rriage,
and her husband waved his hand, and they were away for Dover; though not
until the faithful Mrs Tickit, in her silk gown and jet black curls, had
rushed out from some hiding-place, and thrown both her shoes after
the carriage: an apparition which occasioned great surprise to the
distinguished company at the windows.

The said company being now relieved from further attendance, and the
chief Barnacles being rather hurried (for they had it in hand just
then to send a mail or two which was in danger of going straight to its
destination, beating about the seas like the Flying Dutchman, and to
arrange with complexity for the stoppage of a good deal of important
business otherwise in peril of being done), went their several ways;
with all affability conveying to Mr and Mrs Meagles that general
assurance that what they had been doing there, they had been doing at a
sacrifice for Mr and Mrs Meagles's good, which they always conveyed to
Mr John Bull in their official condescension to that most unfortunate
creature.

A miserable blank remained in the house and in the hearts of the father
and mother and Clennam. Mr Meagles called only one remembrance to his
aid, that really did him good.

'It's very gratifying, Arthur,' he said, 'after all, to look back upon.'

'The past?' said Clennam.

'Yes--but I mean the company.'

It had made him much more low and unhappy at the time, but now it really
did him good. 'It's very gratifying,' he said, often repeating the
remark in the course of the evening. 'Such high company!'

CHAPTER 35. What was behind Mr Pancks on Little Dorrit's Hand

It was at this time that Mr Pancks, in discharge of his compact with
Clennam, revealed to him the whole of his gipsy story, and told him
Little Dorrit's fortune. Her father was heir-at-law to a great estate
that had long lain unknown of, unclaimed, and accumulating. His right
was now clear, nothing interposed in his way, the Marshalsea gates stood
open, the Marshalsea walls were down, a few flourishes of his pen, and
he was extremely rich.

In his tracking out of the claim to its complete establishment, Mr
Pancks had shown a sagacity that nothing could baffle, and a patience
and secrecy that nothing could tire. 'I little thought, sir,' said
Pancks, 'when you and I crossed Smithfield that night, and I told you
what sort of a Collector I was, that this would come of it. I little
thought, sir, when I told you you were not of the Clenna