'Well!' said Mrs Clennam, almost smiling. 'It is no affair of mine. I
ask, because I take an interest in you; and because I believe I was your
friend when you had no other who could serve you. Is that so?'
'Yes, ma'am; indeed it is. I have been here many a time when, but for
you and the work you gave me, we should have wanted everything.' 'We,' repeated Mrs Clennam, looking towards the watch, once her dead
husband's, which always lay upon her table.
'Are there many of you?' 'Only father and I, now. I mean, only father and I to keep regularly out
of what we get.' 'Have you undergone many privations? You and your father and who else
there may be of you?' asked Mrs Clennam, speaking deliberately, and
meditatively turning the watch over and over. 'Sometimes it has been rather hard to live,' said Little Dorrit, in her
soft voice, and timid uncomplaining way; 'but I think not harder--as to
that--than many people find it.'
'That's well said!' Mrs Clennam quickly returned.\'That's the truth!
You are a good, thoughtful girl. You are a grateful girl too, or I much
mistake you.' 'It is only natural to be that. There is no merit in being that,' said
Little Dorrit. 'I am indeed.' Mrs Clennam, with a gentleness of which
the dreaming Affery had never dreamed her to be capable, drew down the
face of her little seamstress, and kissed her on the forehead.'Now go,
Little Dorrit,' said she,'or you will be late, poor child!'
In all the dreams Mistress Affery had been piling up since she first
became devoted to the pursuit, she had dreamed nothing more astonishing
than this. Her head ached with the idea that she would find the other
clever one kissing Little Dorrit next, and then the two clever ones
embracing each other and dissolving into tears of tenderness for all
mankind. The idea quite stunned her, as she attended the light footsteps
down the stairs, that the house door might be safely shut.
On opening it to let Little Dorrit out, she found Mr Pancks, instead
of having gone his way, as in any less wonderful place and among less
wonderful phenomena he might have been reasonably expected to do,
fluttering up and down the court outside the house.
The moment he saw Little Dorrit, he passed her briskly, said with his
finger to his nose (as Mrs Affery distinctly heard), 'Pancks the gipsy,
fortune-telling,' and went away. 'Lord save us, here's a gipsy and a
fortune-teller in it now!' cried Mistress Affery. 'What next! She stood
at the open door, staggering herself with this enigma, on a rainy,
thundery evening.