ket), must be actively championed by
her order for her order's sake. She returned this fealty by causing it
to be understood that she was even more incensed against the felonious
shade of the deceased than anybody else was; thus, on the whole, she
came out of her furnace like a wise woman, and did exceedingly well.

Mr Sparkler's lordship was fortunately one of those shelves on which a
gentleman is considered to be put away for life, unless there should be
reasons for hoisting him up with the Barnacle crane to a more lucrative
height. That patriotic servant accordingly stuck to his colours (the
Standard of four Quarterings), and was a perfect Nelson in respect
of nailing them to the mast. On the profits of his intrepidity, Mrs
Sparkler and Mrs Merdle, inhabiting different floors of the genteel
little temple of inconvenience to which the smell of the day before
yesterday's soup and coach-horses was as constant as Death to man,
arrayed themselves to fight it out in the lists of Society, sworn
rivals. And Little Dorrit, seeing all these things as they developed
themselves, could not but wonder, anxiously, into what back corner of
the genteel establishment Fanny's children would be poked by-and-by, and
who would take care of those unborn little victims.

Arthur being far too ill to be spoken with on subjects of emotion or
anxiety, and his recovery greatly depending on the repose into which
his weakness could be hushed, Little Dorrit's sole reliance during this
heavy period was on Mr Meagles. He was still abroad; but she had written
to him through his daughter, immediately after first seeing Arthur in
the Marshalsea and since, confiding her uneasiness to him on the points
on which she was most anxious, but especially on one. To that one,
the continued absence of Mr Meagles abroad, instead of his comforting
presence in the Marshalsea, was referable.

Without disclosing the precise nature of the documents that had fallen
into Rigaud's hands, Little Dorrit had confided the general outline of
that story to Mr Meagles, to whom she had also recounted his fate. The
old cautious habits of the scales and scoop at once showed Mr Meagles
the importance of recovering the original papers; wherefore he wrote
back to Little Dorrit, strongly confirming her in the solicitude she
expressed on that head, and adding that he would not come over to
England 'without making some attempt to trace them out.'

By this time Mr Henry Gowan had made u