,
Amy,' pursued her sister, gradually beginning to patronise, 'I have
been out, moving more in Society, and may have been getting proud and
spirited--more than I ought to be, perhaps?'

Little Dorrit answered 'Yes. O yes!'

'And while you have been thinking of the dinner or the clothes, I may
have been thinking, you know, of the family. Now, may it not be so,
Amy?'

Little Dorrit again nodded 'Yes,' with a more cheerful face than heart.

'Especially as we know,' said Fanny, 'that there certainly is a tone in
the place to which you have been so true, which does belong to it, and
which does make it different from other aspects of Society. So kiss me
once again, Amy dear, and we will agree that we may both be right, and
that you are a tranquil, domestic, home-loving, good girl.'

The clarionet had been lamenting most pathetically during this dialogue,
but was cut short now by Fanny's announcement that it was time to go;
which she conveyed to her uncle by shutting up his scrap of music, and
taking the clarionet out of his mouth.

Little Dorrit parted from them at the door, and hastened back to the
Marshalsea. It fell dark there sooner than elsewhere, and going into it
that evening was like going into a deep trench. The shadow of the wall
was on every object. Not least upon the figure in the old grey gown and
the black velvet cap, as it turned towards her when she opened the door
of the dim room.

'Why not upon me too!' thought Little Dorrit, with the door Yet in her
hand. 'It was not unreasonable in Fanny.'

CHAPTER 21. Mr Merdle's Complaint

Upon that establishment of state, the Merdle establishment in Harley
Street, Cavendish Square, there was the shadow of no more common wall
than the fronts of other establishments of state on the opposite side of
the street. Like unexceptionable Society, the opposing rows of houses in
Harley Street were very grim with one another. Indeed, the mansions and
their inhabitants were so much alike in that respect, that the people
were often to be found drawn up on opposite sides of dinner-tables, in
the shade of their own loftiness, staring at the other side of the way
with the dullness of the houses.

Everybody knows how like the street the two dinner-rows of people who
take their stand by the street will be. The expressionless uniform
twenty houses, all to be knocked at and rung at in the same form, all
approachable by the same dull steps, all fended off by the same patt