upon me. I'll do the
best I can for the money; and if the best should be bad, why even then,
you may probably have a bad picture with a small name to it, instead of
a bad picture with a large name to it.'

This tone, though not what he had expected, on the whole suited Mr
Dorrit remarkably well. It showed that the gentleman, highly connected,
and not a mere workman, would be under an obligation to him. He
expressed his satisfaction in placing himself in Mr Gowan's hands, and
trusted that he would have the pleasure, in their characters of private
gentlemen, of improving his acquaintance.

'You are very good,' said Gowan. 'I have not forsworn society since I
joined the brotherhood of the brush (the most delightful fellows on the
face of the earth), and am glad enough to smell the old fine gunpowder
now and then, though it did blow me into mid-air and my present calling.
You'll not think, Mr Dorrit,' and here he laughed again in the easiest
way, 'that I am lapsing into the freemasonry of the craft--for it's not
so; upon my life I can't help betraying it wherever I go, though, by
Jupiter, I love and honour the craft with all my might--if I propose a
stipulation as to time and place?'

Ha! Mr Dorrit could erect no--hum--suspicion of that kind on Mr Gowan's
frankness.

'Again you are very good,' said Gowan. 'Mr Dorrit, I hear you are going
to Rome. I am going to Rome, having friends there. Let me begin to do
you the injustice I have conspired to do you, there--not here. We shall
all be hurried during the rest of our stay here; and though there's not
a poorer man with whole elbows in Venice, than myself, I have not quite
got all the Amateur out of me yet--comprising the trade again, you
see!--and can't fall on to order, in a hurry, for the mere sake of the
sixpences.' These remarks were not less favourably received by Mr Dorrit
than their predecessors. They were the prelude to the first reception of
Mr and Mrs Gowan at dinner, and they skilfully placed Gowan on his usual
ground in the new family.

His wife, too, they placed on her usual ground. Miss Fanny understood,
with particular distinctness, that Mrs Gowan's good looks had cost her
husband very dear; that there had been a great disturbance about her
in the Barnacle family; and that the Dowager Mrs Gowan, nearly
heart-broken, had resolutely set her face against the marriage until
overpowered by her maternal feelings. Mrs General likewise clearly
understood that the a