Somehow or other, this was the general misfortune of Bleeding Heart
Yard. From time to time there were public complaints, pathetically
going about, of labour being scarce--which certain people seemed to take
extraordinarily ill, as though they had an absolute right to it on their
own terms--but Bleeding Heart Yard, though as willing a Yard as any in
Britain, was never the better for the demand. That high old family, the
Barnacles, had long been too busy with their great principle to look
into the matter; and indeed the matter had nothing to do with their
watchfulness in out-generalling all other high old families except the
Stiltstalkings.
While Mrs Plornish spoke in these words of her absent lord, her lord
returned. A smooth-cheeked, fresh-coloured, sandy-whiskered man of
thirty. Long in the legs, yielding at the knees, foolish in the face,
flannel-jacketed, lime-whitened.
'This is Plornish, sir.' 'I came,' said Clennam, rising, 'to beg the favour of a little
conversation with you on the subject of the Dorrit family.' Plornish became suspicious.
Seemed to scent a creditor. Said, 'Ah, yes.
Well. He didn't know what satisfaction he could give any gentleman,
respecting that family. What might it be about, now?' 'I know you better,' said Clennam, smiling, 'than you suppose.' Plornish observed, not Smiling in return, And yet he hadn't the pleasure
of being acquainted with the gentleman, neither. 'No,' said Arthur,
'I know your kind offices at second hand, but on the
best authority; through Little Dorrit.--I mean,' he explained, 'Miss
Dorrit.' 'Mr Clennam, is it? Oh! I've heard of you, Sir.' 'And I of you,' said Arthur.
'Please to sit down again, Sir, and consider yourself welcome.--Why,
yes,' said Plornish, taking a chair, and lifting the elder child upon
his knee, that he might have the moral support of speaking to a stranger
over his head, 'I have been on the wrong side of the Lock myself, and
in that way we come to know Miss Dorrit. Me and my wife, we are well
acquainted with Miss Dorrit.' 'Intimate!' cried Mrs Plornish. Indeed,
she was so proud of the acquaintance, that she had awakened some
bitterness of spirit in the Yard by magnifying to an enormous amount the
sum for which Miss Dorrit's father had become insolvent. The Bleeding
Hearts resented her claiming to know people of such distinction.
'It was her father that I got acquainted with first. And through getting
acquainted with him, you see--why--I got acquainted with her,' said
Plornish tautologically. 'I see.'
'Ah! And there's manners! There's polish! There's a gentleman to have
run to seed in the Marshalsea jail! Why, perhaps you are not aware,'
said Plornish, lowering his voice, and speaking with a perverse
admiration of what he ought to have pitied or despised, 'not aware that
Miss Dorrit and her sister dursn't let him know that they work for a
living. No!' said Plornish, looking with a ridiculous triumph first at
his wife, and then all round the room. 'Dursn't let him know it, they
dursn't!' 'Without admiring him for that,' Clennam quietly observed, 'I am very
sorry for him.' The remark appeared to suggest to Plornish, for the
first time, that it might not be a very fine trait of character after
all. He pondered about it for a moment, and gave it up.