to her (which, in his
gallantry, he had proposed), the envoy threw open the door, and
escorted Mrs General to the presence. It was quite a walk, by mysterious
staircases and corridors, from Mrs General's apartment,--hoodwinked by
a narrow side street with a low gloomy bridge in it, and dungeon-like
opposite tenements, their walls besmeared with a thousand downward
stains and streaks, as if every crazy aperture in them had been weeping
tears of rust into the Adriatic for centuries--to Mr Dorrit's apartment:
with a whole English house-front of window, a prospect of beautiful
church-domes rising into the blue sky sheer out of the water which
reflected them, and a hushed murmur of the Grand Canal laving the
doorways below, where his gondolas and gondoliers attended his pleasure,
drowsily swinging in a little forest of piles.

Mr Dorrit, in a resplendent dressing-gown and cap--the dormant grub that
had so long bided its time among the Collegians had burst into a rare
butterfly--rose to receive Mrs General. A chair to Mrs General. An
easier chair, sir; what are you doing, what are you about, what do you
mean? Now, leave us!

'Mrs General,' said Mr Dorrit, 'I took the liberty--'

'By no means,' Mrs General interposed. 'I was quite at your disposition.
I had had my coffee.'

'--I took the liberty,' said Mr Dorrit again, with the magnificent
placidity of one who was above correction, 'to solicit the favour of
a little private conversation with you, because I feel rather worried
respecting my--ha--my younger daughter. You will have observed a great
difference of temperament, madam, between my two daughters?'

Said Mrs General in response, crossing her gloved hands (she was never
without gloves, and they never creased and always fitted), 'There is a
great difference.'

'May I ask to be favoured with your view of it?' said Mr Dorrit, with a
deference not incompatible with majestic serenity.

'Fanny,' returned Mrs General, 'has force of character and
self-reliance. Amy, none.'

None? O Mrs General, ask the Marshalsea stones and bars. O Mrs General,
ask the milliner who taught her to work, and the dancing-master who
taught her sister to dance. O Mrs General, Mrs General, ask me, her
father, what I owe her; and hear my testimony touching the life of this
slighted little creature from her childhood up!

No such adjuration entered Mr. Dorrit's head. He looked at Mrs
General, seated in her usual erect attitude on her coach-bo