'Now, ladies!' said the boy in the Scotch cap. 'Now, darlings!' said the

gentleman with the black hair. They were every one gone in a moment, and

the music and the dancing feet were heard again.

Little Dorrit sat down in a golden chair, made quite giddy by these

rapid interruptions. Her sister and the rest were a long time gone; and

during their absence a voice (it appeared to be that of the gentleman

with the black hair) was continually calling out through the music,

'One, two, three, four, five, six--go! One, two, three, four, five,

six--go! Steady, darlings! One, two, three, four, five, six--go!'

Ultimately the voice stopped, and they all came back again, more or less

out of breath, folding themselves in their shawls, and making ready

for the streets. 'Stop a moment, Amy, and let them get away before

us,' whispered Fanny. They were soon left alone; nothing more important

happening, in the meantime, than the boy looking round his old beam, and

saying,

'Everybody at eleven to-morrow, ladies!' and the gentleman with

the black hair looking round his old beam, and saying, 'Everybody at

eleven to-morrow, darlings!' each in his own accustomed manner.

When they were alone, something was rolled up or by other means got out

of the way, and there was a great empty well before them, looking down

into the depths of which Fanny said, 'Now, uncle!' Little Dorrit, as her

eyes became used to the darkness, faintly made him out at the bottom of

the well, in an obscure corner by himself, with his instrument in its

ragged case under his arm.

The old man looked as if the remote high gallery windows, with their

little strip of sky, might have been the point of his better fortunes,

from which he had descended, until he had gradually sunk down below

there to the bottom. He had been in that place six nights a week for

many years, but had never been observed to raise his eyes above his

music-book, and was confidently believed to have never seen a play.

There were legends in the place that he did not so much as know the

popular heroes and heroines by sight, and that the low comedian had

'mugged' at him in his richest manner fifty nights for a wager, and he

had shown no trace of consciousness. The carpenters had a joke to the

effect that he was dead without being aware of it; and the frequenters

of the pit supposed him to pass his whole life, night and day, and

Sunday and all, in the orchestra. They had tried him a few times with

pinches of snuff offered over the rails, and he had always responded to

this attention with a momentary waking up of manner that had the pale

phantom of a gentleman in it: beyond this he never, on any occasion, had

any other part in what was going on than the part written out for the

clarionet; in private life, where there was no part for the clarionet,

he had no part at all.




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