his suspicion;
Little Dorrit, with her hand on the degraded arm, and her drooping head
turned away.

What if his mother had an old reason she well knew for softening to
this poor girl! What if the prisoner now sleeping quietly--Heaven grant
it!--by the light of the great Day of judgment should trace back his
fall to her. What if any act of hers and of his father's, should have
even remotely brought the grey heads of those two brothers so low!

A swift thought shot into his mind. In that long imprisonment here, and
in her own long confinement to her room, did his mother find a balance
to be struck? 'I admit that I was accessory to that man's captivity. I
have suffered for it in kind. He has decayed in his prison: I in mine. I
have paid the penalty.'

When all the other thoughts had faded out, this one held possession
of him. When he fell asleep, she came before him in her wheeled chair,
warding him off with this justification. When he awoke, and sprang up
causelessly frightened, the words were in his ears, as if her voice had
slowly spoken them at his pillow, to break his rest: 'He withers away in
his prison; I wither away in mine; inexorable justice is done; what do I
owe on this score!'

CHAPTER 9. Little Mother

The morning light was in no hurry to climb the prison wall and look in
at the Snuggery windows; and when it did come, it would have been more
welcome if it had come alone, instead of bringing a rush of rain with
it. But the equinoctial gales were blowing out at sea, and the impartial
south-west wind, in its flight, would not neglect even the narrow
Marshalsea. While it roared through the steeple of St George's Church,
and twirled all the cowls in the neighbourhood, it made a swoop to beat
the Southwark smoke into the jail; and, plunging down the chimneys
of the few early collegians who were yet lighting their fires, half
suffocated them. Arthur Clennam would have been little disposed to
linger in bed, though his bed had been in a more private situation, and
less affected by the raking out of yesterday's fire, the kindling of
to-day's under the collegiate boiler, the filling of that Spartan vessel
at the pump, the sweeping and sawdusting of the common room, and other
such preparations. Heartily glad to see the morning, though little
rested by the night, he turned out as soon as he could distinguish
objects about him, and paced the yard for two heavy hours before the
gate was opened.

The walls w