grown neglectful of his person and morose in mind, and, now beholding in Clennam one of the degraded body of his oppressors, received him with ignominy.

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

certained, "if John Barnacle had but abandoned his most unfortunate idea of conciliating the mob, all would have been well, and the country would have been preserved."

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

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

It was agreed that the country (another word, here, for the Barnacles and Stiltstalkings) wanted preserving and was in a bad way, but how it came to be in a bad way was not so clear. It was only clear that the question was all about John Barnacle, Augustus Stiltstalking, William Barnacle and Tudor Stiltstalking, Tom, Dick, The dignified old gentleman turned out to be or Harry Barnacle or Stiltstalking, because Lord Lancaster Stiltstalking, who had been there was nobody else but mob. And this was maintained by the Circumlocution Office for the feature of the conversation that impressed many years as a representative of the Britannic Clennam, as a man not used to it, very disMajesty abroad. This noble Refrigerator had agreeably: making him doubt if it were quite iced several European courts in his time, and right to sit there, silently hearing a great nation had done it with such complete success that the narrowed to such little bounds. Remembering, very name of Englishman yet struck cold to the however, that in the Parliamentary debates, stomachs of foreigners who had the distinguish-whether on the life of that nation's body or the ed honor of remembering him, at a distance of life of its soul, the question was always all about a quarter of a century.

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

and between John Barnacle, Augustus Stiltstalking, William Barnacle, and Tudor Stiltstalking, Tom, Dick, or Harry Barnacle or Stiltstalking, and nobody else, he said nothing on the part of mob, bethinking himself that mob was used to it.

Mr. Henry Gowan seemed to have a malicious pleasure in playing off the three talkers against each other, and in seeing Clennam startled by what they said. Having as supreme a contempt for the class that had thrown him off as for the class that had not taken him on, he had no personal disquiet in any thing that passed. His healthy state of mind appeared even to derive a gratification from Clennam's position of embarrassment and isolation among the good company, and if Clennam had been in that con

There was only one other person in the room: a microscopically small footboy who waited on the malevolent man who hadn't got into the Post-office. Even this youth, if his jacket could have been unbuttoned and his heart laid bare, would have been seen, as a distant adherent of the Barnacle family, already to aspire to a sit-dition with which Nobody was incessantly conuation under Government.

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

"If John Barnacle," said Mrs. Gowan, after the degeneracy of the times had been fully as

tending, he would have suspected it, and would have struggled with the suspicion as a meanness, even while he sat at the table.

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

Then Mrs. Gowan, who had been accustomed in her days of state to retain a vacant arm-chair

beside her to which to summon her devoted | (Nobody's heart would have been wrung by the slaves, one by one, for short audiences as marks remembrance.) of her especial favor, invited Clennam with a turn of her fan to approach the presence. He obeyed, and took the tripod recently vacated by Lord Lancaster Stiltstalking.

"First," said Mrs. Gowan, "now is she real- room, where her son was playing écarté on a ly pretty ?"

"Every nerve," repeated Mrs. Gowan, look- | bored you?" To which he roused himself to ing at him in calm obstinacy, with her green fan between her face and the fire.

"To catch Mr. Henry Gowan ?" The lady placidly assented.

answer, "Not at all," and soon relapsed again.

In that state of mind which rendered Nobody uneasy, his thoughtfulness would have turned principally on the man at his side. He would "Now that is so far," said Arthur, "from be- have thought of the morning when he first saw ing the case," that I know Mr. Meagles to be him rooting out the stones with his heel, and unhappy in this matter, and to have interposed would have asked himself, "Does he jerk me all reasonable obstacles, with the hope of put-out of the path in the same careless, cruel way?" ting an end to it."

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

He would have thought, had this introduction to his mother been brought about by him because he knew what she would say, and that he could thus place his position before a rival and loftily warn him off, without himself reposing a word

Arthur watched her face for some explana- of confidence in him? He would have thought, tion of what she did mean.

even if there were no such design as that, had

"Are you really serious, Mr. Clennam? Don't he brought him there to play with his repressed you see?"

Arthur did not see, and said so.

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

emotions, and torment him? The current of these meditations would have been stayed sometimes by a rush of shame, bearing a remonstrance to himself from his own open nature, representing that to shelter such suspicions, even for the passing moment, was not to hold the generous and unenvious course he had resolved to keep. At those times the striving within him would have been hardest, and looking up and catching Gowan's eyes, he would have started as if he had done him an injury. Then, looking at the dark road and its uncertain objects, he would have gradually trailed

"Oh, Mr. Clennam, can you really be so off again into thinking, "Where are we drivcredulous!"

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

ing, he and I, I wonder, on the darker road of life? How will it be with us, and with her, in the obscure distance?" Thinking of her, he would have been troubled anew with a reproachful misgiving that it was not even loyal to her to dislike him, and that in being so easily prejudiced against him he was more unworthy of her than at first.

have bored you dreadfully."

"Suspicion ?" repeated Mrs. Gowan. "Not suspicion, Mr. Clennam, certainty. It is very "You are evidently out of spirits," said Gowknowingly done indeed, and seems to have tak-an; "I am very much afraid my mother must en you in completely." She laughed, and again sat tapping her lips with her fan, and tossing her head, as if she added, "Don't tell me. know that such people will do any thing for the honor of such an alliance."

I

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

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

CHAPTER XXVII.-FIVE-AND-TWENTY.

A FREQUENTLY recurring doubt whether Mr. Pancks's desire to collect information relative to the Dorrit family could have any possible bearing on the misgivings he had imparted to his mother on his return from his long exile caused Arthur Clennam much uneasiness at this period. What Mr. Pancks already knew about the Dorrit family, what more he really wanted to find out, and why he should trouble his busy head about them at all, were questions that often perplexed him. Mr. Pancks was not a man to waste his time and trouble in researches prompt"Not at all," said Clennam. ed by idle curiosity. That he had a specific They had a little open phaeton for the jour-object Clennam could not doubt. And whethney, and were soon in it on the road home.er the attainment of that object by Mr. Pancks's Gowan, driving, lighted a cigar; Clennam de- industry might bring to light, in some untimely clined one. Do what he would, he fell into way, secret reasons which had induced his mothsuch a mood of abstraction, that Gowan said er to take Little Dorrit by the hand, was a seriagain, "I am very much afraid my mother has ous speculation.

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

horses couldn't draw her back now; the bolts and bars of the old Bastille couldn't keep her." "How did it happen? Pray sit down and tell me."

"As to how it happened, it's not so easy to relate, because you must have the unfortunate temperament of the poor impetuous girl herself before you can fully understand it. But it came about in this way. Pet and Mother and I have been having a good deal of talk together, of late. I'll not disguise from you, Clennam, that those conversations have not been of as bright a kind as I could wish; they have referred to our going away again. In proposing to do which, I have had, in fact, an object." Nobody's heart beat quickly.

Not that he ever wavered, either in his de-shaking his head. "You don't know that girl's sire or his determination to repair the wrong passionate and proud character. A team of that had been done in his father's time, should a wrong come to light. The shadow of a supposed act of unrepaired injustice, which had hung over him since his father's death, was so vague and formless that it might be the result of a reality widely different from his idea of it. But, if his apprehensions should prove to be well founded, he was ready at any moment to lay down all he had, and begin the world anew. As the fierce dark teaching of his childhood had never sunk into his heart, so the first word in his code of morals was the opposite of the first word in his mother's. He began, in practical humility, with Earth instead of scaling Heaven. Duty on earth, restitution on earth, action on earth: these first. Strait was the gate and narrow was the way; far straiter and narrower than the broad high road paved with words and vain repetitions, motes from other men's eyes and liberal delivery of others to the judgment—all cheap materials, costing absolutely nothing.

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

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

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

"I was not unprepared to hear it."

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

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

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

"Clennam!-Tattycoram !"
"What's the matter?"
"Lost!"

"Why, bless my heart alive!" cried Clennam, in amazement. "What do you mean?" "Wouldn't count five-and-twenty, Sir; couldn't be got to do it; stopped at eight, and took herself off."

"Left your house?"

"I do indeed think so," returned Clennam, in most emphatic recognition of this very mod

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

Mr. Meagles, with a despondent countenance in which the goodness of his heart was even more "Never to come back," said Mr. Meagles, expressed than in his times of cheerfulness and

"How, and why?"

gayety, stroked his face down from his forehead | Perhaps fifty times as good. When we pretendto his chin, and shook his head again. ed to be so fond of one another, we exulted over "I said to Mother (not that it was necessary, her; that was what we did; we exulted over for she would have thought it all for herself), her and shamed her. And all in the house did we are practical people, my dear, and we know the same. They talked about their fathers and her story; we see in this unhappy girl some re-mothers, and brothers and sisters; they liked to flection of what was raging in her mother's heart drag them up before her face. There was Mrs. before ever such a creature as this poor thing Tickit, only yesterday, when her little grandwas in the world; we'll gloss her temper over, child was with her, had been amused by the Mother; we won't notice it at present, my dear; | child's trying to call her (Tattycoram) by the we'll take advantage of some better disposition wretched name we gave her; and had laughed in her another time. So we said nothing. But, at the name. Why, who didn't, and who were do what we would, it seems as if it was to be; we that we should have a right to name her she broke out violently one night." like a dog or a cat? But she didn't care. She would take no more benefits from us; she would "If you ask me why," said Mr. Meagles, a fling us her name back again, and she would go. little disturbed by the question, for he was far She would leave us that minute, nobody should more intent on softening her case than the fam-stop her, and we should never hear of her again." ily's, "I can only refer you to what I have just repeated as having been pretty near my words to Mother. As to How, we had said good-night to Pet in her presence (very affectionately, I must allow), and she had attended Pet up stairs -you remember she was her maid. Perhaps Pet, having been out of sorts, may have been a little more inconsiderate than usual in requiring services of her; but I don't know that I have any right to say so; she was always thoughtful | and gentle."

"The gentlest mistress in the world."

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

"Upon which you-?"

"I?" said Mr. Meagles, with a plain good faith that might have commanded the belief of Mrs. Gowan herself. "I said, Count five-andtwenty, Tattycoram."

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

"She was so used to do it, Clennam, that even then, such a picture of passion as you never saw, she stopped short, looked me full in the face, and counted (as I made out) to eight. But she couldn't control herself to go any farther. There she broke down, poor thing! and gave the other seventeen to the four winds. Then it all burst

out.

She detested us, she was miserable with us, she couldn't bear it, she wouldn't bear it, she was determined to go away. She was younger than her young mistress, and would she remain to see her always held up as the only creature who was young and interesting, and to be cherished and loved? No. She wouldn't, she wouldn't, she wouldn't! What did we think she, Tattycoram, might have been if she had been caressed and cared for in her childhood like her young mistress? As good as her? Ah!

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

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

"And you know no more of her?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"To tell you the truth," returned Mr. Meagles, "it's because I have an addled jumble of a notion on that subject that you have found me waiting here. There is one of those odd impressions in my house which do mysteriously get into houses sometimes, which nobody seems