ry a little more something green, sir,' said Young John; and again
handed the basket.

It was so like handing green meat into the cage of a dull imprisoned
bird, and John had so evidently brought the little basket as a handful
of fresh relief from the stale hot paving-stones and bricks of the jail,
that Clennam said, with a smile, 'It was very kind of you to think of
putting this between the wires; but I cannot even get this down to-day.'

As if the difficulty were contagious, Young John soon pushed away his
own plate, and fell to folding the cabbage-leaf that had contained the
ham. When he had folded it into a number of layers, one over another,
so that it was small in the palm of his hand, he began to flatten it
between both his hands, and to eye Clennam attentively. 'I wonder,' he
at length said, compressing his green packet with some force, 'that if
it's not worth your while to take care of yourself for your own sake,
it's not worth doing for some one else's.'

'Truly,' returned Arthur, with a sigh and a smile, 'I don't know for
whose.'

'Mr Clennam,' said John, warmly, 'I am surprised that a gentleman who
is capable of the straightforwardness that you are capable of, should be
capable of the mean action of making me such an answer. Mr Clennam, I am
surprised that a gentleman who is capable of having a heart of his own,
should be capable of the heartlessness of treating mine in that way. I
am astonished at it, sir. Really and truly I am astonished!'

Having got upon his feet to emphasise his concluding words, Young John
sat down again, and fell to rolling his green packet on his right leg;
never taking his eyes off Clennam, but surveying him with a fixed look
of indignant reproach.

'I had got over it, sir,' said John. 'I had conquered it, knowing that
it must be conquered, and had come to the resolution to think no more
about it. I shouldn't have given my mind to it again, I hope, if to this
prison you had not been brought, and in an hour unfortunate for me,
this day!' (In his agitation Young John adopted his mother's powerful
construction of sentences.) 'When you first came upon me, sir, in the
Lodge, this day, more as if a Upas tree had been made a capture of than
a private defendant, such mingled streams of feelings broke loose again
within me, that everything was for the first few minutes swept away
before them, and I was going round and round in a vortex. I got out of
it. I struggled, and got out of it.