Little Dorrit, Charles Dickens [big ebook reader txt] 📗

off for a few months, it might be, considering all things, best?”

“No, little Tortoise,” retorted Fanny, with exceeding sharpness. “I don’t think anything of the kind.”

Here, she threw her bonnet from her altogether, and flounced into a chair. But, becoming affectionate almost immediately, she flounced out of it again, and kneeled down on the floor to take her sister, chair and all, in her arms.

“Don’t suppose I am hasty or unkind, darling, because I really am not. But you are such a little oddity! You make one bite your head off, when one wants to be soothing beyond everything. Didn’t I tell you, you dearest baby, that Edmund can’t be trusted by himself? And don’t you know that he can’t?”

“Yes, yes, Fanny. You said so, I know.”

“And you know it, I know,” retorted Fanny. “Well, my precious child! If he is not to be trusted by himself, it follows, I suppose, that I should go with him?”

“It⁠—seems so, love,” said Little Dorrit.

“Therefore, having heard the arrangements that are feasible to carry out that object, am I to understand, dearest Amy, that on the whole you advise me to make them?”

“It⁠—seems so, love,” said Little Dorrit again.

“Very well,” cried Fanny with an air of resignation, “then I suppose it must be done! I came to you, my sweet, the moment I saw the doubt, and the necessity of deciding. I have now decided. So let it be.”

After yielding herself up, in this pattern manner, to sisterly advice and the force of circumstances, Fanny became quite benignant: as one who had laid her own inclinations at the feet of her dearest friend, and felt a glow of conscience in having made the sacrifice. “After all, my Amy,” she said to her sister, “you are the best of small creatures, and full of good sense; and I don’t know what I shall ever do without you!”

With which words she folded her in a closer embrace, and a really fond one.

“Not that I contemplate doing without You, Amy, by any means, for I hope we shall ever be next to inseparable. And now, my pet, I am going to give you a word of advice. When you are left alone here with Mrs. General⁠—”

“I am to be left alone here with Mrs. General?” said Little Dorrit, quietly.

“Why, of course, my precious, till papa comes back! Unless you call Edward company, which he certainly is not, even when he is here, and still more certainly is not when he is away at Naples or in Sicily. I was going to say⁠—but you are such a beloved little Marplot for putting one out⁠—when you are left alone here with Mrs. General, Amy, don’t you let her slide into any sort of artful understanding with you that she is looking after Pa, or that Pa is looking after her. She will if she can. I know her sly manner of feeling her way with those gloves of hers. But don’t you comprehend her on any account. And if Pa should tell you when he comes back, that he has it in contemplation to make Mrs. General your mama (which is not the less likely because I am going away), my advice to you is, that you say at once, ‘Papa, I beg to object most strongly. Fanny cautioned me about this, and she objected, and I object.’ I don’t mean to say that any objection from you, Amy, is likely to be of the smallest effect, or that I think you likely to make it with any degree of firmness. But there is a principle involved⁠—a filial principle⁠—and I implore you not to submit to be mother-in-lawed by Mrs. General, without asserting it in making everyone about you as uncomfortable as possible. I don’t expect you to stand by it⁠—indeed, I know you won’t, Pa being concerned⁠—but I wish to rouse you to a sense of duty. As to any help from me, or as to any opposition that I can offer to such a match, you shall not be left in the lurch, my love. Whatever weight I may derive from my position as a married girl not wholly devoid of attractions⁠—used, as that position always shall be, to oppose that woman⁠—I will bring to bear, you may depend upon it, on the head and false hair (for I am confident it’s not all real, ugly as it is and unlikely as it appears that anyone in their senses would go to the expense of buying it) of Mrs. General!”

Little Dorrit received this counsel without venturing to oppose it but without giving Fanny any reason to believe that she intended to act upon it. Having now, as it were, formally wound up her single life and arranged her worldly affairs, Fanny proceeded with characteristic ardour to prepare for the serious change in her condition.

The preparation consisted in the despatch of her maid to Paris under the protection of the Courier, for the purchase of that outfit for a bride on which it would be extremely low, in the present narrative, to bestow an English name, but to which (on a vulgar principle it observes of adhering to the language in which it professes to be written) it declines to give a French one. The rich and beautiful wardrobe purchased by these agents, in the course of a few weeks made its way through the intervening country, bristling with customhouses, garrisoned by an immense army of shabby mendicants in uniform who incessantly repeated the Beggar’s Petition over it, as if every individual warrior among them were the ancient Belisarius: and of whom there were so many Legions, that unless the Courier had expended just one bushel and a half of silver money relieving their distresses, they would have worn the wardrobe out before it got to Rome, by turning it over and over. Through all such dangers, however, it was triumphantly brought, inch by inch, and arrived at its journey’s end in fine condition.

There it was exhibited to select companies of female viewers,