Chapter 24

CHAPTER 24

Fortune-Telling

Little Dorrit received a call that same evening from Mr Plornish,
who, having intimated that he wished to speak to her privately, in
a series of coughs so very noticeable as to favour the idea that
her father, as regarded her seamstress occupation, was an
illustration of the axiom that there are no such stone-blind men as
those who will not see, obtained an audience with her on the common
staircase outside the door.

'There's been a lady at our place to-day, Miss Dorrit,' Plornish
growled, 'and another one along with her as is a old wixen if ever
I met with such. The way she snapped a person's head off, dear
me!'

The mild Plornish was at first quite unable to get his mind away
from Mr F.'s Aunt. 'For,' said he, to excuse himself, 'she is, I
do assure you, the winegariest party.'

At length, by a great effort, he detached himself from the subject
sufficiently to observe:

'But she's neither here nor there just at present. The other lady,
she's Mr Casby's daughter; and if Mr Casby an't well off, none
better, it an't through any fault of Pancks. For, as to Pancks, he
does, he really does, he does indeed!'

Mr Plornish, after his usual manner, was a little obscure, but
conscientiously emphatic.

'And what she come to our place for,' he pursued, 'was to leave
word that if Miss Dorrit would step up to that card--which it's Mr
Casby's house that is, and Pancks he has a office at the back,
where he really does, beyond belief--she would be glad for to
engage her. She was a old and a dear friend, she said particular,
of Mr Clennam, and hoped for to prove herself a useful friend to
his friend. Them was her words. Wishing to know whether Miss
Dorrit could come to-morrow morning, I said I would see you, Miss,
and inquire, and look round there to-night, to say yes, or, if you
was engaged to-morrow, when.'

'I can go to-morrow, thank you,' said Little Dorrit. 'This is very
kind of you, but you are always kind.'

Mr Plornish, with a modest disavowal of his merits, opened the room
door for her readmission, and followed her in with such an
exceedingly bald pretence of not having been out at all, that her
father might have observed it without being very suspicious. In
his affable unconsciousness, however, he took no heed. Plornish,
after a little conversation, in which he blended his former duty as
a Collegian with his present privilege as a humble outside friend,
qualified again by his low estate as a plasterer, took his leave;
making the tour of the prison before he left, and looking on at a
game of skittles with the mixed feelings of an old inhabitant who
had his private reasons for believing that it might be his destiny