 to her; lies hidden with many mysteries. It is
enough that she was inspired to be something which was not what the rest were,
and to be that something, different and laborious, for the sake of the rest.
Inspired? Yes. Shall we speak of the inspiration of a poet or a priest, and not
of the heart impelled by love and self-devotion to the lowliest work in the
lowliest way of life!
    With no earthly friend to help her, or so much as to see her, but the one so
strangely assorted; with no knowledge even of the common daily tone and habits
of the common members of the free community who are not shut up in prisons; born
and bred, in a social condition, false even with a reference to the falsest
condition outside the walls; drinking from infancy of a well whose waters had
their own peculiar stain, their own unwholesome and unnatural taste; the Child
of the Marshalsea began her womanly life.
    No matter through what mistakes and discouragements, what ridicule (not
unkindly meant, but deeply felt) of her youth and little figure, what humble
consciousness of her own babyhood and want of strength, even in the matter of
lifting and carrying; through how much weariness and hopelessness, and how many
secret tears; she trudged on, until recognised as useful, even indispensable.
That time came. She took the place of eldest of the three, in all things but
precedence; was the head of the fallen family; and bore, in her own heart, its
anxieties and shames.
    At thirteen, she could read and keep accounts - that is, could put down in
words and figures how much the bare necessaries that they wanted would cost, and
how much less they had to buy them with. She had been, by snatches of a few
weeks at a time, to an evening school outside, and got her sister and brother
sent to day-schools by desultory starts, during three or four years. There was
no instruction for any of them at home; but she knew well - no one better - that
a man so broken as to be the Father of the Marshalsea, could be no father to his
own children.
    To these scanty means of improvement, she added another of her own
contriving. Once, among the heterogeneous crowd of inmates there appeared a
dancing-master. Her sister had a great desire to learn the dancing-master's art,
and seemed to have a taste that way. At thirteen years old, the Child of the
Marshalsea presented herself to the dancing-master, with
