by his bed, 'My good Frederick, sit down. You are very feeble
indeed.'

They tried him with Mrs General, but he had not the faintest knowledge
of her. Some injurious suspicion lodged itself in his brain, that she
wanted to supplant Mrs Bangham, and that she was given to drinking. He
charged her with it in no measured terms; and was so urgent with his
daughter to go round to the Marshal and entreat him to turn her out,
that she was never reproduced after the first failure. Saving that
he once asked 'if Tip had gone outside?' the remembrance of his two
children not present seemed to have departed from him. But the child who
had done so much for him and had been so poorly repaid, was never out of
his mind. Not that he spared her, or was fearful of her being spent by
watching and fatigue; he was not more troubled on that score than he
had usually been. No; he loved her in his old way. They were in the jail
again, and she tended him, and he had constant need of her, and could
not turn without her; and he even told her, sometimes, that he was
content to have undergone a great deal for her sake. As to her, she bent
over his bed with her quiet face against his, and would have laid down
her own life to restore him.

When he had been sinking in this painless way for two or three days, she
observed him to be troubled by the ticking of his watch--a pompous gold
watch that made as great a to-do about its going as if nothing else
went but itself and Time. She suffered it to run down; but he was still
uneasy, and showed that was not what he wanted. At length he roused
himself to explain that he wanted money to be raised on this watch. He
was quite pleased when she pretended to take it away for the purpose,
and afterwards had a relish for his little tastes of wine and jelly,
that he had not had before.

He soon made it plain that this was so; for, in another day or two
he sent off his sleeve-buttons and finger-rings. He had an amazing
satisfaction in entrusting her with these errands, and appeared to
consider it equivalent to making the most methodical and provident
arrangements. After his trinkets, or such of them as he had been able to
see about him, were gone, his clothes engaged his attention; and it
is as likely as not that he was kept alive for some days by the
satisfaction of sending them, piece by piece, to an imaginary
pawnbroker's.

Thus for ten days Little Dorrit bent over his pillow, laying her cheek
against his. Some