rk, it could rise into the light, seeing it shine on others and
hailing it.

Therefore, he sat before his dying fire, sorrowful to think upon the way
by which he had come to that night, yet not strewing poison on the way
by which other men had come to it. That he should have missed so much,
and at his time of life should look so far about him for any staff to
bear him company upon his downward journey and cheer it, was a just
regret. He looked at the fire from which the blaze departed, from which
the afterglow subsided, in which the ashes turned grey, from which they
dropped to dust, and thought, 'How soon I too shall pass through such
changes, and be gone!'

To review his life was like descending a green tree in fruit and flower,
and seeing all the branches wither and drop off, one by one, as he came
down towards them.

'From the unhappy suppression of my youngest days, through the rigid and
unloving home that followed them, through my departure, my long exile,
my return, my mother's welcome, my intercourse with her since, down to
the afternoon of this day with poor Flora,' said Arthur Clennam, 'what
have I found!'

His door was softly opened, and these spoken words startled him, and
came as if they were an answer:

'Little Dorrit.'

CHAPTER 14. Little Dorrit's Party

Arthur Clennam rose hastily, and saw her standing at the door. This
history must sometimes see with Little Dorrit's eyes, and shall begin
that course by seeing him.

Little Dorrit looked into a dim room, which seemed a spacious one to
her, and grandly furnished. Courtly ideas of Covent Garden, as a place
with famous coffee-houses, where gentlemen wearing gold-laced coats and
swords had quarrelled and fought duels; costly ideas of Covent Garden,
as a place where there were flowers in winter at guineas a-piece,
pine-apples at guineas a pound, and peas at guineas a pint; picturesque
ideas of Covent Garden, as a place where there was a mighty theatre,
showing wonderful and beautiful sights to richly-dressed ladies and
gentlemen, and which was for ever far beyond the reach of poor Fanny or
poor uncle; desolate ideas of Covent Garden, as having all those arches
in it, where the miserable children in rags among whom she had just now
passed, like young rats, slunk and hid, fed on offal, huddled together
for warmth, and were hunted about (look to the rats young and old, all
ye Barnacles, for before God they are eating away our foundations, and
w