Little Dorrit received a call that same evening from Mr Plornish, who,
having intimated that he wished to speak to her privately, in a series
of coughs so very noticeable as to favour the idea that her father, as
regarded her seamstress occupation, was an illustration of the axiom
that there are no such stone-blind men as those who will not see,
obtained an audience with her on the common staircase outside the door.
'There's been a lady at our place to-day, Miss Dorrit,' Plornish
growled, 'and another one along with her as is a old wixen if ever I met
with such. The way she snapped a person's head off, dear me!'
The mild Plornish was at first quite unable to get his mind away from Mr
F.'s Aunt. 'For,' said he, to excuse himself, 'she is, I do assure you,
the winegariest party.' At length, by a great effort, he detached himself from the subject
sufficiently to observe: 'But she's neither here nor there just at present. The other lady, she's
Mr Casby's daughter; and if Mr Casby an't well off, none better, it an't
through any fault of Pancks. For, as to Pancks, he does, he really does,
he does indeed!' Mr Plornish, after his usual manner, was a little obscure, but
conscientiously emphatic.
'And what she come to our place for,' he pursued, 'was to leave word
that if Miss Dorrit would step up to that card--which it's Mr Casby's
house that is, and Pancks he has a office at the back, where he really
does, beyond belief--she would be glad for to engage her. She was a old
and a dear friend, she said particular, of Mr Clennam, and hoped for to
prove herself a useful friend to his friend. Them was her words. Wishing
to know whether Miss Dorrit could come to-morrow morning, I said I would
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.