City Hotel. To-morrow morning, Mother and Tattycoram will go down
to Twickenham, where Mrs Tickit, sitting attended by Dr Buchan in the
parlour-window, will think them a couple of ghosts; and I shall go
abroad again for Doyce. We must have Dan here. Now, I tell you, my love,
it's of no use writing and planning and conditionally speculating upon
this and that and the other, at uncertain intervals and distances; we
must have Doyce here. I devote myself at daybreak to-morrow morning, to
bringing Doyce here. It's nothing to me to go and find him. I'm an old
traveller, and all foreign languages and customs are alike to me--I
never understand anything about any of 'em. Therefore I can't be put
to any inconvenience. Go at once I must, it stands to reason; because
I can't live without breathing freely; and I can't breathe freely until
Arthur is out of this Marshalsea. I am stifled at the present moment,
and have scarcely breath enough to say this much, and to carry this
precious box down-stairs for you.'

They got into the street as the bell began to ring, Mr Meagles carrying
the box. Little Dorrit had no conveyance there: which rather surprised
him. He called a coach for her and she got into it, and he placed the
box beside her when she was seated. In her joy and gratitude she kissed
his hand.

'I don't like that, my dear,' said Mr Meagles. 'It goes against my
feeling of what's right, that YOU should do homage to ME--at the
Marshalsea Gate.'

She bent forward, and kissed his cheek.

'You remind me of the days,' said Mr Meagles, suddenly drooping--'but
she's very fond of him, and hides his faults, and thinks that no
one sees them--and he certainly is well connected and of a very good
family!'

It was the only comfort he had in the loss of his daughter, and if he
made the most of it, who could blame him?

CHAPTER 34. Gone

On a healthy autumn day, the Marshalsea prisoner, weak but otherwise
restored, sat listening to a voice that read to him. On a healthy autumn
day; when the golden fields had been reaped and ploughed again, when the
summer fruits had ripened and waned, when the green perspectives of hops
had been laid low by the busy pickers, when the apples clustering in the
orchards were russet, and the berries of the mountain ash were crimson
among the yellowing foliage. Already in the woods, glimpses of the hardy
winter that was coming were to be caught through unaccustomed openings
among the boughs where