as a rapturous dream to Mr
Dorrit to find himself set aloft in this public car of triumph, making a
magnificent progress to that befitting destination, the golden Street of
the Lombards.

There Mr Merdle insisted on alighting and going his way a-foot, and
leaving his poor equipage at Mr Dorrit's disposition. So the dream
increased in rapture when Mr Dorrit came out of the bank alone, and
people looked at him in default of Mr Merdle, and when, with the ears of
his mind, he heard the frequent exclamation as he rolled glibly along,
'A wonderful man to be Mr Merdle's friend!'

At dinner that day, although the occasion was not foreseen and provided
for, a brilliant company of such as are not made of the dust of the
earth, but of some superior article for the present unknown, shed
their lustrous benediction upon Mr Dorrit's daughter's marriage. And Mr
Dorrit's daughter that day began, in earnest, her competition with that
woman not present; and began it so well that Mr Dorrit could all but
have taken his affidavit, if required, that Mrs Sparkler had all her
life been lying at full length in the lap of luxury, and had never heard
of such a rough word in the English tongue as Marshalsea.

Next day, and the day after, and every day, all graced by more dinner
company, cards descended on Mr Dorrit like theatrical snow. As the
friend and relative by marriage of the illustrious Merdle, Bar, Bishop,
Treasury, Chorus, Everybody, wanted to make or improve Mr Dorrit's
acquaintance. In Mr Merdle's heap of offices in the City, when Mr Dorrit
appeared at any of them on his business taking him Eastward (which it
frequently did, for it throve amazingly), the name of Dorrit was always
a passport to the great presence of Merdle. So the dream increased in
rapture every hour, as Mr Dorrit felt increasingly sensible that this
connection had brought him forward indeed.

Only one thing sat otherwise than auriferously, and at the same time
lightly, on Mr Dorrit's mind. It was the Chief Butler. That stupendous
character looked at him, in the course of his official looking at the
dinners, in a manner that Mr Dorrit considered questionable. He looked
at him, as he passed through the hall and up the staircase, going to
dinner, with a glazed fixedness that Mr Dorrit did not like. Seated
at table in the act of drinking, Mr Dorrit still saw him through his
wine-glass, regarding him with a cold and ghostly eye. It misgave him
that the Chief Butler must