exemplary demolition of him,
would have the hardihood to hint that the more the Circumlocution Office
did, the less was done, and that the greatest blessing it could confer
on an unhappy public would be to do nothing.

With sufficient occupation on his hands, now that he had this additional
task--such a task had many and many a serviceable man died of before his
day--Arthur Clennam led a life of slight variety. Regular visits to his
mother's dull sick room, and visits scarcely less regular to Mr Meagles
at Twickenham, were its only changes during many months.

He sadly and sorely missed Little Dorrit. He had been prepared to miss
her very much, but not so much. He knew to the full extent only through
experience, what a large place in his life was left blank when her
familiar little figure went out of it. He felt, too, that he must
relinquish the hope of its return, understanding the family character
sufficiently well to be assured that he and she were divided by a broad
ground of separation. The old interest he had had in her, and her old
trusting reliance on him, were tinged with melancholy in his mind: so
soon had change stolen over them, and so soon had they glided into the
past with other secret tendernesses.

When he received her letter he was greatly moved, but did not the less
sensibly feel that she was far divided from him by more than distance.
It helped him to a clearer and keener perception of the place assigned
him by the family. He saw that he was cherished in her grateful
remembrance secretly, and that they resented him with the jail and the
rest of its belongings.

Through all these meditations which every day of his life crowded about
her, he thought of her otherwise in the old way. She was his innocent
friend, his delicate child, his dear Little Dorrit. This very change
of circumstances fitted curiously in with the habit, begun on the night
when the roses floated away, of considering himself as a much older man
than his years really made him. He regarded her from a point of view
which in its remoteness, tender as it was, he little thought would have
been unspeakable agony to her. He speculated about her future destiny,
and about the husband she might have, with an affection for her which
would have drained her heart of its dearest drop of hope, and broken it.

Everything about him tended to confirm him in the custom of looking on
himself as an elderly man, from whom such aspirations as he had combat