Mrs Plornish's father,--a poor little reedy piping old gentleman, like
a worn-out bird; who had been in what he called the music-binding
business, and met with great misfortunes, and who had seldom been able
to make his way, or to see it or to pay it, or to do anything at all
with it but find it no thoroughfare,--had retired of his own accord to
the Workhouse which was appointed by law to be the Good Samaritan of his
district (without the twopence, which was bad political economy), on
the settlement of that execution which had carried Mr Plornish to the
Marshalsea College. Previous to his son-in-law's difficulties coming to
that head, Old Nandy (he was always so called in his legal Retreat, but
he was Old Mr Nandy among the Bleeding Hearts) had sat in a corner of
the Plornish fireside, and taken his bite and sup out of the Plornish
cupboard.
He still hoped to resume that domestic position when Fortune
should smile upon his son-in-law; in the meantime, while she preserved
an immovable countenance, he was, and resolved to remain, one of these
little old men in a grove of little old men with a community of flavour.
But no poverty in him, and no coat on him that never was the mode, and
no Old Men's Ward for his dwelling-place, could quench his daughter's
admiration. Mrs Plornish was as proud of her father's talents as she
could possibly have been if they had made him Lord Chancellor. She had
as firm a belief in the sweetness and propriety of his manners as she
could possibly have had if he had been Lord Chamberlain. The poor little
old man knew some pale and vapid little songs, long out of date, about
Chloe, and Phyllis, and Strephon being wounded by the son of Venus;
and for Mrs Plornish there was no such music at the Opera as the small
internal flutterings and chirpings wherein he would discharge himself
of these ditties, like a weak, little, broken barrel-organ, ground by
a baby.
On his 'days out,' those flecks of light in his flat vista of
pollard old men,' it was at once Mrs Plornish's delight and sorrow,
when he was strong with meat, and had taken his full halfpenny-worth of
porter, to say, 'Sing us a song, Father.' Then he would give them Chloe,
and if he were in pretty good spirits, Phyllis also--Strephon he had
hardly been up to since he went into retirement--and then would Mrs
Plornish declare she did believe there never was such a singer as
Father, and wipe her eyes.