Chapter 18 - Page 2

She, the child of the Marshalsea;
he, the lock-keeper. There was a fitness in that. Say he became
a resident turnkey. She would officially succeed to the chamber
she had rented so long. There was a beautiful propriety in that.
It looked over the wall, if you stood on tip-toe; and, with a
trellis-work of scarlet beans and a canary or so, would become a
very Arbour. There was a charming idea in that. Then, being all
in all to one another, there was even an appropriate grace in the
lock. With the world shut out (except that part of it which would
be shut in); with its troubles and disturbances only known to them
by hearsay, as they would be described by the pilgrims tarrying
with them on their way to the Insolvent Shrine; with the Arbour
above, and the Lodge below; they would glide down the stream of
time, in pastoral domestic happiness. Young John drew tears from
his eyes by finishing the picture with a tombstone in the adjoining
churchyard, close against the prison wall, bearing the following
touching inscription: 'Sacred to the Memory Of JOHN CHIVERY, Sixty
years Turnkey, and fifty years Head Turnkey, Of the neighbouring
Marshalsea, Who departed this life, universally respected, on the
thirty-first of December, One thousand eight hundred and eighty-
six, Aged eighty-three years. Also of his truly beloved and truly
loving wife, AMY, whose maiden name was DORRIT, Who survived his
loss not quite forty-eight hours, And who breathed her last in the
Marshalsea aforesaid. There she was born, There she lived, There
she died.'

The Chivery parents were not ignorant of their son's attachment --
indeed it had, on some exceptional occasions, thrown him into a
state of mind that had impelled him to conduct himself with
irascibility towards the customers, and damage the business--but
they, in their turns, had worked it out to desirable conclusions.
Mrs Chivery, a prudent woman, had desired her husband to take
notice that their john's prospects of the Lock would certainly be
strengthened by an alliance with Miss Dorrit, who had herself a
kind of claim upon the College and was much respected there. Mrs
Chivery had desired her husband to take notice that if, on the one
hand, their John had means and a post of trust, on the other hand,
Miss Dorrit had family; and that her (Mrs Chivery's) sentiment was,
that two halves made a whole. Mrs Chivery, speaking as a mother
and not as a diplomatist, had then, from a different point of view,
desired her husband to recollect that their John had never been
strong, and that his love had fretted and worrited him enough as it
was, without his being driven to do himself a mischief, as nobody
couldn't say he wouldn't be if he was crossed. These arguments had
so powerfully