an account of my visit.
She fainted when she saw me return, and made a little jug of egg-hot
afterwards to console us while we talked it over.

I don't know how the household furniture came to be sold for the family
benefit, or who sold it, except that I did not. Sold it was, however,
and carried away in a van; except the bed, a few chairs, and the kitchen
table. With these possessions we encamped, as it were, in the two
parlours of the emptied house in Windsor Terrace; Mrs. Micawber, the
children, the Orfling, and myself; and lived in those rooms night and
day. I have no idea for how long, though it seems to me for a long
time. At last Mrs. Micawber resolved to move into the prison, where Mr.
Micawber had now secured a room to himself. So I took the key of the
house to the landlord, who was very glad to get it; and the beds were
sent over to the King's Bench, except mine, for which a little room was
hired outside the walls in the neighbourhood of that Institution, very
much to my satisfaction, since the Micawbers and I had become too used
to one another, in our troubles, to part. The Orfling was likewise
accommodated with an inexpensive lodging in the same neighbourhood.
Mine was a quiet back-garret with a sloping roof, commanding a pleasant
prospect of a timberyard; and when I took possession of it, with the
reflection that Mr. Micawber's troubles had come to a crisis at last, I
thought it quite a paradise.

All this time I was working at Murdstone and Grinby's in the same common
way, and with the same common companions, and with the same sense of
unmerited degradation as at first. But I never, happily for me no doubt,
made a single acquaintance, or spoke to any of the many boys whom I
saw daily in going to the warehouse, in coming from it, and in prowling
about the streets at meal-times. I led the same secretly unhappy life;
but I led it in the same lonely, self-reliant manner. The only changes
I am conscious of are, firstly, that I had grown more shabby, and
secondly, that I was now relieved of much of the weight of Mr. and Mrs.
Micawber's cares; for some relatives or friends had engaged to help them
at their present pass, and they lived more comfortably in the prison
than they had lived for a long while out of it. I used to breakfast with
them now, in virtue of some arrangement, of which I have forgotten
the details. I forget, too, at what hour the gates were opened in the
morning, admitting of my going in; but I