s what I wish to have.'

'But I say. Look here! Is this public business?' asked Barnacle junior.

(Click! Eye-glass down again. Barnacle Junior in that state of search
after it that Mr Clennam felt it useless to reply at present.)

'Is it,' said Barnacle junior, taking heed of his visitor's brown face,
'anything about--Tonnage--or that sort of thing?'

(Pausing for a reply, he opened his right eye with his hand, and stuck
his glass in it, in that inflammatory manner that his eye began watering
dreadfully.)

'No,' said Arthur, 'it is nothing about tonnage.'

'Then look here. Is it private business?'

'I really am not sure. It relates to a Mr Dorrit.'

'Look here, I tell you what! You had better call at our house, if you
are going that way. Twenty-four, Mews Street, Grosvenor Square. My
father's got a slight touch of the gout, and is kept at home by it.'

(The misguided young Barnacle evidently going blind on his eye-glass
side, but ashamed to make any further alteration in his painful
arrangements.)

'Thank you. I will call there now. Good morning.' Young Barnacle seemed
discomfited at this, as not having at all expected him to go.

'You are quite sure,' said Barnacle junior, calling after him when he
got to the door, unwilling wholly to relinquish the bright business idea
he had conceived; 'that it's nothing about Tonnage?'

'Quite sure.'

With such assurance, and rather wondering what might have taken place
if it HAD been anything about tonnage, Mr Clennam withdrew to pursue his
inquiries.

Mews Street, Grosvenor Square, was not absolutely Grosvenor Square
itself, but it was very near it. It was a hideous little street of dead
wall, stables, and dunghills, with lofts over coach-houses inhabited by
coachmen's families, who had a passion for drying clothes and decorating
their window-sills with miniature turnpike-gates. The principal
chimney-sweep of that fashionable quarter lived at the blind end of Mews
Street; and the same corner contained an establishment much frequented
about early morning and twilight for the purchase of wine-bottles and
kitchen-stuff. Punch's shows used to lean against the dead wall in Mews
Street, while their proprietors were dining elsewhere; and the dogs of
the neighbourhood made appointments to meet in the same locality. Yet
there were two or three small airless houses at the entrance end of Mews
Street, which went at enormous rents on account of their being abject
hangers-on