If Young John Chivery had had the inclination and the power to write a

satire on family pride, he would have had no need to go for an avenging

illustration out of the family of his beloved. He would have found it

amply in that gallant brother and that dainty sister, so steeped in mean

experiences, and so loftily conscious of the family name; so ready

to beg or borrow from the poorest, to eat of anybody's bread, spend

anybody's money, drink from anybody's cup and break it afterwards.

To have painted the sordid facts of their lives, and they throughout

invoking the death's head apparition of the family gentility to come and

scare their benefactors, would have made Young John a satirist of the

first water. Tip had turned his liberty to hopeful account by becoming a

billiard-marker. He had troubled himself so little as to the means of

his release, that Clennam scarcely needed to have been at the pains of

impressing the mind of Mr Plornish on that subject. Whoever had paid

him the compliment, he very readily accepted the compliment with HIS

compliments, and there was an end of it. Issuing forth from the gate

on these easy terms, he became a billiard-marker; and now occasionally

looked in at the little skittle-ground in a green Newmarket coat

(second-hand), with a shining collar and bright buttons (new), and drank

the beer of the Collegians.

One solid stationary point in the looseness of this gentleman's

character was, that he respected and admired his sister Amy. The feeling

had never induced him to spare her a moment's uneasiness, or to put

himself to any restraint or inconvenience on her account; but with that

Marshalsea taint upon his love, he loved her. The same rank Marshalsea

flavour was to be recognised in his distinctly perceiving that she

sacrificed her life to her father, and in his having no idea that she

had done anything for himself.

When this spirited young man and his sister had begun systematically

to produce the family skeleton for the overawing of the College, this

narrative cannot precisely state. Probably at about the period when

they began to dine on the College charity. It is certain that the more

reduced and necessitous they were, the more pompously the skeleton

emerged from its tomb; and that when there was anything particularly

shabby in the wind, the skeleton always came out with the ghastliest

flourish. Little Dorrit was late on the Monday morning, for her father slept

late, and afterwards there was his breakfast to prepare and his room to

arrange. She had no engagement to go out to work, however, and therefore

stayed with him until, with Maggy's help, she had put everything right

about him, and had seen him off upon his morning walk (of twenty yards

or so) to the coffee-house to read the paper.




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