["[Event happened on 2024-01-01 The user is reading a book]\n<User> Arthur Clennam rose hastily, and saw her standing at the door. This\nhistory must sometimes see with Little Dorrit's eyes, and shall begin\nthat course by seeing him. Little Dorrit looked into a dim room, which seemed a spacious one to\nher, and grandly furnished. Courtly ideas of Covent Garden, as a place\nwith famous coffee-houses, where gentlemen wearing gold-laced coats and\nswords had quarrelled and fought duels; costly ideas of Covent Garden,\n       as a place where there were flowers in winter at guineas a-piece,\n       pine-apples at guineas a pound, and peas at guineas a pint; picturesque\n       ideas of Covent Garden, as a place where there was a mighty theatre,\n       showing wonderful and beautiful sights to richly-dressed ladies and\n       gentlemen, and which was for ever far beyond the reach of poor Fanny or\n       poor uncle; desolate ideas of Covent Garden, as having all those arches\n       in it, where the miserable children in rags among whom she had just now\n       passed, like young rats, slunk and hid, fed on offal, huddled together\n       for warmth, and were hunted about (look to the rats young and old, all\n               ye Barnacles, for before God they are eating away our foundations, and\n               will bring the roofs on our heads! ); teeming ideas of Covent Garden, as\n       a place of past and present mystery, romance, abundance, want, beauty,\n       ugliness, fair country gardens, and foul street gutters; all confused\n       together,--made the room dimmer than it was in Little Dorrit's eyes, as\n       they timidly saw it from the door. At first in the chair before the gone-out fire, and then turned round\n       wondering to see her, was the gentleman whom she sought. The brown,\n       grave gentleman, who smiled so pleasantly, who was so frank and\n       considerate in his manner, and yet in whose earnestness there was\n       something that reminded her of his mother, with the great difference\n       that she was earnest in asperity and he in gentleness. Now he regarded\n       her with that attentive and inquiring look before which Little Dorrit's\n       eyes had always fallen, and before which they fell still. 'My poor child! Here at midnight?' 'I said Little Dorrit, sir, on purpose to prepare you. I knew you must\n       be very much surprised.' 'Are you alone?' 'No sir, I have got Maggy with me.' Considering her entrance sufficiently prepared for by this mention of\n       her name, Maggy appeared from the landing outside, on the broad grin. She instantly suppressed that manifestation, however, and became fixedly\n       solemn. 'And I have no fire,' said Clennam. 'And you are--' He was going to say\n       so lightly clad, but stopped himself in what would have been a reference\n       to her poverty, saying instead, 'And it is so cold.' Putting the chair from which he had risen nearer to the grate, he made\n       her sit down in it; and hurriedly bringing wood and coal, heaped them\n       together and got a blaze. 'Your foot is like marble, my child;' he had happened to touch it, while\n       stooping on one knee at his work of kindling the fire; 'put it nearer\n       the warmth.' Little Dorrit thanked him hastily. It was quite warm, it\n       was very warm! It smote upon his heart to feel that she hid her thin,\n       worn shoe. Little Dorrit was not ashamed of her poor shoes. He knew her story, and\n       it was not that. Little Dorrit had a misgiving that he might blame her\n       father, if he saw them; that he might think, 'why did he dine to-day,\n       and leave this little creature to the mercy of the cold stones!' She had\n       no belief that it would have been a just reflection; she simply knew,\n       by experience, that such delusions did sometimes present themselves to\n       people. It was a part of her father's misfortunes that they did. 'Before I say anything else,' Little Dorrit began, sitting before\n       the pale fire, and raising her eyes again to the face which in its\n       harmonious look of interest, and pity, and protection, she felt to be a\n       mystery far above her in degree, and almost removed beyond her guessing\n       at; 'may I tell you something, sir?' 'Yes, my child.' A slight shade of distress fell upon her, at his so often calling her a\n       child. She was surprised that he should see it, or think of such a\n       slight thing; but he said directly:\n\n       'I wanted a tender word, and could think of no other. As you just now\n       gave yourself the name they give you at my mother's, and as that is the\n       name by which I always think of you, let me call you Little Dorrit.' 'Thank you, sir, I should like it better than any name.' 'Little Dorrit.' 'Little mother,' Maggy (who had been falling asleep) put in, as a\n       correction. 'It's all the same, Maggy,' returned Little Dorrit, 'all the same.' 'Is it all the same, mother?' 'Just the same.' Maggy laughed, and immediately snored. In Little Dorrit's eyes and ears,\n       the uncouth figure and the uncouth sound were as pleasant as could be. There was a glow of pride in her big child, overspreading her face, when\n       it again met the eyes of the grave brown gentleman. She wondered what he\n       was thinking of, as he looked at Maggy and her. She thought what a\n       good father he would be. How, with some such look, he would counsel and\n       cherish his daughter. 'What I was going to tell you, sir,' said Little Dorrit, 'is, that my\n       brother is at large.' Arthur was rejoiced to hear it, and hoped he would do well. 'And what I was going to tell you, sir,' said Little Dorrit, trembling\n       in all her little figure and in her voice, 'is, that I am not to know\n       whose generosity released him--am never to ask, and am never to be told,\n       and am never to thank that gentleman with all my grateful heart!' He would probably need no thanks, Clennam said. Very likely he would be\n       thankful himself (and with reason), that he had had the means and chance\n       of doing a little service to her, who well deserved a great one. 'And what I was going to say, sir, is,' said Little Dorrit, trembling\n       more and more, 'that if I knew him, and I might, I would tell him that\n       he can never, never know how I feel his goodness, and how my good father\n       would feel it. And what I was going to say, sir, is, that if I knew him,\n       and I might--but I don't know him and I must not--I know that!--I would\n       tell him that I shall never any more lie down to sleep without having\n       prayed to Heaven to bless him and reward him. And if I knew him, and I\n       might, I would go down on my knees to him, and take his hand and kiss\n       it and ask him not to draw it away, but to leave it--O to leave it for a\n       moment--and let my thankful tears fall on it; for I have no other thanks\n       to give him!' Little Dorrit had put his hand to her lips, and would have kneeled to\n       him, but he gently prevented her, and replaced her in her chair. Her\n       eyes, and the tones of her voice, had thanked him far better than she\n       thought. He was not able to say, quite as composedly as usual, 'There,\n       Little Dorrit, there, there, there! We will suppose that you did know\n       this person, and that you might do all this, and that it was all done. And now tell me, Who am quite another person--who am nothing more than\n       the friend who begged you to trust him--why you are out at midnight, and\n       what it is that brings you so far through the streets at this late hour,\n       my slight, delicate,' child was on his lips again, 'Little Dorrit!' 'Maggy and I have been to-night,' she answered, subduing herself with\n       the quiet effort that had long been natural to her, 'to the theatre\n       where my sister is engaged.' 'And oh ain't it a Ev'nly place,' suddenly interrupted Maggy, who seemed\n       to have the power of going to sleep and waking up whenever she chose. 'Almost as good as a hospital. Only there ain't no Chicking in it.' Here she shook herself, and fell asleep again. 'We went there,' said Little Dorrit, glancing at her charge, 'because\n       I like sometimes to know, of my own knowledge, that my sister is doing\n       well; and like to see her there, with my own eyes, when neither she nor\n       Uncle is aware.\n\n<System> Please remember what the user reads on 2024-01-01, save the details within the book, and retain a summary of the book the user has read so far.", "[Event happened on 2024-01-04 The user is reading a book]\n<User> It is very seldom indeed that I can do that, because\n       when I am not out at work, I am with my father, and even when I am out\n       at work, I hurry home to him. But I pretend to-night that I am at a\n       party.' As she made the confession, timidly hesitating, she raised her eyes to\n       the face, and read its expression so plainly that she answered it. 'Oh no, certainly! I never was at a party in my life.' She paused a little under his attentive look, and then said, 'I hope\n       there is no harm in it. I could never have been of any use, if I had\n       not pretended a little.' She feared that he was blaming her in his mind for so devising to\n       contrive for them, think for them, and watch over them, without their\n       knowledge or gratitude; perhaps even with their reproaches for supposed\n       neglect. But what was really in his mind, was the weak figure with its\n       strong purpose, the thin worn shoes, the insufficient dress, and the\n       pretence of recreation and enjoyment. He asked where the suppositious\n       party was? At a place where she worked, answered Little Dorrit,\n       blushing. She had said very little about it; only a few words to\n       make her father easy. Her father did not believe it to be a grand\n       party--indeed he might suppose that. And she glanced for an instant at\n       the shawl she wore. 'It is the first night,' said Little Dorrit, 'that I have ever been away\n       from home. And London looks so large, so barren, and so wild.' In Little\n       Dorrit's eyes, its vastness under the black sky was awful; a tremor\n       passed over her as she said the words. 'But this is not,' she added, with the quiet effort again, 'what I have\n       come to trouble you with, sir. My sister's having found a friend, a lady\n    she has told me of and made me rather anxious about, was the first cause\nof my coming away from home. And being away, and coming (on purpose)\n    round by where you lived and seeing a light in the window--'\n\n    Not for the first time. No, not for the first time. In Little Dorrit's\n    eyes, the outside of that window had been a distant star on other nights\n    than this. She had toiled out of her way, tired and troubled, to look up\n    at it, and wonder about the grave, brown gentleman from so far off, who\n    had spoken to her as a friend and protector. 'There were three things,' said Little Dorrit, 'that I thought I would\n    like to say, if you were alone and I might come up-stairs. First, what I\n    have tried to say, but never can--never shall--'\n\n    'Hush, hush! That is done with, and disposed of. Let us pass to the\n    second,' said Clennam, smiling her agitation away, making the blaze\n    shine upon her, and putting wine and cake and fruit towards her on the\n    table. 'I think,' said Little Dorrit--'this is the second thing, sir--I think\n    Mrs Clennam must have found out my secret, and must know where I come\n    from and where I go to. Where I live, I mean.' 'Indeed!' returned Clennam quickly. He asked her, after short\n    consideration, why she supposed so. 'I think,' replied Little Dorrit, 'that Mr Flintwinch must have watched\n    me.' And why, Clennam asked, as he turned his eyes upon the fire, bent his\n    brows, and considered again; why did she suppose that? 'I have met him twice. Both times near home. Both times at night, when\n    I was going back. Both times I thought (though that may easily be my\n            mistake), that he hardly looked as if he had met me by accident.' 'Did he say anything?' 'No; he only nodded and put his head on one side.' 'The devil take his head!' mused Clennam, still looking at the fire;\n    'it's always on one side.' He roused himself to persuade her to put some wine to her lips, and to\n    touch something to eat--it was very difficult, she was so timid and\n    shy--and then said, musing again:\n\n    'Is my mother at all changed to you?' 'Oh, not at all. She is just the same. I wondered whether I had better\n    tell her my history. I wondered whether I might--I mean, whether you\n    would like me to tell her. I wondered,' said Little Dorrit, looking at\n    him in a suppliant way, and gradually withdrawing her eyes as he looked\n    at her, 'whether you would advise me what I ought to do.' 'Little Dorrit,' said Clennam; and the phrase had already begun, between\n    these two, to stand for a hundred gentle phrases, according to the\n    varying tone and connection in which it was used; 'do nothing. I will\n    have some talk with my old friend, Mrs Affery. Do nothing, Little\n    Dorrit--except refresh yourself with such means as there are here. I\n    entreat you to do that.' 'Thank you, I am not hungry. Nor,' said Little Dorrit, as he softly\n    put her glass towards her, 'nor thirsty.--I think Maggy might like\n    something, perhaps.' 'We will make her find pockets presently for all there is here,' said\n    Clennam: 'but before we awake her, there was a third thing to say.' 'Yes. You will not be offended, sir?' 'I promise that, unreservedly.' 'It will sound strange. I hardly know how to say it. Don't think it\n    unreasonable or ungrateful in me,' said Little Dorrit, with returning\n    and increasing agitation. 'No, no, no. I am sure it will be natural and right. I am not afraid\n    that I shall put a wrong construction on it, whatever it is.' 'Thank you. You are coming back to see my father again?' 'Yes.' 'You have been so good and thoughtful as to write him a note, saying\n    that you are coming to-morrow?' 'Oh, that was nothing! Yes.' 'Can you guess,' said Little Dorrit, folding her small hands tight in\n    one another, and looking at him with all the earnestness of her soul\n    looking steadily out of her eyes, 'what I am going to ask you not to\n    do?' 'I think I can. But I may be wrong.' 'No, you are not wrong,' said Little Dorrit, shaking her head. 'If we\n    should want it so very, very badly that we cannot do without it, let me\n    ask you for it.' 'I Will,--I Will.' 'Don't encourage him to ask. Don't understand him if he does ask. Don't\n    give it to him. Save him and spare him that, and you will be able to\n    think better of him!' Clennam said--not very plainly, seeing those tears glistening in her\n    anxious eyes--that her wish should be sacred with him. 'You don't know what he is,' she said; 'you don't know what he really\n    is. How can you, seeing him there all at once, dear love, and not\n    gradually, as I have done! You have been so good to us, so delicately\n    and truly good, that I want him to be better in your eyes than in\n    anybody's. And I cannot bear to think,' cried Little Dorrit, covering\n    her tears with her hands, 'I cannot bear to think that you of all the\n    world should see him in his only moments of degradation.' 'Pray,' said Clennam, 'do not be so distressed. Pray, pray, Little\n    Dorrit! This is quite understood now.' 'Thank you, sir. Thank you! I have tried very much to keep myself from\n    saying this; I have thought about it, days and nights; but when I knew\n    for certain you were coming again, I made up my mind to speak to you. Not because I am ashamed of him,' she dried her tears quickly, 'but\n    because I know him better than any one does, and love him, and am proud\n    of him.' Relieved of this weight, Little Dorrit was nervously anxious to be gone. Maggy being broad awake, and in the act of distantly gloating over the\n    fruit and cakes with chuckles of anticipation, Clennam made the best\n    diversion in his power by pouring her out a glass of wine, which she\n    drank in a series of loud smacks; putting her hand upon her windpipe\n    after every one, and saying, breathless, with her eyes in a prominent\n    state, 'Oh, ain't it d'licious!\n\n<System> Please remember what the user reads on 2024-01-04, save the details within the book, and retain a summary of the book the user has read so far.", "[Event happened on 2024-01-07 The user is reading a book]\n<User> Ain't it hospitally!' When she had\n    finished the wine and these encomiums, he charged her to load her basket\n    (she was never without her basket) with every eatable thing upon the\n    table, and to take especial care to leave no scrap behind. Maggy's\n    pleasure in doing this and her little mother's pleasure in seeing Maggy\n    pleased, was as good a turn as circumstances could have given to the\n    late conversation. 'But the gates will have been locked long ago,' said Clennam, suddenly\n    remembering it. 'Where are you going?' 'I am going to Maggy's lodging,' answered Little Dorrit. 'I shall be\n    quite safe, quite well taken care of.' 'I must accompany you there,' said Clennam, 'I cannot let you go alone.' 'Yes, pray leave us to go there by ourselves. Pray do!' begged Little\n    Dorrit. She was so earnest in the petition, that Clennam felt a delicacy in\n    obtruding himself upon her: the rather, because he could well understand\n    that Maggy's lodging was of the obscurest sort. 'Come, Maggy,' said\n    Little Dorrit cheerily, 'we shall do very well; we know the way by this\n    time, Maggy?' 'Yes, yes, little mother; we know the way,' chuckled Maggy. And away\n    they went. Little Dorrit turned at the door to say, 'God bless you!' She\n    said it very softly, but perhaps she may have been as audible above--who\n    knows!--as a whole cathedral choir. Arthur Clennam suffered them to pass the corner of the street before he\n    followed at a distance; not with any idea of encroaching a second time\n    on Little Dorrit's privacy, but to satisfy his mind by seeing her secure\n    in the neighbourhood to which she was accustomed. So diminutive she\n    looked, so fragile and defenceless against the bleak damp weather,\n    flitting along in the shuffling shadow of her charge, that he felt, in\n    his compassion, and in his habit of considering her a child apart from\n    the rest of the rough world, as if he would have been glad to take her\n    up in his arms and carry her to her journey's end. In course of time she came into the leading thoroughfare where the\n    Marshalsea was, and then he saw them slacken their pace, and soon turn\n    down a by-street. He stopped, felt that he had no right to go further,\n    and slowly left them. He had no suspicion that they ran any risk of\n    being houseless until morning; had no idea of the truth until long, long\n    afterwards. But, said Little Dorrit, when they stopped at a poor dwelling all in\n    darkness, and heard no sound on listening at the door, 'Now, this is a\n    good lodging for you, Maggy, and we must not give offence. Consequently,\n    we will only knock twice, and not very loud; and if we cannot wake them\n    so, we must walk about till day.' Once, Little Dorrit knocked with a careful hand, and listened. Twice,\n    Little Dorrit knocked with a careful hand, and listened. All was close\n    and still. 'Maggy, we must do the best we can, my dear. We must be\n    patient, and wait for day.' It was a chill dark night, with a damp wind blowing, when they came out\n    into the leading street again, and heard the clocks strike half-past\n    one. 'In only five hours and a half,' said Little Dorrit, 'we shall be\n    able to go home.' To speak of home, and to go and look at it, it being\n    so near, was a natural sequence. They went to the closed gate, and\n    peeped through into the court-yard. 'I hope he is sound asleep,' said\n    Little Dorrit, kissing one of the bars, 'and does not miss me.' The gate was so familiar, and so like a companion, that they put down\n    Maggy's basket in a corner to serve for a seat, and keeping close\n    together, rested there for some time. While the street was empty and\n    silent, Little Dorrit was not afraid; but when she heard a footstep at\n    a distance, or saw a moving shadow among the street lamps, she was\n    startled, and whispered, 'Maggy, I see some one. Come away!' Maggy\n    would then wake up more or less fretfully, and they would wander about a\n    little, and come back again. As long as eating was a novelty and an amusement, Maggy kept up pretty\n    well. But that period going by, she became querulous about the cold, and\n    shivered and whimpered. 'It will soon be over, dear,' said Little Dorrit\n    patiently. 'Oh it's all very fine for you, little mother,' returned\n    Maggy, 'but I'm a poor thing, only ten years old.' At last, in the dead\n    of the night, when the street was very still indeed, Little Dorrit laid\n    the heavy head upon her bosom, and soothed her to sleep. And thus she\n    sat at the gate, as it were alone; looking up at the stars, and seeing\n    the clouds pass over them in their wild flight--which was the dance at\n    Little Dorrit's party. 'If it really was a party!' she thought once, as she sat there. 'If it\n    was light and warm and beautiful, and it was our house, and my poor dear\n    was its master, and had never been inside these walls. And if Mr\n    Clennam was one of our visitors, and we were dancing to delightful\n    music, and were all as gay and light-hearted as ever we could be! I\n    wonder--' Such a vista of wonder opened out before her, that she sat\n    looking up at the stars, quite lost, until Maggy was querulous again,\n    and wanted to get up and walk. Three o'clock, and half-past three, and they had passed over London\n    Bridge. They had heard the rush of the tide against obstacles; and\n    looked down, awed, through the dark vapour on the river; had seen little\n    spots of lighted water where the bridge lamps were reflected, shining\n    like demon eyes, with a terrible fascination in them for guilt and\n    misery. They had shrunk past homeless people, lying coiled up in\n    nooks. They had run from drunkards. They had started from slinking men,\n    whistling and signing to one another at bye corners, or running away at\n    full speed. Though everywhere the leader and the guide, Little Dorrit,\n    happy for once in her youthful appearance, feigned to cling to and rely\n    upon Maggy. And more than once some voice, from among a knot of brawling\n    or prowling figures in their path, had called out to the rest to 'let\n    the woman and the child go by!' So, the woman and the child had gone by, and gone on, and five had\n    sounded from the steeples. They were walking slowly towards the east,\n    already looking for the first pale streak of day, when a woman came\n    after them. 'What are you doing with the child?' she said to Maggy. She was young--far too young to be there, Heaven knows!--and neither\n    ugly nor wicked-looking. She spoke coarsely, but with no naturally\n    coarse voice; there was even something musical in its sound. 'What are you doing with yourself?' retorted Maggy, for want of a better\n    answer. 'Can't you see, without my telling you?' 'I don't know as I can,' said Maggy. 'Killing myself! Now I have answered you, answer me. What are you doing\n    with the child?' The supposed child kept her head drooped down, and kept her form close\n    at Maggy's side. 'Poor thing!' said the woman. 'Have you no feeling, that you keep her\n    out in the cruel streets at such a time as this? Have you no eyes, that\n    you don't see how delicate and slender she is? Have you no sense (you\n            don't look as if you had much) that you don't take more pity on this\n    cold and trembling little hand?' She had stepped across to that side, and held the hand between her own\n    two, chafing it. 'Kiss a poor lost creature, dear,' she said, bending\n    her face, 'and tell me where's she taking you.' Little Dorrit turned towards her. 'Why, my God!' she said, recoiling, 'you're a woman!' 'Don't mind that!' said Little Dorrit, clasping one of her hands that\n    had suddenly released hers. 'I am not afraid of you.' 'Then you had better be,' she answered. 'Have you no mother?' 'No.'\n\n<System> Please remember what the user reads on 2024-01-07, save the details within the book, and retain a summary of the book the user has read so far.", "[Event happened on 2024-01-09 The user is reading a book]\n<User> 'No father?' 'Yes, a very dear one.' 'Go home to him, and be afraid of me. Let me go. Good night!' 'I must thank you first; let me speak to you as if I really were a\n    child.' 'You can't do it,' said the woman. 'You are kind and innocent; but you\n    can't look at me out of a child's eyes. I never should have touched you,\n    but I thought that you were a child.' And with a strange, wild cry, she\n    went away. No day yet in the sky, but there was day in the resounding stones of\n    the streets; in the waggons, carts, and coaches; in the workers going\n    to various occupations; in the opening of early shops; in the traffic\n    at markets; in the stir of the riverside. There was coming day in the\n    flaring lights, with a feebler colour in them than they would have had\n    at another time; coming day in the increased sharpness of the air, and\n    the ghastly dying of the night. They went back again to the gate, intending to wait there now until it\n    should be opened; but the air was so raw and cold that Little Dorrit,\n    leading Maggy about in her sleep, kept in motion. Going round by the\n    Church, she saw lights there, and the door open; and went up the steps\n    and looked in. 'Who's that?' cried a stout old man, who was putting on a nightcap as if\n    he were going to bed in a vault. 'It's no one particular, sir,' said Little Dorrit. 'Stop!' cried the man. 'Let's have a look at you!' This caused her to turn back again in the act of going out, and to\n    present herself and her charge before him. 'I thought so!' said he. 'I know _you_.' 'We have often seen each other,' said Little Dorrit, recognising the\n    sexton, or the beadle, or the verger, or whatever he was, 'when I have\n    been at church here.' 'More than that, we've got your birth in our Register, you know; you're\n    one of our curiosities.' 'Indeed!' said Little Dorrit. 'To be sure. As the child of the--by-the-bye, how did you get out so\n    early?' 'We were shut out last night, and are waiting to get in.' 'You don't mean it? And there's another hour good yet! Come into the\n    vestry. You'll find a fire in the vestry, on account of the painters. I'm waiting for the painters, or I shouldn't be here, you may depend\n    upon it. One of our curiosities mustn't be cold when we have it in our\n    power to warm her up comfortable. Come along.' He was a very good old fellow, in his familiar way; and having stirred\n    the vestry fire, he looked round the shelves of registers for a\n    particular volume. 'Here you are, you see,' he said, taking it down and\n    turning the leaves. 'Here you'll find yourself, as large as life. Amy,\n    daughter of William and Fanny Dorrit. Born, Marshalsea Prison, Parish of\n    St George. And we tell people that you have lived there, without so much\n    as a day's or a night's absence, ever since. Is it true?' 'Quite true, till last night.' 'Lord!' But his surveying her with an admiring gaze suggested Something\n    else to him, to wit: 'I am sorry to see, though, that you are faint and\n    tired. Stay a bit. I'll get some cushions out of the church, and you and\n    your friend shall lie down before the fire. Don't be afraid of not\n    going in to join your father when the gate opens. _I'll_ call you.' He soon brought in the cushions, and strewed them on the ground. 'There you are, you see. Again as large as life. Oh, never mind\n    thanking. I've daughters of my own. And though they weren't born in the\n    Marshalsea Prison, they might have been, if I had been, in my ways of\n    carrying on, of your father's breed. Stop a bit. I must put something\n    under the cushion for your head. Here's a burial volume, just the\n    thing! We have got Mrs Bangham in this book. But what makes these books\n    interesting to most people is--not who's in 'em, but who isn't--who's\n    coming, you know, and when. That's the interesting question.' Commendingly looking back at the pillow he had improvised, he left them\n    to their hour's repose. Maggy was snoring already, and Little Dorrit\n    was soon fast asleep with her head resting on that sealed book of Fate,\n    untroubled by its mysterious blank leaves. This was Little Dorrit's party. The shame, desertion, wretchedness, and\n    exposure of the great capital; the wet, the cold, the slow hours, and\n    the swift clouds of the dismal night. This was the party from which\n    Little Dorrit went home, jaded, in the first grey mist of a rainy\n    morning. The debilitated old house in the city, wrapped in its mantle of soot,\n    and leaning heavily on the crutches that had partaken of its decay and\n    worn out with it, never knew a healthy or a cheerful interval, let what\n    would betide. If the sun ever touched it, it was but with a ray, and\n    that was gone in half an hour; if the moonlight ever fell upon it, it\n    was only to put a few patches on its doleful cloak, and make it look\n    more wretched. The stars, to be sure, coldly watched it when the nights\n    and the smoke were clear enough; and all bad weather stood by it with\n    a rare fidelity. You should alike find rain, hail, frost, and thaw\n    lingering in that dismal enclosure when they had vanished from other\n    places; and as to snow, you should see it there for weeks, long after\n    it had changed from yellow to black, slowly weeping away its grimy life. The place had no other adherents. As to street noises, the rumbling of\n    wheels in the lane merely rushed in at the gateway in going past, and\n    rushed out again: making the listening Mistress Affery feel as if she\n    were deaf, and recovered the sense of hearing by instantaneous flashes. So with whistling, singing, talking, laughing, and all pleasant human\n    sounds. They leaped the gap in a moment, and went upon their way. The varying light of fire and candle in Mrs Clennam's room made the\n    greatest change that ever broke the dead monotony of the spot. In her\n    two long narrow windows, the fire shone sullenly all day, and sullenly\n    all night. On rare occasions it flashed up passionately, as she did;\n    but for the most part it was suppressed, like her, and preyed upon\n    itself evenly and slowly. During many hours of the short winter days,\n    however, when it was dusk there early in the afternoon, changing\n    distortions of herself in her wheeled chair, of Mr Flintwinch with his\n    wry neck, of Mistress Affery coming and going, would be thrown upon the\n    house wall that was over the gateway, and would hover there like shadows\n    from a great magic lantern. As the room-ridden invalid settled for the\n    night, these would gradually disappear: Mistress Affery's magnified\n    shadow always flitting about, last, until it finally glided away into\n    the air, as though she were off upon a witch excursion. Then the\n    solitary light would burn unchangingly, until it burned pale before the\n    dawn, and at last died under the breath of Mrs Affery, as her shadow\n    descended on it from the witch-region of sleep. Strange, if the little sick-room fire were in effect a beacon fire,\n    summoning some one, and that the most unlikely some one in the world,\n    to the spot that _must_ be come to. Strange, if the little sick-room light\n    were in effect a watch-light, burning in that place every night until\n    an appointed event should be watched out! Which of the vast multitude\n    of travellers, under the sun and the stars, climbing the dusty hills\n    and toiling along the weary plains, journeying by land and journeying by\n    sea, coming and going so strangely, to meet and to act and react on one\n    another; which of the host may, with no suspicion of the journey's end,\n    be travelling surely hither? Time shall show us.\n\n<System> Please remember what the user reads on 2024-01-09, save the details within the book, and retain a summary of the book the user has read so far.", "[Event happened on 2024-01-11 The user is reading a book]\n<User> The post of honour and the post of shame, the\n    general's station and the drummer's, a peer's statue in Westminster\n    Abbey and a seaman's hammock in the bosom of the deep, the mitre and\n    the workhouse, the woolsack and the gallows, the throne and the\n    guillotine--the travellers to all are on the great high road, but it\n    has wonderful divergencies, and only Time shall show us whither each\n    traveller is bound. On a wintry afternoon at twilight, Mrs Flintwinch, having been heavy all\n    day, dreamed this dream:\n\n    She thought she was in the kitchen getting the kettle ready for tea, and\n    was warming herself with her feet upon the fender and the skirt of her\n    gown tucked up, before the collapsed fire in the middle of the grate,\n    bordered on either hand by a deep cold black ravine. She thought that\n    as she sat thus, musing upon the question whether life was not for some\n    people a rather dull invention, she was frightened by a sudden noise\n    behind her. She thought that she had been similarly frightened once last\n    week, and that the noise was of a mysterious kind--a sound of rustling\n    and of three or four quick beats like a rapid step; while a shock or\n    tremble was communicated to her heart, as if the step had shaken the\n    floor, or even as if she had been touched by some awful hand. She\n    thought that this revived within her certain old fears of hers that\n    the house was haunted; and that she flew up the kitchen stairs without\n    knowing how she got up, to be nearer company. Mistress Affery thought that on reaching the hall, she saw the door of\n    her liege lord's office standing open, and the room empty. That she went\n    to the ripped-up window in the little room by the street door to connect\n    her palpitating heart, through the glass, with living things beyond\n    and outside the haunted house. That she then saw, on the wall over the\n    gateway, the shadows of the two clever ones in conversation above. That\n    she then went upstairs with her shoes in her hand, partly to be near\n    the clever ones as a match for most ghosts, and partly to hear what they\n    were talking about. 'None of your nonsense with me,' said Mr Flintwinch. 'I won't take it\n    from you.' Mrs Flintwinch dreamed that she stood behind the door, which was just\n    ajar, and most distinctly heard her husband say these bold words. 'Flintwinch,' returned Mrs Clennam, in her usual strong low voice,\n    'there is a demon of anger in you. Guard against it.' 'I don't care whether there's one or a dozen,' said Mr Flintwinch,\n    forcibly suggesting in his tone that the higher number was nearer the\n    mark. 'If there was fifty, they should all say, None of your nonsense\n    with me, I won't take it from you--I'd make 'em say it, whether they\n    liked it or not.' 'What have I done, you wrathful man?' her strong voice asked. 'Done?' said Mr Flintwinch. 'Dropped down upon me.' 'If you mean, remonstrated with you--'\n\n    'Don't put words into my mouth that I don't mean,' said Jeremiah,\n    sticking to his figurative expression with tenacious and impenetrable\n    obstinacy: 'I mean dropped down upon me.' 'I remonstrated with you,' she began again, 'because--'\n\n    'I won't have it!' cried Jeremiah. 'You dropped down upon me.' 'I dropped down upon you, then, you ill-conditioned man,' (Jeremiah\n            chuckled at having forced her to adopt his phrase,) 'for having been\n    needlessly significant to Arthur that morning. I have a right to\n    complain of it as almost a breach of confidence. You did not mean it--'\n\n    'I won't have it!' interposed the contradictory Jeremiah, flinging back\n    the concession. 'I did mean it.' 'I suppose I must leave you to speak in soliloquy if you choose,' she\n    replied, after a pause that seemed an angry one. 'It is useless my\n    addressing myself to a rash and headstrong old man who has a set purpose\n    not to hear me.' 'Now, I won't take that from you either,' said Jeremiah. 'I have no such\n    purpose. I have told you I did mean it. Do you wish to know why I meant\n    it, you rash and headstrong old woman?' 'After all, you only restore me my own words,' she said, struggling with\n    her indignation. 'Yes.' 'This is why, then. Because you hadn't cleared his father to him, and\n    you ought to have done it. Because, before you went into any tantrum\n    about yourself, who are--'\n\n    'Hold there, Flintwinch!' she cried out in a changed voice: 'you may go\n    a word too far.' The old man seemed to think so. There was another pause, and he had\n    altered his position in the room, when he spoke again more mildly:\n\n    'I was going to tell you why it was. Because, before you took your own\n    part, I thought you ought to have taken the part of Arthur's father. Arthur's father! I had no particular love for Arthur's father. I served\n    Arthur's father's uncle, in this house, when Arthur's father was not\n    much above me--was poorer as far as his pocket went--and when his uncle\n    might as soon have left me his heir as have left him. He starved in the\n    parlour, and I starved in the kitchen; that was the principal difference\n    in our positions; there was not much more than a flight of breakneck\n    stairs between us. I never took to him in those times; I don't know that\n    I ever took to him greatly at any time. He was an undecided, irresolute\n    chap, who had everything but his orphan life scared out of him when he\n    was young. And when he brought you home here, the wife his uncle\n    had named for him, I didn't need to look at you twice (you were a\n            good-looking woman at that time) to know who'd be master. You have stood\n    of your own strength ever since. Stand of your own strength now. Don't\n    lean against the dead.' 'I do _not_--as you call it--lean against the dead.' 'But you had a mind to do it, if I had submitted,' growled Jeremiah,\n    'and that's why you drop down upon me. You can't forget that I didn't\n    submit. I suppose you are astonished that I should consider it worth my\n    while to have justice done to Arthur's father? Hey? It doesn't matter\n    whether you answer or not, because I know you are, and you know you are. Come, then, I'll tell you how it is. I may be a bit of an oddity in\n    point of temper, but this is my temper--I can't let anybody have\n    entirely their own way. You are a determined woman, and a clever woman;\n    and when you see your purpose before you, nothing will turn you from it. Who knows that better than I do?' 'Nothing will turn me from it, Flintwinch, when I have justified it to\n    myself. Add that.' 'Justified it to yourself? I said you were the most determined woman on\n    the face of the earth (or I meant to say so), and if you are determined\n    to justify any object you entertain, of course you'll do it.' 'Man! I justify myself by the authority of these Books,' she cried, with\n    stern emphasis, and appearing from the sound that followed to strike the\n    dead-weight of her arm upon the table. 'Never mind that,' returned Jeremiah calmly, 'we won't enter into that\n    question at present. However that may be, you carry out your purposes,\n    and you make everything go down before them. Now, I won't go down before\n    them. I have been faithful to you, and useful to you, and I am attached\n    to you. But I can't consent, and I won't consent, and I never did\n    consent, and I never will consent to be lost in you. Swallow up\n    everybody else, and welcome. The peculiarity of my temper is, ma'am,\n    that I won't be swallowed up alive.' Perhaps this had originally been the mainspring of the understanding\n    between them. Descrying thus much of force of character in Mr\n    Flintwinch, perhaps Mrs Clennam had deemed alliance with him worth her\n    while. 'Enough and more than enough of the subject,' said she gloomily. 'Unless you drop down upon me again,' returned the persistent\n    Flintwinch, 'and then you must expect to hear of it again.'\n\n<System> Please remember what the user reads on 2024-01-11, save the details within the book, and retain a summary of the book the user has read so far.", "[Event happened on 2024-01-12 The user is reading a book]\n<User> Mistress Affery dreamed that the figure of her lord here began walking\n    up and down the room, as if to cool his spleen, and that she ran away;\n    but that, as he did not issue forth when she had stood listening and\n    trembling in the shadowy hall a little time, she crept up-stairs again,\n    impelled as before by ghosts and curiosity, and once more cowered\n    outside the door. 'Please to light the candle, Flintwinch,' Mrs Clennam was saying,\n    apparently wishing to draw him back into their usual tone. 'It is nearly\n    time for tea. Little Dorrit is coming, and will find me in the dark.' Mr Flintwinch lighted the candle briskly, and said as he put it down\n    upon the table:\n\n    'What are you going to do with Little Dorrit? Is she to come to work\n    here for ever? To come to tea here for ever? To come backwards and\n    forwards here, in the same way, for ever?' 'How can you talk about \"for ever\" to a maimed creature like me? Are we\n    not all cut down like the grass of the field, and was not I shorn by the\n    scythe many years ago: since when I have been lying here, waiting to be\n    gathered into the barn?' 'Ay, ay! But since you have been lying here--not near dead--nothing like\n    it--numbers of children and young people, blooming women, strong men,\n    and what not, have been cut down and carried; and still here are you,\n    you see, not much changed after all. Your time and mine may be a long\n    one yet. When I say for ever, I mean (though I am not poetical) through\n    all our time.' Mr Flintwinch gave this explanation with great calmness,\n    and calmly waited for an answer. 'So long as Little Dorrit is quiet and industrious, and stands in need\n    of the slight help I can give her, and deserves it; so long, I suppose,\n    unless she withdraws of her own act, she will continue to come here, I\n    being spared.' 'Nothing more than that?' said Flintwinch, stroking his mouth and chin. 'What should there be more than that! What could there be more than\n    that!' she ejaculated in her sternly wondering way. Mrs Flintwinch dreamed, that, for the space of a minute or two, they\n    remained looking at each other with the candle between them, and\n    that she somehow derived an impression that they looked at each other\n    fixedly. 'Do you happen to know, Mrs Clennam,' Affery's liege lord then demanded\n    in a much lower voice, and with an amount of expression that seemed\n    quite out of proportion to the simple purpose of his words, 'where she\n    lives?' 'No.' 'Would you--now, would you like to know?' said Jeremiah with a pounce as\n    if he had sprung upon her. 'If I cared to know, I should know already. Could I not have asked her\n    any day?' 'Then you don't care to know?' 'I do not.' Mr Flintwinch, having expelled a long significant breath said, with his\n    former emphasis, 'For I have accidentally--mind!--found out.' 'Wherever she lives,' said Mrs Clennam, speaking in one unmodulated hard\n    voice, and separating her words as distinctly as if she were reading\n    them off from separate bits of metal that she took up one by one, 'she\n    has made a secret of it, and she shall always keep her secret from me.' 'After all, perhaps you would rather not have known the fact, any how?' said Jeremiah; and he said it with a twist, as if his words had come out\n    of him in his own wry shape. 'Flintwinch,' said his mistress and partner, flashing into a sudden\n    energy that made Affery start, 'why do you goad me? Look round this\n    room. If it is any compensation for my long confinement within these\n    narrow limits--not that I complain of being afflicted; you know I never\n    complain of that--if it is any compensation to me for long confinement\n    to this room, that while I am shut up from all pleasant change I am also\n    shut up from the knowledge of some things that I may prefer to avoid\n    knowing, why should you, of all men, grudge me that belief?' 'I don't grudge it to you,' returned Jeremiah. 'Then say no more. Say no more. Let Little Dorrit keep her secret from\n    me, and do you keep it from me also. Let her come and go, unobserved and\n    unquestioned. Let me suffer, and let me have what alleviation belongs to\n    my condition. Is it so much, that you torment me like an evil spirit?' 'I asked you a question. That's all.' 'I have answered it. So, say no more. Say no more.' Here the sound of\n    the wheeled chair was heard upon the floor, and Affery's bell rang with\n    a hasty jerk. More afraid of her husband at the moment than of the mysterious sound in\n    the kitchen, Affery crept away as lightly and as quickly as she could,\n    descended the kitchen stairs almost as rapidly as she had ascended them,\n    resumed her seat before the fire, tucked up her skirt again, and finally\n    threw her apron over her head. Then the bell rang once more, and then\n    once more, and then kept on ringing; in despite of which importunate\n    summons, Affery still sat behind her apron, recovering her breath. At last Mr Flintwinch came shuffling down the staircase into the\n    hall, muttering and calling 'Affery woman!' all the way. Affery still\n    remaining behind her apron, he came stumbling down the kitchen stairs,\n    candle in hand, sidled up to her, twitched her apron off, and roused\n    her. 'Oh Jeremiah!' cried Affery, waking. 'What a start you gave me!' 'What have you been doing, woman?' inquired Jeremiah. 'You've been rung\n    for fifty times.' 'Oh Jeremiah,' said Mistress Affery, 'I have been a-dreaming!' Reminded of her former achievement in that way, Mr Flintwinch held the\n    candle to her head, as if he had some idea of lighting her up for the\n    illumination of the kitchen. 'Don't you know it's her tea-time?' he demanded with a vicious grin, and\n    giving one of the legs of Mistress Affery's chair a kick. 'Jeremiah? Tea-time? I don't know what's come to me. But I got such a\n    dreadful turn, Jeremiah, before I went--off a-dreaming, that I think it\n    must be that.' 'Yoogh! Sleepy-Head!' said Mr Flintwinch, 'what are you talking about?' 'Such a strange noise, Jeremiah, and such a curious movement. In the\n    kitchen here--just here.' Jeremiah held up his light and looked at the blackened ceiling, held\n    down his light and looked at the damp stone floor, turned round with his\n    light and looked about at the spotted and blotched walls. 'Rats, cats, water, drains,' said Jeremiah. Mistress Affery negatived each with a shake of her head. 'No, Jeremiah;\n    I have felt it before. I have felt it up-stairs, and once on the\n    staircase as I was going from her room to ours in the night--a rustle\n    and a sort of trembling touch behind me.' 'Affery, my woman,' said Mr Flintwinch grimly, after advancing his nose\n    to that lady's lips as a test for the detection of spirituous liquors,\n    'if you don't get tea pretty quick, old woman, you'll become sensible\n    of a rustle and a touch that'll send you flying to the other end of the\n    kitchen.' This prediction stimulated Mrs Flintwinch to bestir herself, and to\n    hasten up-stairs to Mrs Clennam's chamber. But, for all that, she now\n    began to entertain a settled conviction that there was something wrong\n    in the gloomy house. Henceforth, she was never at peace in it after\n    daylight departed; and never went up or down stairs in the dark without\n    having her apron over her head, lest she should see something. What with these ghostly apprehensions and her singular dreams, Mrs\n    Flintwinch fell that evening into a haunted state of mind, from which\n    it may be long before this present narrative descries any trace of her\n    recovery. In the vagueness and indistinctness of all her new experiences\n    and perceptions, as everything about her was mysterious to herself she\n    began to be mysterious to others: and became as difficult to be made out\n    to anybody's satisfaction as she found the house and everything in it\n    difficult to make out to her own.\n\n<System> Please remember what the user reads on 2024-01-12, save the details within the book, and retain a summary of the book the user has read so far.", "[Event happened on 2024-01-15 The user is reading a book]\n<User> She had not yet finished preparing Mrs Clennam's tea, when the soft\n    knock came to the door which always announced Little Dorrit. Mistress\n    Affery looked on at Little Dorrit taking off her homely bonnet in the\n    hall, and at Mr Flintwinch scraping his jaws and contemplating her in\n    silence, as expecting some wonderful consequence to ensue which would\n    frighten her out of her five wits or blow them all three to pieces. After tea there came another knock at the door, announcing Arthur. Mistress Affery went down to let him in, and he said on entering,\n    'Affery, I am glad it's you. I want to ask you a question.' Affery\n    immediately replied, 'For goodness sake don't ask me nothing, Arthur! I\n    am frightened out of one half of my life, and dreamed out of the\n    other. Don't ask me nothing! I don't know which is which, or what is\n    what!' --and immediately started away from him, and came near him no\n    more. Mistress Affery having no taste for reading, and no sufficient light for\n    needlework in the subdued room, supposing her to have the inclination,\n    now sat every night in the dimness from which she had momentarily\n    emerged on the evening of Arthur Clennam's return, occupied with crowds\n    of wild speculations and suspicions respecting her mistress and her\n    husband and the noises in the house. When the ferocious devotional\n    exercises were engaged in, these speculations would distract Mistress\n    Affery's eyes towards the door, as if she expected some dark form to\n    appear at those propitious moments, and make the party one too many. Otherwise, Affery never said or did anything to attract the attention of\n    the two clever ones towards her in any marked degree, except on certain\n    occasions, generally at about the quiet hour towards bed-time, when she\n    would suddenly dart out of her dim corner, and whisper with a face of\n    terror to Mr Flintwinch, reading the paper near Mrs Clennam's little\n    table:\n\n    'There, Jeremiah! Now! What's that noise?' Then the noise, if there were any, would have ceased, and Mr Flintwinch\n    would snarl, turning upon her as if she had cut him down that moment\n    against his will, 'Affery, old woman, you shall have a dose, old woman,\n    such a dose! You have been dreaming again!' The time being come for the renewal of his acquaintance with the Meagles\nfamily, Clennam, pursuant to contract made between himself and Mr\nMeagles within the precincts of Bleeding Heart Yard, turned his face\non a certain Saturday towards Twickenham, where Mr Meagles had a\ncottage-residence of his own. The weather being fine and dry, and any\nEnglish road abounding in interest for him who had been so long away,\n        he sent his valise on by the coach, and set out to walk. A walk was in\n        itself a new enjoyment to him, and one that had rarely diversified his\n        life afar off. He went by Fulham and Putney, for the pleasure of strolling over the\n        heath. It was bright and shining there; and when he found himself so far\n        on his road to Twickenham, he found himself a long way on his road to\n        a number of airier and less substantial destinations. They had risen\n        before him fast, in the healthful exercise and the pleasant road. It is\n        not easy to walk alone in the country without musing upon something. And\n        he had plenty of unsettled subjects to meditate upon, though he had been\n        walking to the Land's End. First, there was the subject seldom absent from his mind, the question,\n        what he was to do henceforth in life; to what occupation he should\n        devote himself, and in what direction he had best seek it. He was far\n        from rich, and every day of indecision and inaction made his inheritance\n        a source of greater anxiety to him. As often as he began to consider how\n        to increase this inheritance, or to lay it by, so often his misgiving\n        that there was some one with an unsatisfied claim upon his justice,\n        returned; and that alone was a subject to outlast the longest walk. Again, there was the subject of his relations with his mother, which\n        were now upon an equable and peaceful but never confidential footing,\n        and whom he saw several times a week. Little Dorrit was a leading and a\n        constant subject: for the circumstances of his life, united to those of\n        her own story, presented the little creature to him as the only person\n        between whom and himself there were ties of innocent reliance on one\n        hand, and affectionate protection on the other; ties of compassion,\n        respect, unselfish interest, gratitude, and pity. Thinking of her, and\n        of the possibility of her father's release from prison by the unbarring\n        hand of death--the only change of circumstance he could foresee that\n        might enable him to be such a friend to her as he wished to be, by\n        altering her whole manner of life, smoothing her rough road, and\n        giving her a home--he regarded her, in that perspective, as his adopted\n        daughter, his poor child of the Marshalsea hushed to rest. If there were\n        a last subject in his thoughts, and it lay towards Twickenham, its form\n        was so indefinite that it was little more than the pervading atmosphere\n        in which these other subjects floated before him. He had crossed the heath and was leaving it behind when he gained upon a\n        figure which had been in advance of him for some time, and which, as\n        he gained upon it, he thought he knew. He derived this impression\n        from something in the turn of the head, and in the figure's action of\n        consideration, as it went on at a sufficiently sturdy walk. But when\n        the man--for it was a man's figure--pushed his hat up at the back of his\n        head, and stopped to consider some object before him, he knew it to be\n        Daniel Doyce. 'How do you do, Mr Doyce?' said Clennam, overtaking him. 'I am glad to\n        see you again, and in a healthier place than the Circumlocution Office.' 'Ha! Mr Meagles's friend!' exclaimed that public criminal, coming out of\n        some mental combinations he had been making, and offering his hand. 'I\n        am glad to see you, sir. Will you excuse me if I forget your name?' 'Readily. It's not a celebrated name. It's not Barnacle.' 'No, no,' said Daniel, laughing. 'And now I know what it is. It's\n        Clennam. How do you do, Mr Clennam?' 'I have some hope,' said Arthur, as they walked on together, 'that we\n        may be going to the same place, Mr Doyce.' 'Meaning Twickenham?' returned Daniel. 'I am glad to hear it.' They were soon quite intimate, and lightened the way with a variety of\n        conversation. The ingenious culprit was a man of great modesty and good\n        sense; and, though a plain man, had been too much accustomed to combine\n        what was original and daring in conception with what was patient and\n        minute in execution, to be by any means an ordinary man. It was at first\n        difficult to lead him to speak about himself, and he put off Arthur's\n        advances in that direction by admitting slightly, oh yes, he had done\n        this, and he had done that, and such a thing was of his making, and\n        such another thing was his discovery, but it was his trade, you see, his\n        trade; until, as he gradually became assured that his companion had a\n        real interest in his account of himself, he frankly yielded to it. Then\n        it appeared that he was the son of a north-country blacksmith, and had\n        originally been apprenticed by his widowed mother to a lock-maker; that\n        he had 'struck out a few little things' at the lock-maker's, which had\n        led to his being released from his indentures with a present, which\n        present had enabled him to gratify his ardent wish to bind himself to\n        a working engineer, under whom he had laboured hard, learned hard, and\n        lived hard, seven years. His time being out, he had 'worked in the shop'\n        at weekly wages seven or eight years more; and had then betaken\n        himself to the banks of the Clyde, where he had studied, and filed, and\n        hammered, and improved his knowledge, theoretical and practical, for six\n        or seven years more. There he had had an offer to go to Lyons, which he\n        had accepted; and from Lyons had been engaged to go to Germany, and in\n        Germany had had an offer to go to St Petersburg, and there had done very\n        well indeed--never better.\n\n<System> Please remember what the user reads on 2024-01-15, save the details within the book, and retain a summary of the book the user has read so far.", "[Event happened on 2024-01-18 The user is reading a book]\n<User> However, he had naturally felt a preference\n        for his own country, and a wish to gain distinction there, and to do\n        whatever service he could do, there rather than elsewhere. And so he had\n        come home. And so at home he had established himself in business, and\n        had invented and executed, and worked his way on, until, after a dozen\n        years of constant suit and service, he had been enrolled in the\n        Great British Legion of Honour, the Legion of the Rebuffed of the\n        Circumlocution Office, and had been decorated with the Great British\n        Order of Merit, the Order of the Disorder of the Barnacles and\n        Stiltstalkings. 'It is much to be regretted,' said Clennam, 'that you ever turned your\n        thoughts that way, Mr Doyce.' 'True, sir, true to a certain extent. But what is a man to do? if he\n        has the misfortune to strike out something serviceable to the nation,\n        he must follow where it leads him.' 'Hadn't he better let it go?' said Clennam. 'He can't do it,' said Doyce, shaking his head with a thoughtful smile. 'It's not put into his head to be buried. It's put into his head to be\n        made useful. You hold your life on the condition that to the last you\n        shall struggle hard for it. Every man holds a discovery on the same\n        terms.' 'That is to say,' said Arthur, with a growing admiration of his quiet\n        companion, 'you are not finally discouraged even now?' 'I have no right to be, if I am,' returned the other. 'The thing is as\n        true as it ever was.' When they had walked a little way in silence, Clennam, at once to\n        change the direct point of their conversation and not to change it\n        too abruptly, asked Mr Doyce if he had any partner in his business to\n        relieve him of a portion of its anxieties? 'No,' he returned, 'not at present. I had when I first entered on it,\n        and a good man he was. But he has been dead some years; and as I could\n        not easily take to the notion of another when I lost him, I bought\n        his share for myself and have gone on by myself ever since. And here's\n        another thing,' he said, stopping for a moment with a good-humoured\n        laugh in his eyes, and laying his closed right hand, with its peculiar\n        suppleness of thumb, on Clennam's arm, 'no inventor can be a man of\n        business, you know.' 'No?' said Clennam. 'Why, so the men of business say,' he answered, resuming the walk and\n        laughing outright. 'I don't know why we unfortunate creatures should\n        be supposed to want common sense, but it is generally taken for granted\n        that we do. Even the best friend I have in the world, our excellent\n        friend over yonder,' said Doyce, nodding towards Twickenham, 'extends\n        a sort of protection to me, don't you know, as a man not quite able to\n        take care of himself?' Arthur Clennam could not help joining in the good-humoured laugh, for he\n        recognised the truth of the description. 'So I find that I must have a partner who is a man of business and not\n        guilty of any inventions,' said Daniel Doyce, taking off his hat to pass\n        his hand over his forehead, 'if it's only in deference to the current\n        opinion, and to uphold the credit of the Works. I don't think he'll find\n        that I have been very remiss or confused in my way of conducting them;\n        but that's for him to say--whoever he is--not for me.' 'You have not chosen him yet, then?' 'No, sir, no. I have only just come to a decision to take one. The fact\n        is, there's more to do than there used to be, and the Works are enough\n        for me as I grow older. What with the books and correspondence, and\n        foreign journeys for which a Principal is necessary, I can't do all. I\n        am going to talk over the best way of negotiating the matter, if I find\n        a spare half-hour between this and Monday morning, with my--my Nurse and\n        protector,' said Doyce, with laughing eyes again. 'He is a sagacious man\n        in business, and has had a good apprenticeship to it.' After this, they conversed on different subjects until they arrived at\n        their journey's end. A composed and unobtrusive self-sustainment was\n        noticeable in Daniel Doyce--a calm knowledge that what was true must\n        remain true, in spite of all the Barnacles in the family ocean, and\n        would be just the truth, and neither more nor less when even that sea\n        had run dry--which had a kind of greatness in it, though not of the\n        official quality. As he knew the house well, he conducted Arthur to it by the way that\n        showed it to the best advantage. It was a charming place (none the worse\n                for being a little eccentric), on the road by the river, and just what\n        the residence of the Meagles family ought to be. It stood in a garden,\n        no doubt as fresh and beautiful in the May of the Year as Pet now was\n        in the May of her life; and it was defended by a goodly show of handsome\n        trees and spreading evergreens, as Pet was by Mr and Mrs Meagles. It\n        was made out of an old brick house, of which a part had been altogether\n        pulled down, and another part had been changed into the present cottage;\n        so there was a hale elderly portion, to represent Mr and Mrs Meagles,\n        and a young picturesque, very pretty portion to represent Pet. There was\n        even the later addition of a conservatory sheltering itself against it,\n        uncertain of hue in its deep-stained glass, and in its more transparent\n        portions flashing to the sun's rays, now like fire and now like harmless\n        water drops; which might have stood for Tattycoram. Within view was\n        the peaceful river and the ferry-boat, to moralise to all the inmates\n        saying: Young or old, passionate or tranquil, chafing or content, you,\n        thus runs the current always. Let the heart swell into what discord it\n        will, thus plays the rippling water on the prow of the ferry-boat ever\n        the same tune. Year after year, so much allowance for the drifting of\n        the boat, so many miles an hour the flowing of the stream, here the\n        rushes, there the lilies, nothing uncertain or unquiet, upon this road\n        that steadily runs away; while you, upon your flowing road of time, are\n        so capricious and distracted. The bell at the gate had scarcely sounded when Mr Meagles came out to\n        receive them. Mr Meagles had scarcely come out, when Mrs Meagles came\n        out. Mrs Meagles had scarcely come out, when Pet came out. Pet scarcely\n        had come out, when Tattycoram came out. Never had visitors a more\n        hospitable reception. 'Here we are, you see,' said Mr Meagles, 'boxed up, Mr Clennam, within\n        our own home-limits, as if we were never going to expand--that is,\n        travel--again. Not like Marseilles, eh? No allonging and marshonging\n        here!' 'A different kind of beauty, indeed!' said Clennam, looking about him. 'But, Lord bless me!' cried Mr Meagles, rubbing his hands with a relish,\n        'it was an uncommonly pleasant thing being in quarantine, wasn't it? Do you know, I have often wished myself back again? We were a capital\n        party.' This was Mr Meagles's invariable habit. Always to object to everything\n        while he was travelling, and always to want to get back to it when he\n        was not travelling. 'If it was summer-time,' said Mr Meagles, 'which I wish it was on your\n        account, and in order that you might see the place at its best, you\n        would hardly be able to hear yourself speak for birds. Being practical\n        people, we never allow anybody to scare the birds; and the birds, being\n        practical people too, come about us in myriads. We are delighted to see\n        you, Clennam (if you'll allow me, I shall drop the Mister); I heartily\n        assure you, we are delighted.' 'I have not had so pleasant a greeting,' said Clennam--then he recalled\n        what Little Dorrit had said to him in his own room, and faithfully\n        added 'except once--since we last walked to and fro, looking down at the\n        Mediterranean.' 'Ah!' returned Mr Meagles. 'Something like a look out, _that_ was, wasn't\n        it?\n\n<System> Please remember what the user reads on 2024-01-18, save the details within the book, and retain a summary of the book the user has read so far.", "[Event happened on 2024-01-20 The user is reading a book]\n<User> I don't want a military government, but I shouldn't mind a little\n        allonging and marshonging--just a dash of it--in this neighbourhood\n        sometimes. It's Devilish still.' Bestowing this eulogium on the retired character of his retreat with a\n        dubious shake of the head, Mr Meagles led the way into the house. It was\n        just large enough, and no more; was as pretty within as it was without,\n        and was perfectly well-arranged and comfortable. Some traces of the\n        migratory habits of the family were to be observed in the covered frames\n        and furniture, and wrapped-up hangings; but it was easy to see that it\n        was one of Mr Meagles's whims to have the cottage always kept, in their\n        absence, as if they were always coming back the day after to-morrow. Of\n        articles collected on his various expeditions, there was such a vast\n        miscellany that it was like the dwelling of an amiable Corsair. There\n        were antiquities from Central Italy, made by the best modern houses in\n        that department of industry; bits of mummy from Egypt (and perhaps\n                Birmingham); model gondolas from Venice; model villages from\n        Switzerland; morsels of tesselated pavement from Herculaneum and\n        Pompeii, like petrified minced veal; ashes out of tombs, and lava out of\n        Vesuvius; Spanish fans, Spezzian straw hats, Moorish slippers, Tuscan\n        hairpins, Carrara sculpture, Trastaverini scarves, Genoese velvets and\n        filigree, Neapolitan coral, Roman cameos, Geneva jewellery, Arab\n        lanterns, rosaries blest all round by the Pope himself, and an infinite\n        variety of lumber. There were views, like and unlike, of a multitude of\n        places; and there was one little picture-room devoted to a few of the\n        regular sticky old Saints, with sinews like whipcord, hair like\n        Neptune's, wrinkles like tattooing, and such coats of varnish that every\n        holy personage served for a fly-trap, and became what is now called in\n        the vulgar tongue a Catch-em-alive O. Of these pictorial acquisitions Mr\n        Meagles spoke in the usual manner. He was no judge, he said, except of\n        what pleased himself; he had picked them up, dirt-cheap, and people\n        _had_ considered them rather fine. One man, who at any rate ought to\n        know something of the subject, had declared that 'Sage, Reading' (a\n                specially oily old gentleman in a blanket, with a swan's-down tippet for\n                a beard, and a web of cracks all over him like rich pie-crust), to be a\n        fine Guercino. As for Sebastian del Piombo there, you would judge for\n        yourself; if it were not his later manner, the question was, Who was it? Titian, that might or might not be--perhaps he had only touched it. Daniel Doyce said perhaps he hadn't touched it, but Mr Meagles rather\n        declined to overhear the remark. When he had shown all his spoils, Mr Meagles took them into his own\n        snug room overlooking the lawn, which was fitted up in part like a\n        dressing-room and in part like an office, and in which, upon a kind of\n        counter-desk, were a pair of brass scales for weighing gold, and a scoop\n        for shovelling out money. 'Here they are, you see,' said Mr Meagles. 'I stood behind these two\n        articles five-and-thirty years running, when I no more thought of\n        gadding about than I now think of--staying at home. When I left the Bank\n        for good, I asked for them, and brought them away with me. I mention it\n        at once, or you might suppose that I sit in my counting-house (as Pet\n                says I do), like the king in the poem of the four-and-twenty blackbirds,\n        counting out my money.' Clennam's eyes had strayed to a natural picture on the wall, of two\n        pretty little girls with their arms entwined. 'Yes, Clennam,' said\n        Mr Meagles, in a lower voice. 'There they both are. It was taken some\n        seventeen years ago. As I often say to Mother, they were babies then.' 'Their names?' said Arthur. 'Ah, to be sure! You have never heard any name but Pet. Pet's name is\n        Minnie; her sister's Lillie.' 'Should you have known, Mr Clennam, that one of them was meant for me?' asked Pet herself, now standing in the doorway. 'I might have thought that both of them were meant for you, both\n        are still so like you. Indeed,' said Clennam, glancing from the fair\n        original to the picture and back, 'I cannot even now say which is not\n        your portrait.' 'D'ye hear that, Mother?' cried Mr Meagles to his wife, who had followed\n        her daughter. 'It's always the same, Clennam; nobody can decide. The\n        child to your left is Pet.' The picture happened to be near a looking-glass. As Arthur looked at\n        it again, he saw, by the reflection of the mirror, Tattycoram stop in\n        passing outside the door, listen to what was going on, and pass away\n        with an angry and contemptuous frown upon her face, that changed its\n        beauty into ugliness. 'But come!' said Mr Meagles. 'You have had a long walk, and will be glad\n        to get your boots off. As to Daniel here, I suppose he'd never think of\n        taking _his_ boots off, unless we showed him a boot-jack.' 'Why not?' asked Daniel, with a significant smile at Clennam. 'Oh! You have so many things to think about,' returned Mr Meagles,\n        clapping him on the shoulder, as if his weakness must not be left to\n        itself on any account. 'Figures, and wheels, and cogs, and levers, and\n        screws, and cylinders, and a thousand things.' 'In my calling,' said Daniel, amused, 'the greater usually includes the\n        less. But never mind, never mind! Whatever pleases you, pleases me.' Clennam could not help speculating, as he seated himself in his room\n        by the fire, whether there might be in the breast of this honest,\n        affectionate, and cordial Mr Meagles, any microscopic portion of\n        the mustard-seed that had sprung up into the great tree of the\n        Circumlocution Office. His curious sense of a general superiority to\n        Daniel Doyce, which seemed to be founded, not so much on anything\n        in Doyce's personal character as on the mere fact of his being an\n        originator and a man out of the beaten track of other men, suggested the\n        idea. It might have occupied him until he went down to dinner an hour\n        afterwards, if he had not had another question to consider, which\n        had been in his mind so long ago as before he was in quarantine at\n        Marseilles, and which had now returned to it, and was very urgent with\n        it. No less a question than this: Whether he should allow himself to\n        fall in love with Pet? He was twice her age. (He changed the leg he had crossed over the other,\n                and tried the calculation again, but could not bring out the total at\n                less.) He was twice her age. Well! He was young in appearance, young\n        in health and strength, young in heart. A man was certainly not old\n        at forty; and many men were not in circumstances to marry, or did not\n        marry, until they had attained that time of life. On the other hand, the\n        question was, not what he thought of the point, but what she thought of\n        it. He believed that Mr Meagles was disposed to entertain a ripe regard for\n        him, and he knew that he had a sincere regard for Mr Meagles and his\n        good wife. He could foresee that to relinquish this beautiful only\n        child, of whom they were so fond, to any husband, would be a trial\n        of their love which perhaps they never yet had had the fortitude to\n        contemplate. But the more beautiful and winning and charming she, the\n        nearer they must always be to the necessity of approaching it. And why\n        not in his favour, as well as in another's? When he had got so far, it came again into his head that the question\n        was, not what they thought of it, but what she thought of it. Arthur Clennam was a retiring man, with a sense of many deficiencies;\n        and he so exalted the merits of the beautiful Minnie in his mind, and\n        depressed his own, that when he pinned himself to this point, his hopes\n        began to fail him.\n\n<System> Please remember what the user reads on 2024-01-20, save the details within the book, and retain a summary of the book the user has read so far.", "[Event happened on 2024-01-21 The user is reading a book]\n<User> He came to the final resolution, as he made himself\n        ready for dinner, that he would not allow himself to fall in love with\n        Pet. There were only five, at a round table, and it was very pleasant indeed. They had so many places and people to recall, and they were all so easy\n        and cheerful together (Daniel Doyce either sitting out like an amused\n                spectator at cards, or coming in with some shrewd little experiences of\n                his own, when it happened to be to the purpose), that they might have\n        been together twenty times, and not have known so much of one another. 'And Miss Wade,' said Mr Meagles, after they had recalled a number of\n        fellow-travellers. 'Has anybody seen Miss Wade?' 'I have,' said Tattycoram. She had brought a little mantle which her young mistress had sent for,\n        and was bending over her, putting it on, when she lifted up her dark\n        eyes and made this unexpected answer. 'Tatty!' her young mistress exclaimed. 'You seen Miss Wade?--where?' 'Here, miss,' said Tattycoram. 'How?' An impatient glance from Tattycoram seemed, as Clennam saw it, to answer\n        'With my eyes!' But her only answer in words was: 'I met her near the\n        church.' 'What was she doing there I wonder!' said Mr Meagles. 'Not going to it,\n        I should think.' 'She had written to me first,' said Tattycoram. 'Oh, Tatty!' murmured her mistress, 'take your hands away. I feel as if\n        some one else was touching me!' She said it in a quick involuntary way, but half playfully, and not more\n        petulantly or disagreeably than a favourite child might have done, who\n        laughed next moment. Tattycoram set her full red lips together, and\n        crossed her arms upon her bosom. 'Did you wish to know, sir,' she said, looking at Mr Meagles, 'what Miss\n        Wade wrote to me about?' 'Well, Tattycoram,' returned Mr Meagles, 'since you ask the question,\n        and we are all friends here, perhaps you may as well mention it, if you\n        are so inclined.' 'She knew, when we were travelling, where you lived,' said Tattycoram,\n        'and she had seen me not quite--not quite--'\n\n        'Not quite in a good temper, Tattycoram?' suggested Mr Meagles,\n        shaking his head at the dark eyes with a quiet caution. 'Take a little\n        time--count five-and-twenty, Tattycoram.' She pressed her lips together again, and took a long deep breath. 'So she wrote to me to say that if I ever felt myself hurt,' she looked\n        down at her young mistress, 'or found myself worried,' she looked down\n        at her again, 'I might go to her, and be considerately treated. I was\n        to think of it, and could speak to her by the church. So I went there to\n        thank her.' 'Tatty,' said her young mistress, putting her hand up over her shoulder\n        that the other might take it, 'Miss Wade almost frightened me when we\n        parted, and I scarcely like to think of her just now as having been so\n        near me without my knowing it. Tatty dear!' Tatty stood for a moment, immovable. 'Hey?' cried Mr Meagles. 'Count another five-and-twenty, Tattycoram.' She might have counted a dozen, when she bent and put her lips to the\n        caressing hand. It patted her cheek, as it touched the owner's beautiful\n        curls, and Tattycoram went away. 'Now there,' said Mr Meagles softly, as he gave a turn to the\n        dumb-waiter on his right hand to twirl the sugar towards himself. 'There's a girl who might be lost and ruined, if she wasn't among\n        practical people. Mother and I know, solely from being practical, that\n        there are times when that girl's whole nature seems to roughen itself\n        against seeing us so bound up in Pet. No father and mother were bound\n        up in her, poor soul. I don't like to think of the way in which that\n        unfortunate child, with all that passion and protest in her, feels when\n        she hears the Fifth Commandment on a Sunday. I am always inclined to\n        call out, Church, Count five-and-twenty, Tattycoram.' Besides his dumb-waiter, Mr Meagles had two other not dumb waiters in\n        the persons of two parlour-maids with rosy faces and bright eyes, who\n        were a highly ornamental part of the table decoration. 'And why not, you\n        see?' said Mr Meagles on this head. 'As I always say to Mother, why\n        not have something pretty to look at, if you have anything at all?' A certain Mrs Tickit, who was Cook and Housekeeper when the family were\n        at home, and Housekeeper only when the family were away, completed the\n        establishment. Mr Meagles regretted that the nature of the duties in\n        which she was engaged, rendered Mrs Tickit unpresentable at present,\n        but hoped to introduce her to the new visitor to-morrow. She was an\n        important part of the Cottage, he said, and all his friends knew her. That was her picture up in the corner. When they went away, she always\n        put on the silk-gown and the jet-black row of curls represented in that\n        portrait (her hair was reddish-grey in the kitchen), established herself\n        in the breakfast-room, put her spectacles between two particular leaves\n        of Doctor Buchan's Domestic Medicine, and sat looking over the blind all\n        day until they came back again. It was supposed that no persuasion could\n        be invented which would induce Mrs Tickit to abandon her post at the\n        blind, however long their absence, or to dispense with the attendance\n        of Dr Buchan; the lucubrations of which learned practitioner, Mr Meagles\n        implicitly believed she had never yet consulted to the extent of one\n        word in her life. In the evening they played an old-fashioned rubber; and Pet sat looking\n        over her father's hand, or singing to herself by fits and starts at the\n        piano. She was a spoilt child; but how could she be otherwise? Who could\n        be much with so pliable and beautiful a creature, and not yield to her\n        endearing influence? Who could pass an evening in the house, and not\n        love her for the grace and charm of her very presence in the room? This\n        was Clennam's reflection, notwithstanding the final conclusion at which\n        he had arrived up-stairs. In making it, he revoked. 'Why, what are you thinking of, my good sir?' asked the astonished Mr Meagles, who was his partner. 'I beg your\n        pardon. Nothing,' returned Clennam. 'Think of something, next time;\n        that's a dear fellow,' said Mr Meagles. Pet laughingly believed he had\n        been thinking of Miss Wade. 'Why of Miss Wade, Pet?' asked her father. 'Why, indeed!' said Arthur Clennam. Pet coloured a little, and went to\n        the piano again. As they broke up for the night, Arthur overheard Doyce ask his host if\n        he could give him half an hour's conversation before breakfast in the\n        morning? The host replying willingly, Arthur lingered behind a moment,\n        having his own word to add to that topic. 'Mr Meagles,' he said, on their being left alone, 'do you remember when\n        you advised me to go straight to London?' 'Perfectly well.' 'And when you gave me some other good advice which I needed at that time?' 'I won't say what it was worth,' answered Mr Meagles: 'but of course I\n        remember our being very pleasant and confidential together.' 'I have acted on your advice; and having disembarrassed myself of an\n        occupation that was painful to me for many reasons, wish to devote\n        myself and what means I have, to another pursuit.' 'Right! You can't do it too soon,' said Mr Meagles. 'Now, as I came down to-day, I found that your friend, Mr Doyce, is\n        looking for a partner in his business--not a partner in his mechanical\n        knowledge, but in the ways and means of turning the business arising\n        from it to the best account.' 'Just so,' said Mr Meagles, with his hands in his pockets, and with\n        the old business expression of face that had belonged to the scales and\n        scoop. 'Mr Doyce mentioned incidentally, in the course of our conversation,\n        that he was going to take your valuable advice on the subject of finding\n        such a partner. If you should think our views and opportunities at all\n        likely to coincide, perhaps you will let him know my available position.\n\n<System> Please remember what the user reads on 2024-01-21, save the details within the book, and retain a summary of the book the user has read so far.", "[Event happened on 2024-01-22 The user is reading a book]\n<User> I speak, of course, in ignorance of the details, and they may be\n        unsuitable on both sides.' 'No doubt, no doubt,' said Mr Meagles, with the caution belonging to the\n        scales and scoop. 'But they will be a question of figures and accounts--'\n\n        'Just so, just so,' said Mr Meagles, with arithmetical solidity\n        belonging to the scales and scoop.\n\n        ' --And I shall be glad to enter into the subject, provided Mr Doyce\n        responds, and you think well of it. If you will at present, therefore,\n        allow me to place it in your hands, you will much oblige me.' 'Clennam, I accept the trust with readiness,' said Mr Meagles. 'And\n        without anticipating any of the points which you, as a man of business,\n        have of course reserved, I am free to say to you that I think something\n        may come of this. Of one thing you may be perfectly certain. Daniel is\n        an honest man.' 'I am so sure of it that I have promptly made up my mind to speak to\n        you.' 'You must guide him, you know; you must steer him; you must direct him;\n        he is one of a crotchety sort,' said Mr Meagles, evidently meaning\n        nothing more than that he did new things and went new ways; 'but he is\n        as honest as the sun, and so good night!' Clennam went back to his room, sat down again before his fire, and made\n        up his mind that he was glad he had resolved not to fall in love with\n        Pet. She was so beautiful, so amiable, so apt to receive any true\n        impression given to her gentle nature and her innocent heart, and make\n        the man who should be so happy as to communicate it, the most fortunate\n        and enviable of all men, that he was very glad indeed he had come to\n        that conclusion. But, as this might have been a reason for coming to the opposite\n        conclusion, he followed out the theme again a little way in his mind; to\n        justify himself, perhaps. 'Suppose that a man,' so his thoughts ran, 'who had been of age some\n        twenty years or so; who was a diffident man, from the circumstances of\n        his youth; who was rather a grave man, from the tenor of his life; who\n        knew himself to be deficient in many little engaging qualities which\n        he admired in others, from having been long in a distant region, with\n        nothing softening near him; who had no kind sisters to present to her;\n        who had no congenial home to make her known in; who was a stranger in\n        the land; who had not a fortune to compensate, in any measure, for\n        these defects; who had nothing in his favour but his honest love and his\n        general wish to do right--suppose such a man were to come to this house,\n        and were to yield to the captivation of this charming girl, and were to\n        persuade himself that he could hope to win her; what a weakness it would\n        be!' He softly opened his window, and looked out upon the serene river. Year\n        after year so much allowance for the drifting of the ferry-boat, so\n        many miles an hour the flowing of the stream, here the rushes, there the\n        lilies, nothing uncertain or unquiet. Why should he be vexed or sore at heart? It was not his weakness that he\n        had imagined. It was nobody's, nobody's within his knowledge; why should\n        it trouble him? And yet it did trouble him. And he thought--who has not\n        thought for a moment, sometimes?--that it might be better to flow away\n        monotonously, like the river, and to compound for its insensibility to\n        happiness with its insensibility to pain. Before breakfast in the morning, Arthur walked out to look about him. As the morning was fine and he had an hour on his hands, he crossed the\nriver by the ferry, and strolled along a footpath through some meadows. When he came back to the towing-path, he found the ferry-boat on the\nopposite side, and a gentleman hailing it and waiting to be taken over. This gentleman looked barely thirty. He was well dressed, of a sprightly\nand gay appearance, a well-knit figure, and a rich dark complexion. As\nArthur came over the stile and down to the water's edge, the lounger\nglanced at him for a moment, and then resumed his occupation of idly\ntossing stones into the water with his foot. There was something in his\nway of spurning them out of their places with his heel, and getting them\ninto the required position, that Clennam thought had an air of cruelty\nin it. Most of us have more or less frequently derived a similar\nimpression from a man's manner of doing some very little thing: plucking\na flower, clearing away an obstacle, or even destroying an insentient\nobject. The gentleman's thoughts were preoccupied, as his face showed, and he\ntook no notice of a fine Newfoundland dog, who watched him attentively,\n     and watched every stone too, in its turn, eager to spring into the\n     river on receiving his master's sign. The ferry-boat came over, however,\n     without his receiving any sign, and when it grounded his master took him\n     by the collar and walked him into it. 'Not this morning,' he said to the dog. 'You won't do for ladies'\n     company, dripping wet. Lie down.' Clennam followed the man and the dog into the boat, and took his seat. The dog did as he was ordered. The man remained standing, with his hands\n     in his pockets, and towered between Clennam and the prospect. Man and\n     dog both jumped lightly out as soon as they touched the other side, and\n     went away. Clennam was glad to be rid of them. The church clock struck the breakfast hour as he walked up the little\n     lane by which the garden-gate was approached. The moment he pulled the\n     bell a deep loud barking assailed him from within the wall. 'I heard no dog last night,' thought Clennam. The gate was opened by\n     one of the rosy maids, and on the lawn were the Newfoundland dog and the\n     man. 'Miss Minnie is not down yet, gentlemen,' said the blushing portress, as\n     they all came together in the garden. Then she said to the master of the\n     dog, 'Mr Clennam, sir,' and tripped away. 'Odd enough, Mr Clennam, that we should have met just now,' said\n     the man. Upon which the dog became mute. 'Allow me to introduce\n     myself--Henry Gowan. A pretty place this, and looks wonderfully well\n     this morning!' The manner was easy, and the voice agreeable; but still Clennam thought,\n     that if he had not made that decided resolution to avoid falling in love\n     with Pet, he would have taken a dislike to this Henry Gowan. 'It's new to you, I believe?' said this Gowan, when Arthur had extolled\n     the place. 'Quite new. I made acquaintance with it only yesterday afternoon.' 'Ah! Of course this is not its best aspect. It used to look charming in\n     the spring, before they went away last time. I should like you to have\n     seen it then.' But for that resolution so often recalled, Clennam might have wished him\n     in the crater of Mount Etna, in return for this civility. 'I have had the pleasure of seeing it under many circumstances during\n     the last three years, and it's--a Paradise.' It was (at least it might have been, always excepting for that wise\n             resolution) like his dexterous impudence to call it a Paradise. He only\n     called it a Paradise because he first saw her coming, and so made her\n     out within her hearing to be an angel, Confusion to him! And ah! how beaming she looked, and how glad! How she caressed the dog,\n     and how the dog knew her! How expressive that heightened colour in her\n     face, that fluttered manner, her downcast eyes, her irresolute\n     happiness! When had Clennam seen her look like this? Not that there was\n     any reason why he might, could, would, or should have ever seen her look\n     like this, or that he had ever hoped for himself to see her look like\n     this; but still--when had he ever known her do it! He stood at a little distance from them. This Gowan when he had talked\n     about a Paradise, had gone up to her and taken her hand. The dog had put\n     his great paws on her arm and laid his head against her dear bosom. She\n     had laughed and welcomed them, and made far too much of the dog, far,\n     far, too much--that is to say, supposing there had been any third person\n     looking on who loved her.\n\n<System> Please remember what the user reads on 2024-01-22, save the details within the book, and retain a summary of the book the user has read so far.", "[Event happened on 2024-01-23 The user is reading a book]\n<User> She disengaged herself now, and came to Clennam, and put her hand in his\n     and wished him good morning, and gracefully made as if she would take\n     his arm and be escorted into the house. To this Gowan had no objection. No, he knew he was too safe. There was a passing cloud on Mr Meagles's good-humoured face when they\n     all three (four, counting the dog, and he was the most objectionable\n             but one of the party) came in to breakfast. Neither it, nor the touch\n     of uneasiness on Mrs Meagles as she directed her eyes towards it, was\n     unobserved by Clennam. 'Well, Gowan,' said Mr Meagles, even suppressing a sigh; 'how goes the\n     world with you this morning?' 'Much as usual, sir. Lion and I being determined not to waste anything\n     of our weekly visit, turned out early, and came over from Kingston, my\n     present headquarters, where I am making a sketch or two.' Then he told\n     how he had met Mr Clennam at the ferry, and they had come over together. 'Mrs Gowan is well, Henry?' said Mrs Meagles. (Clennam became\n             attentive.) 'My mother is quite well, thank you.' (Clennam became inattentive.) 'I\n     have taken the liberty of making an addition to your family dinner-party\n     to-day, which I hope will not be inconvenient to you or to Mr Meagles. I\n     couldn't very well get out of it,' he explained, turning to the latter. 'The young fellow wrote to propose himself to me; and as he is well\n     connected, I thought you would not object to my transferring him here.' 'Who _is_ the young fellow?' asked Mr Meagles with peculiar complacency. 'He is one of the Barnacles. Tite Barnacle's son, Clarence Barnacle, who\n     is in his father's Department. I can at least guarantee that the river\n     shall not suffer from his visit. He won't set it on fire.' 'Aye, aye?' said Meagles. 'A Barnacle is he? _We_ know something of that\n     family, eh, Dan? By George, they are at the top of the tree, though! Let\n     me see. What relation will this young fellow be to Lord Decimus now? His\n     Lordship married, in seventeen ninety-seven, Lady Jemima Bilberry, who\n     was the second daughter by the third marriage--no! There I am wrong! That was Lady Seraphina--Lady Jemima was the first daughter by the\n     second marriage of the fifteenth Earl of Stiltstalking with the\n     Honourable Clementina Toozellem. Very well. Now this young fellow's\n     father married a Stiltstalking and _his_ father married his cousin who\n     was a Barnacle. The father of that father who married a Barnacle,\n     married a Joddleby.--I am getting a little too far back, Gowan; I want\n     to make out what relation this young fellow is to Lord Decimus.' 'That's easily stated. His father is nephew to Lord Decimus.' 'Nephew--to--Lord--Decimus,' Mr Meagles luxuriously repeated with his\n     eyes shut, that he might have nothing to distract him from the full\n     flavour of the genealogical tree. 'By George, you are right, Gowan. So\n     he is.' 'Consequently, Lord Decimus is his great uncle.' 'But stop a bit!' said Mr Meagles, opening his eyes with a fresh\n     discovery. 'Then on the mother's side, Lady Stiltstalking is his great\n     aunt.' 'Of course she is.' 'Aye, aye, aye?' said Mr Meagles with much interest. 'Indeed, indeed? We\n     shall be glad to see him. We'll entertain him as well as we can, in our\n     humble way; and we shall not starve him, I hope, at all events.' In the beginning of this dialogue, Clennam had expected some great\n     harmless outburst from Mr Meagles, like that which had made him burst\n     out of the Circumlocution Office, holding Doyce by the collar. But his\n     good friend had a weakness which none of us need go into the next street\n     to find, and which no amount of Circumlocution experience could long\n     subdue in him. Clennam looked at Doyce; but Doyce knew all about it\n     beforehand, and looked at his plate, and made no sign, and said no word. 'I am much obliged to you,' said Gowan, to conclude the subject. 'Clarence is a great ass, but he is one of the dearest and best fellows\n     that ever lived!' It appeared, before the breakfast was over, that everybody whom this\n     Gowan knew was either more or less of an ass, or more or less of a\n     knave; but was, notwithstanding, the most lovable, the most engaging,\n     the simplest, truest, kindest, dearest, best fellow that ever lived. The process by which this unvarying result was attained, whatever the\n     premises, might have been stated by Mr Henry Gowan thus: 'I claim to be\n     always book-keeping, with a peculiar nicety, in every man's case, and\n     posting up a careful little account of Good and Evil with him. I do\n     this so conscientiously, that I am happy to tell you I find the most\n     worthless of men to be the dearest old fellow too: and am in a condition\n     to make the gratifying report, that there is much less difference than\n     you are inclined to suppose between an honest man and a scoundrel.' The\n     effect of this cheering discovery happened to be, that while he seemed\n     to be scrupulously finding good in most men, he did in reality lower\n     it where it was, and set it up where it was not; but that was its only\n     disagreeable or dangerous feature. It scarcely seemed, however, to afford Mr Meagles as much satisfaction\n     as the Barnacle genealogy had done. The cloud that Clennam had never\n     seen upon his face before that morning, frequently overcast it again;\n     and there was the same shadow of uneasy observation of him on the comely\n     face of his wife. More than once or twice when Pet caressed the dog,\n     it appeared to Clennam that her father was unhappy in seeing her do it;\nand, in one particular instance when Gowan stood on the other side of\nthe dog, and bent his head at the same time, Arthur fancied that he saw\ntears rise to Mr Meagles's eyes as he hurried out of the room. It was\neither the fact too, or he fancied further, that Pet herself was not\ninsensible to these little incidents; that she tried, with a more\ndelicate affection than usual, to express to her good father how much\nshe loved him; that it was on this account that she fell behind the\nrest, both as they went to church and as they returned from it, and\ntook his arm. He could not have sworn but that as he walked alone in\nthe garden afterwards, he had an instantaneous glimpse of her in\nher father's room, clinging to both her parents with the greatest\ntenderness, and weeping on her father's shoulder. The latter part of the day turning out wet, they were fain to keep the\nhouse, look over Mr Meagles's collection, and beguile the time with\nconversation. This Gowan had plenty to say for himself, and said it\nin an off-hand and amusing manner. He appeared to be an artist by\nprofession, and to have been at Rome some time; yet he had a slight,\n    careless, amateur way with him--a perceptible limp, both in his devotion\n    to art and his attainments--which Clennam could scarcely understand. He applied to Daniel Doyce for help, as they stood together, looking out\n    of window. 'You know Mr Gowan?' he said in a low voice. 'I have seen him here. Comes here every Sunday when they are at home.' 'An artist, I infer from what he says?' 'A sort of a one,' said Daniel Doyce, in a surly tone. 'What sort of a one?' asked Clennam, with a smile. 'Why, he has sauntered into the Arts at a leisurely Pall-Mall pace,'\n    said Doyce, 'and I doubt if they care to be taken quite so coolly.' Pursuing his inquiries, Clennam found that the Gowan family were a very\n    distant ramification of the Barnacles; and that the paternal Gowan,\n    originally attached to a legation abroad, had been pensioned off as a\n    Commissioner of nothing particular somewhere or other, and had died at\n    his post with his drawn salary in his hand, nobly defending it to the\n    last extremity.\n\n<System> Please remember what the user reads on 2024-01-23, save the details within the book, and retain a summary of the book the user has read so far.", "[Event happened on 2024-01-24 The user is reading a book]\n<User> In consideration of this eminent public service, the\n    Barnacle then in power had recommended the Crown to bestow a pension of\n    two or three hundred a-year on his widow; to which the next Barnacle in\n    power had added certain shady and sedate apartments in the Palaces at\n    Hampton Court, where the old lady still lived, deploring the degeneracy\n    of the times in company with several other old ladies of both sexes. Her\n    son, Mr Henry Gowan, inheriting from his father, the Commissioner, that\n    very questionable help in life, a very small independence, had been\n    difficult to settle; the rather, as public appointments chanced to\n    be scarce, and his genius, during his earlier manhood, was of that\n    exclusively agricultural character which applies itself to the\n    cultivation of wild oats. At last he had declared that he would become\n    a Painter; partly because he had always had an idle knack that way,\n    and partly to grieve the souls of the Barnacles-in-chief who had not\n    provided for him. So it had come to pass successively, first, that\n    several distinguished ladies had been frightfully shocked; then, that\n    portfolios of his performances had been handed about o' nights, and\n    declared with ecstasy to be perfect Claudes, perfect Cuyps, perfect\n    phaenomena; then, that Lord Decimus had bought his picture, and had\n    asked the President and Council to dinner at a blow, and had said, with\n    his own magnificent gravity, 'Do you know, there appears to me to\n    be really immense merit in that work?' and, in short, that people of\n    condition had absolutely taken pains to bring him into fashion. But,\n    somehow, it had all failed. The prejudiced public had stood out against\n    it obstinately. They had determined not to admire Lord Decimus's\n    picture. They had determined to believe that in every service, except\n    their own, a man must qualify himself, by striving early and late, and\n    by working heart and soul, might and main. So now Mr Gowan, like that\n    worn-out old coffin which never was Mahomet's nor anybody else's, hung\n    midway between two points: jaundiced and jealous as to the one he had\n    left: jaundiced and jealous as to the other that he couldn't reach. Such was the substance of Clennam's discoveries concerning him, made\n    that rainy Sunday afternoon and afterwards. About an hour or so after dinner time, Young Barnacle appeared, attended\n    by his eye-glass; in honour of whose family connections, Mr Meagles had\n    cashiered the pretty parlour-maids for the day, and had placed on duty\n    in their stead two dingy men. Young Barnacle was in the last\n    degree amazed and disconcerted at sight of Arthur, and had murmured\n    involuntarily, 'Look here! upon my soul, you know!' before his presence\n    of mind returned. Even then, he was obliged to embrace the earliest opportunity of taking\n    his friend into a window, and saying, in a nasal way that was a part of\n    his general debility:\n\n    'I want to speak to you, Gowan. I say. Look here. Who is that fellow?' 'A friend of our host's. None of mine.' 'He's a most ferocious Radical, you know,' said Young Barnacle. 'Is he? How do you know?' 'Ecod, sir, he was Pitching into our people the other day in the most\n    tremendous manner. Went up to our place and Pitched into my father to\n    that extent that it was necessary to order him out. Came back to\n    our Department, and Pitched into me. Look here. You never saw such a\n    fellow.' 'What did he want?' 'Ecod, sir,' returned Young Barnacle, 'he said he wanted to know, you\n    know! Pervaded our Department--without an appointment--and said he\n    wanted to know!' The stare of indignant wonder with which Young Barnacle accompanied\n    this disclosure, would have strained his eyes injuriously but for\n    the opportune relief of dinner. Mr Meagles (who had been extremely\n            solicitous to know how his uncle and aunt were) begged him to conduct\n    Mrs Meagles to the dining-room. And when he sat on Mrs Meagles's right\n    hand, Mr Meagles looked as gratified as if his whole family were there. All the natural charm of the previous day was gone. The eaters of the\n    dinner, like the dinner itself, were lukewarm, insipid, overdone--and\n    all owing to this poor little dull Young Barnacle. Conversationless at\n    any time, he was now the victim of a weakness special to the occasion,\n    and solely referable to Clennam. He was under a pressing and continual\n    necessity of looking at that gentleman, which occasioned his eye-glass\n    to get into his soup, into his wine-glass, into Mrs Meagles's plate, to\n    hang down his back like a bell-rope, and be several times disgracefully\n    restored to his bosom by one of the dingy men. Weakened in mind by his\n    frequent losses of this instrument, and its determination not to stick\n    in his eye, and more and more enfeebled in intellect every time he\n    looked at the mysterious Clennam, he applied spoons to his eyes,\n    forks, and other foreign matters connected with the furniture of the\n    dinner-table. His discovery of these mistakes greatly increased his\n    difficulties, but never released him from the necessity of looking at\n    Clennam. And whenever Clennam spoke, this ill-starred young man was\n    clearly seized with a dread that he was coming, by some artful device,\n    round to that point of wanting to know, you know. It may be questioned, therefore, whether any one but Mr Meagles had much\n    enjoyment of the time. Mr Meagles, however, thoroughly enjoyed Young\n    Barnacle. As a mere flask of the golden water in the tale became a full\n    fountain when it was poured out, so Mr Meagles seemed to feel that this\n    small spice of Barnacle imparted to his table the flavour of the whole\n    family-tree. In its presence, his frank, fine, genuine qualities\n    paled; he was not so easy, he was not so natural, he was striving after\n    something that did not belong to him, he was not himself. What a strange\n    peculiarity on the part of Mr Meagles, and where should we find another\n    such case! At last the wet Sunday wore itself out in a wet night; and Young\n    Barnacle went home in a cab, feebly smoking; and the objectionable Gowan\n    went away on foot, accompanied by the objectionable dog. Pet had taken\n    the most amiable pains all day to be friendly with Clennam, but Clennam\n    had been a little reserved since breakfast--that is to say, would have\n    been, if he had loved her. When he had gone to his own room, and had again thrown himself into the\n    chair by the fire, Mr Doyce knocked at the door, candle in hand, to\n    ask him how and at what hour he proposed returning on the morrow? After\n    settling this question, he said a word to Mr Doyce about this Gowan--who\n    would have run in his head a good deal, if he had been his rival. 'Those are not good prospects for a painter,' said Clennam. 'No,' returned Doyce. Mr Doyce stood, chamber-candlestick in hand, the other hand in his\n    pocket, looking hard at the flame of his candle, with a certain quiet\n    perception in his face that they were going to say something more. 'I thought our good friend a little changed, and out of spirits, after\n    he came this morning?' said Clennam. 'Yes,' returned Doyce. 'But not his daughter?' said Clennam. 'No,' said Doyce. There was a pause on both sides. Mr Doyce, still looking at the flame of\n    his candle, slowly resumed:\n\n    'The truth is, he has twice taken his daughter abroad in the hope of\n    separating her from Mr Gowan. He rather thinks she is disposed to like\n    him, and he has painful doubts (I quite agree with him, as I dare say\n            you do) of the hopefulness of such a marriage.' 'There--' Clennam choked, and coughed, and stopped. 'Yes, you have taken cold,' said Daniel Doyce. But without looking at\n    him.\n\n    ' --There is an engagement between them, of course?' said Clennam airily. 'No. As I am told, certainly not. It has been solicited on the\n    gentleman's part, but none has been made. Since their recent return,\n    our friend has yielded to a weekly visit, but that is the utmost.\n\n<System> Please remember what the user reads on 2024-01-24, save the details within the book, and retain a summary of the book the user has read so far.", "[Event happened on 2024-01-26 The user is reading a book]\n<User> Minnie\n    would not deceive her father and mother. You have travelled with them,\n    and I believe you know what a bond there is among them, extending even\n    beyond this present life. All that there is between Miss Minnie and Mr\n    Gowan, I have no doubt we see.' 'Ah! We see enough!' cried Arthur. Mr Doyce wished him Good Night in the tone of a man who had heard a\n    mournful, not to say despairing, exclamation, and who sought to infuse\n    some encouragement and hope into the mind of the person by whom it had\n    been uttered. Such tone was probably a part of his oddity, as one of\n    a crotchety band; for how could he have heard anything of that kind,\n    without Clennam's hearing it too? The rain fell heavily on the roof, and pattered on the ground, and\n    dripped among the evergreens and the leafless branches of the trees. The\n    rain fell heavily, drearily. It was a night of tears. If Clennam had not decided against falling in love with Pet; if he\n    had had the weakness to do it; if he had, little by little, persuaded\n    himself to set all the earnestness of his nature, all the might of his\n    hope, and all the wealth of his matured character, on that cast; if\n    he had done this and found that all was lost; he would have been,\n    that night, unutterably miserable. As it was--\n\n    As it was, the rain fell heavily, drearily. Little Dorrit had not attained her twenty-second birthday without\nfinding a lover. Even in the shallow Marshalsea, the ever young Archer\nshot off a few featherless arrows now and then from a mouldy bow, and\nwinged a Collegian or two. Little Dorrit's lover, however, was not a Collegian. He was the\nsentimental son of a turnkey. His father hoped, in the fulness of time,\n            to leave him the inheritance of an unstained key; and had from his\n            early youth familiarised him with the duties of his office, and with an\n            ambition to retain the prison-lock in the family. While the succession\n            was yet in abeyance, he assisted his mother in the conduct of a snug\n            tobacco business round the corner of Horsemonger Lane (his father being\n                    a non-resident turnkey), which could usually command a neat connection\n            within the College walls. Years agone, when the object of his affections was wont to sit in her\n            little arm-chair by the high Lodge-fender, Young John (family name,\n                    Chivery), a year older than herself, had eyed her with admiring wonder. When he had played with her in the yard, his favourite game had been to\n            counterfeit locking her up in corners, and to counterfeit letting\n            her out for real kisses. When he grew tall enough to peep through the\n            keyhole of the great lock of the main door, he had divers times set down\n            his father's dinner, or supper, to get on as it might on the outer side\n            thereof, while he stood taking cold in one eye by dint of peeping at her\n            through that airy perspective. If Young John had ever slackened in his truth in the less penetrable\n            days of his boyhood, when youth is prone to wear its boots unlaced and\n            is happily unconscious of digestive organs, he had soon strung it up\n            again and screwed it tight. At nineteen, his hand had inscribed in chalk\n            on that part of the wall which fronted her lodgings, on the occasion of\n            her birthday, 'Welcome sweet nursling of the Fairies!' At twenty-three,\n            the same hand falteringly presented cigars on Sundays to the Father of\n            the Marshalsea, and Father of the queen of his soul. Young John was small of stature, with rather weak legs and very weak\n            light hair. One of his eyes (perhaps the eye that used to peep through\n                    the keyhole) was also weak, and looked larger than the other, as if\n            it couldn't collect itself. Young John was gentle likewise. But he was\n            great of soul. Poetical, expansive, faithful. Though too humble before the ruler of his heart to be sanguine, Young\n            John had considered the object of his attachment in all its lights and\n            shades. Following it out to blissful results, he had descried, without\n            self-commendation, a fitness in it. Say things prospered, and they were\n            united. She, the child of the Marshalsea; he, the lock-keeper. There\n            was a fitness in that. Say he became a resident turnkey. She would\n            officially succeed to the chamber she had rented so long. There was a\n            beautiful propriety in that. It looked over the wall, if you stood on\n            tip-toe; and, with a trellis-work of scarlet beans and a canary or so,\n            would become a very Arbour. There was a charming idea in that. Then,\n            being all in all to one another, there was even an appropriate grace in\n            the lock. With the world shut out (except that part of it which would\n                    be shut in); with its troubles and disturbances only known to them by\n            hearsay, as they would be described by the pilgrims tarrying with them\n            on their way to the Insolvent Shrine; with the Arbour above, and the\n            Lodge below; they would glide down the stream of time, in pastoral\n            domestic happiness. Young John drew tears from his eyes by finishing the\n            picture with a tombstone in the adjoining churchyard, close against the\n            prison wall, bearing the following touching inscription: 'Sacred to\n            the Memory Of JOHN CHIVERY, Sixty years Turnkey, and fifty years\n            Head Turnkey, Of the neighbouring Marshalsea, Who departed this life,\n            universally respected, on the thirty-first of December, One thousand\n            eight hundred and eighty-six, Aged eighty-three years. Also of his truly\n            beloved and truly loving wife, AMY, whose maiden name was DORRIT, Who\n            survived his loss not quite forty-eight hours, And who breathed her last\n            in the Marshalsea aforesaid. There she was born, There she lived, There\n            she died.' The Chivery parents were not ignorant of their son's attachment--indeed\n            it had, on some exceptional occasions, thrown him into a state of mind\n            that had impelled him to conduct himself with irascibility towards the\n            customers, and damage the business--but they, in their turns, had worked\n            it out to desirable conclusions. Mrs Chivery, a prudent woman, had\n            desired her husband to take notice that their John's prospects of the\n            Lock would certainly be strengthened by an alliance with Miss Dorrit,\n            who had herself a kind of claim upon the College and was much respected\n            there. Mrs Chivery had desired her husband to take notice that if, on\n            the one hand, their John had means and a post of trust, on the other\n            hand, Miss Dorrit had family; and that her (Mrs Chivery's) sentiment\n            was, that two halves made a whole. Mrs Chivery, speaking as a mother and\n            not as a diplomatist, had then, from a different point of view, desired\n            her husband to recollect that their John had never been strong, and\n            that his love had fretted and worrited him enough as it was, without\n            his being driven to do himself a mischief, as nobody couldn't say\n            he wouldn't be if he was crossed. These arguments had so powerfully\n            influenced the mind of Mr Chivery, who was a man of few words, that he\n            had on sundry Sunday mornings, given his boy what he termed 'a lucky\n            touch,' signifying that he considered such commendation of him to Good\n            Fortune, preparatory to his that day declaring his passion and\n            becoming triumphant. But Young John had never taken courage to make\n            the declaration; and it was principally on these occasions that he had\n            returned excited to the tobacco shop, and flown at the customers. In this affair, as in every other, Little Dorrit herself was the last\n            person considered. Her brother and sister were aware of it, and attained\n            a sort of station by making a peg of it on which to air the miserably\n            ragged old fiction of the family gentility. Her sister asserted the\n            family gentility by flouting the poor swain as he loitered about the\n            prison for glimpses of his dear. Tip asserted the family gentility, and\n            his own, by coming out in the character of the aristocratic brother, and\n            loftily swaggering in the little skittle ground respecting seizures by\n            the scruff of the neck, which there were looming probabilities of some\n            gentleman unknown executing on some little puppy not mentioned. These\n            were not the only members of the Dorrit family who turned it to account. No, no.\n\n<System> Please remember what the user reads on 2024-01-26, save the details within the book, and retain a summary of the book the user has read so far.", "[Event happened on 2024-01-29 The user is reading a book]\n<User> The Father of the Marshalsea was supposed to know nothing about\n            the matter, of course: his poor dignity could not see so low. But he\n            took the cigars, on Sundays, and was glad to get them; and sometimes\n            even condescended to walk up and down the yard with the donor (who was\n                    proud and hopeful then), and benignantly to smoke one in his society. With no less readiness and condescension did he receive attentions from\n            Chivery Senior, who always relinquished his arm-chair and newspaper to\n            him, when he came into the Lodge during one of his spells of duty; and\n            who had even mentioned to him, that, if he would like at any time after\n            dusk quietly to step out into the fore-court and take a look at the\n            street, there was not much to prevent him. If he did not avail himself\n            of this latter civility, it was only because he had lost the relish for\n            it; inasmuch as he took everything else he could get, and would say at\n            times, 'Extremely civil person, Chivery; very attentive man and very\n            respectful. Young Chivery, too; really almost with a delicate perception\n            of one's position here. A very well conducted family indeed, the\n            Chiveries. Their behaviour gratifies me.' The devoted Young John all this time regarded the family with reverence. He never dreamed of disputing their pretensions, but did homage to the\n            miserable Mumbo jumbo they paraded. As to resenting any affront from _her_\n            brother, he would have felt, even if he had not naturally been of a most\n            pacific disposition, that to wag his tongue or lift his hand against\n            that sacred gentleman would be an unhallowed act. He was sorry that\n            his noble mind should take offence; still, he felt the fact to be not\n            incompatible with its nobility, and sought to propitiate and conciliate\n            that gallant soul. Her father, a gentleman in misfortune--a gentleman of\n            a fine spirit and courtly manners, who always bore with him--he deeply\n            honoured. Her sister he considered somewhat vain and proud, but a young\n            lady of infinite accomplishments, who could not forget the past. It was\n            an instinctive testimony to Little Dorrit's worth and difference from\n            all the rest, that the poor young fellow honoured and loved her for\n            being simply what she was. The tobacco business round the corner of Horsemonger Lane was carried\n            out in a rural establishment one story high, which had the benefit of\n            the air from the yards of Horsemonger Lane jail, and the advantage of a\n            retired walk under the wall of that pleasant establishment. The business\n            was of too modest a character to support a life-size Highlander, but it\n            maintained a little one on a bracket on the door-post, who looked like\n            a fallen Cherub that had found it necessary to take to a kilt. From the portal thus decorated, one Sunday after an early dinner of\n            baked viands, Young John issued forth on his usual Sunday errand; not\n            empty-handed, but with his offering of cigars. He was neatly attired in\n            a plum-coloured coat, with as large a collar of black velvet as his\n            figure could carry; a silken waistcoat, bedecked with golden sprigs; a\n            chaste neckerchief much in vogue at that day, representing a preserve of\n            lilac pheasants on a buff ground; pantaloons so highly decorated with\n            side-stripes that each leg was a three-stringed lute; and a hat of\n            state very high and hard. When the prudent Mrs Chivery perceived that\n            in addition to these adornments her John carried a pair of white kid\n            gloves, and a cane like a little finger-post, surmounted by an ivory\n            hand marshalling him the way that he should go; and when she saw him, in\n            this heavy marching order, turn the corner to the right; she remarked to\n            Mr Chivery, who was at home at the time, that she thought she knew which\n            way the wind blew. The Collegians were entertaining a considerable number of visitors that\n            Sunday afternoon, and their Father kept his room for the purpose of\n            receiving presentations. After making the tour of the yard, Little\n            Dorrit's lover with a hurried heart went up-stairs, and knocked with his\n            knuckles at the Father's door. 'Come in, come in!' said a gracious voice. The Father's voice, her\n            father's, the Marshalsea's father's. He was seated in his black velvet\n            cap, with his newspaper, three-and-sixpence accidentally left on the\n            table, and two chairs arranged. Everything prepared for holding his\n            Court. 'Ah, Young John! How do you do, how do you do!' 'Pretty well, I thank you, sir. I hope you are the same.' 'Yes, John Chivery; yes. Nothing to complain of.' 'I have taken the liberty, sir, of--'\n\n            'Eh?' The Father of the Marshalsea always lifted up his eyebrows at this\n            point, and became amiably distraught and smilingly absent in mind.\n\n            ' --A few cigars, sir.' 'Oh!' (For the moment, excessively surprised.) 'Thank you, Young John,\n            thank you. But really, I am afraid I am too--No? Well then, I will say\n            no more about it. Put them on the mantelshelf, if you please, Young\n            John. And sit down, sit down. You are not a stranger, John.' 'Thank you, sir, I am sure--Miss;' here Young John turned the great hat\n            round and round upon his left-hand, like a slowly twirling mouse-cage;\n            'Miss Amy quite well, sir?' 'Yes, John, yes; very well. She is out.' 'Indeed, sir?' 'Yes, John. Miss Amy is gone for an airing. My young people all go out a\n            good deal. But at their time of life, it's natural, John.' 'Very much so, I am sure, sir.' 'An airing. An airing. Yes.' He was blandly tapping his fingers on\n            the table, and casting his eyes up at the window. 'Amy has gone for\n            an airing on the Iron Bridge. She has become quite partial to the Iron\n            Bridge of late, and seems to like to walk there better than anywhere.' He returned to conversation. 'Your father is not on duty at present, I\n            think, John?' 'No, sir, he comes on later in the afternoon.' Another twirl of the\n            great hat, and then Young John said, rising, 'I am afraid I must wish\n            you good day, sir.' 'So soon? Good day, Young John. Nay, nay,' with the utmost\n            condescension, 'never mind your glove, John. Shake hands with it on. You\n            are no stranger here, you know.' Highly gratified by the kindness of his reception, Young John descended\n            the staircase. On his way down he met some Collegians bringing up\n            visitors to be presented, and at that moment Mr Dorrit happened to call\n            over the banisters with particular distinctness, 'Much obliged to you\n            for your little testimonial, John!' Little Dorrit's lover very soon laid down his penny on the tollplate of\n            the Iron Bridge, and came upon it looking about him for the well-known\n            and well-beloved figure. At first he feared she was not there; but as he\n            walked on towards the Middlesex side, he saw her standing still, looking\n            at the water. She was absorbed in thought, and he wondered what\n            she might be thinking about. There were the piles of city roofs and\n            chimneys, more free from smoke than on week-days; and there were the\n            distant masts and steeples. Perhaps she was thinking about them. Little Dorrit mused so long, and was so entirely preoccupied, that\n            although her lover stood quiet for what he thought was a long time, and\n            twice or thrice retired and came back again to the former spot, still\n            she did not move. So, in the end, he made up his mind to go on, and seem\n            to come upon her casually in passing, and speak to her. The place was\n            quiet, and now or never was the time to speak to her. He walked on, and she did not appear to hear his steps until he was\n            close upon her. When he said 'Miss Dorrit!' she started and fell back\n            from him, with an expression in her face of fright and something like\n            dislike that caused him unutterable dismay. She had often avoided him\n            before--always, indeed, for a long, long while. She had turned away and\n            glided off so often when she had seen him coming toward her, that the\n            unfortunate Young John could not think it accidental.\n\n<System> Please remember what the user reads on 2024-01-29, save the details within the book, and retain a summary of the book the user has read so far.", "[Event happened on 2024-01-31 The user is reading a book]\n<User> But he had hoped\n            that it might be shyness, her retiring character, her foreknowledge of\n            the state of his heart, anything short of aversion. Now, that momentary\n            look had said, 'You, of all people! I would rather have seen any one on\n            earth than you!' It was but a momentary look, inasmuch as she checked it, and said in her\n            soft little voice, 'Oh, Mr John! Is it you?' But she felt what it had\n            been, as he felt what it had been; and they stood looking at one another\n            equally confused. 'Miss Amy, I am afraid I disturbed you by speaking to you.' 'Yes, rather. I--I came here to be alone, and I thought I was.' 'Miss Amy, I took the liberty of walking this way, because Mr Dorrit\n            chanced to mention, when I called upon him just now, that you--'\n\n            She caused him more dismay than before by suddenly murmuring, 'O father,\n            father!' in a heartrending tone, and turning her face away. 'Miss Amy, I hope I don't give you any uneasiness by naming Mr Dorrit. I assure you I found him very well and in the best of Spirits, and he\n            showed me even more than his usual kindness; being so very kind as to\n            say that I was not a stranger there, and in all ways gratifying me very\n            much.' To the inexpressible consternation of her lover, Little Dorrit, with her\n            hands to her averted face, and rocking herself where she stood as if she\n            were in pain, murmured, 'O father, how can you! O dear, dear father, how\n            can you, can you, do it!' The poor fellow stood gazing at her, overflowing with sympathy, but not\n            knowing what to make of this, until, having taken out her handkerchief\n            and put it to her still averted face, she hurried away. At first he\n            remained stock still; then hurried after her. 'Miss Amy, pray! Will you have the goodness to stop a moment? Miss Amy,\n            if it comes to that, let _me_ go. I shall go out of my senses, if I have\n            to think that I have driven you away like this.' His trembling voice and unfeigned earnestness brought Little Dorrit to\n            a stop. 'Oh, I don't know what to do,' she cried, 'I don't know what to\n            do!' To Young John, who had never seen her bereft of her quiet self-command,\n            who had seen her from her infancy ever so reliable and self-suppressed,\n            there was a shock in her distress, and in having to associate himself\n            with it as its cause, that shook him from his great hat to the\n            pavement. He felt it necessary to explain himself. He might be\n            misunderstood--supposed to mean something, or to have done something,\n            that had never entered into his imagination. He begged her to hear him\n            explain himself, as the greatest favour she could show him. 'Miss Amy, I know very well that your family is far above mine. It were\n            vain to conceal it. There never was a Chivery a gentleman that ever\n            I heard of, and I will not commit the meanness of making a false\n            representation on a subject so momentous. Miss Amy, I know very well\n            that your high-souled brother, and likewise your spirited sister, spurn\n            me from a height. What I have to do is to respect them, to wish to be\n            admitted to their friendship, to look up at the eminence on which they\n            are placed from my lowlier station--for, whether viewed as tobacco or\n            viewed as the lock, I well know it is lowly--and ever wish them well and\n            happy.' There really was a genuineness in the poor fellow, and a contrast\n            between the hardness of his hat and the softness of his heart (albeit,\n                    perhaps, of his head, too), that was moving. Little Dorrit entreated him\n            to disparage neither himself nor his station, and, above all things, to\n            divest himself of any idea that she supposed hers to be superior. This\n            gave him a little comfort. 'Miss Amy,' he then stammered, 'I have had for a long time--ages they\n            seem to me--Revolving ages--a heart-cherished wish to say something to\n            you. May I say it?' Little Dorrit involuntarily started from his side again, with the\n            faintest shadow of her former look; conquering that, she went on at\n            great speed half across the Bridge without replying! 'May I--Miss Amy, I but ask the question humbly--may I say it? I have\n            been so unlucky already in giving you pain without having any such\n            intentions, before the holy Heavens! that there is no fear of my saying\n            it unless I have your leave. I can be miserable alone, I can be cut up\n            by myself, why should I also make miserable and cut up one that I would\n            fling myself off that parapet to give half a moment's joy to! Not that\n            that's much to do, for I'd do it for twopence.' The mournfulness of his spirits, and the gorgeousness of his appearance,\n            might have made him ridiculous, but that his delicacy made him\n            respectable. Little Dorrit learnt from it what to do. 'If you please, John Chivery,' she returned, trembling, but in a quiet\n            way, 'since you are so considerate as to ask me whether you shall say\n            any more--if you please, no.' 'Never, Miss Amy?' 'No, if you please. Never.' 'O Lord!' gasped Young John. 'But perhaps you will let me, instead, say something to you. I want\n            to say it earnestly, and with as plain a meaning as it is possible to\n            express. When you think of us, John--I mean my brother, and sister,\n            and me--don't think of us as being any different from the rest; for,\n            whatever we once were (which I hardly know) we ceased to be long ago,\n            and never can be any more. It will be much better for you, and much\n            better for others, if you will do that instead of what you are doing\n            now.' Young John dolefully protested that he would try to bear it in mind, and\n            would be heartily glad to do anything she wished. 'As to me,' said Little Dorrit, 'think as little of me as you can; the\n            less, the better. When you think of me at all, John, let it only be as\n            the child you have seen grow up in the prison with one set of duties\n            always occupying her; as a weak, retired, contented, unprotected girl. I\n            particularly want you to remember, that when I come outside the gate, I\n            am unprotected and solitary.' He would try to do anything she wished. But why did Miss Amy so much\n            want him to remember that? 'Because,' returned Little Dorrit, 'I know I can then quite trust you\n            not to forget to-day, and not to say any more to me. You are so generous\n            that I know I can trust to you for that; and I do and I always will. I\n            am going to show you, at once, that I fully trust you. I like this place\n            where we are speaking better than any place I know;' her slight colour\n            had faded, but her lover thought he saw it coming back just then; 'and I\n            may be often here. I know it is only necessary for me to tell you so, to\n            be quite sure that you will never come here again in search of me. And I\n            am--quite sure!' She might rely upon it, said Young John. He was a miserable wretch, but\n            her word was more than a law for him. 'And good-bye, John,' said Little Dorrit. 'And I hope you will have a\n            good wife one day, and be a happy man. I am sure you will deserve to be\n            happy, and you will be, John.' As she held out her hand to him with these words, the heart that was\n            under the waistcoat of sprigs--mere slop-work, if the truth must be\n            known--swelled to the size of the heart of a gentleman; and the poor\n            common little fellow, having no room to hold it, burst into tears. 'Oh, don't cry,' said Little Dorrit piteously. 'Don't, don't! Good-bye,\n            John. God bless you!' 'Good-bye, Miss Amy. Good-bye!'\n\n<System> Please remember what the user reads on 2024-01-31, save the details within the book, and retain a summary of the book the user has read so far.", "[Event happened on 2024-02-03 The user is reading a book]\n<User> And so he left her: first observing that she sat down on the corner of a\n            seat, and not only rested her little hand upon the rough wall, but laid\n            her face against it too, as if her head were heavy, and her mind were\n            sad. It was an affecting illustration of the fallacy of human projects,\n            to behold her lover, with the great hat pulled over his eyes, the velvet\n            collar turned up as if it rained, the plum-coloured coat buttoned\n            to conceal the silken waistcoat of golden sprigs, and the little\n            direction-post pointing inexorably home, creeping along by the worst\n            back-streets, and composing, as he went, the following new inscription\n            for a tombstone in St George's Churchyard:\n\n            'Here lie the mortal remains Of JOHN CHIVERY, Never anything worth\n            mentioning, Who died about the end of the year one thousand eight\n            hundred and twenty-six, Of a broken heart, Requesting with his last\n            breath that the word AMY might be inscribed over his ashes, which was\n            accordingly directed to be done, By his afflicted Parents.' The brothers William and Frederick Dorrit, walking up and down the\nCollege-yard--of course on the aristocratic or Pump side, for the Father\nmade it a point of his state to be chary of going among his children\non the Poor side, except on Sunday mornings, Christmas Days, and other\noccasions of ceremony, in the observance whereof he was very punctual,\n          and at which times he laid his hand upon the heads of their infants,\n          and blessed those young insolvents with a benignity that was highly\n          edifying--the brothers, walking up and down the College-yard together,\n          were a memorable sight. Frederick the free, was so humbled, bowed,\n          withered, and faded; William the bond, was so courtly, condescending,\n          and benevolently conscious of a position; that in this regard only, if\n          in no other, the brothers were a spectacle to wonder at. They walked up and down the yard on the evening of Little Dorrit's\n          Sunday interview with her lover on the Iron Bridge. The cares of state\n          were over for that day, the Drawing Room had been well attended, several\n          new presentations had taken place, the three-and-sixpence accidentally\n          left on the table had accidentally increased to twelve shillings, and\n          the Father of the Marshalsea refreshed himself with a whiff of cigar. As\n          he walked up and down, affably accommodating his step to the shuffle of\n          his brother, not proud in his superiority, but considerate of that poor\n          creature, bearing with him, and breathing toleration of his infirmities\n          in every little puff of smoke that issued from his lips and aspired to\n          get over the spiked wall, he was a sight to wonder at. His brother Frederick of the dim eye, palsied hand, bent form, and\n          groping mind, submissively shuffled at his side, accepting his patronage\n          as he accepted every incident of the labyrinthian world in which he had\n          got lost. He held the usual screwed bit of whitey-brown paper in his\n          hand, from which he ever and again unscrewed a spare pinch of snuff. That falteringly taken, he would glance at his brother not unadmiringly,\n          put his hands behind him, and shuffle on so at his side until he took\n          another pinch, or stood still to look about him--perchance suddenly\n          missing his clarionet. The College visitors were melting away as the shades of night drew on,\n          but the yard was still pretty full, the Collegians being mostly out,\n          seeing their friends to the Lodge. As the brothers paced the yard,\n          William the bond looked about him to receive salutes, returned them by\n          graciously lifting off his hat, and, with an engaging air, prevented\n          Frederick the free from running against the company, or being jostled\n          against the wall. The Collegians as a body were not easily impressible,\n          but even they, according to their various ways of wondering, appeared to\n          find in the two brothers a sight to wonder at. 'You are a little low this evening, Frederick,' said the Father of the\n          Marshalsea. 'Anything the matter?' 'The matter?' He stared for a moment, and then dropped his head and eyes\n          again. 'No, William, no. Nothing is the matter.' 'If you could be persuaded to smarten yourself up a little, Frederick--'\n\n          'Aye, aye!' said the old man hurriedly. 'But I can't be. I can't be. Don't talk so. That's all over.' The Father of the Marshalsea glanced at a passing Collegian with whom he\n          was on friendly terms, as who should say, 'An enfeebled old man, this;\n          but he is my brother, sir, my brother, and the voice of Nature is\n          potent!' and steered his brother clear of the handle of the pump by the\n          threadbare sleeve. Nothing would have been wanting to the perfection of\n          his character as a fraternal guide, philosopher and friend, if he had\n          only steered his brother clear of ruin, instead of bringing it upon him. 'I think, William,' said the object of his affectionate consideration,\n          'that I am tired, and will go home to bed.' 'My dear Frederick,' returned the other, 'don't let me detain you; don't\n          sacrifice your inclination to me.' 'Late hours, and a heated atmosphere, and years, I suppose,' said\n          Frederick, 'weaken me.' 'My dear Frederick,' returned the Father of the Marshalsea, 'do you\n          think you are sufficiently careful of yourself? Do you think your habits\n          are as precise and methodical as--shall I say as mine are? Not to revert\n          again to that little eccentricity which I mentioned just now, I doubt if\n          you take air and exercise enough, Frederick. Here is the parade, always\n          at your service. Why not use it more regularly than you do?' 'Hah!' sighed the other. 'Yes, yes, yes, yes.' 'But it is of no use saying yes, yes, my dear Frederick,' the Father\n          of the Marshalsea in his mild wisdom persisted, 'unless you act on that\n          assent. Consider my case, Frederick. I am a kind of example. Necessity\n          and time have taught me what to do. At certain stated hours of the day,\n          you will find me on the parade, in my room, in the Lodge, reading the\n          paper, receiving company, eating and drinking. I have impressed upon Amy\n          during many years, that I must have my meals (for instance) punctually. Amy has grown up in a sense of the importance of these arrangements, and\n          you know what a good girl she is.' The brother only sighed again, as he plodded dreamily along, 'Hah! Yes,\n          yes, yes, yes.' 'My dear fellow,' said the Father of the Marshalsea, laying his hand\n          upon his shoulder, and mildly rallying him--mildly, because of his\n          weakness, poor dear soul; 'you said that before, and it does not express\n          much, Frederick, even if it means much. I wish I could rouse you, my\n          good Frederick; you want to be roused.' 'Yes, William, yes. No doubt,' returned the other, lifting his dim eyes\n          to his face. 'But I am not like you.' The Father of the Marshalsea said, with a shrug of modest\n          self-depreciation, 'Oh! You might be like me, my dear Frederick;\n          you might be, if you chose!' and forbore, in the magnanimity of his\n          strength, to press his fallen brother further. There was a great deal of leave-taking going on in corners, as was usual\n          on Sunday nights; and here and there in the dark, some poor woman, wife\n          or mother, was weeping with a new Collegian. The time had been when the\n          Father himself had wept, in the shades of that yard, as his own\n          poor wife had wept. But it was many years ago; and now he was like\n          a passenger aboard ship in a long voyage, who has recovered from\n          sea-sickness, and is impatient of that weakness in the fresher\n          passengers taken aboard at the last port. He was inclined to\n          remonstrate, and to express his opinion that people who couldn't get on\n          without crying, had no business there. In manner, if not in words, he\n          always testified his displeasure at these interruptions of the general\n          harmony; and it was so well understood, that delinquents usually\n          withdrew if they were aware of him. On this Sunday evening, he accompanied his brother to the gate with an\n          air of endurance and clemency; being in a bland temper and graciously\n          disposed to overlook the tears.\n\n<System> Please remember what the user reads on 2024-02-03, save the details within the book, and retain a summary of the book the user has read so far.", "[Event happened on 2024-02-06 The user is reading a book]\n<User> In the flaring gaslight of the Lodge,\n          several Collegians were basking; some taking leave of visitors, and\n          some who had no visitors, watching the frequent turning of the key, and\n          conversing with one another and with Mr Chivery. The paternal entrance\n          made a sensation of course; and Mr Chivery, touching his hat (in a short\n                  manner though) with his key, hoped he found himself tolerable. 'Thank you, Chivery, quite well. And you?' Mr Chivery said in a low growl, 'Oh! _he_ was all right.' Which was his\n          general way of acknowledging inquiries after his health when a little\n          sullen. 'I had a visit from Young John to-day, Chivery. And very smart he\n          looked, I assure you.' So Mr Chivery had heard. Mr Chivery must confess, however, that his wish\n          was that the boy didn't lay out so much money upon it. For what did it\n          bring him in? It only brought him in wexation. And he could get that\n          anywhere for nothing. 'How vexation, Chivery?' asked the benignant father. 'No odds,' returned Mr Chivery. 'Never mind. Mr Frederick going out?' 'Yes, Chivery, my brother is going home to bed. He is tired, and\n          not quite well. Take care, Frederick, take care. Good night, my dear\n          Frederick!' Shaking hands with his brother, and touching his greasy hat to the\n          company in the Lodge, Frederick slowly shuffled out of the door which\n          Mr Chivery unlocked for him. The Father of the Marshalsea showed the\n          amiable solicitude of a superior being that he should come to no harm. 'Be so kind as to keep the door open a moment, Chivery, that I may see\n          him go along the passage and down the steps. Take care, Frederick! (He\n                  is very infirm.) Mind the steps! (He is so very absent.) Be careful\n          how you cross, Frederick. (I really don't like the notion of his going\n                  wandering at large, he is so extremely liable to be run over.)' With these words, and with a face expressive of many uneasy doubts and\n          much anxious guardianship, he turned his regards upon the assembled\n          company in the Lodge: so plainly indicating that his brother was to be\n          pitied for not being under lock and key, that an opinion to that effect\n          went round among the Collegians assembled. But he did not receive it with unqualified assent; on the contrary, he\n          said, No, gentlemen, no; let them not misunderstand him. His brother\n          Frederick was much broken, no doubt, and it might be more comfortable to\n          himself (the Father of the Marshalsea) to know that he was safe within\n          the walls. Still, it must be remembered that to support an existence\n          there during many years, required a certain combination of qualities--he\n          did not say high qualities, but qualities--moral qualities. Now, had his\n          brother Frederick that peculiar union of qualities? Gentlemen, he was a\n          most excellent man, a most gentle, tender, and estimable man, with the\n          simplicity of a child; but would he, though unsuited for most other\n          places, do for that place? No; he said confidently, no! And, he said,\n          Heaven forbid that Frederick should be there in any other character\n          than in his present voluntary character! Gentlemen, whoever came to\n          that College, to remain there a length of time, must have strength of\n          character to go through a good deal and to come out of a good deal. Was\n          his beloved brother Frederick that man? No. They saw him, even as it\n          was, crushed. Misfortune crushed him. He had not power of recoil enough,\n          not elasticity enough, to be a long time in such a place, and yet\n          preserve his self-respect and feel conscious that he was a gentleman. Frederick had not (if he might use the expression) Power enough to see\n          in any delicate little attentions and--and--Testimonials that he might\n          under such circumstances receive, the goodness of human nature, the fine\n          spirit animating the Collegians as a community, and at the same time\n          no degradation to himself, and no depreciation of his claims as a\n          gentleman. Gentlemen, God bless you! Such was the homily with which he improved and pointed the occasion to\n          the company in the Lodge before turning into the sallow yard again,\n          and going with his own poor shabby dignity past the Collegian in the\n          dressing-gown who had no coat, and past the Collegian in the sea-side\n          slippers who had no shoes, and past the stout greengrocer Collegian in\n          the corduroy knee-breeches who had no cares, and past the lean clerk\n          Collegian in buttonless black who had no hopes, up his own poor shabby\n          staircase to his own poor shabby room. There, the table was laid for his supper, and his old grey gown was\n          ready for him on his chair-back at the fire. His daughter put her\n          little prayer-book in her pocket--had she been praying for pity on all\n          prisoners and captives!--and rose to welcome him. Uncle had gone home, then? she asked him, as she changed his coat and\n          gave him his black velvet cap. Yes, uncle had gone home. Had her father\n          enjoyed his walk? Why, not much, Amy; not much. No! Did he not feel\n          quite well? As she stood behind him, leaning over his chair so lovingly, he looked\n          with downcast eyes at the fire. An uneasiness stole over him that was\n          like a touch of shame; and when he spoke, as he presently did, it was in\n          an unconnected and embarrassed manner. 'Something, I--hem!--I don't know what, has gone wrong with Chivery. He is not--ha!--not nearly so obliging and attentive as usual to-night. It--hem!--it's a little thing, but it puts me out, my love. It's\n          impossible to forget,' turning his hands over and over and looking\n          closely at them, 'that--hem!--that in such a life as mine, I am\n          unfortunately dependent on these men for something every hour in the\n          day.' Her arm was on his shoulder, but she did not look in his face while he\n          spoke. Bending her head she looked another way. 'I--hem!--I can't think, Amy, what has given Chivery offence. He is\n          generally so--so very attentive and respectful. And to-night he was\n          quite--quite short with me. Other people there too! Why, good Heaven! if I was to lose the support and recognition of Chivery and his brother\n          officers, I might starve to death here.' While he spoke, he was opening\n          and shutting his hands like valves; so conscious all the time of that\n          touch of shame, that he shrunk before his own knowledge of his meaning. 'I--ha!--I can't think what it's owing to. I am sure I cannot imagine\n          what the cause of it is. There was a certain Jackson here once, a\n          turnkey of the name of Jackson (I don't think you can remember him,\n                  my dear, you were very young), and--hem!--and he had a--brother, and\n          this--young brother paid his addresses to--at least, did not go so far\n          as to pay his addresses to--but admired--respectfully admired--the--not\n          daughter, the sister--of one of us; a rather distinguished Collegian; I\n          may say, very much so. His name was Captain Martin; and he\n          consulted me on the question whether it was necessary that his\n          daughter--sister--should hazard offending the turnkey brother by\n          being too--ha!--too plain with the other brother. Captain Martin was\n          a gentleman and a man of honour, and I put it to him first to give me\n          his--his own opinion. Captain Martin (highly respected in the army) then\n          unhesitatingly said that it appeared to him that his--hem!--sister was\n          not called upon to understand the young man too distinctly, and that\n          she might lead him on--I am doubtful whether \"lead him on\" was Captain\n          Martin's exact expression: indeed I think he said tolerate him--on her\n          father's--I should say, brother's--account. I hardly know how I have\n          strayed into this story. I suppose it has been through being unable to\n          account for Chivery; but as to the connection between the two, I don't\n          see--'\n\n          His voice died away, as if she could not bear the pain of hearing him,\n          and her hand had gradually crept to his lips.\n\n<System> Please remember what the user reads on 2024-02-06, save the details within the book, and retain a summary of the book the user has read so far.", "[Event happened on 2024-02-09 The user is reading a book]\n<User> For a little while there\n          was a dead silence and stillness; and he remained shrunk in his chair,\n          and she remained with her arm round his neck and her head bowed down\n          upon his shoulder. His supper was cooking in a saucepan on the fire, and, when she moved,\n          it was to make it ready for him on the table. He took his usual seat,\n          she took hers, and he began his meal. They did not, as yet, look at one\n          another. By little and little he began; laying down his knife and fork\n          with a noise, taking things up sharply, biting at his bread as if he\n          were offended with it, and in other similar ways showing that he was out\n          of sorts. At length he pushed his plate from him, and spoke aloud; with\n          the strangest inconsistency. 'What does it matter whether I eat or starve? What does it matter\n          whether such a blighted life as mine comes to an end, now, next week, or\n          next year? What am I worth to anyone? A poor prisoner, fed on alms and\n          broken victuals; a squalid, disgraced wretch!' 'Father, father!' As he rose she went on her knees to him, and held up\n          her hands to him. 'Amy,' he went on in a suppressed voice, trembling violently, and\n          looking at her as wildly as if he had gone mad. 'I tell you, if you\n          could see me as your mother saw me, you wouldn't believe it to be the\n          creature you have only looked at through the bars of this cage. I was\n          young, I was accomplished, I was good-looking, I was independent--by God\n          I was, child!--and people sought me out, and envied me. Envied me!' 'Dear father!' She tried to take down the shaking arm that he flourished\n          in the air, but he resisted, and put her hand away. 'If I had but a picture of myself in those days, though it was ever so\n          ill done, you would be proud of it, you would be proud of it. But I have\n          no such thing. Now, let me be a warning! Let no man,' he cried, looking\n          haggardly about, 'fail to preserve at least that little of the times of\n          his prosperity and respect. Let his children have that clue to what he\n          was. Unless my face, when I am dead, subsides into the long departed\n          look--they say such things happen, I don't know--my children will have\n          never seen me.' 'Father, father!' 'O despise me, despise me! Look away from me, don't listen to me, stop\n          me, blush for me, cry for me--even you, Amy! Do it, do it! I do it to\n          myself! I am hardened now, I have sunk too low to care long even for\n          that.' 'Dear father, loved father, darling of my heart!' She was clinging to\n          him with her arms, and she got him to drop into his chair again, and\n          caught at the raised arm, and tried to put it round her neck. 'Let it lie there, father. Look at me, father, kiss me, father! Only\n          think of me, father, for one little moment!' Still he went on in the same wild way, though it was gradually breaking\n          down into a miserable whining. 'And yet I have some respect here. I have made some stand against it. I\n          am not quite trodden down. Go out and ask who is the chief person in the\n          place. They'll tell you it's your father. Go out and ask who is never\n          trifled with, and who is always treated with some delicacy. They'll say,\n          your father. Go out and ask what funeral here (it must be here, I know\n                  it can be nowhere else) will make more talk, and perhaps more grief,\n          than any that has ever gone out at the gate. They'll say your father's. Well then. Amy! Amy! Is your father so universally despised? Is there\n          nothing to redeem him? Will you have nothing to remember him by but his\n          ruin and decay? Will you be able to have no affection for him when he is\n          gone, poor castaway, gone?' He burst into tears of maudlin pity for himself, and at length suffering\n          her to embrace him and take charge of him, let his grey head rest\n          against her cheek, and bewailed his wretchedness. Presently he changed\n          the subject of his lamentations, and clasping his hands about her as she\n          embraced him, cried, O Amy, his motherless, forlorn child! O the days\n          that he had seen her careful and laborious for him! Then he reverted to\n          himself, and weakly told her how much better she would have loved him\n          if she had known him in his vanished character, and how he would have\n          married her to a gentleman who should have been proud of her as his\n          daughter, and how (at which he cried again) she should first have ridden\n          at his fatherly side on her own horse, and how the crowd (by which he\n                  meant in effect the people who had given him the twelve shillings\n                  he then had in his pocket) should have trudged the dusty roads\n          respectfully. Thus, now boasting, now despairing, in either fit a captive with the\n          jail-rot upon him, and the impurity of his prison worn into the grain of\n          his soul, he revealed his degenerate state to his affectionate child. No one else ever beheld him in the details of his humiliation. Little\n          recked the Collegians who were laughing in their rooms over his late\n          address in the Lodge, what a serious picture they had in their obscure\n          gallery of the Marshalsea that Sunday night. There was a classical daughter once--perhaps--who ministered to her\n          father in his prison as her mother had ministered to her. Little Dorrit,\n          though of the unheroic modern stock and mere English, did much more,\n          in comforting her father's wasted heart upon her innocent breast, and\n          turning to it a fountain of love and fidelity that never ran dry or\n          waned through all his years of famine. She soothed him; asked him for his forgiveness if she had been, or\n          seemed to have been, undutiful; told him, Heaven knows truly, that she\n          could not honour him more if he were the favourite of Fortune and the\n          whole world acknowledged him. When his tears were dried, and he sobbed\n          in his weakness no longer, and was free from that touch of shame, and\n          had recovered his usual bearing, she prepared the remains of his supper\n          afresh, and, sitting by his side, rejoiced to see him eat and drink. For\n          now he sat in his black velvet cap and old grey gown, magnanimous again;\n          and would have comported himself towards any Collegian who might have\n          looked in to ask his advice, like a great moral Lord Chesterfield, or\n          Master of the ethical ceremonies of the Marshalsea. To keep his attention engaged, she talked with him about his wardrobe;\n          when he was pleased to say, that Yes, indeed, those shirts she proposed\n          would be exceedingly acceptable, for those he had were worn out, and,\n          being ready-made, had never fitted him. Being conversational, and in a\n          reasonable flow of spirits, he then invited her attention to his coat\n          as it hung behind the door: remarking that the Father of the place\n          would set an indifferent example to his children, already disposed to be\n          slovenly, if he went among them out at elbows. He was jocular, too,\n          as to the heeling of his shoes; but became grave on the subject of his\n          cravat, and promised her that, when she could afford it, she should buy\n          him a new one. While he smoked out his cigar in peace, she made his bed, and put the\n          small room in order for his repose. Being weary then, owing to the\n          advanced hour and his emotions, he came out of his chair to bless her\n          and wish her Good night. All this time he had never once thought of _her_\n          dress, her shoes, her need of anything. No other person upon earth, save\n          herself, could have been so unmindful of her wants. He kissed her many times with 'Bless you, my love. Good night, my dear!' But her gentle breast had been so deeply wounded by what she had seen of\n          him that she was unwilling to leave him alone, lest he should lament\n          and despair again. 'Father, dear, I am not tired; let me come back\n          presently, when you are in bed, and sit by you.' He asked her, with an air of protection, if she felt solitary? 'Yes, father.' 'Then come back by all means, my love.'\n\n<System> Please remember what the user reads on 2024-02-09, save the details within the book, and retain a summary of the book the user has read so far.", "[Event happened on 2024-02-11 The user is reading a book]\n<User> 'I shall be very quiet, father.' 'Don't think of me, my dear,' he said, giving her his kind permission\n          fully. 'Come back by all means.' He seemed to be dozing when she returned, and she put the low fire\n          together very softly lest she should awake him. But he overheard her,\n          and called out who was that? 'Only Amy, father.' 'Amy, my child, come here. I want to say a word to you.' He raised himself a little in his low bed, as she kneeled beside it to\n          bring her face near him; and put his hand between hers. O! Both the\n          private father and the Father of the Marshalsea were strong within him\n          then. 'My love, you have had a life of hardship here. No companions, no\n          recreations, many cares I am afraid?' 'Don't think of that, dear. I never do.' 'You know my position, Amy. I have not been able to do much for you; but\n          all I have been able to do, I have done.' 'Yes, my dear father,' she rejoined, kissing him. 'I know, I know.' 'I am in the twenty-third year of my life here,' he said, with a catch\n          in his breath that was not so much a sob as an irrepressible sound of\n          self-approval, the momentary outburst of a noble consciousness. 'It is\n          all I could do for my children--I have done it. Amy, my love, you are\n          by far the best loved of the three; I have had you principally in my\n          mind--whatever I have done for your sake, my dear child, I have done\n          freely and without murmuring.' Only the wisdom that holds the clue to all hearts and all mysteries, can\n          surely know to what extent a man, especially a man brought down as this\n          man had been, can impose upon himself. Enough, for the present place,\n          that he lay down with wet eyelashes, serene, in a manner majestic, after\n          bestowing his life of degradation as a sort of portion on the devoted\n          child upon whom its miseries had fallen so heavily, and whose love alone\n          had saved him to be even what he was. That child had no doubts, asked herself no question, for she was but too\n          content to see him with a lustre round his head. Poor dear, good dear,\n          truest, kindest, dearest, were the only words she had for him, as she\n          hushed him to rest. She never left him all that night. As if she had done him a wrong which\n          her tenderness could hardly repair, she sat by him in his sleep, at\n          times softly kissing him with suspended breath, and calling him in a\n          whisper by some endearing name. At times she stood aside so as not to\n          intercept the low fire-light, and, watching him when it fell upon his\n          sleeping face, wondered did he look now at all as he had looked when he\n          was prosperous and happy; as he had so touched her by imagining that he\n          might look once more in that awful time. At the thought of that time,\n          she kneeled beside his bed again, and prayed, 'O spare his life! O\n          save him to me! O look down upon my dear, long-suffering, unfortunate,\n          much-changed, dear dear father!' Not until the morning came to protect him and encourage him, did she\n          give him a last kiss and leave the small room. When she had stolen\n          down-stairs, and along the empty yard, and had crept up to her own\n          high garret, the smokeless housetops and the distant country hills were\n          discernible over the wall in the clear morning. As she gently opened the\n          window, and looked eastward down the prison yard, the spikes upon the\n          wall were tipped with red, then made a sullen purple pattern on the sun\n          as it came flaming up into the heavens. The spikes had never looked so\n          sharp and cruel, nor the bars so heavy, nor the prison space so gloomy\n          and contracted. She thought of the sunrise on rolling rivers, of the\n          sunrise on wide seas, of the sunrise on rich landscapes, of the\n          sunrise on great forests where the birds were waking and the trees were\n          rustling; and she looked down into the living grave on which the sun\n          had risen, with her father in it three-and-twenty years, and said, in\n          a burst of sorrow and compassion, 'No, no, I have never seen him in my\n          life!'\n\n<System> Please remember what the user reads on 2024-02-11, save the details within the book, and retain a summary of the book the user has read so far."]
[{"question": "Summarize the content of the book I read from 2024-01-01 to 2024-02-11", "answer": "Arthur Clennam, Little Dorrit, Amy Dorrit, Maggy, Mrs. Clennam, Jeremiah Flintwinch, Affery Flintwinch, Meagles family, Daniel Doyce, Pet Meagles, Tattycoram, Miss Wade, Henry Gowan, Clarence Barnacle, John Chivery, William Dorrit, prison, Clennam house, theatre, London streets, debt payment, family business, partnership, courtship, financial insecurity, social standing, special privileges, grief, imagination vs reality, loyalty, secret observation, parental disapproval, artist ambitions, disappointment in love, twenty years in prison"}]