', 'To the winds with the family credit!' That he might be; but he was not so forlorn as to roam away and leave them together. Behold me here expressly to prevent it!' ', 'No doubt,' said Fanny. 'Everybody is polite to Mrs General,' said Little Dorrit. The connection in question, being really people of importance and consideration--', 'As to that,' said Edward Dorrit, Esquire, 'I'll give you the means of judging for yourself. ', 'I am happy,' returned Mrs General, 'to be so corroborated. Edward, beyond opening his mouth in amazement, had not opened his lips, and had done nothing but stare. 'Ah! 'If so, a more undeniable guarantee could not be given,' said Mrs General to Mr Dorrit, raising her gloves and bowing her head, as if she were doing homage to some visible graven image. How dare you set up superiorities against all these characters combined in your sister? Good-bye!' Where's your more than mother? What is it to me?' But, brother, brother, brother, I protest against it!'. Lest he himself should be found deficient in perfect breeding, Mr Dorrit hastened to reply, 'Unquestionably, madam, you are right.' The continued kindness of her sister was this comfort to Little Dorrit. It was the easiest way, and, beyond allcomparison, the properest. Numbers of people seemed to come abroad, pretty much as people had come into the prison; through debt, through idleness, relationship, curiosity, and general unfitness for getting on at home. He has returned quite transported with Venice.' 'I don't mean that; quite different from that. You alone say you can't do it. Pray do everything on my behalf that is civil to Mr and Mrs Gowan, for we will--ha--we will certainly notice them. Amy, none.'. A certain set of words and phrases, as much belonging to tourists as the College and the Snuggery belonged to the jail, was always in their mouths. She felt that, in what he had just now said to her and in his whole bearing towards her, there was the well-known shadow of the Marshalsea wall. Mrs General, having long ago formed her own surface to such perfection that it hid whatever was below it (if anything), no observation was to be made in that quarter. What is the matter? 'Would not inadvertently lighted upon, or accidentally referred to, be better?'. It is peculiar. 'You say, Amy,' pursued Mr Dorrit, 'that you think you require time. I claim a return. He looked at Mrs General, seated in her usual erect attitude on her coach-box behind the proprieties, and he said in a thoughtful manner, 'True, madam. Dear, kind, quiet little Amy, too, what would she feel if she could know that she had been innocently the means of exposing me to such treatment! If her countenance andhair had rather a floury appearance, as though from living in sometranscendently genteel Mill, it was rather because she was a chalkycreation altogether, than because she mended her complexion withviolet powder, or had turned grey. I do not quite understand my elder daughter's having-- hum--too much material. 'I understand,' said Mrs Merdle, 'from my son Edmund Sparkler, that he has already improved that chance occasion. 'By putting an upstart's hire in his pocket?' — and can't fall on to order, in a hurry, for the mere sake of the sixpences.' What material?'. I have pointed out to her that the celebrated Mr Eustace, the classical tourist, did not think much of it; and that he compared the Rialto, greatly to its disadvantage, with Westminster and Blackfriars Bridges. A chair to Mrs General. 'Fanny,' returned Mrs General, 'has force of character and self- reliance. interrupted Fanny. Prunes and Prism, in a thousand combinations, having been wearily in the ascendant all day — everything having been surface and varnish and show without substance — Little Dorrit looked as if she had hoped that Mrs General was safely tucked up in bed for some hours. 'I never, never, never was so used!' You disappoint me. 'I hope I shall do better soon,' said Little Dorrit. Blandois calling to pay his respects, Mr Dorrit received him with affability as the friend of Mr Gowan, and mentioned to him his idea of commissioning Mr Gowan to transmit him to posterity. 'Mrs General.' 'Now, can you guess, Amy?' ', 'Really,' he replied, 'I--ha--what is Mrs General's view?'. Copyright © 2020 Farlex, Inc. | ', 'Perhaps, if you have no other engagement, you would not object for a minute or two--'. was all she said to him. That envoy found her on a little square of carpet, so extremely diminutive in reference to the size of her stone and marble floor that she looked as if she might have had it spread for the trying on of a ready-made pair of shoes; or as if she had come into possession of the enchanted piece of carpet, bought for forty purses by one of the three princes in the Arabian Nights, and had that moment been transported on it, at a wish, into a palatial saloon with which it had no connection. Sparkler.'. — Chapter 1-25 Don't look towards me; look towards him. Mrs General was in her pure element. Mr Dorrit received them in the presence of his daughters and of Mr Sparkler, who happened, by some surprising accident, to be calling there. Fanny was so very much amused by the misgiving, that she took up her favourite fan (being then seated at her dressing-table with her armoury of cruel instruments about her, most of them reeking from the heart of Sparkler), and tapped her sister frequently on the nose with it, laughing all the time. said Blandois. Blandois highly extolling it, it occurred to Mr Dorrit that it might be agreeable to Blandois to communicate to his friend the great opportunity reserved for him. We will-- ha--keep this to ourselves. In this state of affairs it occurred to Mrs General, that she might'form the mind,' and eke the manners of some young lady ofdistinction. — Chapter 2-16 It is for your sake that I wish you, under the auspices of Mrs General, to form a--hum--a surface. But my younger daughter, Mrs General, rather worries and vexes my thoughts. Accidents,miseries, and offences, were never to be mentioned before her. Ha! 'Gowan is coming here?' You--ha--embarrass me very much. No. Here it seemed to Little Dorrit that a change came over the Marshalsea spirit of their society, and that Prunes and Prism got the upper hand. 'I cannot object,' said Mrs General--'though even that isdisagreeable to me--to Mr Dorrit's inquiring, in confidence of myfriends here, what amount they have been accustomed, at quarterlyintervals, to pay to my credit at my bankers'. Henry believes it, but we do not. ', 'There is no accounting,' said Mrs General, 'for these partialities. It always appears to me (if this should prove to be a baseless assumption, I shall be pardoned), that Mr Dorrit has been accustomed to exercise influence over the minds of others. 'And you have never heard Mrs General say anything?' 'My dear,' said he, 'I--ha--approve of your resolution. She gently touched him. Nothing disagreeable should ever be looked at. But it had an influence in placing obstacles in the way of her association with Mrs Gowan by making the Prunes and Prism school excessively polite to her, but not very intimate with her; and Little Dorrit, as an enforced sizar of that college, was obliged to submit herself humbly to its ordinances.