d with papa and mama, that I should ever find it
necessary to take a lodger. But Mr. Micawber being in difficulties, all
considerations of private feeling must give way.'

I said: 'Yes, ma'am.'

'Mr. Micawber's difficulties are almost overwhelming just at present,'
said Mrs. Micawber; 'and whether it is possible to bring him through
them, I don't know. When I lived at home with papa and mama, I really
should have hardly understood what the word meant, in the sense in which
I now employ it, but experientia does it,--as papa used to say.'

I cannot satisfy myself whether she told me that Mr. Micawber had been
an officer in the Marines, or whether I have imagined it. I only know
that I believe to this hour that he WAS in the Marines once upon a time,
without knowing why. He was a sort of town traveller for a number
of miscellaneous houses, now; but made little or nothing of it, I am
afraid.

'If Mr. Micawber's creditors will not give him time,' said Mrs.
Micawber, 'they must take the consequences; and the sooner they bring it
to an issue the better. Blood cannot be obtained from a stone, neither
can anything on account be obtained at present (not to mention law
expenses) from Mr. Micawber.'

I never can quite understand whether my precocious self-dependence
confused Mrs. Micawber in reference to my age, or whether she was so
full of the subject that she would have talked about it to the very
twins if there had been nobody else to communicate with, but this was
the strain in which she began, and she went on accordingly all the time
I knew her.

Poor Mrs. Micawber! She said she had tried to exert herself, and so,
I have no doubt, she had. The centre of the street door was perfectly
covered with a great brass-plate, on which was engraved 'Mrs. Micawber's
Boarding Establishment for Young Ladies': but I never found that any
young lady had ever been to school there; or that any young lady ever
came, or proposed to come; or that the least preparation was ever made
to receive any young lady. The only visitors I ever saw, or heard of,
were creditors. THEY used to come at all hours, and some of them were
quite ferocious. One dirty-faced man, I think he was a boot-maker,
used to edge himself into the passage as early as seven o'clock in the
morning, and call up the stairs to Mr. Micawber--'Come! You ain't out
yet, you know. Pay us, will you? Don't hide, you know; that's mean. I
wouldn't be mean if I was you. Pay us, will you?