 home he had so lately found, with a depressed heart.
    But Little Dorrit?
    The business hours, allowing for intervals of invalid regimen of oysters and
partridges, during which Clennam refreshed himself with a walk, were from ten to
six for about a fortnight. Sometimes Little Dorrit was employed at her needle,
sometimes not, sometimes appeared as a humble visitor: which must have been her
character on the occasion of his arrival. His original curiosity augmented every
day, as he watched for her, saw or did not see her, and speculated about her.
Influenced by his predominant idea, he even fell into a habit of discussing with
himself the possibility of her being in some way associated with it. At last he
resolved to watch Little Dorrit and know more of her story.
 

                                   Chapter VI

                         The Father of the Marshalsea.

Thirty years ago there stood, a few doors short of the church of Saint George,
in the borough of Southwark, on the left-hand side of the way going southward,
the Marshalsea Prison. It had stood there many years before, and it remained
there some years afterwards; but it is gone now, and the world is none the worse
without it.
    It was an oblong pile of barrack building, partitioned into squalid houses
standing back to back, so that there were no back rooms; environed by a narrow
paved yard, hemmed in by high walls duly spiked at top. Itself a close and
confined prison for debtors, it contained within it a much closer and more
confined jail for smugglers. Offenders against the revenue laws, and defaulters
to excise or customs, who had incurred fines which they were unable to pay, were
supposed to be incarcerated behind an iron-plated door, closing up a second
prison, consisting of a strong cell or two, and a blind alley some yard and a
half wide, which formed the mysterious termination of the very limited
skittle-ground in which the Marshalsea debtors bowled down their troubles.
    Supposed to be incarcerated there, because the time had rather outgrown the
strong cells and the blind alley. In practice they had come to be considered a
little too bad, though in theory they were quite as good as ever; which may be
observed to be the case at the present day with other cells that are not at all
strong, and with other blind alleys that are stone-blind. Hence the smugglers
habitually consorted with the debtors (who received them with open arms), except
at certain constitutional moments when somebody came from some Office, to go
through some form of overlooking something, which neither he nor anybody else
knew
