py Cottage, T. and M. Plornish; the partnership
expressing man and wife. No Poetry and no Art ever charmed the
imagination more than the union of the two in this counterfeit cottage
charmed Mrs Plornish. It was nothing to her that Plornish had a habit
of leaning against it as he smoked his pipe after work, when his
hat blotted out the pigeon-house and all the pigeons, when his back
swallowed up the dwelling, when his hands in his pockets uprooted the
blooming garden and laid waste the adjacent country. To Mrs Plornish, it
was still a most beautiful cottage, a most wonderful deception; and
it made no difference that Mr Plornish's eye was some inches above the
level of the gable bed-room in the thatch. To come out into the shop
after it was shut, and hear her father sing a song inside this cottage,
was a perfect Pastoral to Mrs Plornish, the Golden Age revived. And
truly if that famous period had been revived, or had ever been at all,
it may be doubted whether it would have produced many more heartily
admiring daughters than the poor woman.

Warned of a visitor by the tinkling bell at the shop-door, Mrs Plornish
came out of Happy Cottage to see who it might be. 'I guessed it was
you, Mr Pancks,' said she, 'for it's quite your regular night; ain't it?
Here's father, you see, come out to serve at the sound of the bell, like
a brisk young shopman. Ain't he looking well? Father's more pleased to
see you than if you was a customer, for he dearly loves a gossip; and
when it turns upon Miss Dorrit, he loves it all the more. You never
heard father in such voice as he is at present,' said Mrs Plornish, her
own voice quavering, she was so proud and pleased. 'He gave us Strephon
last night to that degree that Plornish gets up and makes him this
speech across the table. "John Edward Nandy," says Plornish to father,
"I never heard you come the warbles as I have heard you come the warbles
this night." An't it gratifying, Mr Pancks, though; really?'

Mr Pancks, who had snorted at the old man in his friendliest manner,
replied in the affirmative, and casually asked whether that lively Altro
chap had come in yet? Mrs Plornish answered no, not yet, though he had
gone to the West-End with some work, and had said he should be back
by tea-time. Mr Pancks was then hospitably pressed into Happy Cottage,
where he encountered the elder Master Plornish just come home from
school. Examining that young student, lightly, on the educational
proceedin