see you, Miss, and inquire, and look round there to-night, to say yes,
or, if you was engaged to-morrow, when?'

'I can go to-morrow, thank you,' said Little Dorrit. 'This is very kind
of you, but you are always kind.'

Mr Plornish, with a modest disavowal of his merits, opened the room door
for her readmission, and followed her in with such an exceedingly bald
pretence of not having been out at all, that her father might
have observed it without being very suspicious. In his affable
unconsciousness, however, he took no heed. Plornish, after a little
conversation, in which he blended his former duty as a Collegian with
his present privilege as a humble outside friend, qualified again by his
low estate as a plasterer, took his leave; making the tour of the prison
before he left, and looking on at a game of skittles with the mixed
feelings of an old inhabitant who had his private reasons for believing
that it might be his destiny to come back again.

Early in the morning, Little Dorrit, leaving Maggy in high domestic
trust, set off for the Patriarchal tent. She went by the Iron Bridge,
though it cost her a penny, and walked more slowly in that part of her
journey than in any other. At five minutes before eight her hand was on
the Patriarchal knocker, which was quite as high as she could reach.

She gave Mrs Finching's card to the young woman who opened the door, and
the young woman told her that 'Miss Flora'--Flora having, on her return
to the parental roof, reinvested herself with the title under which she
had lived there--was not yet out of her bedroom, but she was to please
to walk up into Miss Flora's sitting-room. She walked up into
Miss Flora's sitting-room, as in duty bound, and there found a
breakfast-table comfortably laid for two, with a supplementary tray
upon it laid for one. The young woman, disappearing for a few moments,
returned to say that she was to please to take a chair by the fire,
and to take off her bonnet and make herself at home. But Little Dorrit,
being bashful, and not used to make herself at home on such occasions,
felt at a loss how to do it; so she was still sitting near the door with
her bonnet on, when Flora came in in a hurry half an hour afterwards.

Flora was so sorry to have kept her waiting, and good gracious why did
she sit out there in the cold when she had expected to find her by the
fire reading the paper, and hadn't that heedless girl given her the
message then, and had she re