the Marshalsea had always upon her the care of preserving
the genteel fiction that they were all idle beggars together.

The sister became a dancer. There was a ruined uncle in the family
group--ruined by his brother, the Father of the Marshalsea, and knowing
no more how than his ruiner did, but accepting the fact as an inevitable
certainty--on whom her protection devolved. Naturally a retired and
simple man, he had shown no particular sense of being ruined at the time
when that calamity fell upon him, further than that he left off washing
himself when the shock was announced, and never took to that luxury any
more. He had been a very indifferent musical amateur in his better days;
and when he fell with his brother, resorted for support to playing a
clarionet as dirty as himself in a small Theatre Orchestra. It was the
theatre in which his niece became a dancer; he had been a fixture there
a long time when she took her poor station in it; and he accepted
the task of serving as her escort and guardian, just as he would have
accepted an illness, a legacy, a feast, starvation--anything but soap.

To enable this girl to earn her few weekly shillings, it was necessary
for the Child of the Marshalsea to go through an elaborate form with the
Father.

'Fanny is not going to live with us just now, father. She will be here a
good deal in the day, but she is going to live outside with uncle.'

'You surprise me. Why?'

'I think uncle wants a companion, father. He should be attended to, and
looked after.'

'A companion? He passes much of his time here. And you attend to him and
look after him, Amy, a great deal more than ever your sister will. You
all go out so much; you all go out so much.'

This was to keep up the ceremony and pretence of his having no idea that
Amy herself went out by the day to work.

'But we are always glad to come home, father; now, are we not? And as to
Fanny, perhaps besides keeping uncle company and taking care of him, it
may be as well for her not quite to live here, always. She was not born
here as I was, you know, father.'

'Well, Amy, well. I don't quite follow you, but it's natural I suppose
that Fanny should prefer to be outside, and even that you often should,
too. So, you and Fanny and your uncle, my dear, shall have your own way.
Good, good. I'll not meddle; don't mind me.'

To get her brother out of the prison; out of the succession to Mrs
Bangham in executing commissions, and out of th