Little Dorrit Vol.1 f.024 recto

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with us, though we have tried [???????][???????] to adapt ourselves to her. We [???????? ???????]have been advised more than once when she
has been a little [?????? ????] ailing, to change [??][??]climate and air for her as [????????]often as we could —especially [????????][????????] at about this time of her life— and to keep her
amused and to give her changeand to give her change. So, as I have no [??????????][??????????] need to stick at a Bank-desk now (though I have
been poor enough in my time I assure you, or I should have married Mrs Meagles long before), we go trotting
about the world [?????essly][?????essly][?????][?????][??????][??????]. This is how you found us shewing Baby the Nile, and the Pyramids,
and the Sphinxes, and the [b?q??b?q??][b?q??b?q??] Desert, [and the mosques][and the mosques] and all the rest of it; and this
is how Tattycoram will be a greater traveller in course of time than Captain Cook.”

“I thank you,” said the other, “very heartily for your confidence.”

“Don’t mention it,” returned Mr Meagles, “I am sure[??????][??????] you are veryquite welcome [??????][??????][I??????][I??????]. And now, Mr
[??????][??????] Clennam, [? of ???????][? of ???????] perhaps I may ask you whether you have made up your mind yet come to a decision
as to which [?????? ??????]as to which [?????? ??????] where to go next?”

“Indeed, no. I am such a waif and stray everywhere, that I am liable to be drifted where any current may set.”

“It’s extraordinary to me—if you’ll excuse my freedom in saying so—that you don’t go straight to London,” said Mr Meagles, in the tone of a confidential adviser.

“Perhaps I shall.”

“Ay! But I mean with a will.”

“I have no will. That is to say,’—he coloured a little,—’next to none that I can put in action now. Trained by main force; broken, not bent; heavily ironed with an object on which I was never consulted and which was never mine; shipped away to the other end of the world before I was of age, and exiled there until my father’s death there, a year ago; always grinding in a mill I always hated; what is to be expected from me in middle life? Will, purpose, hope? All those lights were extinguished before I could sound the words.”

“Light “em up again!” said Mr Meagles.

“Ah! Easily said. I am the son, Mr Meagles, of a hard father and mother. I am the only child of parents who weighed, measured, and priced everything; for whom what could not be weighed, measured, and priced, had no existence. Strict people as the phrase is, professors of a stern religion, their very religion was a gloomy sacrifice of tastes and sympathies that were never their own, offered up as a part of a bargain for the security of their possessions. Austere faces, inexorable discipline, penance in this world and terror in the next—nothing graceful or gentle anywhere, and the void in my cowed heart everywhere—this was my childhood, if I may so misuse the word as to apply it to such a beginning of life.”

“Really though?” said Mr Meagles, made very uncomfortable by the picture offered to his imagination. “That was a tough commencement. But come! You must now study, and profit by, all that lies beyond it, like a practical man.”

“If the people who are usually called practical, were practical in your direction—”

“Why, so they are!” said Mr Meagles.

“Are they indeed?”

“Well, I suppose so,” returned Mr Meagles, thinking about it. “Eh? One can but be practical, and