ke best? Why did I carry up your things?

Not that I found 'em heavy; I don't mention 'em on that accounts; far
from it. Why have I cultivated you in the manner I have done since the
morning? On the ground of your own merits? No. They're very great, I've
no doubt at all; but not on the ground of them. Another's merits have
had their weight, and have had far more weight with Me. Then why not
speak free?'

'Unaffectedly, John,' said Clennam, 'you are so good a fellow and I have
so true a respect for your character, that if I have appeared to be less
sensible than I really am of the fact that the kind services you have
rendered me to-day are attributable to my having been trusted by
Miss Dorrit as her friend--I confess it to be a fault, and I ask your
forgiveness.'

'Oh! why not,' John repeated with returning scorn, 'why not speak free!'

'I declare to you,' returned Arthur, 'that I do not understand you.

Look at me. Consider the trouble I have been in. Is it likely that I
would wilfully add to my other self-reproaches, that of being ungrateful
or treacherous to you. I do not understand you.'

John's incredulous face slowly softened into a face of doubt. He rose,
backed into the garret-window of the room, beckoned Arthur to come
there, and stood looking at him thoughtfully. 'Mr Clennam, do you mean
to say that you don't know?'

'What, John?'

'Lord,' said Young John, appealing with a gasp to the spikes on the
wall. 'He says, What!'

Clennam looked at the spikes, and looked at John; and looked at the
spikes, and looked at John.

'He says What! And what is more,' exclaimed Young John, surveying him in
a doleful maze, 'he appears to mean it! Do you see this window, sir?'

'Of course I see this window.'

'See this room?'

'Why, of course I see this room.'

'That wall opposite, and that yard down below? They have all been
witnesses of it, from day to day, from night to night, from week to
week, from month to month. For how often have I seen Miss Dorrit here
when she has not seen me!'

'Witnesses of what?' said Clennam.

'Of Miss Dorrit's love.'

'For whom?'

'You,' said John. And touched him with the back of his hand upon the
breast, and backed to his chair, and sat down on it with a pale face,
holding the arms, and shaking his head at him.

If he had dealt Clennam a heavy blow, instead of laying that light touch
upon him, its effect could not have been to shake him more. He stood
amazed; his eyes loo