at were always kept
in waiting, moored to painted posts at the door--when she could escape
from the attendance of that oppressive maid, who was her mistress, and
a very hard one--and would be taken all over the strange city. Social
people in other gondolas began to ask each other who the little solitary
girl was whom they passed, sitting in her boat with folded hands,
looking so pensively and wonderingly about her. Never thinking that
it would be worth anybody's while to notice her or her doings, Little
Dorrit, in her quiet, scared, lost manner, went about the city none the
less.

But her favourite station was the balcony of her own room, overhanging
the canal, with other balconies below, and none above. It was of massive
stone darkened by ages, built in a wild fancy which came from the East
to that collection of wild fancies; and Little Dorrit was little indeed,
leaning on the broad-cushioned ledge, and looking over. As she liked no
place of an evening half so well, she soon began to be watched for, and
many eyes in passing gondolas were raised, and many people said, There
was the little figure of the English girl who was always alone.

Such people were not realities to the little figure of the English girl;
such people were all unknown to her. She would watch the sunset, in its
long low lines of purple and red, and its burning flush high up into
the sky: so glowing on the buildings, and so lightening their structure,
that it made them look as if their strong walls were transparent, and
they shone from within. She would watch those glories expire; and then,
after looking at the black gondolas underneath, taking guests to music
and dancing, would raise her eyes to the shining stars. Was there no
party of her own, in other times, on which the stars had shone? To think
of that old gate now! She would think of that old gate, and of herself
sitting at it in the dead of the night, pillowing Maggy's head; and of
other places and of other scenes associated with those different times.
And then she would lean upon her balcony, and look over at the water,
as though they all lay underneath it. When she got to that, she would
musingly watch its running, as if, in the general vision, it might run
dry, and show her the prison again, and herself, and the old room, and
the old inmates, and the old visitors: all lasting realities that had
never changed.

CHAPTER 4. A Letter from Little Dorrit

Dear Mr Clennam,

I write to