Vol.1 f.066 recto (Ms. Chapter 6 to 7, later renumbered 7 to 8)

beside himself if he found knew the truth. The thing was incomprehensible to Tip, and altogether a fanciful
notion. He yielded to it in that light only, when he submitted to her entreaties, [???] backed by those of his uncle and sister. There was
no want of precedent for his return; it was accounted for to the father in the usual way; and
the collegians, with a better comprehension of the pious fraud than Tip, supported it loyally.

This was the life, and this the history, of the child of the Marshalsea at twenty-two. With a still
surviving attachment to the one miserable yard and block of houses as her birthplace and home, she passed to and fro
in it shrinkingly now, with a womanly consciousness that she was pointed out to
every one. Since she had begun to
work beyond the walls, she had found it necessary to conceal where
she lived, and to come and go as secretly as she could, between the free city and the iron gates,
outside of which she had never slept in her life. Her original timidity
had grown with this concealment, and her light
step and her little figure shunned the thronged streets while they passed along them.

Worldly wise in hard and poor necessities, she was innocent
in all things else. Innocent, in the mist through which she
saw her father, and the prison, and the turbid living river that flowed through it and flowed on.

This was the life, and this the history, of Little Dorrit; now going home upon a dull September
evening, observed at a distance by Arthur Clennam. This was the life, and this the history, of Little Dorrit; turning at the end of London Bridge, re-
crossing it, going back again, passing on to Saint George’s Church, turning back suddenly once more, and flitting in at
the open outer gate and little court-yard of the Marshalsea.

CHAPTER 8. The Lock

Arthur Clennam stopped to ask a passer-by what [???? ?????? ???? ???] [a ??????] stood in the street, waiting to ask some
passer-by what place that it that was. He suffered a few people to pass him in whose face there was no en-
couragement to make the inquiry, and [????] still stood pausing in the street, when an old man came up and
turned into the courtyard.

He stooped a good deal, and walked plodded along in a slow [??????ing?] pre-occupied manner [?with his ?????], which made
the [???????] bustling London [???????????] thoroughfares no very safe place safe resort for him. He was shabbily dirtily and meanly dressed, in a
?long threadbare long-skirted coat of threadbare coat, once blue, reaching to his ankles and buttoned to
his chin, where it [trans????????] vanished in the pale ghost of a velvet collar. A [????????] piece of red cloth with
which this phantom had been stiffened in the ?course? of its lifetime was now laid bare, [?????] and poked
itself up, at the back of the old man’s neck, into a confusion of grey hair and [a ?????? of] rusty stock and
buckle which altogether nearly poked his greasy hat off. A greasy hat it was, napless and a napless;
impending over his eyes, cracked and crumpled at the brim, and with a wisp of pocket-handkerchief
dangling out at the back behind . His trousers were so long and ???? long and loose, and his shoes so
clumsy and [?????] big large, that he shuffled like an elephant; though how much of this was gait, and how much
[???? ?????] trailing cloth and leather, no one could have told. Under one arm he carried a [?flat? ????? ???? ????????]limp and [?????? ??????] worn-out case,
containing some wind instrument; and in the same hand he had a pennyworth of snuff in a little
bag packet of whitey-brown paper, from which he [was ??????? a ???? ?????? ???????] slowly comforted his poor old blue nose with
a lengthened-out pinch, as Arthur Clennam looked at him.

To this [??? ???? ???? ????? ??????? ????? this] old man ???????? of as he ?????? ???? ?????? ??? ?????? ?????? crossing the court-yard, he preferred his inquiry, touching