
    fortune that awaits her.'

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Arthur is bumming because Little Dorrit is staying in her room and won't come out and play as often as she used to. Also, he's a little worried about Pancks and his Dorrit family research. Cross fingers and hope for the best! Coming home from the Marshalsea one night, Arthur finds Meagles in his room, freaking out. Turns out Tattycoram finally snapped, gave the Meagleses a piece of her mind, and ran off. The piece of her mind basically accused them of being horrible, horrible people, constantly doting on Pet in front of Tattycoram's face. Also, Tattycoram is just generally depressed by the fact that she easily could have been in Pet's place, and that life is such a random lottery. Meagles can't find her, and he and Arthur decide to seek out Miss Wade - maybe Tattycoram is with her. They search up and down in a forgotten corner of London and finally find the place she's renting. Miss Wade is exactly the same as before: "just as handsome, just as scornful, just as repressed" . She has Tattycoram with her and has clearly taken her side. Miss Wade offers Tattycoram the option to "be, again, a foil to his pretty daughter, a slave to her pleasant willfulness, and a toy in the house showing the goodness of the family. You can have your droll name again, playfully pointing you out and setting you apart, as it is right that you should be pointed out and set apart. You can again be shown to this gentleman's daughter, Harriet, and kept before her, as a living reminder of her own superiority and her gracious condescension" . Wow, harsh. Meagles is totally floored by this perspective on what he and his wife have done with Tattycoram. He busts out with some vague pleas to Miss Wade to let Tattycoram go. Then he accuses her of something. Maybe of being a lesbian? Maybe of being some kind of sadomasochist? It's really hard to tell, but here it is: "If it should happen that you are a woman, who, from whatever cause, has a perverted delight in making a sister-woman as wretched as she is , I warn her against you, and I warn you against yourself" . Huh. Well, you decide what he's talking about. Although it really does sounds like he's suspecting homosexuality. In any case, Tattycoram is all, "um, no, I'm not going back to that," and stomps off. Miss Wade then tells Arthur and Meagles that she is also, like Tattycoram, illegitimate. Finally, she tells Arthur that she hopes Pet and Gowan are happy together. But she says it with a lot of spite, so she probably doesn't mean it.