this attention. I hope we may shake hands now, Mr
John.'

Young John, however, drew back, turning his right wrist in a socket made
of his left thumb and middle-finger and said as he had said at first,
'I don't know as I can. No; I find I can't!' He then stood regarding the
prisoner sternly, though with a swelling humour in his eyes that looked
like pity.

'Why are you angry with me,' said Clennam, 'and yet so ready to do me
these kind services? There must be some mistake between us. If I have
done anything to occasion it I am sorry.'

'No mistake, sir,' returned John, turning the wrist backwards and
forwards in the socket, for which it was rather tight. 'No mistake, sir,
in the feelings with which my eyes behold you at the present moment! If
I was at all fairly equal to your weight, Mr Clennam--which I am not;
and if you weren't under a cloud--which you are; and if it wasn't
against all rules of the Marshalsea--which it is; those feelings are
such, that they would stimulate me, more to having it out with you in
a Round on the present spot than to anything else I could name.' Arthur
looked at him for a moment in some wonder, and some little anger. 'Well,
well!' he said. 'A mistake, a mistake!' Turning away, he sat down with a
heavy sigh in the faded chair again.

Young John followed him with his eyes, and, after a short pause, cried
out, 'I beg your pardon!'

'Freely granted,' said Clennam, waving his hand without raising his
sunken head. 'Say no more. I am not worth it.'

'This furniture, sir,' said Young John in a voice of mild and soft
explanation, 'belongs to me. I am in the habit of letting it out to
parties without furniture, that have the room. It an't much, but it's at
your service. Free, I mean. I could not think of letting you have it on
any other terms. You're welcome to it for nothing.'

Arthur raised his head again to thank him, and to say he could
not accept the favour. John was still turning his wrist, and still
contending with himself in his former divided manner.

'What is the matter between us?' said Arthur.

'I decline to name it, sir,' returned Young John, suddenly turning loud
and sharp. 'Nothing's the matter.'

Arthur looked at him again, in vain, for an explanation of his
behaviour. After a while, Arthur turned away his head again. Young John
said, presently afterwards, with the utmost mildness:

'The little round table, sir, that's nigh your elbow, was--you know
whose--I needn't me