esteem.«
    »Mr. Merdle,« said Mrs. Merdle, who had been looking admiringly at Fanny
through her eye-glass, »will esteem it, I am sure, no less.«
    Little Dorrit, still habitually thoughtful and solitary, though no longer
alone, at first supposed this to be mere Prunes and Prism. But as her father
when they had been to a brilliant reception at Mrs. Merdle's, harped, at their
own family breakfast-table, on his wish to know Mr. Merdle, with the contingent
view of benefiting by the advice of that wonderful man in the disposal of his
fortune, she began to think it had a real meaning, and to entertain a curiosity
on her own part, to see the shining light of the time.
 

                                  Chapter VIII

             The Dowager Mrs. Gowan Is Reminded that It Never Does.

While the waters of Venice and the ruins of Rome were sunning themselves for the
pleasure of the Dorrit family, and were daily being sketched out of all earthly
proportion, lineament, and likeness, by travelling pencils innumerable, the firm
of Doyce and Clennam hammered away in Bleeding Heart Yard, and the vigorous
clink of iron upon iron was heard there through the working hours.
    The younger partner had, by this time, brought the business into sound trim;
and the elder, left free to follow his own ingenious devices, had done much to
enhance the character of the factory. As an ingenious man, he had necessarily to
encounter every discouragement that the ruling powers for a length of time had
been able by any means to put in the way of this class of culprits; but that was
only reasonable self-defence in the powers, since How to do it must obviously be
regarded as the natural and mortal enemy of How not to do it. In this was to be
found the basis of the wise system, by tooth and nail upheld by the
Circumlocution Office, of warning every ingenious British subject to be
ingenious at his peril: of harassing him, obstructing him, inviting robbers (by
making his remedy uncertain, difficult, and expensive) to plunder him, and at
the best of confiscating his property after a short term of enjoyment, as though
invention were on a par with felony. The system had uniformly found great favour
with the Barnacles, and that was only reasonable, too; for one who worthily
invents must be in earnest, and the Barnacles abhorred and dreaded nothing half
so much. That again was very reasonable; since in a country suffering under the
affliction of a great amount of earnestness, there might, in