prompt:
Chapter: As the city clocks struck nine on Monday morning, Mrs Clennam was
wheeled by Jeremiah Flintwinch of the cut-down aspect to her tall
cabinet. When she had unlocked and opened it, and had settled herself
at its desk, Jeremiah withdrew--as it might be, to hang himself more
effectually--and her son appeared.

'Are you any better this morning, mother?'

She shook her head, with the same austere air of luxuriousness that she
had shown over-night when speaking of the weather. 'I shall never be
better any more. It is well for me, Arthur, that I know it and can bear
it.'

Sitting with her hands laid separately upon the desk, and the tall
cabinet towering before her, she looked as if she were performing on a
dumb church organ. Her son thought so (it was an old thought with him),
     while he took his seat beside it.

     She opened a drawer or two, looked over some business papers, and put
     them back again. Her severe face had no thread of relaxation in it, by
     which any explorer could have been guided to the gloomy labyrinth of her
     thoughts.

     'Shall I speak of our affairs, mother? Are you inclined to enter upon
     business?'

     'Am I inclined, Arthur? Rather, are you? Your father has been dead a
     year and more. I have been at your disposal, and waiting your pleasure,
     ever since.'

     'There was much to arrange before I could leave; and when I did leave, I
     travelled a little for rest and relief.'

     She turned her face towards him, as not having heard or understood his
     last words.

     'For rest and relief.'

     She glanced round the sombre room, and appeared from the motion of her
     lips to repeat the words to herself, as calling it to witness how little
     of either it afforded her.

     'Besides, mother, you being sole executrix, and having the direction and
     management of the estate, there remained little business, or I might say
     none, that I could transact, until you had had time to arrange matters
     to your satisfaction.'

     'The accounts are made out,' she returned. 'I have them here. The
     vouchers have all been examined and passed. You can inspect them when
     you like, Arthur; now, if you please.'

     'It is quite enough, mother, to know that the business is completed.
     Shall I proceed then?'

     'Why not?' she said, in her frozen way.

     'Mother, our House has done less and less for some years past, and our
     dealings have been progressively on the decline. We have never shown
     much confidence, or invited much; we have attached no people to us; the
     track we have kept is not the track of the time; and we have been
     left far behind. I need not dwell on this to you, mother. You know it
     necessarily.'

     'I know what you mean,' she answered, in a qualified tone.

     'Even this old house in which we speak,' pursued her son, 'is an
     instance of what I say. In my father's earlier time, and in his uncle's
     time before him, it was a place of business--really a place of business,
     and business resort. Now, it is a mere anomaly and incongruity here, out
     of date and out of purpose. All our consignments have long been made to
     Rovinghams' the commission-merchants; and although, as a check upon
     them, and in the stewardship of my father's resources, your judgment and
     watchfulness have been actively exerted, still those qualities would
     have influenced my father's fortunes equally, if you had lived in any
     private dwelling: would they not?'

     'Do you consider,' she returned, without answering his question, 'that
     a house serves no purpose, Arthur, in sheltering your infirm and
     afflicted--justly infirm and righteously afflicted--mother?'

     'I was speaking only of business purposes.'

     'With what object?'

     'I am coming to it.'

     'I foresee,' she returned, fixing her eyes upon him, 'what it is.
     But the Lord forbid that I should repine under any visitation. In my
     sinfulness I merit bitter disappointment, and I accept it.'

     'Mother, I grieve to hear you speak like this, though I have had my
     apprehensions that you would--'

     'You knew I would. You knew _me_,' she interrupted.

     Her son paused for a moment. He had struck fire out of her, and was
     surprised. 'Well!' she said, relapsing into stone. 'Go on. Let me hear.'

     'You have anticipated, mother, that I decide for my part, to abandon
     the business. I have done with it. I will not take upon myself to advise
     you; you will continue it, I see. If I had any influence with you, I
     would simply use it to soften your judgment of me in causing you this
     disappointment: to represent to you that I have lived the half of a long
     term of life, and have never before set my own will against yours. I
     cannot say that I have been able to conform myself, in heart and spirit,
     to your rules; I cannot say that I believe my forty years have been
     profitable or pleasant to myself, or any one; but I have habitually
     submitted, and I only ask you to remember it.'

     Woe to the suppliant, if such a one there were or ever had been, who had
     any concession to look for in the inexorable face at the cabinet. Woe to
     the defaulter whose appeal lay to the tribunal where those severe eyes
     presided. Great need had the rigid woman of her mystical religion,
     veiled in gloom and darkness, with lightnings of cursing, vengeance, and
     destruction, flashing through the sable clouds. Forgive us our debts as
     we forgive our debtors, was a prayer too poor in spirit for her. Smite
     Thou my debtors, Lord, wither them, crush them; do Thou as I would do,
     and Thou shalt have my worship: this was the impious tower of stone she
     built up to scale Heaven.

     'Have you finished, Arthur, or have you anything more to say to me? I
     think there can be nothing else. You have been short, but full of matter!'

     'Mother, I have yet something more to say. It has been upon my mind,
     night and day, this long time. It is far more difficult to say than what
     I have said. That concerned myself; this concerns us all.'

     'Us all! Who are us all?'

     'Yourself, myself, my dead father.'

     She took her hands from the desk; folded them in her lap; and sat
     looking towards the fire, with the impenetrability of an old Egyptian
     sculpture.

     'You knew my father infinitely better than I ever knew him; and his
     reserve with me yielded to you. You were much the stronger, mother, and
     directed him. As a child, I knew it as well as I know it now. I knew
     that your ascendancy over him was the cause of his going to China to
     take care of the business there, while you took care of it here (though
             I do not even now know whether these were really terms of separation
             that you agreed upon); and that it was your will that I should remain
     with you until I was twenty, and then go to him as I did. You will not
     be offended by my recalling this, after twenty years?'

     'I am waiting to hear why you recall it.'

     He lowered his voice, and said, with manifest reluctance, and against
     his will:

     'I want to ask you, mother, whether it ever occurred to you to
     suspect--'

     At the word Suspect, she turned her eyes momentarily upon her son, with
     a dark frown. She then suffered them to seek the fire, as before; but
     with the frown fixed above them, as if the sculptor of old Egypt had
     indented it in the hard granite face, to frown for ages.

     '--that he had any secret remembrance which caused him trouble of
     mind--remorse? Whether you ever observed anything in his conduct
     suggesting that; or ever spoke to him upon it, or ever heard him hint at
     such a thing?'

     'I do not understand what kind of secret remembrance you mean to infer
     that your father was a prey to,' she returned, after a silence. 'You
     speak so mysteriously.'

     'Is it possible, mother,' her son leaned forward to be the nearer to her
     while he whispered it, and laid his hand nervously upon her desk, 'is
     it possible, mother, that he had unhappily wronged any one, and made no
     reparation?'

     Looking at him wrathfully, she bent herself back in her chair to keep
     him further off, but gave him no reply.

     'I am deeply sensible, mother, that if this thought has never at any
     time flashed upon you, it must seem cruel and unnatural in me, even in
     this confidence, to breathe it. But I cannot shake it off. Time and
     change (I have tried both before breaking silence) do nothing to wear it
     out.  Remember, I was with my father. Remember, I saw his face when he
     gave the watch into my keeping, and struggled to express that he sent it
     as a token you would understand, to you. Remember, I saw him at the last
     with the pencil in his failing hand, trying to write some word for you
     to read, but to which he could give no shape. The more remote and cruel
     this vague suspicion that I have, the stronger the circumstances that
     could give it any semblance of probability to me. For Heaven's sake, let
     us examine sacredly whether there is any wrong entrusted to us to set
     right. No one can help towards it, mother, but you.'

     Still so recoiling in her chair that her overpoised weight moved it,
     from time to time, a little on its wheels, and gave her the appearance
     of a phantom of fierce aspect gliding away from him, she interposed her
     left arm, bent at the elbow with the back of her hand towards her face,
     between herself and him, and looked at him in a fixed silence.

     'In grasping at money and in driving hard bargains--I have begun, and I
     must speak of such things now, mother--some one may have been grievously
     deceived, injured, ruined. You were the moving power of all this
     machinery before my birth; your stronger spirit has been infused into
     all my father's dealings for more than two score years. You can set
     these doubts at rest, I think, if you will really help me to discover
     the truth. Will you, mother?'

     He stopped in the hope that she would speak. But her grey hair was not
     more immovable in its two folds, than were her firm lips.

     'If reparation can be made to any one, if restitution can be made to any
     one, let us know it and make it. Nay, mother, if within my means, let _me_
     make it. I have seen so little happiness come of money; it has brought
     within my knowledge so little peace to this house, or to any one
     belonging to it, that it is worth less to me than to another. It can buy
     me nothing that will not be a reproach and misery to me, if I am haunted
     by a suspicion that it darkened my father's last hours with remorse, and
     that it is not honestly and justly mine.'

     There was a bell-rope hanging on the panelled wall, some two or three yards
     from the cabinet. By a swift and sudden action of her foot, she drove her
     wheeled chair rapidly back to it and pulled it violently--still holding her
     arm up in its shield-like posture, as if he were striking at her, and she
     warding off the blow.

     A girl came hurrying in, frightened.

     'Send Flintwinch here!'

     In a moment the girl had withdrawn, and the old man stood within the
     door. 'What! You're hammer and tongs, already, you two?' he said, coolly
     stroking his face. 'I thought you would be. I was pretty sure of it.'

     'Flintwinch!' said the mother, 'look at my son. Look at him!'

     'Well, I _am_ looking at him,' said Flintwinch.

     She stretched out the arm with which she had shielded herself, and as
     she went on, pointed at the object of her anger.

     'In the very hour of his return almost--before the shoe upon his foot is
     dry--he asperses his father's memory to his mother! Asks his mother
     to become, with him, a spy upon his father's transactions through a
     lifetime! Has misgivings that the goods of this world which we have
     painfully got together early and late, with wear and tear and toil and
     self-denial, are so much plunder; and asks to whom they shall be given
     up, as reparation and restitution!'

     Although she said this raging, she said it in a voice so far from being
     beyond her control that it was even lower than her usual tone. She also
     spoke with great distinctness.

     'Reparation!' said she. 'Yes, truly! It is easy for him to talk of
     reparation, fresh from journeying and junketing in foreign lands, and
     living a life of vanity and pleasure. But let him look at me, in prison,
     and in bonds here. I endure without murmuring, because it is appointed
     that I shall so make reparation for my sins. Reparation! Is there none
     in this room? Has there been none here this fifteen years?'

     Thus was she always balancing her bargains with the Majesty of heaven,
     posting up the entries to her credit, strictly keeping her set-off, and
     claiming her due. She was only remarkable in this, for the force
     and emphasis with which she did it. Thousands upon thousands do it,
     according to their varying manner, every day.

     'Flintwinch, give me that book!'

     The old man handed it to her from the table. She put two fingers between
     the leaves, closed the book upon them, and held it up to her son in
     a threatening way.

     'In the days of old, Arthur, treated of in this commentary, there were
     pious men, beloved of the Lord, who would have cursed their sons for
     less than this: who would have sent them forth, and sent whole nations
     forth, if such had supported them, to be avoided of God and man, and
     perish, down to the baby at the breast. But I only tell you that if you
     ever renew that theme with me, I will renounce you; I will so dismiss
     you through that doorway, that you had better have been motherless from
     your cradle. I will never see or know you more. And if, after all, you
     were to come into this darkened room to look upon me lying dead, my body
     should bleed, if I could make it, when you came near me.'

     In part relieved by the intensity of this threat, and in part (monstrous
             as the fact is) by a general impression that it was in some sort a
     religious proceeding, she handed back the book to the old man, and was
     silent.

    'Now,' said Jeremiah; 'premising that I'm not going to stand between you
two, will you let me ask (as I _have_ been called in, and made a third)
    what is all this about?'

    'Take your version of it,' returned Arthur, finding it left to him to
    speak, 'from my mother. Let it rest there. What I have said, was said to
    my mother only.'

    'Oh!' returned the old man. 'From your mother? Take it from your mother?
    Well! But your mother mentioned that you had been suspecting your father.
    That's not dutiful, Mr Arthur. Who will you be suspecting next?'

    'Enough,' said Mrs Clennam, turning her face so that it was addressed
    for the moment to the old man only. 'Let no more be said about this.'

    'Yes, but stop a bit, stop a bit,' the old man persisted. 'Let us see
    how we stand. Have you told Mr Arthur that he mustn't lay offences at
    his father's door? That he has no right to do it? That he has no ground
    to go upon?'

    'I tell him so now.'

    'Ah! Exactly,' said the old man. 'You tell him so now. You hadn't told
    him so before, and you tell him so now. Ay, ay! That's right! You know I
    stood between you and his father so long, that it seems as if death had
    made no difference, and I was still standing between you. So I will, and
    so in fairness I require to have that plainly put forward. Arthur, you
    please to hear that you have no right to mistrust your father, and have
    no ground to go upon.'

    He put his hands to the back of the wheeled chair, and muttering to
    himself, slowly wheeled his mistress back to her cabinet. 'Now,' he
    resumed, standing behind her: 'in case I should go away leaving things
    half done, and so should be wanted again when you come to the other half
    and get into one of your flights, has Arthur told you what he means to
    do about the business?'

    'He has relinquished it.'

    'In favour of nobody, I suppose?'

    Mrs Clennam glanced at her son, leaning against one of the windows. He
    observed the look and said, 'To my mother, of course. She does what she
    pleases.'

    'And if any pleasure,' she said after a short pause, 'could arise for me
    out of the disappointment of my expectations that my son, in the prime
    of his life, would infuse new youth and strength into it, and make it
    of great profit and power, it would be in advancing an old and faithful
    servant. Jeremiah, the captain deserts the ship, but you and I will sink
    or float with it.'

    Jeremiah, whose eyes glistened as if they saw money, darted a sudden
    look at the son, which seemed to say, 'I owe _you_ no thanks for this;
    _you_ have done nothing towards it!' and then told the mother that he
    thanked her, and that Affery thanked her, and that he would never desert
    her, and that Affery would never desert her. Finally, he hauled up his
    watch from its depths, and said, 'Eleven. Time for your oysters!' and with
    that change of subject, which involved no change of expression or manner,
    rang the bell.

    But Mrs Clennam, resolved to treat herself with the greater rigour for
    having been supposed to be unacquainted with reparation, refused to
    eat her oysters when they were brought. They looked tempting; eight in
    number, circularly set out on a white plate on a tray covered with a
    white napkin, flanked by a slice of buttered French roll, and a little
    compact glass of cool wine and water; but she resisted all persuasions,
    and sent them down again--placing the act to her credit, no doubt, in
    her Eternal Day-Book.

    This refection of oysters was not presided over by Affery, but by the
    girl who had appeared when the bell was rung; the same who had been in
    the dimly-lighted room last night. Now that he had an opportunity of
    observing her, Arthur found that her diminutive figure, small features,
    and slight spare dress, gave her the appearance of being much younger
    than she was. A woman, probably of not less than two-and-twenty, she
    might have been passed in the street for little more than half that
    age. Not that her face was very youthful, for in truth there was more
    consideration and care in it than naturally belonged to her utmost
    years; but she was so little and light, so noiseless and shy, and
    appeared so conscious of being out of place among the three hard elders,
    that she had all the manner and much of the appearance of a subdued
    child.

    In a hard way, and in an uncertain way that fluctuated between patronage
    and putting down, the sprinkling from a watering-pot and hydraulic
    pressure, Mrs Clennam showed an interest in this dependent. Even in the
    moment of her entrance, upon the violent ringing of the bell, when the
    mother shielded herself with that singular action from the son, Mrs
    Clennam's eyes had had some individual recognition in them, which seemed
    reserved for her. As there are degrees of hardness in the hardest metal,
    and shades of colour in black itself, so, even in the asperity of Mrs
    Clennam's demeanour towards all the rest of humanity and towards Little
    Dorrit, there was a fine gradation.

    Little Dorrit let herself out to do needlework. At so much a day--or at
    so little--from eight to eight, Little Dorrit was to be hired. Punctual
    to the moment, Little Dorrit appeared; punctual to the moment, Little
    Dorrit vanished. What became of Little Dorrit between the two eights was
    a mystery.

    Another of the moral phenomena of Little Dorrit. Besides her
    consideration money, her daily contract included meals. She had an
    extraordinary repugnance to dining in company; would never do so, if
    it were possible to escape. Would always plead that she had this bit of
    work to begin first, or that bit of work to finish first; and would, of
    a certainty, scheme and plan--not very cunningly, it would seem, for she
    deceived no one--to dine alone. Successful in this, happy in carrying
    off her plate anywhere, to make a table of her lap, or a box, or the
    ground, or even as was supposed, to stand on tip-toe, dining moderately
    at a mantel-shelf; the great anxiety of Little Dorrit's day was set at
    rest.

    It was not easy to make out Little Dorrit's face; she was so retiring,
    plied her needle in such removed corners, and started away so scared if
    encountered on the stairs. But it seemed to be a pale transparent face,
    quick in expression, though not beautiful in feature, its soft hazel
    eyes excepted. A delicately bent head, a tiny form, a quick little pair
    of busy hands, and a shabby dress--it must needs have been very shabby
    to look at all so, being so neat--were Little Dorrit as she sat at work.

    For these particulars or generalities concerning Little Dorrit, Mr
    Arthur was indebted in the course of the day to his own eyes and to Mrs
    Affery's tongue. If Mrs Affery had had any will or way of her own, it
    would probably have been unfavourable to Little Dorrit. But as 'them two
    clever ones'--Mrs Affery's perpetual reference, in whom her personality
    was swallowed up--were agreed to accept Little Dorrit as a matter of
    course, she had nothing for it but to follow suit. Similarly, if the
    two clever ones had agreed to murder Little Dorrit by candlelight, Mrs
    Affery, being required to hold the candle, would no doubt have done it.

    In the intervals of roasting the partridge for the invalid chamber, and
    preparing a baking-dish of beef and pudding for the dining-room, Mrs
    Affery made the communications above set forth; invariably putting
    her head in at the door again after she had taken it out, to enforce
    resistance to the two clever ones. It appeared to have become a perfect
    passion with Mrs Flintwinch, that the only son should be pitted against
    them.

    In the course of the day, too, Arthur looked through the whole house.
    Dull and dark he found it. The gaunt rooms, deserted for years upon
    years, seemed to have settled down into a gloomy lethargy from which
    nothing could rouse them again. The furniture, at once spare and
    lumbering, hid in the rooms rather than furnished them, and there was
    no colour in all the house; such colour as had ever been there, had long
    ago started away on lost sunbeams--got itself absorbed, perhaps, into
    flowers, butterflies, plumage of birds, precious stones, what not. There
    was not one straight floor from the foundation to the roof; the ceilings
    were so fantastically clouded by smoke and dust, that old women might
    have told fortunes in them better than in grouts of tea; the dead-cold
    hearths showed no traces of having ever been warmed but in heaps of soot
    that had tumbled down the chimneys, and eddied about in little
    dusky whirlwinds when the doors were opened. In what had once been
    a drawing-room, there were a pair of meagre mirrors, with dismal
    processions of black figures carrying black garlands, walking round
    the frames; but even these were short of heads and legs, and one
    undertaker-like Cupid had swung round on its own axis and got upside
    down, and another had fallen off altogether. The room Arthur Clennam's
    deceased father had occupied for business purposes, when he first
    remembered him, was so unaltered that he might have been imagined still
    to keep it invisibly, as his visible relict kept her room up-stairs;
    Jeremiah Flintwinch still going between them negotiating. His picture,
    dark and gloomy, earnestly speechless on the wall, with the eyes
    intently looking at his son as they had looked when life departed from
    them, seemed to urge him awfully to the task he had attempted; but as
    to any yielding on the part of his mother, he had now no hope, and as to
    any other means of setting his distrust at rest, he had abandoned hope a
    long time. Down in the cellars, as up in the bed-chambers, old objects
    that he well remembered were changed by age and decay, but were still in
    their old places; even to empty beer-casks hoary with cobwebs, and empty
    wine-bottles with fur and fungus choking up their throats. There, too,
    among unusual bottle-racks and pale slants of light from the yard above,
    was the strong room stored with old ledgers, which had as musty and
    corrupt a smell as if they were regularly balanced, in the dead small
    hours, by a nightly resurrection of old book-keepers.

    The baking-dish was served up in a penitential manner on a shrunken
    cloth at an end of the dining-table, at two o'clock, when he dined with
    Mr Flintwinch, the new partner. Mr Flintwinch informed him that his
    mother had recovered her equanimity now, and that he need not fear her
    again alluding to what had passed in the morning. 'And don't you lay
    offences at your father's door, Mr Arthur,' added Jeremiah, 'once for
    all, don't do it! Now, we have done with the subject.'

    Mr Flintwinch had been already rearranging and dusting his own
    particular little office, as if to do honour to his accession to new
    dignity. He resumed this occupation when he was replete with beef, had
    sucked up all the gravy in the baking-dish with the flat of his knife,
    and had drawn liberally on a barrel of small beer in the scullery. Thus
    refreshed, he tucked up his shirt-sleeves and went to work again; and Mr
    Arthur, watching him as he set about it, plainly saw that his father's
    picture, or his father's grave, would be as communicative with him as
    this old man.

    'Now, Affery, woman,' said Mr Flintwinch, as she crossed the hall. 'You
    hadn't made Mr Arthur's bed when I was up there last. Stir yourself.
    Bustle.'

    But Mr Arthur found the house so blank and dreary, and was so unwilling
    to assist at another implacable consignment of his mother's enemies
    (perhaps himself among them) to mortal disfigurement and immortal ruin,
    that he announced his intention of lodging at the coffee-house where he
    had left his luggage. Mr Flintwinch taking kindly to the idea of getting
    rid of him, and his mother being indifferent, beyond considerations of
    saving, to most domestic arrangements that were not bounded by the walls
    of her own chamber, he easily carried this point without new offence.
    Daily business hours were agreed upon, which his mother, Mr Flintwinch,
    and he, were to devote together to a necessary checking of books and
    papers; and he left the home he had so lately found, with depressed
    heart.

    But Little Dorrit?

    The business hours, allowing for intervals of invalid regimen of oysters
    and partridges, during which Clennam refreshed himself with a walk,
    were from ten to six for about a fortnight. Sometimes Little Dorrit was
    employed at her needle, sometimes not, sometimes appeared as a humble
    visitor: which must have been her character on the occasion of his
    arrival. His original curiosity augmented every day, as he watched for
    her, saw or did not see her, and speculated about her. Influenced by his
    predominant idea, he even fell into a habit of discussing with himself
    the possibility of her being in some way associated with it. At last he
    resolved to watch Little Dorrit and know more of her story.

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

completion: The next day Arthur tells his mom that he doesn't want to work for the Clennam House of Terror - ahem, we mean the Clennam House of Banking or Some Other Kind of Unspecified Financial Stuff - any longer. As predicted, Mrs. C. gets mad. But she gets a grip and declares that this is exactly the kind of God-sent punishment that she deserves. She gets a kick out of keeping kind of a balance sheet with Heaven, with her own sins on one side and whatever punishments she inflicts on herself or thinks are inflicted on her on the other. Arthur then asks if it's possible that his dad had some kind of regret that he hadn't dealt with. Maybe a person he did something bad to? Someone their company had ripped off? Arthur begs his mom to help him figure this out and promises to pay restitution to the wronged person out of his own pocket. Mrs. Clennam calls Flintwinch, then throws a tantrum. How dare Arthur accuse his dead father of anything? And how is she supposed to spy on her dead husband? Flintwinch kind of doesn't get involved, but he tells Arthur his father never did anything wrong and says not to accuse or suspect him. Then he makes Mrs. Clennam tell Arthur the same thing. Little Dorrit brings in Mrs. Clennam's food, but Mrs. C. decides to punish herself by not eating. Meanwhile, Arthur is shocked to realize that Little Dorrit is not actually a young girl, like he'd thought, but a 22-year-old woman who is so tiny that she looks like a kid. Affery gives Arthur the deets on Little Dorrit. She does needlework at the Clennam house for twelve hours a day. No one knows what she does with the other twelve hours. She refuses to eat in public or in front of anyone else. Arthur also notices that his mom seems slightly nicer to Little Dorrit than to anyone else. Arthur decides that the house is so depressing that he'd rather stay at the inn after all. Also, he decides to start stalking Little Dorrit to find out more about her. And since this is way before he could just Google her or read her Facebook page, he has to actually physically follow her around.


prompt:
Chapter: Thirty years ago there stood, a few doors short of the church of Saint
George, in the borough of Southwark, on the left-hand side of the way
going southward, the Marshalsea Prison. It had stood there many years
before, and it remained there some years afterwards; but it is gone now,
    and the world is none the worse without it.

    It was an oblong pile of barrack building, partitioned into squalid
    houses standing back to back, so that there were no back rooms;
    environed by a narrow paved yard, hemmed in by high walls duly spiked at
    top. Itself a close and confined prison for debtors, it contained within
    it a much closer and more confined jail for smugglers. Offenders against
    the revenue laws, and defaulters to excise or customs who had incurred
    fines which they were unable to pay, were supposed to be incarcerated
    behind an iron-plated door closing up a second prison, consisting of a
    strong cell or two, and a blind alley some yard and a half wide, which
    formed the mysterious termination of the very limited skittle-ground in
    which the Marshalsea debtors bowled down their troubles.

    Supposed to be incarcerated there, because the time had rather outgrown
    the strong cells and the blind alley. In practice they had come to be
    considered a little too bad, though in theory they were quite as good as
    ever; which may be observed to be the case at the present day with other
    cells that are not at all strong, and with other blind alleys that are
    stone-blind. Hence the smugglers habitually consorted with the debtors
    (who received them with open arms), except at certain constitutional
    moments when somebody came from some Office, to go through some form of
    overlooking something which neither he nor anybody else knew anything
    about. On these truly British occasions, the smugglers, if any, made a
    feint of walking into the strong cells and the blind alley, while this
    somebody pretended to do his something: and made a reality of walking
    out again as soon as he hadn't done it--neatly epitomising the
    administration of most of the public affairs in our right little, tight
    little, island.

    There had been taken to the Marshalsea Prison, long before the day when
    the sun shone on Marseilles and on the opening of this narrative, a
    debtor with whom this narrative has some concern.

    He was, at that time, a very amiable and very helpless middle-aged
    gentleman, who was going out again directly. Necessarily, he was going
    out again directly, because the Marshalsea lock never turned upon a
    debtor who was not. He brought in a portmanteau with him, which he
    doubted its being worth while to unpack; he was so perfectly clear--like
    all the rest of them, the turnkey on the lock said--that he was going
    out again directly.

    He was a shy, retiring man; well-looking, though in an effeminate style;
    with a mild voice, curling hair, and irresolute hands--rings upon the
    fingers in those days--which nervously wandered to his trembling lip a
    hundred times in the first half-hour of his acquaintance with the jail.
    His principal anxiety was about his wife.

    'Do you think, sir,' he asked the turnkey, 'that she will be very much
    shocked, if she should come to the gate to-morrow morning?'

    The turnkey gave it as the result of his experience that some of 'em was
    and some of 'em wasn't. In general, more no than yes. 'What like is she,
    you see?' he philosophically asked: 'that's what it hinges on.'

    'She is very delicate and inexperienced indeed.'

    'That,' said the turnkey, 'is agen her.'

    'She is so little used to go out alone,' said the debtor, 'that I am at
    a loss to think how she will ever make her way here, if she walks.'

    'P'raps,' quoth the turnkey, 'she'll take a ackney coach.'

    'Perhaps.' The irresolute fingers went to the trembling lip. 'I hope she
    will. She may not think of it.'

    'Or p'raps,' said the turnkey, offering his suggestions from the the top
    of his well-worn wooden stool, as he might have offered them to a child
    for whose weakness he felt a compassion, 'p'raps she'll get her brother,
    or her sister, to come along with her.'

    'She has no brother or sister.'

    'Niece, nevy, cousin, serwant, young 'ooman, greengrocer.--Dash it! One
    or another on 'em,' said the turnkey, repudiating beforehand the refusal
    of all his suggestions.

    'I fear--I hope it is not against the rules--that she will bring the
    children.'

    'The children?' said the turnkey. 'And the rules? Why, lord set you
    up like a corner pin, we've a reg'lar playground o' children here.
    Children! Why we swarm with 'em. How many a you got?'

    'Two,' said the debtor, lifting his irresolute hand to his lip again,
    and turning into the prison.

    The turnkey followed him with his eyes. 'And you another,' he observed
    to himself, 'which makes three on you. And your wife another, I'll lay
    a crown. Which makes four on you. And another coming, I'll lay
    half-a-crown. Which'll make five on you. And I'll go another seven and
    sixpence to name which is the helplessest, the unborn baby or you!'

    He was right in all his particulars. She came next day with a little
    boy of three years old, and a little girl of two, and he stood entirely
    corroborated.

    'Got a room now; haven't you?' the turnkey asked the debtor after a week
    or two.

    'Yes, I have got a very good room.'

    'Any little sticks a coming to furnish it?' said the turnkey.

    'I expect a few necessary articles of furniture to be delivered by the
    carrier, this afternoon.'

    'Missis and little 'uns a coming to keep you company?' asked the
    turnkey.

    'Why, yes, we think it better that we should not be scattered, even for
    a few weeks.'

    'Even for a few weeks, _of_ course,' replied the turnkey. And he followed
    him again with his eyes, and nodded his head seven times when he was
    gone.

    The affairs of this debtor were perplexed by a partnership, of which he
    knew no more than that he had invested money in it; by legal matters
    of assignment and settlement, conveyance here and conveyance there,
    suspicion of unlawful preference of creditors in this direction, and of
    mysterious spiriting away of property in that; and as nobody on the face
    of the earth could be more incapable of explaining any single item in
    the heap of confusion than the debtor himself, nothing comprehensible
    could be made of his case. To question him in detail, and endeavour
    to reconcile his answers; to closet him with accountants and sharp
    practitioners, learned in the wiles of insolvency and bankruptcy; was
    only to put the case out at compound interest and incomprehensibility.
    The irresolute fingers fluttered more and more ineffectually about the
    trembling lip on every such occasion, and the sharpest practitioners
    gave him up as a hopeless job.

    'Out?' said the turnkey, '_he_'ll never get out, unless his creditors take
    him by the shoulders and shove him out.'

    He had been there five or six months, when he came running to this
    turnkey one forenoon to tell him, breathless and pale, that his wife was
    ill.

    'As anybody might a known she would be,' said the turnkey.

    'We intended,' he returned, 'that she should go to a country lodging
    only to-morrow. What am I to do! Oh, good heaven, what am I to do!'

    'Don't waste your time in clasping your hands and biting your fingers,'
    responded the practical turnkey, taking him by the elbow, 'but come
    along with me.'

    The turnkey conducted him--trembling from head to foot, and constantly
    crying under his breath, What was he to do! while his irresolute fingers
    bedabbled the tears upon his face--up one of the common staircases in
    the prison to a door on the garret story. Upon which door the turnkey
    knocked with the handle of his key.

    'Come in!' cried a voice inside.

    The turnkey, opening the door, disclosed in a wretched, ill-smelling
    little room, two hoarse, puffy, red-faced personages seated at a
    rickety table, playing at all-fours, smoking pipes, and drinking brandy.

    'Doctor,' said the turnkey, 'here's a gentleman's wife in want of you
    without a minute's loss of time!'

    The doctor's friend was in the positive degree of hoarseness, puffiness,
    red-facedness, all-fours, tobacco, dirt, and brandy; the doctor in
    the comparative--hoarser, puffier, more red-faced, more all-fourey,
    tobaccoer, dirtier, and brandier. The doctor was amazingly shabby, in
    a torn and darned rough-weather sea-jacket, out at elbows and eminently
    short of buttons (he had been in his time the experienced surgeon
            carried by a passenger ship), the dirtiest white trousers conceivable by
    mortal man, carpet slippers, and no visible linen. 'Childbed?' said
    the doctor. 'I'm the boy!' With that the doctor took a comb from the
    chimney-piece and stuck his hair upright--which appeared to be his
    way of washing himself--produced a professional chest or case, of most
    abject appearance, from the cupboard where his cup and saucer and coals
    were, settled his chin in the frowsy wrapper round his neck, and became
    a ghastly medical scarecrow.

    The doctor and the debtor ran down-stairs, leaving the turnkey to return
    to the lock, and made for the debtor's room. All the ladies in the
    prison had got hold of the news, and were in the yard. Some of them
    had already taken possession of the two children, and were hospitably
    carrying them off; others were offering loans of little comforts from
    their own scanty store; others were sympathising with the greatest
    volubility. The gentlemen prisoners, feeling themselves at a
    disadvantage, had for the most part retired, not to say sneaked,
    to their rooms; from the open windows of which some of them now
    complimented the doctor with whistles as he passed below, while others,
    with several stories between them, interchanged sarcastic references to
    the prevalent excitement.

    It was a hot summer day, and the prison rooms were baking between the
    high walls. In the debtor's confined chamber, Mrs Bangham, charwoman and
    messenger, who was not a prisoner (though she had been once), but
    was the popular medium of communication with the outer world, had
    volunteered her services as fly-catcher and general attendant. The walls
    and ceiling were blackened with flies. Mrs Bangham, expert in sudden
    device, with one hand fanned the patient with a cabbage leaf, and with
    the other set traps of vinegar and sugar in gallipots; at the same time
    enunciating sentiments of an encouraging and congratulatory nature,
    adapted to the occasion.

    'The flies trouble you, don't they, my dear?' said Mrs Bangham. 'But
    p'raps they'll take your mind off of it, and do you good. What between
    the buryin ground, the grocer's, the waggon-stables, and the paunch
    trade, the Marshalsea flies gets very large. P'raps they're sent as a
    consolation, if we only know'd it. How are you now, my dear? No better?
    No, my dear, it ain't to be expected; you'll be worse before you're
    better, and you know it, don't you? Yes. That's right! And to think of
    a sweet little cherub being born inside the lock! Now ain't it pretty,
    ain't _that_ something to carry you through it pleasant? Why, we ain't
    had such a thing happen here, my dear, not for I couldn't name the time
    when. And you a crying too?' said Mrs Bangham, to rally the patient more
    and more. 'You! Making yourself so famous! With the flies a falling into
    the gallipots by fifties! And everything a going on so well! And here if
    there ain't,' said Mrs Bangham as the door opened, 'if there ain't your
    dear gentleman along with Dr Haggage! And now indeed we _are_ complete, I
    _think_!'

    The doctor was scarcely the kind of apparition to inspire a patient
    with a sense of absolute completeness, but as he presently delivered the
    opinion, 'We are as right as we can be, Mrs Bangham, and we shall
    come out of this like a house afire;' and as he and Mrs Bangham took
    possession of the poor helpless pair, as everybody else and anybody else
    had always done, the means at hand were as good on the whole as better
    would have been. The special feature in Dr Haggage's treatment of the
    case, was his determination to keep Mrs Bangham up to the mark. As thus:

    'Mrs Bangham,' said the doctor, before he had been there twenty minutes,
    'go outside and fetch a little brandy, or we shall have you giving in.'

    'Thank you, sir. But none on my accounts,' said Mrs Bangham.

    'Mrs Bangham,' returned the doctor, 'I am in professional attendance
    on this lady, and don't choose to allow any discussion on your part. Go
    outside and fetch a little brandy, or I foresee that you'll break down.'

    'You're to be obeyed, sir,' said Mrs Bangham, rising. 'If you was to put
    your own lips to it, I think you wouldn't be the worse, for you look but
    poorly, sir.'

    'Mrs Bangham,' returned the doctor, 'I am not your business, thank you,
    but you are mine. Never you mind _me_, if you please. What you have got to
    do, is, to do as you are told, and to go and get what I bid you.'

    Mrs Bangham submitted; and the doctor, having administered her
    potion, took his own. He repeated the treatment every hour, being very
    determined with Mrs Bangham. Three or four hours passed; the flies
    fell into the traps by hundreds; and at length one little life, hardly
    stronger than theirs, appeared among the multitude of lesser deaths.

    'A very nice little girl indeed,' said the doctor; 'little, but
    well-formed. Halloa, Mrs Bangham! You're looking queer! You be off,
    ma'am, this minute, and fetch a little more brandy, or we shall have you
    in hysterics.'

    By this time, the rings had begun to fall from the debtor's irresolute
    hands, like leaves from a wintry tree. Not one was left upon them that
    night, when he put something that chinked into the doctor's greasy palm.
    In the meantime Mrs Bangham had been out on an errand to a neighbouring
    establishment decorated with three golden balls, where she was very well
    known.

    'Thank you,' said the doctor, 'thank you. Your good lady is quite
    composed. Doing charmingly.'

    'I am very happy and very thankful to know it,' said the debtor, 'though
    I little thought once, that--'

    'That a child would be born to you in a place like this?' said the
    doctor. 'Bah, bah, sir, what does it signify? A little more elbow-room
    is all we want here. We are quiet here; we don't get badgered here;
    there's no knocker here, sir, to be hammered at by creditors and bring a
    man's heart into his mouth. Nobody comes here to ask if a man's at
    home, and to say he'll stand on the door mat till he is. Nobody writes
    threatening letters about money to this place. It's freedom, sir, it's
    freedom! I have had to-day's practice at home and abroad, on a march,
    and aboard ship, and I'll tell you this: I don't know that I have ever
    pursued it under such quiet circumstances as here this day. Elsewhere,
    people are restless, worried, hurried about, anxious respecting one
    thing, anxious respecting another. Nothing of the kind here, sir. We
    have done all that--we know the worst of it; we have got to the bottom,
    we can't fall, and what have we found? Peace. That's the word for
    it. Peace.' With this profession of faith, the doctor, who was an old
    jail-bird, and was more sodden than usual, and had the additional and
    unusual stimulus of money in his pocket, returned to his associate and
    chum in hoarseness, puffiness, red-facedness, all-fours, tobacco, dirt,
    and brandy.

    Now, the debtor was a very different man from the doctor, but he had
    already begun to travel, by his opposite segment of the circle, to the
    same point. Crushed at first by his imprisonment, he had soon found a
    dull relief in it. He was under lock and key; but the lock and key that
    kept him in, kept numbers of his troubles out. If he had been a man with
    strength of purpose to face those troubles and fight them, he might have
    broken the net that held him, or broken his heart; but being what he
    was, he languidly slipped into this smooth descent, and never more took
    one step upward.

    When he was relieved of the perplexed affairs that nothing would make
    plain, through having them returned upon his hands by a dozen agents in
    succession who could make neither beginning, middle, nor end of them or
    him, he found his miserable place of refuge a quieter refuge than it
    had been before. He had unpacked the portmanteau long ago; and his elder
    children now played regularly about the yard, and everybody knew the
    baby, and claimed a kind of proprietorship in her.

    'Why, I'm getting proud of you,' said his friend the turnkey, one day.
    'You'll be the oldest inhabitant soon. The Marshalsea wouldn't be like
    the Marshalsea now, without you and your family.'

    The turnkey really was proud of him. He would mention him in laudatory
    terms to new-comers, when his back was turned. 'You took notice of him,'
    he would say, 'that went out of the lodge just now?'

    New-comer would probably answer Yes.

    'Brought up as a gentleman, he was, if ever a man was. Ed'cated at no
    end of expense. Went into the Marshal's house once to try a new piano
    for him. Played it, I understand, like one o'clock--beautiful! As to
    languages--speaks anything. We've had a Frenchman here in his time, and
    it's my opinion he knowed more French than the Frenchman did. We've had
    an Italian here in his time, and he shut _him_ up in about half a minute.
    You'll find some characters behind other locks, I don't say you won't;
    but if you want the top sawyer in such respects as I've mentioned, you
    must come to the Marshalsea.'

    When his youngest child was eight years old, his wife, who had long been
    languishing away--of her own inherent weakness, not that she retained
    any greater sensitiveness as to her place of abode than he did--went
    upon a visit to a poor friend and old nurse in the country, and died
    there. He remained shut up in his room for a fortnight afterwards;
    and an attorney's clerk, who was going through the Insolvent Court,
    engrossed an address of condolence to him, which looked like a Lease,
    and which all the prisoners signed. When he appeared again he was
    greyer (he had soon begun to turn grey); and the turnkey noticed that
    his hands went often to his trembling lips again, as they had used to do
    when he first came in. But he got pretty well over it in a month or
    two; and in the meantime the children played about the yard as regularly
    as ever, but in black.

    Then Mrs Bangham, long popular medium of communication with the outer
    world, began to be infirm, and to be found oftener than usual comatose
    on pavements, with her basket of purchases spilt, and the change of her
    clients ninepence short. His son began to supersede Mrs Bangham, and
    to execute commissions in a knowing manner, and to be of the prison
    prisonous, of the streets streety.

    Time went on, and the turnkey began to fail. His chest swelled, and his
    legs got weak, and he was short of breath. The well-worn wooden stool
    was 'beyond him,' he complained. He sat in an arm-chair with a cushion,
    and sometimes wheezed so, for minutes together, that he couldn't turn
    the key. When he was overpowered by these fits, the debtor often turned
    it for him.

    'You and me,' said the turnkey, one snowy winter's night when the lodge,
    with a bright fire in it, was pretty full of company, 'is the oldest
    inhabitants. I wasn't here myself above seven year before you. I shan't
    last long. When I'm off the lock for good and all, you'll be the Father
    of the Marshalsea.'

    The turnkey went off the lock of this world next day. His words were
    remembered and repeated; and tradition afterwards handed down from
    generation to generation--a Marshalsea generation might be calculated as
    about three months--that the shabby old debtor with the soft manner and
    the white hair, was the Father of the Marshalsea.

    And he grew to be proud of the title. If any impostor had arisen to
    claim it, he would have shed tears in resentment of the attempt to
    deprive him of his rights. A disposition began to be perceived in him
    to exaggerate the number of years he had been there; it was generally
    understood that you must deduct a few from his account; he was vain, the
    fleeting generations of debtors said.

    All new-comers were presented to him. He was punctilious in the exaction
    of this ceremony. The wits would perform the office of introduction with
    overcharged pomp and politeness, but they could not easily overstep his
    sense of its gravity. He received them in his poor room (he disliked an
            introduction in the mere yard, as informal--a thing that might happen
            to anybody), with a kind of bowed-down beneficence. They were welcome to
    the Marshalsea, he would tell them. Yes, he was the Father of the place.
    So the world was kind enough to call him; and so he was, if more than
    twenty years of residence gave him a claim to the title. It looked
    small at first, but there was very good company there--among a
    mixture--necessarily a mixture--and very good air.

    It became a not unusual circumstance for letters to be put under his
    door at night, enclosing half-a-crown, two half-crowns, now and then at
    long intervals even half-a-sovereign, for the Father of the Marshalsea.
    'With the compliments of a collegian taking leave.' He received the
    gifts as tributes, from admirers, to a public character. Sometimes
    these correspondents assumed facetious names, as the Brick, Bellows, Old
    Gooseberry, Wideawake, Snooks, Mops, Cutaway, the Dogs-meat Man; but he
    considered this in bad taste, and was always a little hurt by it.

    In the fulness of time, this correspondence showing signs of wearing
    out, and seeming to require an effort on the part of the correspondents
    to which in the hurried circumstances of departure many of them might
    not be equal, he established the custom of attending collegians of
    a certain standing, to the gate, and taking leave of them there. The
    collegian under treatment, after shaking hands, would occasionally
    stop to wrap up something in a bit of paper, and would come back again
    calling 'Hi!'

    He would look round surprised.'Me?' he would say, with a smile.

    By this time the collegian would be up with him, and he would paternally
    add,'What have you forgotten? What can I do for you?'

    'I forgot to leave this,' the collegian would usually return, 'for the
    Father of the Marshalsea.'

    'My good sir,' he would rejoin, 'he is infinitely obliged to you.' But,
    to the last, the irresolute hand of old would remain in the pocket into
    which he had slipped the money during two or three turns about the yard,
    lest the transaction should be too conspicuous to the general body of
    collegians.

    One afternoon he had been doing the honours of the place to a rather
    large party of collegians, who happened to be going out, when, as he was
    coming back, he encountered one from the poor side who had been taken in
    execution for a small sum a week before, had 'settled' in the course of
    that afternoon, and was going out too. The man was a mere Plasterer in
    his working dress; had his wife with him, and a bundle; and was in high
    spirits.

    'God bless you, sir,' he said in passing.

    'And you,' benignantly returned the Father of the Marshalsea.

    They were pretty far divided, going their several ways, when the
    Plasterer called out, 'I say!--sir!' and came back to him.

    'It ain't much,' said the Plasterer, putting a little pile of halfpence
    in his hand, 'but it's well meant.'

    The Father of the Marshalsea had never been offered tribute in copper
    yet. His children often had, and with his perfect acquiescence it had
    gone into the common purse to buy meat that he had eaten, and drink that
    he had drunk; but fustian splashed with white lime, bestowing halfpence
    on him, front to front, was new.

    'How dare you!' he said to the man, and feebly burst into tears.

    The Plasterer turned him towards the wall, that his face might not be
    seen; and the action was so delicate, and the man was so penetrated with
    repentance, and asked pardon so honestly, that he could make him no less
    acknowledgment than, 'I know you meant it kindly. Say no more.'

    'Bless your soul, sir,' urged the Plasterer, 'I did indeed. I'd do more
    by you than the rest of 'em do, I fancy.'

    'What would you do?' he asked.

    'I'd come back to see you, after I was let out.'

    'Give me the money again,' said the other, eagerly, 'and I'll keep it,
    and never spend it. Thank you for it, thank you! I shall see you again?'

    'If I live a week you shall.'

    They shook hands and parted. The collegians, assembled in Symposium in
    the Snuggery that night, marvelled what had happened to their Father; he
    walked so late in the shadows of the yard, and seemed so downcast.

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

completion: The Marshalsea is a prison that was originally divided into two parts: one part for those who couldn't pay their debts and the other for smugglers. . But over time, the prison buildings have fallen into disrepair, and all these prisoners now mingle together. One day Mr. Dorrit is taken to Marshalsea. He is in his 40s, married, with two children and another on the way. He has almost no idea what his debt is. - and left him with the company debts . In the middle of the 19th century, corporations were finally invented, and investing in a company became much more like what we think of today - you can buy some stock in General Motors, but that doesn't make you responsible for that company in any way.) So, yeah. Mr. Dorrit. Debts. Prison. His wife and kids come with, because where else are they going to go? They aren't actually prisoners, though, and can come and go as they please. A few months later, his youngest daughter is born inside the prison. Eight years later, his wife dies. Mr. Dorrit has become very used to prison life. His son takes over from Mrs. Bangham as the prison's errand-boy. Eventually he is the longest-serving prisoner and gets the nickname Father of the Marshalsea. He starts to be proud of this title, and exaggerates how many years he's been in prison, how fancy a gentleman he used to be before, and how much debt he really has. Other prisoners who are leaving start giving him tips as a kind of charity and token of respect. He starts to expect, and then demand, these handouts.


prompt:
Chapter: The baby whose first draught of air had been tinctured with Doctor
Haggage's brandy, was handed down among the generations of collegians,
    like the tradition of their common parent. In the earlier stages of her
    existence, she was handed down in a literal and prosaic sense; it being
    almost a part of the entrance footing of every new collegian to nurse
    the child who had been born in the college.

    'By rights,' remarked the turnkey when she was first shown to him, 'I
    ought to be her godfather.'

    The debtor irresolutely thought of it for a minute, and said, 'Perhaps
    you wouldn't object to really being her godfather?'

    'Oh! _I_ don't object,' replied the turnkey, 'if you don't.'

    Thus it came to pass that she was christened one Sunday afternoon, when
    the turnkey, being relieved, was off the lock; and that the turnkey
    went up to the font of Saint George's Church, and promised and vowed and
    renounced on her behalf, as he himself related when he came back, 'like
    a good 'un.'

    This invested the turnkey with a new proprietary share in the child,
    over and above his former official one. When she began to walk and talk,
    he became fond of her; bought a little arm-chair and stood it by the
    high fender of the lodge fire-place; liked to have her company when he
    was on the lock; and used to bribe her with cheap toys to come and talk
    to him. The child, for her part, soon grew so fond of the turnkey that
    she would come climbing up the lodge-steps of her own accord at all
    hours of the day. When she fell asleep in the little armchair by the
    high fender, the turnkey would cover her with his pocket-handkerchief;
    and when she sat in it dressing and undressing a doll which soon came
    to be unlike dolls on the other side of the lock, and to bear a horrible
    family resemblance to Mrs Bangham--he would contemplate her from the
    top of his stool with exceeding gentleness. Witnessing these things,
    the collegians would express an opinion that the turnkey, who was a
    bachelor, had been cut out by nature for a family man. But the turnkey
    thanked them, and said, 'No, on the whole it was enough to see other
    people's children there.'

    At what period of her early life the little creature began to perceive
    that it was not the habit of all the world to live locked up in narrow
    yards surrounded by high walls with spikes at the top, would be a
    difficult question to settle. But she was a very, very little creature
    indeed, when she had somehow gained the knowledge that her clasp of her
    father's hand was to be always loosened at the door which the great key
    opened; and that while her own light steps were free to pass beyond it,
    his feet must never cross that line. A pitiful and plaintive look, with
    which she had begun to regard him when she was still extremely young,
    was perhaps a part of this discovery.

    With a pitiful and plaintive look for everything, indeed, but with
    something in it for only him that was like protection, this Child of
    the Marshalsea and the child of the Father of the Marshalsea, sat by her
    friend the turnkey in the lodge, kept the family room, or wandered about
    the prison-yard, for the first eight years of her life. With a pitiful
    and plaintive look for her wayward sister; for her idle brother; for the
    high blank walls; for the faded crowd they shut in; for the games of the
    prison children as they whooped and ran, and played at hide-and-seek,
    and made the iron bars of the inner gateway 'Home.'

    Wistful and wondering, she would sit in summer weather by the high
    fender in the lodge, looking up at the sky through the barred window,
    until, when she turned her eyes away, bars of light would arise between
    her and her friend, and she would see him through a grating, too.

    'Thinking of the fields,' the turnkey said once, after watching her,
    'ain't you?'

    'Where are they?' she inquired.

    'Why, they're--over there, my dear,' said the turnkey, with a vague
    flourish of his key. 'Just about there.'

    'Does anybody open them, and shut them? Are they locked?'

    The turnkey was discomfited. 'Well,' he said. 'Not in general.'

    'Are they very pretty, Bob?' She called him Bob, by his own particular
    request and instruction.

    'Lovely. Full of flowers. There's buttercups, and there's daisies,
    and there's'--the turnkey hesitated, being short of floral
    nomenclature--'there's dandelions, and all manner of games.'

    'Is it very pleasant to be there, Bob?'

    'Prime,' said the turnkey.

    'Was father ever there?'

    'Hem!' coughed the turnkey. 'O yes, he was there, sometimes.'

    'Is he sorry not to be there now?'

    'N-not particular,' said the turnkey.

    'Nor any of the people?' she asked, glancing at the listless crowd
    within. 'O are you quite sure and certain, Bob?'

    At this difficult point of the conversation Bob gave in, and changed the
    subject to hard-bake: always his last resource when he found his little
    friend getting him into a political, social, or theological corner.
    But this was the origin of a series of Sunday excursions that these two
    curious companions made together. They used to issue from the lodge on
    alternate Sunday afternoons with great gravity, bound for some meadows
    or green lanes that had been elaborately appointed by the turnkey in
    the course of the week; and there she picked grass and flowers to bring
    home, while he smoked his pipe. Afterwards, there were tea-gardens,
    shrimps, ale, and other delicacies; and then they would come back hand
    in hand, unless she was more than usually tired, and had fallen asleep
    on his shoulder.

    In those early days, the turnkey first began profoundly to consider
    a question which cost him so much mental labour, that it remained
    undetermined on the day of his death. He decided to will and bequeath
    his little property of savings to his godchild, and the point arose how
    could it be so 'tied up' as that only she should have the benefit of
    it? His experience on the lock gave him such an acute perception of the
    enormous difficulty of 'tying up' money with any approach to tightness,
    and contrariwise of the remarkable ease with which it got loose, that
    through a series of years he regularly propounded this knotty point to
    every new insolvent agent and other professional gentleman who passed in
    and out.

    'Supposing,' he would say, stating the case with his key on the
    professional gentleman's waistcoat; 'supposing a man wanted to leave his
    property to a young female, and wanted to tie it up so that nobody else
    should ever be able to make a grab at it; how would you tie up that
    property?'

    'Settle it strictly on herself,' the professional gentleman would
    complacently answer.

    'But look here,' quoth the turnkey. 'Supposing she had, say a brother,
    say a father, say a husband, who would be likely to make a grab at that
    property when she came into it--how about that?'

    'It would be settled on herself, and they would have no more legal claim
    on it than you,' would be the professional answer.

    'Stop a bit,' said the turnkey. 'Supposing she was tender-hearted, and
    they came over her. Where's your law for tying it up then?'

    The deepest character whom the turnkey sounded, was unable to produce
    his law for tying such a knot as that. So, the turnkey thought about it
    all his life, and died intestate after all.

    But that was long afterwards, when his god-daughter was past sixteen.
    The first half of that space of her life was only just accomplished,
    when her pitiful and plaintive look saw her father a widower. From that
    time the protection that her wondering eyes had expressed towards him,
    became embodied in action, and the Child of the Marshalsea took upon
    herself a new relation towards the Father.

    At first, such a baby could do little more than sit with him, deserting
    her livelier place by the high fender, and quietly watching him. But
    this made her so far necessary to him that he became accustomed to her,
    and began to be sensible of missing her when she was not there. Through
    this little gate, she passed out of childhood into the care-laden world.

    What her pitiful look saw, at that early time, in her father, in her
    sister, in her brother, in the jail; how much, or how little of the
    wretched truth it pleased God to make visible to her; lies hidden with
    many mysteries. It is enough that she was inspired to be something which
    was not what the rest were, and to be that something, different and
    laborious, for the sake of the rest. Inspired? Yes. Shall we speak of
    the inspiration of a poet or a priest, and not of the heart impelled by
    love and self-devotion to the lowliest work in the lowliest way of life!

    With no earthly friend to help her, or so much as to see her, but the
    one so strangely assorted; with no knowledge even of the common daily
    tone and habits of the common members of the free community who are not
    shut up in prisons; born and bred in a social condition, false even with
    a reference to the falsest condition outside the walls; drinking from
    infancy of a well whose waters had their own peculiar stain, their own
    unwholesome and unnatural taste; the Child of the Marshalsea began her
    womanly life.

    No matter through what mistakes and discouragements, what ridicule (not
            unkindly meant, but deeply felt) of her youth and little figure, what
    humble consciousness of her own babyhood and want of strength, even
    in the matter of lifting and carrying; through how much weariness
    and hopelessness, and how many secret tears; she drudged on, until
    recognised as useful, even indispensable. That time came. She took the
    place of eldest of the three, in all things but precedence; was the
    head of the fallen family; and bore, in her own heart, its anxieties and
    shames.

    At thirteen, she could read and keep accounts, that is, could put down
    in words and figures how much the bare necessaries that they wanted
    would cost, and how much less they had to buy them with. She had been,
    by snatches of a few weeks at a time, to an evening school outside,
    and got her sister and brother sent to day-schools by desultory starts,
    during three or four years. There was no instruction for any of them at
    home; but she knew well--no one better--that a man so broken as to be
    the Father of the Marshalsea, could be no father to his own children.

    To these scanty means of improvement, she added another of her own
    contriving. Once, among the heterogeneous crowd of inmates there
    appeared a dancing-master. Her sister had a great desire to learn the
    dancing-master's art, and seemed to have a taste that way. At thirteen
    years old, the Child of the Marshalsea presented herself to the
    dancing-master, with a little bag in her hand, and preferred her humble
    petition.

    'If you please, I was born here, sir.'

    'Oh! You are the young lady, are you?' said the dancing-master,
    surveying the small figure and uplifted face.

    'Yes, sir.'

    'And what can I do for you?' said the dancing-master.

    'Nothing for me, sir, thank you,' anxiously undrawing the strings of
    the little bag; 'but if, while you stay here, you could be so kind as to
    teach my sister cheap--'

    'My child, I'll teach her for nothing,' said the dancing-master,
    shutting up the bag. He was as good-natured a dancing-master as ever
    danced to the Insolvent Court, and he kept his word. The sister was so
    apt a pupil, and the dancing-master had such abundant leisure to bestow
    upon her (for it took him a matter of ten weeks to set to his creditors,
            lead off, turn the Commissioners, and right and left back to his
            professional pursuits), that wonderful progress was made. Indeed the
    dancing-master was so proud of it, and so wishful to display it before
    he left to a few select friends among the collegians, that at six
    o'clock on a certain fine morning, a minuet de la cour came off in
    the yard--the college-rooms being of too confined proportions for the
    purpose--in which so much ground was covered, and the steps were so
    conscientiously executed, that the dancing-master, having to play the
    kit besides, was thoroughly blown.

    The success of this beginning, which led to the dancing-master's
    continuing his instruction after his release, emboldened the poor child
    to try again. She watched and waited months for a seamstress. In the
    fulness of time a milliner came in, and to her she repaired on her own
    behalf.

    'I beg your pardon, ma'am,' she said, looking timidly round the door of
    the milliner, whom she found in tears and in bed: 'but I was born here.'

    Everybody seemed to hear of her as soon as they arrived; for the
    milliner sat up in bed, drying her eyes, and said, just as the
    dancing-master had said:

    'Oh! _You_ are the child, are you?'

    'Yes, ma'am.'

    'I am sorry I haven't got anything for you,' said the milliner, shaking
    her head.

    'It's not that, ma'am. If you please I want to learn needle-work.'

    'Why should you do that,' returned the milliner, 'with me before you? It
    has not done me much good.'

    'Nothing--whatever it is--seems to have done anybody much good who comes
    here,' she returned in all simplicity; 'but I want to learn just the
    same.'

    'I am afraid you are so weak, you see,' the milliner objected.

    'I don't think I am weak, ma'am.'

    'And you are so very, very little, you see,' the milliner objected.

    'Yes, I am afraid I am very little indeed,' returned the Child of the
    Marshalsea; and so began to sob over that unfortunate defect of hers,
    which came so often in her way. The milliner--who was not morose or
    hard-hearted, only newly insolvent--was touched, took her in hand with
    goodwill, found her the most patient and earnest of pupils, and made her
    a cunning work-woman in course of time.

    In course of time, and in the very self-same course of time, the Father
    of the Marshalsea gradually developed a new flower of character. The
    more Fatherly he grew as to the Marshalsea, and the more dependent he
    became on the contributions of his changing family, the greater stand
    he made by his forlorn gentility. With the same hand that he pocketed
    a collegian's half-crown half an hour ago, he would wipe away the
    tears that streamed over his cheeks if any reference were made to his
    daughters' earning their bread. So, over and above other daily cares,
    the Child of the Marshalsea had always upon her the care of preserving
    the genteel fiction that they were all idle beggars together.

    The sister became a dancer. There was a ruined uncle in the family
    group--ruined by his brother, the Father of the Marshalsea, and knowing
    no more how than his ruiner did, but accepting the fact as an inevitable
    certainty--on whom her protection devolved. Naturally a retired and
    simple man, he had shown no particular sense of being ruined at the time
    when that calamity fell upon him, further than that he left off washing
    himself when the shock was announced, and never took to that luxury any
    more. He had been a very indifferent musical amateur in his better days;
    and when he fell with his brother, resorted for support to playing a
    clarionet as dirty as himself in a small Theatre Orchestra. It was the
    theatre in which his niece became a dancer; he had been a fixture there
    a long time when she took her poor station in it; and he accepted
    the task of serving as her escort and guardian, just as he would have
    accepted an illness, a legacy, a feast, starvation--anything but soap.

    To enable this girl to earn her few weekly shillings, it was necessary
    for the Child of the Marshalsea to go through an elaborate form with the
    Father.

    'Fanny is not going to live with us just now, father. She will be here a
    good deal in the day, but she is going to live outside with uncle.'

    'You surprise me. Why?'

    'I think uncle wants a companion, father. He should be attended to, and
    looked after.'

    'A companion? He passes much of his time here. And you attend to him and
    look after him, Amy, a great deal more than ever your sister will. You
    all go out so much; you all go out so much.'

    This was to keep up the ceremony and pretence of his having no idea that
    Amy herself went out by the day to work.

    'But we are always glad to come home, father; now, are we not? And as to
    Fanny, perhaps besides keeping uncle company and taking care of him, it
    may be as well for her not quite to live here, always. She was not born
    here as I was, you know, father.'

    'Well, Amy, well. I don't quite follow you, but it's natural I suppose
    that Fanny should prefer to be outside, and even that you often should,
    too. So, you and Fanny and your uncle, my dear, shall have your own way.
    Good, good. I'll not meddle; don't mind me.'

    To get her brother out of the prison; out of the succession to Mrs
    Bangham in executing commissions, and out of the slang interchange with
    very doubtful companions consequent upon both; was her hardest task. At
    eighteen he would have dragged on from hand to mouth, from hour to hour,
    from penny to penny, until eighty. Nobody got into the prison from whom
    he derived anything useful or good, and she could find no patron for him
    but her old friend and godfather.

    'Dear Bob,' said she, 'what is to become of poor Tip?' His name was
    Edward, and Ted had been transformed into Tip, within the walls.

    The turnkey had strong private opinions as to what would become of
    poor Tip, and had even gone so far with the view of averting their
    fulfilment, as to sound Tip in reference to the expediency of running
    away and going to serve his country. But Tip had thanked him, and said
    he didn't seem to care for his country.

    'Well, my dear,' said the turnkey, 'something ought to be done with him.
    Suppose I try and get him into the law?'

    'That would be so good of you, Bob!'

    The turnkey had now two points to put to the professional gentlemen as
    they passed in and out. He put this second one so perseveringly that
    a stool and twelve shillings a week were at last found for Tip in the
    office of an attorney in a great National Palladium called the Palace
    Court; at that time one of a considerable list of everlasting bulwarks
    to the dignity and safety of Albion, whose places know them no more.

    Tip languished in Clifford's Inns for six months, and at the expiration
    of that term sauntered back one evening with his hands in his pockets,
    and incidentally observed to his sister that he was not going back
    again.

    'Not going back again?' said the poor little anxious Child of the
    Marshalsea, always calculating and planning for Tip, in the front rank
    of her charges.

    'I am so tired of it,' said Tip, 'that I have cut it.'

    Tip tired of everything. With intervals of Marshalsea lounging, and Mrs
    Bangham succession, his small second mother, aided by her trusty friend,
    got him into a warehouse, into a market garden, into the hop trade,
    into the law again, into an auctioneers, into a brewery, into a
    stockbroker's, into the law again, into a coach office, into a waggon
    office, into the law again, into a general dealer's, into a distillery,
    into the law again, into a wool house, into a dry goods house, into the
    Billingsgate trade, into the foreign fruit trade, and into the docks.
    But whatever Tip went into, he came out of tired, announcing that he
    had cut it. Wherever he went, this foredoomed Tip appeared to take the
    prison walls with him, and to set them up in such trade or calling;
    and to prowl about within their narrow limits in the old slip-shod,
    purposeless, down-at-heel way; until the real immovable Marshalsea walls
    asserted their fascination over him, and brought him back.

    Nevertheless, the brave little creature did so fix her heart on her
    brother's rescue, that while he was ringing out these doleful changes,
    she pinched and scraped enough together to ship him for Canada. When he
    was tired of nothing to do, and disposed in its turn to cut even that,
    he graciously consented to go to Canada. And there was grief in her
    bosom over parting with him, and joy in the hope of his being put in a
    straight course at last.

    'God bless you, dear Tip. Don't be too proud to come and see us, when
    you have made your fortune.'

    'All right!' said Tip, and went.

    But not all the way to Canada; in fact, not further than Liverpool.
    After making the voyage to that port from London, he found himself
    so strongly impelled to cut the vessel, that he resolved to walk back
    again. Carrying out which intention, he presented himself before her at
    the expiration of a month, in rags, without shoes, and much more tired
    than ever.

    At length, after another interval of successorship to Mrs Bangham, he
    found a pursuit for himself, and announced it.

    'Amy, I have got a situation.'

    'Have you really and truly, Tip?'

    'All right. I shall do now. You needn't look anxious about me any more,
    old girl.'

    'What is it, Tip?'

    'Why, you know Slingo by sight?'

    'Not the man they call the dealer?'

    'That's the chap. He'll be out on Monday, and he's going to give me a
    berth.'

    'What is he a dealer in, Tip?'

    'Horses. All right! I shall do now, Amy.'

    She lost sight of him for months afterwards, and only heard from him
    once. A whisper passed among the elder collegians that he had been seen
    at a mock auction in Moorfields, pretending to buy plated articles for
    massive silver, and paying for them with the greatest liberality in
    bank notes; but it never reached her ears. One evening she was alone at
    work--standing up at the window, to save the twilight lingering above
    the wall--when he opened the door and walked in.

    She kissed and welcomed him; but was afraid to ask him any questions. He
    saw how anxious and timid she was, and appeared sorry.

    'I am afraid, Amy, you'll be vexed this time. Upon my life I am!'

    'I am very sorry to hear you say so, Tip. Have you come back?'

    'Why--yes.'

    'Not expecting this time that what you had found would answer very well,
    I am less surprised and sorry than I might have been, Tip.'

    'Ah! But that's not the worst of it.'

    'Not the worst of it?'

    'Don't look so startled. No, Amy, not the worst of it. I have come back,
    you see; but--_don't_ look so startled--I have come back in what I may
    call a new way. I am off the volunteer list altogether. I am in now, as
    one of the regulars.'

    'Oh! Don't say you are a prisoner, Tip! Don't, don't!'

    'Well, I don't want to say it,' he returned in a reluctant tone; 'but if
    you can't understand me without my saying it, what am I to do? I am in
    for forty pound odd.'

    For the first time in all those years, she sunk under her cares. She
    cried, with her clasped hands lifted above her head, that it would kill
    their father if he ever knew it; and fell down at Tip's graceless feet.

    It was easier for Tip to bring her to her senses than for her to bring
    _him_ to understand that the Father of the Marshalsea would be beside
    himself if he knew the truth. The thing was incomprehensible to Tip, and
    altogether a fanciful notion. He yielded to it in that light only, when
    he submitted to her entreaties, backed by those of his uncle and sister.
    There was no want of precedent for his return; it was accounted for
    to the father in the usual way; and the collegians, with a better
    comprehension of the pious fraud than Tip, supported it loyally.

    This was the life, and this the history, of the child of the Marshalsea
    at twenty-two. With a still surviving attachment to the one miserable
    yard and block of houses as her birthplace and home, she passed to and
    fro in it shrinkingly now, with a womanly consciousness that she was
    pointed out to every one. Since she had begun to work beyond the walls,
    she had found it necessary to conceal where she lived, and to come and
    go as secretly as she could, between the free city and the iron gates,
    outside of which she had never slept in her life. Her original timidity
    had grown with this concealment, and her light step and her little
    figure shunned the thronged streets while they passed along them.

    Worldly wise in hard and poor necessities, she was innocent in all
    things else. Innocent, in the mist through which she saw her father,
    and the prison, and the turbid living river that flowed through it and
    flowed on.

    This was the life, and this the history, of Little Dorrit; now going
    home upon a dull September evening, observed at a distance by Arthur
    Clennam. This was the life, and this the history, of Little Dorrit;
    turning at the end of London Bridge, recrossing it, going back again,
    passing on to Saint George's Church, turning back suddenly once more,
    and flitting in at the open outer gate and little court-yard of the
    Marshalsea.

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

completion: The prison turnkey becomes Little Dorrit's godfather, and they are very close. He takes her on walks outside the prison. Sometimes she asks him questions about what life is like outside the prison and what people who aren't prisoners do. He doesn't know what to say and gives her treats as a distraction. The turnkey wants to leave money just to her in his will, but there is no way to "tie it up" so that no one but Little Dorrit can touch it, so he dies without a will. Little Dorrit is the only member of the family who can take the long view of things and try to see what's going on with the Dorrits from the outside. She takes it upon herself to get her brother and sister educated. Little Dorrit asks an imprisoned dancing master to teach her sister to dance, and that goes well. She herself learns to sew and embroider from an imprisoned milliner . While all this is happening, Mr. Dorrit starts to believe his whole I-was-a-fancy-gentleman shtick. He starts crying every time someone mentions that his kids work for a living - for two reasons: 1) gentlemen and their families don't work, and 2) obviously if anyone should be working, it should be him. So Little Dorrit decides to start pretending they don't work and are instead going out to party all day. Seriously. And Mr. Dorrit decides to not only buy it, but also to sort of scold them for doing so much all-day partying. Fanny becomes a dancer and goes to live with Mr. Dorrit's brother Frederick. Good-old Fred is also completely poor because of Mr. Dorrit's bankruptcy, and was so shocked by this calamity that he has completely stopped washing himself or his clothes. He is a clarinet player in the little theater where Fanny dances. It might be a helpful brain snack to mention here that back then, being a dancer was one - maybe two - steps up from being a prostitute. Fanny's big hope would have been to become some rich dude's kept woman. So yeah - no great shakes. Brother Tip is hardest to deal with. He has already become a semi-pro conman and small-time riffraff when Little Dorrit tries to get him into a variety of trades. He quits all of them and comes back to the prison. Finally one day he comes back and tells her that this time he's "off the volunteer list altogether. in now, as one of the regulars" for a big debt . Little Dorrit loses it, but they all decide to lie about it to Daddy Dorrit, to spare his feelings. That's one dysfunctional family, no?