Little Dorrit Vol.1 f.025 recto

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Mrs Meagles and myself are nothing else.”
“[?][?][?][?] [?][?], unknown course is easier and more [?]feeling[? helpful than I had expected to find
it then” said mr Clennam shaking his head with his grave smile. “[?]Let me pass[?] Enough of me. Here is the boat!”

The boat [?][?][?][?], was filled with the cocked hats to which Mr Meagles [?][?] entertained a national
objection; and the wearing of those cocked hats [?]escaped[?] landed and more of those andobjectivescame up the steps, and
?? ??????? all the impounded travellersappeared there ???? a week ???? congregated together. There was then a
mighty production of papers on the part of the cocked hats, and a calling ?????? over of names, and great work of signing,
and sealing and stamping and inking, and sanding, with ????????? exceedingly blurred, gritty, and undecipherable results. ????????
At lastFinally, everything was done according to rule, and the travellers wereall at liberty to depart whithersoever
they would.

The ???????? They made little account of detail? stare and ???? glare, in the new pleasure of freedom,
at recovering their freedom, but flitted across the harbour in gay boats, and reassembled at a great hotel, whence the sun was excluded by closed lattices, and where bare paved floors, lofty ceilings, and resounding corridors tempered the intense heat. There, a great table in a great room was soon profusely covered with a superb repast; and the quarantine quarters became bare indeed, remembered among dainty dishes, southern fruits, cooled wines, flowers from Genoa, snow from the mountain tops, and all the colours of the rainbow flashing in the mirrors.

“But I bear those monotonous walls no ill-will now,” said Mr Meagles. “One always begins to forgive a place as soon as it’s left behind; I dare say a prisoner begins to relent towards his prison, after he is let out.”

They were about thirty in company, and all talking; but necessarily in groups. Father and Mother Meagles sat with their daughter between them, the last three on one side of the table: on the opposite side sat Mr Clennam; a tall French gentleman with raven hair and beard, of a swart and terrible, not to say genteelly diabolical aspect, but who had shown himself the mildest of men; and a handsome young Englishwoman, travelling quite alone, who had a proud observant face, and had either withdrawn herself from the rest or been avoided by the rest—nobody, herself excepted perhaps, could have quite decided which. The rest of the party were of the usual materials: travellers on business, and travellers for pleasure; officers from India on leave; merchants in the Greek and Turkey trades; a clerical English husband in a meek strait-waistcoat, on a wedding trip with his young wife; a majestic English mama and papa, of the patrician order, with a family of three growing-up daughters, who were keeping a journal for the confusion of their fellow-creatures; and a deaf old English mother, tough in travel, with a very decidedly grown-up daughter indeed, which daughter went sketching about the universe in the expectation of ultimately toning herself off into the married state.

The reserved Englishwoman took up Mr Meagles in his last remark.

“Do you mean that a prisoner forgives his prison?” said she, slowly and with emphasis.

“That was my speculation, Miss Wade. I don’t pretend to know positively how a prisoner might feel. I never was one before.”