' returned Mr Dorrit, with an astonishing superiority
to his brother's failing powers, 'there can be no doubt of it. It is
painful to me to see you so weak. Ha. It distresses me. Hum. I don't
find you looking at all well. You are not fit for this sort of thing.
You should be more careful, you should be very careful.'

'Shall I go to bed?' asked Frederick.

'Dear Frederick,' said Mr Dorrit, 'do, I adjure you! Good night,
brother. I hope you will be stronger to-morrow. I am not at all pleased
with your looks. Good night, dear fellow.' After dismissing his brother
in this gracious way, he fell into a doze again before the old man was
well out of the room: and he would have stumbled forward upon the logs,
but for his daughter's restraining hold.

'Your uncle wanders very much, Amy,' he said, when he was thus roused.
'He is less--ha--coherent, and his conversation is more--hum--broken,
than I have--ha, hum--ever known. Has he had any illness since I have
been gone?' 'No, father.'

'You--ha--see a great change in him, Amy?'

'I have not observed it, dear.'

'Greatly broken,' said Mr Dorrit. 'Greatly broken. My poor,
affectionate, failing Frederick! Ha. Even taking into account what he
was before, he is--hum--sadly broken!'

His supper, which was brought to him there, and spread upon the little
table where he had seen her working, diverted his attention.

She sat at his side as in the days that were gone, for the first time
since those days ended. They were alone, and she helped him to his meat
and poured out his drink for him, as she had been used to do in the
prison. All this happened now, for the first time since their accession
to wealth. She was afraid to look at him much, after the offence he had
taken; but she noticed two occasions in the course of his meal, when
he all of a sudden looked at her, and looked about him, as if the
association were so strong that he needed assurance from his sense of
sight that they were not in the old prison-room. Both times, he put his
hand to his head as if he missed his old black cap--though it had been
ignominiously given away in the Marshalsea, and had never got free
to that hour, but still hovered about the yards on the head of his
successor.

He took very little supper, but was a long time over it, and often
reverted to his brother's declining state. Though he expressed the
greatest pity for him, he was almost bitter upon him. He said that poor
Frederick--ha hum--drivelle