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.

 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.

