nown
there to help him up the narrow stair to bed, as he had been used to do
in the prison.

Little Dorrit was not ashamed--she loved him too much for that. Her only
wish was to soothe him, and with a pale, frightened face, she begged him
to come with her.

They got him away at last and carried him to his house. Once laid on his
bed, he never rose from it again. Nor did he regain his memory of the
immediate present. That, with its show and its servants, its riches and
power, in which Little Dorrit had had so small a part, had faded out for
ever, and now his mind, back in the Marshalsea, recognized his daughter
as his only stay and faithful comfort.

It was well so, for this was the father she had most loved.

So she watched beside him day and night, while every day his life grew
weaker and weaker. Every day the shadow of death stole deeper and deeper
over his face, until one morning, when the dawn came, they saw that he
would never wake again.

IV

WHAT HAPPENED TO ARTHUR CLENNAM

Arthur, meanwhile, had missed Little Dorrit greatly. He was very
friendly with a couple named Meagles--a comely, healthy, good-humored
and kind-hearted pair, and he was so lonely he almost thought himself in
love with their daughter "Pet" for a while. But Pet soon married a
portrait-painter and went to live abroad.

Mr. and Mrs. Meagles had a little orphan maid whom they called
"Tattycoram," for no particular reason except that her first name had
been Hattie, and the name of the man who founded the asylum where they
found her was "Coram." Tattycoram had a very bad temper, so that Mr.
Meagles, when he saw one of these fits coming on, used to stop and say,
"Count twenty-five, Tattycoram." And Tattycoram would count twenty-five,
and by that time the fit of temper was over.

But one day she had an attack that was very much worse than usual--so
much worse that she couldn't wait to count twenty-five, and ran away.
And it was a long time before they saw Tattycoram again.

At Mr. Meagles's house Arthur met an inventor named Doyce, a quiet,
straightforward man, whom he soon came to like. Doyce had made a useful
invention and for twelve years had been trying to bring it to the notice
of the British Government. But this matter, too, had to go through the
famous "Circumlocution Office," and so there it had stuck just as
Arthur's inquiry had done.

Arthur having chosen no new business as yet, before long proposed a
partnership between hims