'Oh very, very glad, sir!' 'Well, we will hope for him at least. You told me last night of a friend
you had?' His name was Plornish, Little Dorrit said.
And where did Plornish live? Plornish lived in Bleeding Heart Yard. He
was 'only a plasterer,' Little Dorrit said, as a caution to him not to
form high social expectations of Plornish. He lived at the last house in
Bleeding Heart Yard, and his name was over a little gateway. Arthur took
down the address and gave her his. He had now done all he sought to do
for the present, except that he wished to leave her with a reliance
upon him, and to have something like a promise from her that she would
cherish it. 'There is one friend!' he said, putting up his pocketbook. 'As I take
you back--you are going back?' 'Oh yes! going straight home.'
'As I take you back,' the word home jarred upon him, 'let me ask you to
persuade yourself that you have another friend. I make no professions,
and say no more.' 'You are truly kind to me, sir. I am sure I need no more.'
They walked back through the miserable muddy streets, and among the
poor, mean shops, and were jostled by the crowds of dirty hucksters
usual to a poor neighbourhood. There was nothing, by the short way, that
was pleasant to any of the five senses. Yet it was not a common passage
through common rain, and mire, and noise, to Clennam, having this
little, slender, careful creature on his arm. How young she seemed to
him, or how old he to her; or what a secret either to the other, in that
beginning of the destined interweaving of their stories, matters not
here.
He thought of her having been born and bred among these scenes,
and shrinking through them now, familiar yet misplaced; he thought
of her long acquaintance with the squalid needs of life, and of her
innocence; of her solicitude for others, and her few years, and her
childish aspect. They were come into the High Street, where the prison stood, when a
voice cried, 'Little mother, little mother!' Little Dorrit stopping and
looking back, an excited figure of a strange kind bounced against them
(still crying 'little mother'), fell down, and scattered the contents of
a large basket, filled with potatoes, in the mud.
'Oh, Maggy,' said Little Dorrit, 'what a clumsy child you are!'
Maggy was not hurt, but picked herself up immediately, and then began
to pick up the potatoes, in which both Little Dorrit and Arthur Clennam
helped. Maggy picked up very few potatoes and a great quantity of mud;
but they were all recovered, and deposited in the basket. Maggy then
smeared her muddy face with her shawl, and presenting it to Mr Clennam
as a type of purity, enabled him to see what she was like.