construction. 'May I
venture to inquire what is your version of the matter?'

'You may,' said Mrs Chivery, 'and I will give it to you in honour and in
word as true as in this shop I stand. Our John has every one's good word
and every one's good wish. He played with her as a child when in that
yard a child she played. He has known her ever since. He went out upon
the Sunday afternoon when in this very parlour he had dined, and met
her, with appointment or without appointment; which, I do not pretend to
say. He made his offer to her. Her brother and sister is high in their
views, and against Our John. Her father is all for himself in his views
and against sharing her with any one. Under which circumstances she
has answered Our John, "No, John, I cannot have you, I cannot have
any husband, it is not my intentions ever to become a wife, it is my
intentions to be always a sacrifice, farewell, find another worthy of
you, and forget me!" This is the way in which she is doomed to be a
constant slave to them that are not worthy that a constant slave she
unto them should be. This is the way in which Our John has come to find
no pleasure but in taking cold among the linen, and in showing in that
yard, as in that yard I have myself shown you, a broken-down ruin that
goes home to his mother's heart!' Here the good woman pointed to the
little window, whence her son might be seen sitting disconsolate in
the tuneless groves; and again shook her head and wiped her eyes, and
besought him, for the united sakes of both the young people, to exercise
his influence towards the bright reversal of these dismal events.

She was so confident in her exposition of the case, and it was so
undeniably founded on correct premises in so far as the relative
positions of Little Dorrit and her family were concerned, that Clennam
could not feel positive on the other side. He had come to attach to
Little Dorrit an interest so peculiar--an interest that removed her
from, while it grew out of, the common and coarse things surrounding
her--that he found it disappointing, disagreeable, almost painful, to
suppose her in love with young Mr Chivery in the back-yard, or any such
person. On the other hand, he reasoned with himself that she was just
as good and just as true in love with him, as not in love with him;
and that to make a kind of domesticated fairy of her, on the penalty
of isolation at heart from the only people she knew, would be but a
weakness of his