bout and about, like a blind man
who was trying to find some beginning or end to it; until they reached
the prison gate. There, he left his Principal alone; to wonder, as he
rode away, how many thousand Plornishes there might be within a day
or two's journey of the Circumlocution Office, playing sundry curious
variations on the same tune, which were not known by ear in that
glorious institution.

CHAPTER 13. Patriarchal

The mention of Mr Casby again revived in Clennam's memory the
smouldering embers of curiosity and interest which Mrs Flintwinch had
fanned on the night of his arrival. Flora Casby had been the beloved of
his boyhood; and Flora was the daughter and only child of wooden-headed
old Christopher (so he was still occasionally spoken of by some
irreverent spirits who had had dealings with him, and in whom
familiarity had bred its proverbial result perhaps), who was reputed to
be rich in weekly tenants, and to get a good quantity of blood out of
the stones of several unpromising courts and alleys. After some days of
inquiry and research, Arthur Clennam became convinced that the case of
the Father of the Marshalsea was indeed a hopeless one, and sorrowfully
resigned the idea of helping him to freedom again. He had no hopeful
inquiry to make at present, concerning Little Dorrit either; but he
argued with himself that it might--for anything he knew--it might be
serviceable to the poor child, if he renewed this acquaintance. It is
hardly necessary to add that beyond all doubt he would have presented
himself at Mr Casby's door, if there had been no Little Dorrit in
existence; for we all know how we all deceive ourselves--that is to
say, how people in general, our profounder selves excepted, deceive
themselves--as to motives of action.

With a comfortable impression upon him, and quite an honest one in its
way, that he was still patronising Little Dorrit in doing what had no
reference to her, he found himself one afternoon at the corner of Mr
Casby's street. Mr Casby lived in a street in the Gray's Inn Road, which
had set off from that thoroughfare with the intention of running at one
heat down into the valley, and up again to the top of Pentonville Hill;
but which had run itself out of breath in twenty yards, and had stood
still ever since. There is no such place in that part now; but it
remained there for many years, looking with a baulked countenance at
the wilderness patched with unfruitful gardens and p