'You may,' said Mrs Chivery, 'and I will give it to you in honour and in

word as true as in this shop I stand. Our John has every one's good word

and every one's good wish. He played with her as a child when in that

yard a child she played. He has known her ever since. He went out upon

the Sunday afternoon when in this very parlour he had dined, and met

her, with appointment or without appointment; which, I do not pretend to

say.

He made his offer to her. Her brother and sister is high in their

views, and against Our John. Her father is all for himself in his views

and against sharing her with any one. Under which circumstances she

has answered Our John, "No, John, I cannot have you, I cannot have

any husband, it is not my intentions ever to become a wife, it is my

intentions to be always a sacrifice, farewell, find another worthy of

you, and forget me!" This is the way in which she is doomed to be a

constant slave to them that are not worthy that a constant slave she

unto them should be. This is the way in which Our John has come to find

no pleasure but in taking cold among the linen, and in showing in that

yard, as in that yard I have myself shown you, a broken-down ruin that

goes home to his mother's heart!' Here the good woman pointed to the

little window, whence her son might be seen sitting disconsolate in

the tuneless groves; and again shook her head and wiped her eyes, and

besought him, for the united sakes of both the young people, to exercise

his influence towards the bright reversal of these dismal events.

She was so confident in her exposition of the case, and it was so

undeniably founded on correct premises in so far as the relative

positions of Little Dorrit and her family were concerned, that Clennam

could not feel positive on the other side. He had come to attach to

Little Dorrit an interest so peculiar--an interest that removed her

from, while it grew out of, the common and coarse things surrounding

her--that he found it disappointing, disagreeable, almost painful, to

suppose her in love with young Mr Chivery in the back-yard, or any such

person.

On the other hand, he reasoned with himself that she was just

as good and just as true in love with him, as not in love with him;

and that to make a kind of domesticated fairy of her, on the penalty

of isolation at heart from the only people she knew, would be but a

weakness of his own fancy, and not a kind one. Still, her youthful and

ethereal appearance, her timid manner, the charm of her sensitive voice

and eyes, the very many respects in which she had interested him out

of her own individuality, and the strong difference between herself and

those about her, were not in unison, and were determined not to be in

unison, with this newly presented idea.




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