white cap, with a quantity of
opaque frilling that was always flapping about, apologised for Maggy's
baldness, and made it so very difficult for her old black bonnet to
retain its place upon her head, that it held on round her neck like a
gipsy's baby. A commission of haberdashers could alone have reported
what the rest of her poor dress was made of, but it had a strong general
resemblance to seaweed, with here and there a gigantic tea-leaf. Her
shawl looked particularly like a tea-leaf after long infusion.

Arthur Clennam looked at Little Dorrit with the expression of one
saying, 'May I ask who this is?' Little Dorrit, whose hand this Maggy,
still calling her little mother, had begun to fondle, answered in words
(they were under a gateway into which the majority of the potatoes had
rolled).

'This is Maggy, sir.'

'Maggy, sir,' echoed the personage presented. 'Little mother!'

'She is the grand-daughter--' said Little Dorrit.

'Grand-daughter,' echoed Maggy.

'Of my old nurse, who has been dead a long time. Maggy, how old are
you?'

'Ten, mother,' said Maggy.

'You can't think how good she is, sir,' said Little Dorrit, with
infinite tenderness.

'Good SHE is,' echoed Maggy, transferring the pronoun in a most
expressive way from herself to her little mother.

'Or how clever,' said Little Dorrit. 'She goes on errands as well as
any one.' Maggy laughed. 'And is as trustworthy as the Bank of England.'
Maggy laughed. 'She earns her own living entirely. Entirely, sir!' said
Little Dorrit, in a lower and triumphant tone.

'Really does!'

'What is her history?' asked Clennam.

'Think of that, Maggy?' said Little Dorrit, taking her two large hands
and clapping them together. 'A gentleman from thousands of miles away,
wanting to know your history!'

'My history?' cried Maggy. 'Little mother.'

'She means me,' said Little Dorrit, rather confused; 'she is very much
attached to me. Her old grandmother was not so kind to her as she should
have been; was she, Maggy?' Maggy shook her head, made a drinking vessel
of her clenched left hand, drank out of it, and said, 'Gin.' Then beat
an imaginary child, and said, 'Broom-handles and pokers.'

'When Maggy was ten years old,' said Little Dorrit, watching her face
while she spoke, 'she had a bad fever, sir, and she has never grown any
older ever since.'

'Ten years old,' said Maggy, nodding her head. 'But what a nice
hospital! So comfortable, wasn't it? Oh so nice it