nd of the Yard and over the gateway, was the factory of
Daniel Doyce, often heavily beating like a bleeding heart of iron,
with the clink of metal upon metal. The opinion of the Yard was divided
respecting the derivation of its name. The more practical of its inmates
abided by the tradition of a murder; the gentler and more imaginative
inhabitants, including the whole of the tender sex, were loyal to the
legend of a young lady of former times closely imprisoned in her chamber
by a cruel father for remaining true to her own true love, and refusing
to marry the suitor he chose for her. The legend related how that the
young lady used to be seen up at her window behind the bars, murmuring a
love-lorn song of which the burden was, 'Bleeding Heart, Bleeding Heart,
bleeding away,' until she died. It was objected by the murderous party
that this Refrain was notoriously the invention of a tambour-worker, a
spinster and romantic, still lodging in the Yard. But, forasmuch as all
favourite legends must be associated with the affections, and as many
more people fall in love than commit murder--which it may be hoped,
howsoever bad we are, will continue until the end of the world to be
the dispensation under which we shall live--the Bleeding Heart, Bleeding
Heart, bleeding away story, carried the day by a great majority. Neither
party would listen to the antiquaries who delivered learned lectures in
the neighbourhood, showing the Bleeding Heart to have been the heraldic
cognisance of the old family to whom the property had once belonged.
And, considering that the hour-glass they turned from year to year was
filled with the earthiest and coarsest sand, the Bleeding Heart Yarders
had reason enough for objecting to be despoiled of the one little golden
grain of poetry that sparkled in it.

Down in to the Yard, by way of the steps, came Daniel Doyce, Mr Meagles,
and Clennam. Passing along the Yard, and between the open doors on
either hand, all abundantly garnished with light children nursing heavy
ones, they arrived at its opposite boundary, the gateway. Here Arthur
Clennam stopped to look about him for the domicile of Plornish,
plasterer, whose name, according to the custom of Londoners, Daniel
Doyce had never seen or heard of to that hour.

It was plain enough, nevertheless, as Little Dorrit had said; over a
lime-splashed gateway in the corner, within which Plornish kept a ladder
and a barrel or two. The last house in Bleeding Heart Ya