'Can you tell me--I can get the information, no doubt, elsewhere, if you
cannot--who is the most influential of them?'
Little Dorrit said, after considering a little, that she used to
hear long ago of Mr Tite Barnacle as a man of great power. He was a
commissioner, or a board, or a trustee, 'or something.' He lived
in Grosvenor Square, she thought, or very near it. He was under
Government--high in the Circumlocution Office. She appeared to have
acquired, in her infancy, some awful impression of the might of this
formidable Mr Tite Barnacle of Grosvenor Square, or very near it, and
the Circumlocution Office, which quite crushed her when she mentioned
him. 'It can do no harm,' thought Arthur, 'if I see this Mr Tite Barnacle.'
The thought did not present itself so quietly but that her quickness
intercepted it. 'Ah!' said Little Dorrit, shaking her head with the mild
despair of a lifetime. 'Many people used to think once of getting my
poor father out, but you don't know how hopeless it is.'
She forgot to be shy at the moment, in honestly warning him away from
the sunken wreck he had a dream of raising; and looked at him with
eyes which assuredly, in association with her patient face, her fragile
figure, her spare dress, and the wind and rain, did not turn him from
his purpose of helping her.
'Even if it could be done,' said she--'and it never can be done
now--where could father live, or how could he live? I have often thought
that if such a change could come, it might be anything but a service to
him now. People might not think so well of him outside as they do there.
He might not be so gently dealt with outside as he is there. He might
not be so fit himself for the life outside as he is for that.' Here for
the first time she could not restrain her tears from falling; and the
little thin hands he had watched when they were so busy, trembled as
they clasped each other. 'It would be a new distress to him even to know that I earn a little
money, and that Fanny earns a little money. He is so anxious about us,
you see, feeling helplessly shut up there. Such a good, good father!'
He let the little burst of feeling go by before he spoke. It was soon
gone. She was not accustomed to think of herself, or to trouble any one
with her emotions. He had but glanced away at the piles of city roofs
and chimneys among which the smoke was rolling heavily, and at the
wilderness of masts on the river, and the wilderness of steeples on
the shore, indistinctly mixed together in the stormy haze, when she
was again as quiet as if she had been plying her needle in his mother's
room. 'You would be glad to have your brother set at liberty?'