prompt:
Chapter: Arthur Clennam rose hastily, and saw her standing at the door. This
history must sometimes see with Little Dorrit's eyes, and shall begin
that course by seeing him.

Little Dorrit looked into a dim room, which seemed a spacious one to
her, and grandly furnished. Courtly ideas of Covent Garden, as a place
with famous coffee-houses, where gentlemen wearing gold-laced coats and
swords had quarrelled and fought duels; costly ideas of Covent Garden,
       as a place where there were flowers in winter at guineas a-piece,
       pine-apples at guineas a pound, and peas at guineas a pint; picturesque
       ideas of Covent Garden, as a place where there was a mighty theatre,
       showing wonderful and beautiful sights to richly-dressed ladies and
       gentlemen, and which was for ever far beyond the reach of poor Fanny or
       poor uncle; desolate ideas of Covent Garden, as having all those arches
       in it, where the miserable children in rags among whom she had just now
       passed, like young rats, slunk and hid, fed on offal, huddled together
       for warmth, and were hunted about (look to the rats young and old, all
               ye Barnacles, for before God they are eating away our foundations, and
               will bring the roofs on our heads!); teeming ideas of Covent Garden, as
       a place of past and present mystery, romance, abundance, want, beauty,
       ugliness, fair country gardens, and foul street gutters; all confused
       together,--made the room dimmer than it was in Little Dorrit's eyes, as
       they timidly saw it from the door.

       At first in the chair before the gone-out fire, and then turned round
       wondering to see her, was the gentleman whom she sought. The brown,
       grave gentleman, who smiled so pleasantly, who was so frank and
       considerate in his manner, and yet in whose earnestness there was
       something that reminded her of his mother, with the great difference
       that she was earnest in asperity and he in gentleness. Now he regarded
       her with that attentive and inquiring look before which Little Dorrit's
       eyes had always fallen, and before which they fell still.

       'My poor child! Here at midnight?'

       'I said Little Dorrit, sir, on purpose to prepare you. I knew you must
       be very much surprised.'

       'Are you alone?'

       'No sir, I have got Maggy with me.'

       Considering her entrance sufficiently prepared for by this mention of
       her name, Maggy appeared from the landing outside, on the broad grin.
       She instantly suppressed that manifestation, however, and became fixedly
       solemn.

       'And I have no fire,' said Clennam. 'And you are--' He was going to say
       so lightly clad, but stopped himself in what would have been a reference
       to her poverty, saying instead, 'And it is so cold.'

       Putting the chair from which he had risen nearer to the grate, he made
       her sit down in it; and hurriedly bringing wood and coal, heaped them
       together and got a blaze.

       'Your foot is like marble, my child;' he had happened to touch it, while
       stooping on one knee at his work of kindling the fire; 'put it nearer
       the warmth.' Little Dorrit thanked him hastily. It was quite warm, it
       was very warm! It smote upon his heart to feel that she hid her thin,
       worn shoe.

       Little Dorrit was not ashamed of her poor shoes. He knew her story, and
       it was not that. Little Dorrit had a misgiving that he might blame her
       father, if he saw them; that he might think, 'why did he dine to-day,
       and leave this little creature to the mercy of the cold stones!' She had
       no belief that it would have been a just reflection; she simply knew,
       by experience, that such delusions did sometimes present themselves to
       people. It was a part of her father's misfortunes that they did.

       'Before I say anything else,' Little Dorrit began, sitting before
       the pale fire, and raising her eyes again to the face which in its
       harmonious look of interest, and pity, and protection, she felt to be a
       mystery far above her in degree, and almost removed beyond her guessing
       at; 'may I tell you something, sir?'

       'Yes, my child.'

       A slight shade of distress fell upon her, at his so often calling her a
       child. She was surprised that he should see it, or think of such a
       slight thing; but he said directly:

       'I wanted a tender word, and could think of no other. As you just now
       gave yourself the name they give you at my mother's, and as that is the
       name by which I always think of you, let me call you Little Dorrit.'

       'Thank you, sir, I should like it better than any name.'

       'Little Dorrit.'

       'Little mother,' Maggy (who had been falling asleep) put in, as a
       correction.

       'It's all the same, Maggy,' returned Little Dorrit, 'all the same.'

       'Is it all the same, mother?'

       'Just the same.'

       Maggy laughed, and immediately snored. In Little Dorrit's eyes and ears,
       the uncouth figure and the uncouth sound were as pleasant as could be.
       There was a glow of pride in her big child, overspreading her face, when
       it again met the eyes of the grave brown gentleman. She wondered what he
       was thinking of, as he looked at Maggy and her. She thought what a
       good father he would be. How, with some such look, he would counsel and
       cherish his daughter.

       'What I was going to tell you, sir,' said Little Dorrit, 'is, that my
       brother is at large.'

       Arthur was rejoiced to hear it, and hoped he would do well.

       'And what I was going to tell you, sir,' said Little Dorrit, trembling
       in all her little figure and in her voice, 'is, that I am not to know
       whose generosity released him--am never to ask, and am never to be told,
       and am never to thank that gentleman with all my grateful heart!'

       He would probably need no thanks, Clennam said. Very likely he would be
       thankful himself (and with reason), that he had had the means and chance
       of doing a little service to her, who well deserved a great one.

       'And what I was going to say, sir, is,' said Little Dorrit, trembling
       more and more, 'that if I knew him, and I might, I would tell him that
       he can never, never know how I feel his goodness, and how my good father
       would feel it. And what I was going to say, sir, is, that if I knew him,
       and I might--but I don't know him and I must not--I know that!--I would
       tell him that I shall never any more lie down to sleep without having
       prayed to Heaven to bless him and reward him. And if I knew him, and I
       might, I would go down on my knees to him, and take his hand and kiss
       it and ask him not to draw it away, but to leave it--O to leave it for a
       moment--and let my thankful tears fall on it; for I have no other thanks
       to give him!'

       Little Dorrit had put his hand to her lips, and would have kneeled to
       him, but he gently prevented her, and replaced her in her chair. Her
       eyes, and the tones of her voice, had thanked him far better than she
       thought. He was not able to say, quite as composedly as usual, 'There,
       Little Dorrit, there, there, there! We will suppose that you did know
       this person, and that you might do all this, and that it was all done.
       And now tell me, Who am quite another person--who am nothing more than
       the friend who begged you to trust him--why you are out at midnight, and
       what it is that brings you so far through the streets at this late hour,
       my slight, delicate,' child was on his lips again, 'Little Dorrit!'

       'Maggy and I have been to-night,' she answered, subduing herself with
       the quiet effort that had long been natural to her, 'to the theatre
       where my sister is engaged.'

       'And oh ain't it a Ev'nly place,' suddenly interrupted Maggy, who seemed
       to have the power of going to sleep and waking up whenever she chose.
       'Almost as good as a hospital. Only there ain't no Chicking in it.'

       Here she shook herself, and fell asleep again.

       'We went there,' said Little Dorrit, glancing at her charge, 'because
       I like sometimes to know, of my own knowledge, that my sister is doing
       well; and like to see her there, with my own eyes, when neither she nor
       Uncle is aware. It is very seldom indeed that I can do that, because
       when I am not out at work, I am with my father, and even when I am out
       at work, I hurry home to him. But I pretend to-night that I am at a
       party.'

       As she made the confession, timidly hesitating, she raised her eyes to
       the face, and read its expression so plainly that she answered it.

       'Oh no, certainly! I never was at a party in my life.'

       She paused a little under his attentive look, and then said, 'I hope
       there is no harm in it. I could never have been of any use, if I had
       not pretended a little.'

       She feared that he was blaming her in his mind for so devising to
       contrive for them, think for them, and watch over them, without their
       knowledge or gratitude; perhaps even with their reproaches for supposed
       neglect. But what was really in his mind, was the weak figure with its
       strong purpose, the thin worn shoes, the insufficient dress, and the
       pretence of recreation and enjoyment. He asked where the suppositious
       party was? At a place where she worked, answered Little Dorrit,
       blushing. She had said very little about it; only a few words to
       make her father easy. Her father did not believe it to be a grand
       party--indeed he might suppose that. And she glanced for an instant at
       the shawl she wore.

       'It is the first night,' said Little Dorrit, 'that I have ever been away
       from home. And London looks so large, so barren, and so wild.' In Little
       Dorrit's eyes, its vastness under the black sky was awful; a tremor
       passed over her as she said the words.

       'But this is not,' she added, with the quiet effort again, 'what I have
       come to trouble you with, sir. My sister's having found a friend, a lady
    she has told me of and made me rather anxious about, was the first cause
of my coming away from home. And being away, and coming (on purpose)
    round by where you lived and seeing a light in the window--'

    Not for the first time. No, not for the first time. In Little Dorrit's
    eyes, the outside of that window had been a distant star on other nights
    than this. She had toiled out of her way, tired and troubled, to look up
    at it, and wonder about the grave, brown gentleman from so far off, who
    had spoken to her as a friend and protector.

    'There were three things,' said Little Dorrit, 'that I thought I would
    like to say, if you were alone and I might come up-stairs. First, what I
    have tried to say, but never can--never shall--'

    'Hush, hush! That is done with, and disposed of. Let us pass to the
    second,' said Clennam, smiling her agitation away, making the blaze
    shine upon her, and putting wine and cake and fruit towards her on the
    table.

    'I think,' said Little Dorrit--'this is the second thing, sir--I think
    Mrs Clennam must have found out my secret, and must know where I come
    from and where I go to. Where I live, I mean.'

    'Indeed!' returned Clennam quickly. He asked her, after short
    consideration, why she supposed so.

    'I think,' replied Little Dorrit, 'that Mr Flintwinch must have watched
    me.'

    And why, Clennam asked, as he turned his eyes upon the fire, bent his
    brows, and considered again; why did she suppose that?

    'I have met him twice. Both times near home. Both times at night, when
    I was going back. Both times I thought (though that may easily be my
            mistake), that he hardly looked as if he had met me by accident.'

    'Did he say anything?'

    'No; he only nodded and put his head on one side.'

    'The devil take his head!' mused Clennam, still looking at the fire;
    'it's always on one side.'

    He roused himself to persuade her to put some wine to her lips, and to
    touch something to eat--it was very difficult, she was so timid and
    shy--and then said, musing again:

    'Is my mother at all changed to you?'

    'Oh, not at all. She is just the same. I wondered whether I had better
    tell her my history. I wondered whether I might--I mean, whether you
    would like me to tell her. I wondered,' said Little Dorrit, looking at
    him in a suppliant way, and gradually withdrawing her eyes as he looked
    at her, 'whether you would advise me what I ought to do.'

    'Little Dorrit,' said Clennam; and the phrase had already begun, between
    these two, to stand for a hundred gentle phrases, according to the
    varying tone and connection in which it was used; 'do nothing. I will
    have some talk with my old friend, Mrs Affery. Do nothing, Little
    Dorrit--except refresh yourself with such means as there are here. I
    entreat you to do that.'

    'Thank you, I am not hungry. Nor,' said Little Dorrit, as he softly
    put her glass towards her, 'nor thirsty.--I think Maggy might like
    something, perhaps.'

    'We will make her find pockets presently for all there is here,' said
    Clennam: 'but before we awake her, there was a third thing to say.'

    'Yes. You will not be offended, sir?'

    'I promise that, unreservedly.'

    'It will sound strange. I hardly know how to say it. Don't think it
    unreasonable or ungrateful in me,' said Little Dorrit, with returning
    and increasing agitation.

    'No, no, no. I am sure it will be natural and right. I am not afraid
    that I shall put a wrong construction on it, whatever it is.'

    'Thank you. You are coming back to see my father again?'

    'Yes.'

    'You have been so good and thoughtful as to write him a note, saying
    that you are coming to-morrow?'

    'Oh, that was nothing! Yes.'

    'Can you guess,' said Little Dorrit, folding her small hands tight in
    one another, and looking at him with all the earnestness of her soul
    looking steadily out of her eyes, 'what I am going to ask you not to
    do?'

    'I think I can. But I may be wrong.'

    'No, you are not wrong,' said Little Dorrit, shaking her head. 'If we
    should want it so very, very badly that we cannot do without it, let me
    ask you for it.'

    'I Will,--I Will.'

    'Don't encourage him to ask. Don't understand him if he does ask. Don't
    give it to him. Save him and spare him that, and you will be able to
    think better of him!'

    Clennam said--not very plainly, seeing those tears glistening in her
    anxious eyes--that her wish should be sacred with him.

    'You don't know what he is,' she said; 'you don't know what he really
    is. How can you, seeing him there all at once, dear love, and not
    gradually, as I have done! You have been so good to us, so delicately
    and truly good, that I want him to be better in your eyes than in
    anybody's. And I cannot bear to think,' cried Little Dorrit, covering
    her tears with her hands, 'I cannot bear to think that you of all the
    world should see him in his only moments of degradation.'

    'Pray,' said Clennam, 'do not be so distressed. Pray, pray, Little
    Dorrit! This is quite understood now.'

    'Thank you, sir. Thank you! I have tried very much to keep myself from
    saying this; I have thought about it, days and nights; but when I knew
    for certain you were coming again, I made up my mind to speak to you.
    Not because I am ashamed of him,' she dried her tears quickly, 'but
    because I know him better than any one does, and love him, and am proud
    of him.'

    Relieved of this weight, Little Dorrit was nervously anxious to be gone.
    Maggy being broad awake, and in the act of distantly gloating over the
    fruit and cakes with chuckles of anticipation, Clennam made the best
    diversion in his power by pouring her out a glass of wine, which she
    drank in a series of loud smacks; putting her hand upon her windpipe
    after every one, and saying, breathless, with her eyes in a prominent
    state, 'Oh, ain't it d'licious! Ain't it hospitally!' When she had
    finished the wine and these encomiums, he charged her to load her basket
    (she was never without her basket) with every eatable thing upon the
    table, and to take especial care to leave no scrap behind. Maggy's
    pleasure in doing this and her little mother's pleasure in seeing Maggy
    pleased, was as good a turn as circumstances could have given to the
    late conversation.

    'But the gates will have been locked long ago,' said Clennam, suddenly
    remembering it. 'Where are you going?'

    'I am going to Maggy's lodging,' answered Little Dorrit. 'I shall be
    quite safe, quite well taken care of.'

    'I must accompany you there,' said Clennam, 'I cannot let you go alone.'

    'Yes, pray leave us to go there by ourselves. Pray do!' begged Little
    Dorrit.

    She was so earnest in the petition, that Clennam felt a delicacy in
    obtruding himself upon her: the rather, because he could well understand
    that Maggy's lodging was of the obscurest sort. 'Come, Maggy,' said
    Little Dorrit cheerily, 'we shall do very well; we know the way by this
    time, Maggy?'

    'Yes, yes, little mother; we know the way,' chuckled Maggy. And away
    they went. Little Dorrit turned at the door to say, 'God bless you!' She
    said it very softly, but perhaps she may have been as audible above--who
    knows!--as a whole cathedral choir.

    Arthur Clennam suffered them to pass the corner of the street before he
    followed at a distance; not with any idea of encroaching a second time
    on Little Dorrit's privacy, but to satisfy his mind by seeing her secure
    in the neighbourhood to which she was accustomed. So diminutive she
    looked, so fragile and defenceless against the bleak damp weather,
    flitting along in the shuffling shadow of her charge, that he felt, in
    his compassion, and in his habit of considering her a child apart from
    the rest of the rough world, as if he would have been glad to take her
    up in his arms and carry her to her journey's end.

    In course of time she came into the leading thoroughfare where the
    Marshalsea was, and then he saw them slacken their pace, and soon turn
    down a by-street. He stopped, felt that he had no right to go further,
    and slowly left them. He had no suspicion that they ran any risk of
    being houseless until morning; had no idea of the truth until long, long
    afterwards.

    But, said Little Dorrit, when they stopped at a poor dwelling all in
    darkness, and heard no sound on listening at the door, 'Now, this is a
    good lodging for you, Maggy, and we must not give offence. Consequently,
    we will only knock twice, and not very loud; and if we cannot wake them
    so, we must walk about till day.'

    Once, Little Dorrit knocked with a careful hand, and listened. Twice,
    Little Dorrit knocked with a careful hand, and listened. All was close
    and still. 'Maggy, we must do the best we can, my dear. We must be
    patient, and wait for day.'

    It was a chill dark night, with a damp wind blowing, when they came out
    into the leading street again, and heard the clocks strike half-past
    one. 'In only five hours and a half,' said Little Dorrit, 'we shall be
    able to go home.' To speak of home, and to go and look at it, it being
    so near, was a natural sequence. They went to the closed gate, and
    peeped through into the court-yard. 'I hope he is sound asleep,' said
    Little Dorrit, kissing one of the bars, 'and does not miss me.'

    The gate was so familiar, and so like a companion, that they put down
    Maggy's basket in a corner to serve for a seat, and keeping close
    together, rested there for some time. While the street was empty and
    silent, Little Dorrit was not afraid; but when she heard a footstep at
    a distance, or saw a moving shadow among the street lamps, she was
    startled, and whispered, 'Maggy, I see some one. Come away!' Maggy
    would then wake up more or less fretfully, and they would wander about a
    little, and come back again.

    As long as eating was a novelty and an amusement, Maggy kept up pretty
    well. But that period going by, she became querulous about the cold, and
    shivered and whimpered. 'It will soon be over, dear,' said Little Dorrit
    patiently. 'Oh it's all very fine for you, little mother,' returned
    Maggy, 'but I'm a poor thing, only ten years old.' At last, in the dead
    of the night, when the street was very still indeed, Little Dorrit laid
    the heavy head upon her bosom, and soothed her to sleep. And thus she
    sat at the gate, as it were alone; looking up at the stars, and seeing
    the clouds pass over them in their wild flight--which was the dance at
    Little Dorrit's party.

    'If it really was a party!' she thought once, as she sat there. 'If it
    was light and warm and beautiful, and it was our house, and my poor dear
    was its master, and had never been inside these walls. And if Mr
    Clennam was one of our visitors, and we were dancing to delightful
    music, and were all as gay and light-hearted as ever we could be! I
    wonder--' Such a vista of wonder opened out before her, that she sat
    looking up at the stars, quite lost, until Maggy was querulous again,
    and wanted to get up and walk.

    Three o'clock, and half-past three, and they had passed over London
    Bridge. They had heard the rush of the tide against obstacles; and
    looked down, awed, through the dark vapour on the river; had seen little
    spots of lighted water where the bridge lamps were reflected, shining
    like demon eyes, with a terrible fascination in them for guilt and
    misery. They had shrunk past homeless people, lying coiled up in
    nooks. They had run from drunkards. They had started from slinking men,
    whistling and signing to one another at bye corners, or running away at
    full speed. Though everywhere the leader and the guide, Little Dorrit,
    happy for once in her youthful appearance, feigned to cling to and rely
    upon Maggy. And more than once some voice, from among a knot of brawling
    or prowling figures in their path, had called out to the rest to 'let
    the woman and the child go by!'

    So, the woman and the child had gone by, and gone on, and five had
    sounded from the steeples. They were walking slowly towards the east,
    already looking for the first pale streak of day, when a woman came
    after them.

    'What are you doing with the child?' she said to Maggy.

    She was young--far too young to be there, Heaven knows!--and neither
    ugly nor wicked-looking. She spoke coarsely, but with no naturally
    coarse voice; there was even something musical in its sound.

    'What are you doing with yourself?' retorted Maggy, for want of a better
    answer.

    'Can't you see, without my telling you?'

    'I don't know as I can,' said Maggy.

    'Killing myself! Now I have answered you, answer me. What are you doing
    with the child?'

    The supposed child kept her head drooped down, and kept her form close
    at Maggy's side.

    'Poor thing!' said the woman. 'Have you no feeling, that you keep her
    out in the cruel streets at such a time as this? Have you no eyes, that
    you don't see how delicate and slender she is? Have you no sense (you
            don't look as if you had much) that you don't take more pity on this
    cold and trembling little hand?'

    She had stepped across to that side, and held the hand between her own
    two, chafing it. 'Kiss a poor lost creature, dear,' she said, bending
    her face, 'and tell me where's she taking you.'

    Little Dorrit turned towards her.

    'Why, my God!' she said, recoiling, 'you're a woman!'

    'Don't mind that!' said Little Dorrit, clasping one of her hands that
    had suddenly released hers. 'I am not afraid of you.'

    'Then you had better be,' she answered. 'Have you no mother?'

    'No.'

    'No father?'

    'Yes, a very dear one.'

    'Go home to him, and be afraid of me. Let me go. Good night!'

    'I must thank you first; let me speak to you as if I really were a
    child.'

    'You can't do it,' said the woman. 'You are kind and innocent; but you
    can't look at me out of a child's eyes. I never should have touched you,
    but I thought that you were a child.' And with a strange, wild cry, she
    went away.

    No day yet in the sky, but there was day in the resounding stones of
    the streets; in the waggons, carts, and coaches; in the workers going
    to various occupations; in the opening of early shops; in the traffic
    at markets; in the stir of the riverside. There was coming day in the
    flaring lights, with a feebler colour in them than they would have had
    at another time; coming day in the increased sharpness of the air, and
    the ghastly dying of the night.

    They went back again to the gate, intending to wait there now until it
    should be opened; but the air was so raw and cold that Little Dorrit,
    leading Maggy about in her sleep, kept in motion. Going round by the
    Church, she saw lights there, and the door open; and went up the steps
    and looked in.

    'Who's that?' cried a stout old man, who was putting on a nightcap as if
    he were going to bed in a vault.

    'It's no one particular, sir,' said Little Dorrit.

    'Stop!' cried the man. 'Let's have a look at you!'

    This caused her to turn back again in the act of going out, and to
    present herself and her charge before him.

    'I thought so!' said he. 'I know _you_.'

    'We have often seen each other,' said Little Dorrit, recognising the
    sexton, or the beadle, or the verger, or whatever he was, 'when I have
    been at church here.'

    'More than that, we've got your birth in our Register, you know; you're
    one of our curiosities.'

    'Indeed!' said Little Dorrit.

    'To be sure. As the child of the--by-the-bye, how did you get out so
    early?'

    'We were shut out last night, and are waiting to get in.'

    'You don't mean it? And there's another hour good yet! Come into the
    vestry. You'll find a fire in the vestry, on account of the painters.
    I'm waiting for the painters, or I shouldn't be here, you may depend
    upon it. One of our curiosities mustn't be cold when we have it in our
    power to warm her up comfortable. Come along.'

    He was a very good old fellow, in his familiar way; and having stirred
    the vestry fire, he looked round the shelves of registers for a
    particular volume. 'Here you are, you see,' he said, taking it down and
    turning the leaves. 'Here you'll find yourself, as large as life. Amy,
    daughter of William and Fanny Dorrit. Born, Marshalsea Prison, Parish of
    St George. And we tell people that you have lived there, without so much
    as a day's or a night's absence, ever since. Is it true?'

    'Quite true, till last night.'

    'Lord!' But his surveying her with an admiring gaze suggested Something
    else to him, to wit: 'I am sorry to see, though, that you are faint and
    tired. Stay a bit. I'll get some cushions out of the church, and you and
    your friend shall lie down before the fire. Don't be afraid of not
    going in to join your father when the gate opens. _I'll_ call you.'

    He soon brought in the cushions, and strewed them on the ground.

    'There you are, you see. Again as large as life. Oh, never mind
    thanking. I've daughters of my own. And though they weren't born in the
    Marshalsea Prison, they might have been, if I had been, in my ways of
    carrying on, of your father's breed. Stop a bit. I must put something
    under the cushion for your head. Here's a burial volume, just the
    thing! We have got Mrs Bangham in this book. But what makes these books
    interesting to most people is--not who's in 'em, but who isn't--who's
    coming, you know, and when. That's the interesting question.'

    Commendingly looking back at the pillow he had improvised, he left them
    to their hour's repose. Maggy was snoring already, and Little Dorrit
    was soon fast asleep with her head resting on that sealed book of Fate,
    untroubled by its mysterious blank leaves.

    This was Little Dorrit's party. The shame, desertion, wretchedness, and
    exposure of the great capital; the wet, the cold, the slow hours, and
    the swift clouds of the dismal night. This was the party from which
    Little Dorrit went home, jaded, in the first grey mist of a rainy
    morning.

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

completion: What on earth are Little Dorrit and Maggy doing at Arthur's house at midnight? Turns out they were watching Fanny perform and got locked out of the Marshalsea. Little Dorrit told her dad she was going to a party. Arthur is horrified by how thin her clothes are considering it's a cold fall night. As she is warming by the fire, Little Dorrit thanks Arthur in a roundabout way for getting Tip out of prison. Then she tells him that Flintwinch has been watching her comings and goings. Finally she asks him to not give Dorrit money anymore, even if he starts asking for it. She doesn't want Arthur to only see Dorrit as a guy who degrades himself. There's a whole lot of denial going on, though, as Little Dorrit tells Arthur that she is super-proud of her dad. Finally, Little Dorrit and Maggy get up to leave. They tell Arthur they're going to Maggy's, and Arthur doesn't realize that they could end up homeless for the night. End up homeless they do, since they can't wake up the people from whom Maggy rents a room . They are forced to wander around the shady parts of London all night long, since sleeping on the street would be too dangerous. There are beggars, drunks, people fighting, and even a prostitute. It's really not a good scene. In the early morning, after a long night, Little Dorrit sees a light on in a church and goes in. It's the church closest to the Marshalsea, the one where her own baptism was recorded. The sexton there recognizes her and sets up a makeshift bed for her and Maggy in front of a fire. He gives Little Dorrit the burial volume of the church registry to use as a pillow. Nice. And then, as if we weren't feeling bad enough, the narrator piles it on: "This was Little Dorrit's party. The shame, desertion, wretchedness, and exposure of the great capital; the wet, the cold, the slow hours, and the swift clouds of the dismal night. This was the party from which Little Dorrit went home, jaded, in the first grey mist of a rainy morning" .


prompt:
Chapter: The debilitated old house in the city, wrapped in its mantle of soot,
    and leaning heavily on the crutches that had partaken of its decay and
    worn out with it, never knew a healthy or a cheerful interval, let what
    would betide. If the sun ever touched it, it was but with a ray, and
    that was gone in half an hour; if the moonlight ever fell upon it, it
    was only to put a few patches on its doleful cloak, and make it look
    more wretched. The stars, to be sure, coldly watched it when the nights
    and the smoke were clear enough; and all bad weather stood by it with
    a rare fidelity. You should alike find rain, hail, frost, and thaw
    lingering in that dismal enclosure when they had vanished from other
    places; and as to snow, you should see it there for weeks, long after
    it had changed from yellow to black, slowly weeping away its grimy life.
    The place had no other adherents. As to street noises, the rumbling of
    wheels in the lane merely rushed in at the gateway in going past, and
    rushed out again: making the listening Mistress Affery feel as if she
    were deaf, and recovered the sense of hearing by instantaneous flashes.
    So with whistling, singing, talking, laughing, and all pleasant human
    sounds. They leaped the gap in a moment, and went upon their way.

    The varying light of fire and candle in Mrs Clennam's room made the
    greatest change that ever broke the dead monotony of the spot. In her
    two long narrow windows, the fire shone sullenly all day, and sullenly
    all night. On rare occasions it flashed up passionately, as she did;
    but for the most part it was suppressed, like her, and preyed upon
    itself evenly and slowly. During many hours of the short winter days,
    however, when it was dusk there early in the afternoon, changing
    distortions of herself in her wheeled chair, of Mr Flintwinch with his
    wry neck, of Mistress Affery coming and going, would be thrown upon the
    house wall that was over the gateway, and would hover there like shadows
    from a great magic lantern. As the room-ridden invalid settled for the
    night, these would gradually disappear: Mistress Affery's magnified
    shadow always flitting about, last, until it finally glided away into
    the air, as though she were off upon a witch excursion. Then the
    solitary light would burn unchangingly, until it burned pale before the
    dawn, and at last died under the breath of Mrs Affery, as her shadow
    descended on it from the witch-region of sleep.

    Strange, if the little sick-room fire were in effect a beacon fire,
    summoning some one, and that the most unlikely some one in the world,
    to the spot that _must_ be come to. Strange, if the little sick-room light
    were in effect a watch-light, burning in that place every night until
    an appointed event should be watched out! Which of the vast multitude
    of travellers, under the sun and the stars, climbing the dusty hills
    and toiling along the weary plains, journeying by land and journeying by
    sea, coming and going so strangely, to meet and to act and react on one
    another; which of the host may, with no suspicion of the journey's end,
    be travelling surely hither?

    Time shall show us. The post of honour and the post of shame, the
    general's station and the drummer's, a peer's statue in Westminster
    Abbey and a seaman's hammock in the bosom of the deep, the mitre and
    the workhouse, the woolsack and the gallows, the throne and the
    guillotine--the travellers to all are on the great high road, but it
    has wonderful divergencies, and only Time shall show us whither each
    traveller is bound.

    On a wintry afternoon at twilight, Mrs Flintwinch, having been heavy all
    day, dreamed this dream:

    She thought she was in the kitchen getting the kettle ready for tea, and
    was warming herself with her feet upon the fender and the skirt of her
    gown tucked up, before the collapsed fire in the middle of the grate,
    bordered on either hand by a deep cold black ravine. She thought that
    as she sat thus, musing upon the question whether life was not for some
    people a rather dull invention, she was frightened by a sudden noise
    behind her. She thought that she had been similarly frightened once last
    week, and that the noise was of a mysterious kind--a sound of rustling
    and of three or four quick beats like a rapid step; while a shock or
    tremble was communicated to her heart, as if the step had shaken the
    floor, or even as if she had been touched by some awful hand. She
    thought that this revived within her certain old fears of hers that
    the house was haunted; and that she flew up the kitchen stairs without
    knowing how she got up, to be nearer company.

    Mistress Affery thought that on reaching the hall, she saw the door of
    her liege lord's office standing open, and the room empty. That she went
    to the ripped-up window in the little room by the street door to connect
    her palpitating heart, through the glass, with living things beyond
    and outside the haunted house. That she then saw, on the wall over the
    gateway, the shadows of the two clever ones in conversation above. That
    she then went upstairs with her shoes in her hand, partly to be near
    the clever ones as a match for most ghosts, and partly to hear what they
    were talking about.

    'None of your nonsense with me,' said Mr Flintwinch. 'I won't take it
    from you.'

    Mrs Flintwinch dreamed that she stood behind the door, which was just
    ajar, and most distinctly heard her husband say these bold words.

    'Flintwinch,' returned Mrs Clennam, in her usual strong low voice,
    'there is a demon of anger in you. Guard against it.'

    'I don't care whether there's one or a dozen,' said Mr Flintwinch,
    forcibly suggesting in his tone that the higher number was nearer the
    mark. 'If there was fifty, they should all say, None of your nonsense
    with me, I won't take it from you--I'd make 'em say it, whether they
    liked it or not.'

    'What have I done, you wrathful man?' her strong voice asked.

    'Done?' said Mr Flintwinch. 'Dropped down upon me.'

    'If you mean, remonstrated with you--'

    'Don't put words into my mouth that I don't mean,' said Jeremiah,
    sticking to his figurative expression with tenacious and impenetrable
    obstinacy: 'I mean dropped down upon me.'

    'I remonstrated with you,' she began again, 'because--'

    'I won't have it!' cried Jeremiah. 'You dropped down upon me.'

    'I dropped down upon you, then, you ill-conditioned man,' (Jeremiah
            chuckled at having forced her to adopt his phrase,) 'for having been
    needlessly significant to Arthur that morning. I have a right to
    complain of it as almost a breach of confidence. You did not mean it--'

    'I won't have it!' interposed the contradictory Jeremiah, flinging back
    the concession. 'I did mean it.'

    'I suppose I must leave you to speak in soliloquy if you choose,' she
    replied, after a pause that seemed an angry one. 'It is useless my
    addressing myself to a rash and headstrong old man who has a set purpose
    not to hear me.'

    'Now, I won't take that from you either,' said Jeremiah. 'I have no such
    purpose. I have told you I did mean it. Do you wish to know why I meant
    it, you rash and headstrong old woman?'

    'After all, you only restore me my own words,' she said, struggling with
    her indignation. 'Yes.'

    'This is why, then. Because you hadn't cleared his father to him, and
    you ought to have done it. Because, before you went into any tantrum
    about yourself, who are--'

    'Hold there, Flintwinch!' she cried out in a changed voice: 'you may go
    a word too far.'

    The old man seemed to think so. There was another pause, and he had
    altered his position in the room, when he spoke again more mildly:

    'I was going to tell you why it was. Because, before you took your own
    part, I thought you ought to have taken the part of Arthur's father.
    Arthur's father! I had no particular love for Arthur's father. I served
    Arthur's father's uncle, in this house, when Arthur's father was not
    much above me--was poorer as far as his pocket went--and when his uncle
    might as soon have left me his heir as have left him. He starved in the
    parlour, and I starved in the kitchen; that was the principal difference
    in our positions; there was not much more than a flight of breakneck
    stairs between us. I never took to him in those times; I don't know that
    I ever took to him greatly at any time. He was an undecided, irresolute
    chap, who had everything but his orphan life scared out of him when he
    was young. And when he brought you home here, the wife his uncle
    had named for him, I didn't need to look at you twice (you were a
            good-looking woman at that time) to know who'd be master. You have stood
    of your own strength ever since. Stand of your own strength now. Don't
    lean against the dead.'

    'I do _not_--as you call it--lean against the dead.'

    'But you had a mind to do it, if I had submitted,' growled Jeremiah,
    'and that's why you drop down upon me. You can't forget that I didn't
    submit. I suppose you are astonished that I should consider it worth my
    while to have justice done to Arthur's father? Hey? It doesn't matter
    whether you answer or not, because I know you are, and you know you are.
    Come, then, I'll tell you how it is. I may be a bit of an oddity in
    point of temper, but this is my temper--I can't let anybody have
    entirely their own way. You are a determined woman, and a clever woman;
    and when you see your purpose before you, nothing will turn you from it.
    Who knows that better than I do?'

    'Nothing will turn me from it, Flintwinch, when I have justified it to
    myself. Add that.'

    'Justified it to yourself? I said you were the most determined woman on
    the face of the earth (or I meant to say so), and if you are determined
    to justify any object you entertain, of course you'll do it.'

    'Man! I justify myself by the authority of these Books,' she cried, with
    stern emphasis, and appearing from the sound that followed to strike the
    dead-weight of her arm upon the table.

    'Never mind that,' returned Jeremiah calmly, 'we won't enter into that
    question at present. However that may be, you carry out your purposes,
    and you make everything go down before them. Now, I won't go down before
    them. I have been faithful to you, and useful to you, and I am attached
    to you. But I can't consent, and I won't consent, and I never did
    consent, and I never will consent to be lost in you. Swallow up
    everybody else, and welcome. The peculiarity of my temper is, ma'am,
    that I won't be swallowed up alive.'

    Perhaps this had originally been the mainspring of the understanding
    between them. Descrying thus much of force of character in Mr
    Flintwinch, perhaps Mrs Clennam had deemed alliance with him worth her
    while.

    'Enough and more than enough of the subject,' said she gloomily.

    'Unless you drop down upon me again,' returned the persistent
    Flintwinch, 'and then you must expect to hear of it again.'

    Mistress Affery dreamed that the figure of her lord here began walking
    up and down the room, as if to cool his spleen, and that she ran away;
    but that, as he did not issue forth when she had stood listening and
    trembling in the shadowy hall a little time, she crept up-stairs again,
    impelled as before by ghosts and curiosity, and once more cowered
    outside the door.

    'Please to light the candle, Flintwinch,' Mrs Clennam was saying,
    apparently wishing to draw him back into their usual tone. 'It is nearly
    time for tea. Little Dorrit is coming, and will find me in the dark.'

    Mr Flintwinch lighted the candle briskly, and said as he put it down
    upon the table:

    'What are you going to do with Little Dorrit? Is she to come to work
    here for ever? To come to tea here for ever? To come backwards and
    forwards here, in the same way, for ever?'

    'How can you talk about "for ever" to a maimed creature like me? Are we
    not all cut down like the grass of the field, and was not I shorn by the
    scythe many years ago: since when I have been lying here, waiting to be
    gathered into the barn?'

    'Ay, ay! But since you have been lying here--not near dead--nothing like
    it--numbers of children and young people, blooming women, strong men,
    and what not, have been cut down and carried; and still here are you,
    you see, not much changed after all. Your time and mine may be a long
    one yet. When I say for ever, I mean (though I am not poetical) through
    all our time.' Mr Flintwinch gave this explanation with great calmness,
    and calmly waited for an answer.

    'So long as Little Dorrit is quiet and industrious, and stands in need
    of the slight help I can give her, and deserves it; so long, I suppose,
    unless she withdraws of her own act, she will continue to come here, I
    being spared.'

    'Nothing more than that?' said Flintwinch, stroking his mouth and chin.

    'What should there be more than that! What could there be more than
    that!' she ejaculated in her sternly wondering way.

    Mrs Flintwinch dreamed, that, for the space of a minute or two, they
    remained looking at each other with the candle between them, and
    that she somehow derived an impression that they looked at each other
    fixedly.

    'Do you happen to know, Mrs Clennam,' Affery's liege lord then demanded
    in a much lower voice, and with an amount of expression that seemed
    quite out of proportion to the simple purpose of his words, 'where she
    lives?'

    'No.'

    'Would you--now, would you like to know?' said Jeremiah with a pounce as
    if he had sprung upon her.

    'If I cared to know, I should know already. Could I not have asked her
    any day?'

    'Then you don't care to know?'

    'I do not.'

    Mr Flintwinch, having expelled a long significant breath said, with his
    former emphasis, 'For I have accidentally--mind!--found out.'

    'Wherever she lives,' said Mrs Clennam, speaking in one unmodulated hard
    voice, and separating her words as distinctly as if she were reading
    them off from separate bits of metal that she took up one by one, 'she
    has made a secret of it, and she shall always keep her secret from me.'

    'After all, perhaps you would rather not have known the fact, any how?'
    said Jeremiah; and he said it with a twist, as if his words had come out
    of him in his own wry shape.

    'Flintwinch,' said his mistress and partner, flashing into a sudden
    energy that made Affery start, 'why do you goad me? Look round this
    room. If it is any compensation for my long confinement within these
    narrow limits--not that I complain of being afflicted; you know I never
    complain of that--if it is any compensation to me for long confinement
    to this room, that while I am shut up from all pleasant change I am also
    shut up from the knowledge of some things that I may prefer to avoid
    knowing, why should you, of all men, grudge me that belief?'

    'I don't grudge it to you,' returned Jeremiah.

    'Then say no more. Say no more. Let Little Dorrit keep her secret from
    me, and do you keep it from me also. Let her come and go, unobserved and
    unquestioned. Let me suffer, and let me have what alleviation belongs to
    my condition. Is it so much, that you torment me like an evil spirit?'

    'I asked you a question. That's all.'

    'I have answered it. So, say no more. Say no more.' Here the sound of
    the wheeled chair was heard upon the floor, and Affery's bell rang with
    a hasty jerk.

    More afraid of her husband at the moment than of the mysterious sound in
    the kitchen, Affery crept away as lightly and as quickly as she could,
    descended the kitchen stairs almost as rapidly as she had ascended them,
    resumed her seat before the fire, tucked up her skirt again, and finally
    threw her apron over her head. Then the bell rang once more, and then
    once more, and then kept on ringing; in despite of which importunate
    summons, Affery still sat behind her apron, recovering her breath.

    At last Mr Flintwinch came shuffling down the staircase into the
    hall, muttering and calling 'Affery woman!' all the way. Affery still
    remaining behind her apron, he came stumbling down the kitchen stairs,
    candle in hand, sidled up to her, twitched her apron off, and roused
    her.

    'Oh Jeremiah!' cried Affery, waking. 'What a start you gave me!'

    'What have you been doing, woman?' inquired Jeremiah. 'You've been rung
    for fifty times.'

    'Oh Jeremiah,' said Mistress Affery, 'I have been a-dreaming!'

    Reminded of her former achievement in that way, Mr Flintwinch held the
    candle to her head, as if he had some idea of lighting her up for the
    illumination of the kitchen.

    'Don't you know it's her tea-time?' he demanded with a vicious grin, and
    giving one of the legs of Mistress Affery's chair a kick.

    'Jeremiah? Tea-time? I don't know what's come to me. But I got such a
    dreadful turn, Jeremiah, before I went--off a-dreaming, that I think it
    must be that.'

    'Yoogh! Sleepy-Head!' said Mr Flintwinch, 'what are you talking about?'

    'Such a strange noise, Jeremiah, and such a curious movement. In the
    kitchen here--just here.'

    Jeremiah held up his light and looked at the blackened ceiling, held
    down his light and looked at the damp stone floor, turned round with his
    light and looked about at the spotted and blotched walls.

    'Rats, cats, water, drains,' said Jeremiah.

    Mistress Affery negatived each with a shake of her head. 'No, Jeremiah;
    I have felt it before. I have felt it up-stairs, and once on the
    staircase as I was going from her room to ours in the night--a rustle
    and a sort of trembling touch behind me.'

    'Affery, my woman,' said Mr Flintwinch grimly, after advancing his nose
    to that lady's lips as a test for the detection of spirituous liquors,
    'if you don't get tea pretty quick, old woman, you'll become sensible
    of a rustle and a touch that'll send you flying to the other end of the
    kitchen.'

    This prediction stimulated Mrs Flintwinch to bestir herself, and to
    hasten up-stairs to Mrs Clennam's chamber. But, for all that, she now
    began to entertain a settled conviction that there was something wrong
    in the gloomy house. Henceforth, she was never at peace in it after
    daylight departed; and never went up or down stairs in the dark without
    having her apron over her head, lest she should see something.

    What with these ghostly apprehensions and her singular dreams, Mrs
    Flintwinch fell that evening into a haunted state of mind, from which
    it may be long before this present narrative descries any trace of her
    recovery. In the vagueness and indistinctness of all her new experiences
    and perceptions, as everything about her was mysterious to herself she
    began to be mysterious to others: and became as difficult to be made out
    to anybody's satisfaction as she found the house and everything in it
    difficult to make out to her own.

    She had not yet finished preparing Mrs Clennam's tea, when the soft
    knock came to the door which always announced Little Dorrit. Mistress
    Affery looked on at Little Dorrit taking off her homely bonnet in the
    hall, and at Mr Flintwinch scraping his jaws and contemplating her in
    silence, as expecting some wonderful consequence to ensue which would
    frighten her out of her five wits or blow them all three to pieces.

    After tea there came another knock at the door, announcing Arthur.
    Mistress Affery went down to let him in, and he said on entering,
    'Affery, I am glad it's you. I want to ask you a question.' Affery
    immediately replied, 'For goodness sake don't ask me nothing, Arthur! I
    am frightened out of one half of my life, and dreamed out of the
    other. Don't ask me nothing! I don't know which is which, or what is
    what!'--and immediately started away from him, and came near him no
    more.

    Mistress Affery having no taste for reading, and no sufficient light for
    needlework in the subdued room, supposing her to have the inclination,
    now sat every night in the dimness from which she had momentarily
    emerged on the evening of Arthur Clennam's return, occupied with crowds
    of wild speculations and suspicions respecting her mistress and her
    husband and the noises in the house. When the ferocious devotional
    exercises were engaged in, these speculations would distract Mistress
    Affery's eyes towards the door, as if she expected some dark form to
    appear at those propitious moments, and make the party one too many.

    Otherwise, Affery never said or did anything to attract the attention of
    the two clever ones towards her in any marked degree, except on certain
    occasions, generally at about the quiet hour towards bed-time, when she
    would suddenly dart out of her dim corner, and whisper with a face of
    terror to Mr Flintwinch, reading the paper near Mrs Clennam's little
    table:

    'There, Jeremiah! Now! What's that noise?'

    Then the noise, if there were any, would have ceased, and Mr Flintwinch
    would snarl, turning upon her as if she had cut him down that moment
    against his will, 'Affery, old woman, you shall have a dose, old woman,
    such a dose! You have been dreaming again!'

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

completion: The Clennam house is creepy and gloomy and never sees sunlight or moonlight. It's also a beat-up wreck. One night Affery has another "dream" She "dreams" the she overhears Flintwinch and Mrs. Clennam arguing. Flintwinch tells Mrs. Clennam never to yell at him, and Mrs. Clennam is angry that he implied too much to Arthur when Arthur visited. Flintwinch says that even though he was never a huge fan of Mr. Clennam, it's not OK to slander the dead, so he needed to make sure Arthur knew that Mr. Clennam was blameless. Affery is floored that Flintwinch is talking so forcefully to Mrs. Clennam and that she's just taking it. Since he is her servant, and since she's a human lead pipe, she usually does the bossing. The conversation is over, and Affery runs back into the kitchen to hide from Flintwinch. She hears a scary noise from somewhere within the walls of the house. When Flintwinch finds her, she is terrified, and his explanation of the noise as "rats, cats, water, drains" doesn't make her feel any better. From then on, Affery spends her days wondering what on earth Flintwinch and Mrs. Clennam are up to, being scared of the crazy noises she keeps hearing, and trying to attract as little attention as possible.


prompt:
Chapter: The time being come for the renewal of his acquaintance with the Meagles
family, Clennam, pursuant to contract made between himself and Mr
Meagles within the precincts of Bleeding Heart Yard, turned his face
on a certain Saturday towards Twickenham, where Mr Meagles had a
cottage-residence of his own. The weather being fine and dry, and any
English road abounding in interest for him who had been so long away,
        he sent his valise on by the coach, and set out to walk. A walk was in
        itself a new enjoyment to him, and one that had rarely diversified his
        life afar off.

        He went by Fulham and Putney, for the pleasure of strolling over the
        heath. It was bright and shining there; and when he found himself so far
        on his road to Twickenham, he found himself a long way on his road to
        a number of airier and less substantial destinations. They had risen
        before him fast, in the healthful exercise and the pleasant road. It is
        not easy to walk alone in the country without musing upon something. And
        he had plenty of unsettled subjects to meditate upon, though he had been
        walking to the Land's End.

        First, there was the subject seldom absent from his mind, the question,
        what he was to do henceforth in life; to what occupation he should
        devote himself, and in what direction he had best seek it. He was far
        from rich, and every day of indecision and inaction made his inheritance
        a source of greater anxiety to him. As often as he began to consider how
        to increase this inheritance, or to lay it by, so often his misgiving
        that there was some one with an unsatisfied claim upon his justice,
        returned; and that alone was a subject to outlast the longest walk.
        Again, there was the subject of his relations with his mother, which
        were now upon an equable and peaceful but never confidential footing,
        and whom he saw several times a week. Little Dorrit was a leading and a
        constant subject: for the circumstances of his life, united to those of
        her own story, presented the little creature to him as the only person
        between whom and himself there were ties of innocent reliance on one
        hand, and affectionate protection on the other; ties of compassion,
        respect, unselfish interest, gratitude, and pity. Thinking of her, and
        of the possibility of her father's release from prison by the unbarring
        hand of death--the only change of circumstance he could foresee that
        might enable him to be such a friend to her as he wished to be, by
        altering her whole manner of life, smoothing her rough road, and
        giving her a home--he regarded her, in that perspective, as his adopted
        daughter, his poor child of the Marshalsea hushed to rest. If there were
        a last subject in his thoughts, and it lay towards Twickenham, its form
        was so indefinite that it was little more than the pervading atmosphere
        in which these other subjects floated before him.

        He had crossed the heath and was leaving it behind when he gained upon a
        figure which had been in advance of him for some time, and which, as
        he gained upon it, he thought he knew. He derived this impression
        from something in the turn of the head, and in the figure's action of
        consideration, as it went on at a sufficiently sturdy walk. But when
        the man--for it was a man's figure--pushed his hat up at the back of his
        head, and stopped to consider some object before him, he knew it to be
        Daniel Doyce.

        'How do you do, Mr Doyce?' said Clennam, overtaking him. 'I am glad to
        see you again, and in a healthier place than the Circumlocution Office.'

        'Ha! Mr Meagles's friend!' exclaimed that public criminal, coming out of
        some mental combinations he had been making, and offering his hand. 'I
        am glad to see you, sir. Will you excuse me if I forget your name?'

        'Readily. It's not a celebrated name. It's not Barnacle.'

        'No, no,' said Daniel, laughing. 'And now I know what it is. It's
        Clennam. How do you do, Mr Clennam?'

        'I have some hope,' said Arthur, as they walked on together, 'that we
        may be going to the same place, Mr Doyce.'

        'Meaning Twickenham?' returned Daniel. 'I am glad to hear it.'

        They were soon quite intimate, and lightened the way with a variety of
        conversation. The ingenious culprit was a man of great modesty and good
        sense; and, though a plain man, had been too much accustomed to combine
        what was original and daring in conception with what was patient and
        minute in execution, to be by any means an ordinary man. It was at first
        difficult to lead him to speak about himself, and he put off Arthur's
        advances in that direction by admitting slightly, oh yes, he had done
        this, and he had done that, and such a thing was of his making, and
        such another thing was his discovery, but it was his trade, you see, his
        trade; until, as he gradually became assured that his companion had a
        real interest in his account of himself, he frankly yielded to it. Then
        it appeared that he was the son of a north-country blacksmith, and had
        originally been apprenticed by his widowed mother to a lock-maker; that
        he had 'struck out a few little things' at the lock-maker's, which had
        led to his being released from his indentures with a present, which
        present had enabled him to gratify his ardent wish to bind himself to
        a working engineer, under whom he had laboured hard, learned hard, and
        lived hard, seven years. His time being out, he had 'worked in the shop'
        at weekly wages seven or eight years more; and had then betaken
        himself to the banks of the Clyde, where he had studied, and filed, and
        hammered, and improved his knowledge, theoretical and practical, for six
        or seven years more. There he had had an offer to go to Lyons, which he
        had accepted; and from Lyons had been engaged to go to Germany, and in
        Germany had had an offer to go to St Petersburg, and there had done very
        well indeed--never better. However, he had naturally felt a preference
        for his own country, and a wish to gain distinction there, and to do
        whatever service he could do, there rather than elsewhere. And so he had
        come home. And so at home he had established himself in business, and
        had invented and executed, and worked his way on, until, after a dozen
        years of constant suit and service, he had been enrolled in the
        Great British Legion of Honour, the Legion of the Rebuffed of the
        Circumlocution Office, and had been decorated with the Great British
        Order of Merit, the Order of the Disorder of the Barnacles and
        Stiltstalkings.

        'It is much to be regretted,' said Clennam, 'that you ever turned your
        thoughts that way, Mr Doyce.'

        'True, sir, true to a certain extent. But what is a man to do? if he
        has the misfortune to strike out something serviceable to the nation,
        he must follow where it leads him.'

        'Hadn't he better let it go?' said Clennam.

        'He can't do it,' said Doyce, shaking his head with a thoughtful smile.
        'It's not put into his head to be buried. It's put into his head to be
        made useful. You hold your life on the condition that to the last you
        shall struggle hard for it. Every man holds a discovery on the same
        terms.'

        'That is to say,' said Arthur, with a growing admiration of his quiet
        companion, 'you are not finally discouraged even now?'

        'I have no right to be, if I am,' returned the other. 'The thing is as
        true as it ever was.'

        When they had walked a little way in silence, Clennam, at once to
        change the direct point of their conversation and not to change it
        too abruptly, asked Mr Doyce if he had any partner in his business to
        relieve him of a portion of its anxieties?

        'No,' he returned, 'not at present. I had when I first entered on it,
        and a good man he was. But he has been dead some years; and as I could
        not easily take to the notion of another when I lost him, I bought
        his share for myself and have gone on by myself ever since. And here's
        another thing,' he said, stopping for a moment with a good-humoured
        laugh in his eyes, and laying his closed right hand, with its peculiar
        suppleness of thumb, on Clennam's arm, 'no inventor can be a man of
        business, you know.'

        'No?' said Clennam.

        'Why, so the men of business say,' he answered, resuming the walk and
        laughing outright. 'I don't know why we unfortunate creatures should
        be supposed to want common sense, but it is generally taken for granted
        that we do. Even the best friend I have in the world, our excellent
        friend over yonder,' said Doyce, nodding towards Twickenham, 'extends
        a sort of protection to me, don't you know, as a man not quite able to
        take care of himself?'

        Arthur Clennam could not help joining in the good-humoured laugh, for he
        recognised the truth of the description.

        'So I find that I must have a partner who is a man of business and not
        guilty of any inventions,' said Daniel Doyce, taking off his hat to pass
        his hand over his forehead, 'if it's only in deference to the current
        opinion, and to uphold the credit of the Works. I don't think he'll find
        that I have been very remiss or confused in my way of conducting them;
        but that's for him to say--whoever he is--not for me.'

        'You have not chosen him yet, then?'

        'No, sir, no. I have only just come to a decision to take one. The fact
        is, there's more to do than there used to be, and the Works are enough
        for me as I grow older. What with the books and correspondence, and
        foreign journeys for which a Principal is necessary, I can't do all. I
        am going to talk over the best way of negotiating the matter, if I find
        a spare half-hour between this and Monday morning, with my--my Nurse and
        protector,' said Doyce, with laughing eyes again. 'He is a sagacious man
        in business, and has had a good apprenticeship to it.'

        After this, they conversed on different subjects until they arrived at
        their journey's end. A composed and unobtrusive self-sustainment was
        noticeable in Daniel Doyce--a calm knowledge that what was true must
        remain true, in spite of all the Barnacles in the family ocean, and
        would be just the truth, and neither more nor less when even that sea
        had run dry--which had a kind of greatness in it, though not of the
        official quality.

        As he knew the house well, he conducted Arthur to it by the way that
        showed it to the best advantage. It was a charming place (none the worse
                for being a little eccentric), on the road by the river, and just what
        the residence of the Meagles family ought to be. It stood in a garden,
        no doubt as fresh and beautiful in the May of the Year as Pet now was
        in the May of her life; and it was defended by a goodly show of handsome
        trees and spreading evergreens, as Pet was by Mr and Mrs Meagles. It
        was made out of an old brick house, of which a part had been altogether
        pulled down, and another part had been changed into the present cottage;
        so there was a hale elderly portion, to represent Mr and Mrs Meagles,
        and a young picturesque, very pretty portion to represent Pet. There was
        even the later addition of a conservatory sheltering itself against it,
        uncertain of hue in its deep-stained glass, and in its more transparent
        portions flashing to the sun's rays, now like fire and now like harmless
        water drops; which might have stood for Tattycoram. Within view was
        the peaceful river and the ferry-boat, to moralise to all the inmates
        saying: Young or old, passionate or tranquil, chafing or content, you,
        thus runs the current always. Let the heart swell into what discord it
        will, thus plays the rippling water on the prow of the ferry-boat ever
        the same tune. Year after year, so much allowance for the drifting of
        the boat, so many miles an hour the flowing of the stream, here the
        rushes, there the lilies, nothing uncertain or unquiet, upon this road
        that steadily runs away; while you, upon your flowing road of time, are
        so capricious and distracted.

        The bell at the gate had scarcely sounded when Mr Meagles came out to
        receive them. Mr Meagles had scarcely come out, when Mrs Meagles came
        out. Mrs Meagles had scarcely come out, when Pet came out. Pet scarcely
        had come out, when Tattycoram came out. Never had visitors a more
        hospitable reception.

        'Here we are, you see,' said Mr Meagles, 'boxed up, Mr Clennam, within
        our own home-limits, as if we were never going to expand--that is,
        travel--again. Not like Marseilles, eh? No allonging and marshonging
        here!'

        'A different kind of beauty, indeed!' said Clennam, looking about him.

        'But, Lord bless me!' cried Mr Meagles, rubbing his hands with a relish,
        'it was an uncommonly pleasant thing being in quarantine, wasn't it?
        Do you know, I have often wished myself back again? We were a capital
        party.'

        This was Mr Meagles's invariable habit. Always to object to everything
        while he was travelling, and always to want to get back to it when he
        was not travelling.

        'If it was summer-time,' said Mr Meagles, 'which I wish it was on your
        account, and in order that you might see the place at its best, you
        would hardly be able to hear yourself speak for birds. Being practical
        people, we never allow anybody to scare the birds; and the birds, being
        practical people too, come about us in myriads. We are delighted to see
        you, Clennam (if you'll allow me, I shall drop the Mister); I heartily
        assure you, we are delighted.'

        'I have not had so pleasant a greeting,' said Clennam--then he recalled
        what Little Dorrit had said to him in his own room, and faithfully
        added 'except once--since we last walked to and fro, looking down at the
        Mediterranean.'

        'Ah!' returned Mr Meagles. 'Something like a look out, _that_ was, wasn't
        it? I don't want a military government, but I shouldn't mind a little
        allonging and marshonging--just a dash of it--in this neighbourhood
        sometimes. It's Devilish still.'

        Bestowing this eulogium on the retired character of his retreat with a
        dubious shake of the head, Mr Meagles led the way into the house. It was
        just large enough, and no more; was as pretty within as it was without,
        and was perfectly well-arranged and comfortable. Some traces of the
        migratory habits of the family were to be observed in the covered frames
        and furniture, and wrapped-up hangings; but it was easy to see that it
        was one of Mr Meagles's whims to have the cottage always kept, in their
        absence, as if they were always coming back the day after to-morrow. Of
        articles collected on his various expeditions, there was such a vast
        miscellany that it was like the dwelling of an amiable Corsair. There
        were antiquities from Central Italy, made by the best modern houses in
        that department of industry; bits of mummy from Egypt (and perhaps
                Birmingham); model gondolas from Venice; model villages from
        Switzerland; morsels of tesselated pavement from Herculaneum and
        Pompeii, like petrified minced veal; ashes out of tombs, and lava out of
        Vesuvius; Spanish fans, Spezzian straw hats, Moorish slippers, Tuscan
        hairpins, Carrara sculpture, Trastaverini scarves, Genoese velvets and
        filigree, Neapolitan coral, Roman cameos, Geneva jewellery, Arab
        lanterns, rosaries blest all round by the Pope himself, and an infinite
        variety of lumber. There were views, like and unlike, of a multitude of
        places; and there was one little picture-room devoted to a few of the
        regular sticky old Saints, with sinews like whipcord, hair like
        Neptune's, wrinkles like tattooing, and such coats of varnish that every
        holy personage served for a fly-trap, and became what is now called in
        the vulgar tongue a Catch-em-alive O. Of these pictorial acquisitions Mr
        Meagles spoke in the usual manner. He was no judge, he said, except of
        what pleased himself; he had picked them up, dirt-cheap, and people
        _had_ considered them rather fine. One man, who at any rate ought to
        know something of the subject, had declared that 'Sage, Reading' (a
                specially oily old gentleman in a blanket, with a swan's-down tippet for
                a beard, and a web of cracks all over him like rich pie-crust), to be a
        fine Guercino. As for Sebastian del Piombo there, you would judge for
        yourself; if it were not his later manner, the question was, Who was it?
        Titian, that might or might not be--perhaps he had only touched it.
        Daniel Doyce said perhaps he hadn't touched it, but Mr Meagles rather
        declined to overhear the remark.

        When he had shown all his spoils, Mr Meagles took them into his own
        snug room overlooking the lawn, which was fitted up in part like a
        dressing-room and in part like an office, and in which, upon a kind of
        counter-desk, were a pair of brass scales for weighing gold, and a scoop
        for shovelling out money.

        'Here they are, you see,' said Mr Meagles. 'I stood behind these two
        articles five-and-thirty years running, when I no more thought of
        gadding about than I now think of--staying at home. When I left the Bank
        for good, I asked for them, and brought them away with me. I mention it
        at once, or you might suppose that I sit in my counting-house (as Pet
                says I do), like the king in the poem of the four-and-twenty blackbirds,
        counting out my money.'

        Clennam's eyes had strayed to a natural picture on the wall, of two
        pretty little girls with their arms entwined. 'Yes, Clennam,' said
        Mr Meagles, in a lower voice. 'There they both are. It was taken some
        seventeen years ago. As I often say to Mother, they were babies then.'

        'Their names?' said Arthur.

        'Ah, to be sure! You have never heard any name but Pet. Pet's name is
        Minnie; her sister's Lillie.'

        'Should you have known, Mr Clennam, that one of them was meant for me?'
        asked Pet herself, now standing in the doorway.

        'I might have thought that both of them were meant for you, both
        are still so like you. Indeed,' said Clennam, glancing from the fair
        original to the picture and back, 'I cannot even now say which is not
        your portrait.'

        'D'ye hear that, Mother?' cried Mr Meagles to his wife, who had followed
        her daughter. 'It's always the same, Clennam; nobody can decide. The
        child to your left is Pet.'

        The picture happened to be near a looking-glass. As Arthur looked at
        it again, he saw, by the reflection of the mirror, Tattycoram stop in
        passing outside the door, listen to what was going on, and pass away
        with an angry and contemptuous frown upon her face, that changed its
        beauty into ugliness.

        'But come!' said Mr Meagles. 'You have had a long walk, and will be glad
        to get your boots off. As to Daniel here, I suppose he'd never think of
        taking _his_ boots off, unless we showed him a boot-jack.'

        'Why not?' asked Daniel, with a significant smile at Clennam.

        'Oh! You have so many things to think about,' returned Mr Meagles,
        clapping him on the shoulder, as if his weakness must not be left to
        itself on any account. 'Figures, and wheels, and cogs, and levers, and
        screws, and cylinders, and a thousand things.'

        'In my calling,' said Daniel, amused, 'the greater usually includes the
        less. But never mind, never mind! Whatever pleases you, pleases me.'

        Clennam could not help speculating, as he seated himself in his room
        by the fire, whether there might be in the breast of this honest,
        affectionate, and cordial Mr Meagles, any microscopic portion of
        the mustard-seed that had sprung up into the great tree of the
        Circumlocution Office. His curious sense of a general superiority to
        Daniel Doyce, which seemed to be founded, not so much on anything
        in Doyce's personal character as on the mere fact of his being an
        originator and a man out of the beaten track of other men, suggested the
        idea. It might have occupied him until he went down to dinner an hour
        afterwards, if he had not had another question to consider, which
        had been in his mind so long ago as before he was in quarantine at
        Marseilles, and which had now returned to it, and was very urgent with
        it. No less a question than this: Whether he should allow himself to
        fall in love with Pet?

        He was twice her age. (He changed the leg he had crossed over the other,
                and tried the calculation again, but could not bring out the total at
                less.) He was twice her age. Well! He was young in appearance, young
        in health and strength, young in heart. A man was certainly not old
        at forty; and many men were not in circumstances to marry, or did not
        marry, until they had attained that time of life. On the other hand, the
        question was, not what he thought of the point, but what she thought of
        it.

        He believed that Mr Meagles was disposed to entertain a ripe regard for
        him, and he knew that he had a sincere regard for Mr Meagles and his
        good wife. He could foresee that to relinquish this beautiful only
        child, of whom they were so fond, to any husband, would be a trial
        of their love which perhaps they never yet had had the fortitude to
        contemplate. But the more beautiful and winning and charming she, the
        nearer they must always be to the necessity of approaching it. And why
        not in his favour, as well as in another's?

        When he had got so far, it came again into his head that the question
        was, not what they thought of it, but what she thought of it.

        Arthur Clennam was a retiring man, with a sense of many deficiencies;
        and he so exalted the merits of the beautiful Minnie in his mind, and
        depressed his own, that when he pinned himself to this point, his hopes
        began to fail him. He came to the final resolution, as he made himself
        ready for dinner, that he would not allow himself to fall in love with
        Pet.

        There were only five, at a round table, and it was very pleasant indeed.
        They had so many places and people to recall, and they were all so easy
        and cheerful together (Daniel Doyce either sitting out like an amused
                spectator at cards, or coming in with some shrewd little experiences of
                his own, when it happened to be to the purpose), that they might have
        been together twenty times, and not have known so much of one another.

        'And Miss Wade,' said Mr Meagles, after they had recalled a number of
        fellow-travellers. 'Has anybody seen Miss Wade?'

        'I have,' said Tattycoram.

        She had brought a little mantle which her young mistress had sent for,
        and was bending over her, putting it on, when she lifted up her dark
        eyes and made this unexpected answer.

        'Tatty!' her young mistress exclaimed. 'You seen Miss Wade?--where?'

        'Here, miss,' said Tattycoram.

        'How?'

        An impatient glance from Tattycoram seemed, as Clennam saw it, to answer
        'With my eyes!' But her only answer in words was: 'I met her near the
        church.'

        'What was she doing there I wonder!' said Mr Meagles. 'Not going to it,
        I should think.'

        'She had written to me first,' said Tattycoram.

        'Oh, Tatty!' murmured her mistress, 'take your hands away. I feel as if
        some one else was touching me!'

        She said it in a quick involuntary way, but half playfully, and not more
        petulantly or disagreeably than a favourite child might have done, who
        laughed next moment. Tattycoram set her full red lips together, and
        crossed her arms upon her bosom.

        'Did you wish to know, sir,' she said, looking at Mr Meagles, 'what Miss
        Wade wrote to me about?'

        'Well, Tattycoram,' returned Mr Meagles, 'since you ask the question,
        and we are all friends here, perhaps you may as well mention it, if you
        are so inclined.'

        'She knew, when we were travelling, where you lived,' said Tattycoram,
        'and she had seen me not quite--not quite--'

        'Not quite in a good temper, Tattycoram?' suggested Mr Meagles,
        shaking his head at the dark eyes with a quiet caution. 'Take a little
        time--count five-and-twenty, Tattycoram.'

        She pressed her lips together again, and took a long deep breath.

        'So she wrote to me to say that if I ever felt myself hurt,' she looked
        down at her young mistress, 'or found myself worried,' she looked down
        at her again, 'I might go to her, and be considerately treated. I was
        to think of it, and could speak to her by the church. So I went there to
        thank her.'

        'Tatty,' said her young mistress, putting her hand up over her shoulder
        that the other might take it, 'Miss Wade almost frightened me when we
        parted, and I scarcely like to think of her just now as having been so
        near me without my knowing it. Tatty dear!'

        Tatty stood for a moment, immovable.

        'Hey?' cried Mr Meagles. 'Count another five-and-twenty, Tattycoram.'

        She might have counted a dozen, when she bent and put her lips to the
        caressing hand. It patted her cheek, as it touched the owner's beautiful
        curls, and Tattycoram went away.

        'Now there,' said Mr Meagles softly, as he gave a turn to the
        dumb-waiter on his right hand to twirl the sugar towards himself.
        'There's a girl who might be lost and ruined, if she wasn't among
        practical people. Mother and I know, solely from being practical, that
        there are times when that girl's whole nature seems to roughen itself
        against seeing us so bound up in Pet. No father and mother were bound
        up in her, poor soul. I don't like to think of the way in which that
        unfortunate child, with all that passion and protest in her, feels when
        she hears the Fifth Commandment on a Sunday. I am always inclined to
        call out, Church, Count five-and-twenty, Tattycoram.'

        Besides his dumb-waiter, Mr Meagles had two other not dumb waiters in
        the persons of two parlour-maids with rosy faces and bright eyes, who
        were a highly ornamental part of the table decoration. 'And why not, you
        see?' said Mr Meagles on this head. 'As I always say to Mother, why
        not have something pretty to look at, if you have anything at all?'

        A certain Mrs Tickit, who was Cook and Housekeeper when the family were
        at home, and Housekeeper only when the family were away, completed the
        establishment. Mr Meagles regretted that the nature of the duties in
        which she was engaged, rendered Mrs Tickit unpresentable at present,
        but hoped to introduce her to the new visitor to-morrow. She was an
        important part of the Cottage, he said, and all his friends knew her.
        That was her picture up in the corner. When they went away, she always
        put on the silk-gown and the jet-black row of curls represented in that
        portrait (her hair was reddish-grey in the kitchen), established herself
        in the breakfast-room, put her spectacles between two particular leaves
        of Doctor Buchan's Domestic Medicine, and sat looking over the blind all
        day until they came back again. It was supposed that no persuasion could
        be invented which would induce Mrs Tickit to abandon her post at the
        blind, however long their absence, or to dispense with the attendance
        of Dr Buchan; the lucubrations of which learned practitioner, Mr Meagles
        implicitly believed she had never yet consulted to the extent of one
        word in her life.

        In the evening they played an old-fashioned rubber; and Pet sat looking
        over her father's hand, or singing to herself by fits and starts at the
        piano. She was a spoilt child; but how could she be otherwise? Who could
        be much with so pliable and beautiful a creature, and not yield to her
        endearing influence? Who could pass an evening in the house, and not
        love her for the grace and charm of her very presence in the room? This
        was Clennam's reflection, notwithstanding the final conclusion at which
        he had arrived up-stairs.

        In making it, he revoked. 'Why, what are you thinking of, my good sir?'
        asked the astonished Mr Meagles, who was his partner. 'I beg your
        pardon. Nothing,' returned Clennam. 'Think of something, next time;
        that's a dear fellow,' said Mr Meagles. Pet laughingly believed he had
        been thinking of Miss Wade. 'Why of Miss Wade, Pet?' asked her father.
        'Why, indeed!' said Arthur Clennam. Pet coloured a little, and went to
        the piano again.

        As they broke up for the night, Arthur overheard Doyce ask his host if
        he could give him half an hour's conversation before breakfast in the
        morning? The host replying willingly, Arthur lingered behind a moment,
        having his own word to add to that topic.

        'Mr Meagles,' he said, on their being left alone, 'do you remember when
        you advised me to go straight to London?'

        'Perfectly well.'

        'And when you gave me some other good advice which I needed at that time?'

        'I won't say what it was worth,' answered Mr Meagles: 'but of course I
        remember our being very pleasant and confidential together.'

        'I have acted on your advice; and having disembarrassed myself of an
        occupation that was painful to me for many reasons, wish to devote
        myself and what means I have, to another pursuit.'

        'Right! You can't do it too soon,' said Mr Meagles.

        'Now, as I came down to-day, I found that your friend, Mr Doyce, is
        looking for a partner in his business--not a partner in his mechanical
        knowledge, but in the ways and means of turning the business arising
        from it to the best account.'

        'Just so,' said Mr Meagles, with his hands in his pockets, and with
        the old business expression of face that had belonged to the scales and
        scoop.

        'Mr Doyce mentioned incidentally, in the course of our conversation,
        that he was going to take your valuable advice on the subject of finding
        such a partner. If you should think our views and opportunities at all
        likely to coincide, perhaps you will let him know my available position.
        I speak, of course, in ignorance of the details, and they may be
        unsuitable on both sides.'

        'No doubt, no doubt,' said Mr Meagles, with the caution belonging to the
        scales and scoop.

        'But they will be a question of figures and accounts--'

        'Just so, just so,' said Mr Meagles, with arithmetical solidity
        belonging to the scales and scoop.

        '--And I shall be glad to enter into the subject, provided Mr Doyce
        responds, and you think well of it. If you will at present, therefore,
        allow me to place it in your hands, you will much oblige me.'

        'Clennam, I accept the trust with readiness,' said Mr Meagles. 'And
        without anticipating any of the points which you, as a man of business,
        have of course reserved, I am free to say to you that I think something
        may come of this. Of one thing you may be perfectly certain. Daniel is
        an honest man.'

        'I am so sure of it that I have promptly made up my mind to speak to
        you.'

        'You must guide him, you know; you must steer him; you must direct him;
        he is one of a crotchety sort,' said Mr Meagles, evidently meaning
        nothing more than that he did new things and went new ways; 'but he is
        as honest as the sun, and so good night!'

        Clennam went back to his room, sat down again before his fire, and made
        up his mind that he was glad he had resolved not to fall in love with
        Pet. She was so beautiful, so amiable, so apt to receive any true
        impression given to her gentle nature and her innocent heart, and make
        the man who should be so happy as to communicate it, the most fortunate
        and enviable of all men, that he was very glad indeed he had come to
        that conclusion.

        But, as this might have been a reason for coming to the opposite
        conclusion, he followed out the theme again a little way in his mind; to
        justify himself, perhaps.

        'Suppose that a man,' so his thoughts ran, 'who had been of age some
        twenty years or so; who was a diffident man, from the circumstances of
        his youth; who was rather a grave man, from the tenor of his life; who
        knew himself to be deficient in many little engaging qualities which
        he admired in others, from having been long in a distant region, with
        nothing softening near him; who had no kind sisters to present to her;
        who had no congenial home to make her known in; who was a stranger in
        the land; who had not a fortune to compensate, in any measure, for
        these defects; who had nothing in his favour but his honest love and his
        general wish to do right--suppose such a man were to come to this house,
        and were to yield to the captivation of this charming girl, and were to
        persuade himself that he could hope to win her; what a weakness it would
        be!'

        He softly opened his window, and looked out upon the serene river. Year
        after year so much allowance for the drifting of the ferry-boat, so
        many miles an hour the flowing of the stream, here the rushes, there the
        lilies, nothing uncertain or unquiet.

        Why should he be vexed or sore at heart? It was not his weakness that he
        had imagined. It was nobody's, nobody's within his knowledge; why should
        it trouble him? And yet it did trouble him. And he thought--who has not
        thought for a moment, sometimes?--that it might be better to flow away
        monotonously, like the river, and to compound for its insensibility to
        happiness with its insensibility to pain.

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

completion: Arthur sets out for a long walk to Mr. Meagles's house. He thinks about all sorts of things, but mainly about what he should do for a living now and how he can make a lot of money to set up Little Dorrit with a house. On the way he runs into Doyce, who - it turns out - has already met with success all over Europe. But he's not giving up on trying to push his awesome invention through the Circumlocution Office. Doyce tells Arthur that he's looking for a partner in his business - someone to do accounting and deal with clients. The Meagleses' house is super cute and has a Goldilocks quality: everything in it is just right, not too big, not too small. Arthur is totally into the beautiful Pet, even though she is a spoiled, bratty girl, and he is twice her age. He makes himself promise not to fall in love with her . Instead, he kind of decides that the person who is in love with her is an internal "nobody" - that's the deal with the chapter title. Meagles is fixated on being patronizing to Doyce and treating him like he's an absentminded professor - which he isn't. At dinner Tattycoram tells the gang that she has seen Miss Wade. This makes Pet freak out, in a totally obnoxious way. Tattycoram is furious, and Meagles asks her to count to 25 before saying anything in order to calm down. He does this a lot, since she is constantly about to start crying or yelling or screaming. In any case, it turns out that Miss Wade wrote her a letter and said that if Tattycoram ever felt like she didn't want to be with the Meagleses anymore, she could come live with Miss Wade instead. They all kind of make up, and when Tattycoram goes away, Meagles is very proud of their having rescued her from the orphanage. Finally, after dinner, Arthur talks to Meagles about potentially becoming Doyce's business partner. Meagles says he'll talk to Doyce and hopefully they can work it out. Arthur goes up to his room psyched that he's doing such a good job of not falling in love with Pet - even as he is thinking about her nonstop.