a carriage and drove as fast as possible with her to
the prison to carry her father the great news.

Little Dorrit told the old man with her arms around his neck, and as she
clasped him, thinking that she had never yet in her life known him as he
had once been, before his prison years, she cried:

"I shall see him as I never saw him yet--my dear love, with the dark
cloud cleared away! I shall see him, as my poor mother saw him long
ago! O my dear, my dear! O father, father! O thank God, thank God!"

So "The Father of the Marshalsea" left the old prison, in which he had
lived so long, and all the prisoners held a mass-meeting and gave him a
farewell address and a dinner.

On the last day, when they drove away from the iron gates, old Mr.
Dorrit was in fine, new clothing, and Tip and Fanny were clad in the
height of fashion. Poor Little Dorrit, in joy for her father and grief
at parting from Arthur (for they were to go abroad at once), did not
appear at the last moment, and Arthur, who had come to see them off,
hastening to her room, found that she had fainted away. He carried her
gently down to the carriage, and as he lifted her in, he saw she had put
on the same thin little dress that she had worn on the day he had first
seen her.

So, amid cheers and good wishes, they drove away, and Arthur, as he
walked back through the crowded streets, somehow felt very lonely.

III

WHAT RICHES BROUGHT TO THE DORRITS

Great changes came to old Mr. Dorrit with his money. As they traveled
slowly through Switzerland and into Italy, he put on greater dignity
daily. He lived each day suspecting that every one was in some way
trying to slight him and grew very much ashamed of his past years in the
Marshalsea, and forbade all mention of them. He hired a great number of
servants, and, to improve the manners of Fanny and Little Dorrit, he
employed a woman named Mrs. General, who had many silly notions of
society.

Little Dorrit could not even say "father" without being reproved by Mrs.
General. "Papa is preferable, my dear," the lady would insist, "and,
besides, it gives a pretty form to the lips. Papa, potatoes, poultry,
prunes and prisms are all good words for the lips. You will find it
serviceable in the formation of a demeanor, if you say to yourself in
company--on entering a room, for instance--'Papa, potatoes, poultry,
prunes and prisms!'"

Fanny and Tip were as spoiled as possible. Fanny, morning and night,
thought of