Little Dorrit Vol.1 f.021 recto

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It was Mrs Meagles who confronted had spoken to Mr Meagles; and Mrs Meagles Mrs Meagles was, like Mr Meagles,
comely and healthy, with a pleasant English face that which had been looking at homely things for five and fifty years or
more, and had shone with a [?] bright reflection of them.

“There! Never mind, Father, never mind!” said Mrs Meagles. “For goodness sake content yourself with Baby .”

“With Pet?” repeated Mr Meagles in his injured vein. Pet,
Baby however, being close behind him, [????????????] [put her hand?????] touched him on the shoulder, and Mr Meagles [instantly???] immediately forgave Marseilles from the bottom of his heart.

Pet [???] was about nineteen twenty. A fair girl with rich brown hair
hanging free in natural ringlets. She was A lovely girl, with a frank [?????] face, and wonderful eyes; [??] so large, so
soft, so bright, set to such perfection in her kind good head. She was round
and fresh and dimpled and spoilt, and there was in Pet an air of timidity and
dependence which was the best weakness in the world, and gave her the only crowning
charm a girl so pretty and pleasant could have been without.

“Now, I ask you,” said Mr Meagles in the blandest confidence, falling back
a step himself, and handing his daughter a step forward to illustrate his question: “I ask you simply, as between man and man, you know, DID you ever hear of such damned
nonsense as putting Pet in quarantine?”

“It has had the effect of result of making even quarantine enjoyable.”

“Come!” said Mr Meagles, “that’s something to be sure. I am obliged
to you for that remark. Now, Pet, my darling, you had better go along with Mother and get ready for the
boat. The officer of health, and a variety of humbugs in cocked hats, are coming off to let us out of this
at last: and all we [captives???] jail-birds are to breakfast together in something approaching to a Christian style again, before we take wing for
our different destinations. Tattycoram, stick you close to your young mistress.”

He spoke to a handsome girl with lustrous dark hair and eyes, and very neatly
dressed, who replied with a half curtsey as she passed off in the train of
Mrs Meagles and Pet. They crossed the bare scorched terrace all three together, and disappeared through a
staring white archway. Mr Meagles’s companion, a grave dark man of forty, still stood
looking towards this archway after they were gone; until Mr Meagles tapped him on the arm.

“I beg your pardon,” said he, starting.

“Not at all,” said Mr Meagles.

They took a few one silent turns backward and forward in the shade of the wall, getting,
at the height on which the quarantine [???????] barracks are placed, what cool refreshment of
sea breeze there was at seven [?????] in the morning. Mr Meagles’s companion resumed the conversation.

“May I ask you,” he said, “what is the name of—”

“Tattycoram?” Mr Meagles struck in. “I have not the least idea.”

“I thought,” said the other, “that—”

“Tattycoram?” suggested Mr Meagles again.

“Thank you—that Tattycoram was a name; and I have several times wondered at the oddity of it.”