they are at present going on, and that there must be an end of
this, one way or another.'

As the announcement was vague, though very peremptory, Little Dorrit
returned, 'Let us talk about it.'

'Quite so, my dear,' assented Fanny, as she dried her eyes. 'Let us talk
about it. I am rational again now, and you shall advise me. Will you
advise me, my sweet child?'

Even Amy smiled at this notion, but she said, 'I will, Fanny, as well as
I can.'

'Thank you, dearest Amy,' returned Fanny, kissing her. 'You are my
anchor.'

Having embraced her Anchor with great affection, Fanny took a bottle of
sweet toilette water from the table, and called to her maid for a fine
handkerchief. She then dismissed that attendant for the night, and went
on to be advised; dabbing her eyes and forehead from time to time to
cool them.

'My love,' Fanny began, 'our characters and points of view are
sufficiently different (kiss me again, my darling), to make it very
probable that I shall surprise you by what I am going to say. What I am
going to say, my dear, is, that notwithstanding our property, we labour,
socially speaking, under disadvantages. You don't quite understand what
I mean, Amy?'

'I have no doubt I shall,' said Amy, mildly, 'after a few words more.'

'Well, my dear, what I mean is, that we are, after all, newcomers into
fashionable life.'

'I am sure, Fanny,' Little Dorrit interposed in her zealous admiration,
'no one need find that out in you.'

'Well, my dear child, perhaps not,' said Fanny, 'though it's most kind
and most affectionate in you, you precious girl, to say so.' Here she
dabbed her sister's forehead, and blew upon it a little. 'But you are,'
resumed Fanny, 'as is well known, the dearest little thing that ever
was! To resume, my child. Pa is extremely gentlemanly and extremely well
informed, but he is, in some trifling respects, a little different from
other gentlemen of his fortune: partly on account of what he has gone
through, poor dear: partly, I fancy, on account of its often running in
his mind that other people are thinking about that, while he is talking
to them. Uncle, my love, is altogether unpresentable. Though a dear
creature to whom I am tenderly attached, he is, socially speaking,
shocking. Edward is frightfully expensive and dissipated. I don't mean
that there is anything ungenteel in that itself--far from it--but I
do mean that he doesn't do it well, and that he doesn't, if I may
so express m