'Mr Plornish,' said Arthur, 'I trust to you, if you please, to keep my
secret. If you will undertake to let the young man know that he is free,
and to tell him that you were employed to compound for the debt by
some one whom you are not at liberty to name, you will not only do me a
service, but may do him one, and his sister also.'
'The last reason, sir,' said Plornish, 'would be quite sufficient. Your
wishes shall be attended to.'
'A Friend has obtained his discharge, you can say if you please. A
Friend who hopes that for his sister's sake, if for no one else's, he
will make good use of his liberty.' 'Your wishes, sir, shall be attended to.'
'And if you will be so good, in your better knowledge of the family, as
to communicate freely with me, and to point out to me any means by which
you think I may be delicately and really useful to Little Dorrit, I
shall feel under an obligation to you.'
'Don't name it, sir,' returned Plornish, 'it'll be ekally a pleasure an
a--it'l be ekally a pleasure and a--' Finding himself unable to balance
his sentence after two efforts, Mr Plornish wisely dropped it. He took
Clennam's card and appropriate pecuniary compliment.
He was earnest to finish his commission at once, and his Principal
was in the same mind. So his Principal offered to set him down at the
Marshalsea Gate, and they drove in that direction over Blackfriars
Bridge. On the way, Arthur elicited from his new friend a confused
summary of the interior life of Bleeding Heart Yard. They was all hard
up there, Mr Plornish said, uncommon hard up, to be sure. Well, he
couldn't say how it was; he didn't know as anybody could say how it was;
all he know'd was, that so it was.
When a man felt, on his own back and in his own belly, that poor he was,
that man (Mr Plornish gave it as his decided belief) know'd well that
he was poor somehow or another, and you couldn't talk it out of him, no
more than you could talk Beef into him. Then you see, some people as was
better off said, and a good many such people lived pretty close up
to the mark themselves if not beyond it so he'd heerd, that they was
'improvident' (that was the favourite word) down the Yard. For instance,
if they see a man with his wife and children going to Hampton Court in a
Wan, perhaps once in a year, they says, 'Hallo! I thought you was poor,
my improvident friend!' Why, Lord, how hard it was upon a man! What was
a man to do? He couldn't go mollancholy mad, and even if he did, you
wouldn't be the better for it. In Mr Plornish's judgment you would be
the worse for it. Yet you seemed to want to make a man mollancholy mad.