turning at the end of London Bridge, recrossing it, going back again, passing on to Saint George’s Church, turning back suddenly once more, and flitting in at the open outer gate and little court-yard of the Marshalsea.
#CharlesDickens
#LittleDorrit

Worldly wise in hard and poor necessities, she was innocent in all things else. Innocent, in the mist through which she saw her father, and the prison, and the turbid living river that flowed through it and flowed on.
#CharlesDickens
#LittleDorrit

and to come and go as secretly as she could, between the free city and the iron gates, outside of which she had never slept in her life.
#CharlesDickens
#LittleDorrit

and the collegians, with a better comprehension of the pious fraud than Tip, supported it loyally.
#CharlesDickens
#LittleDorrit

It was easier for Tip to bring her to her senses than for her to bring him to understand that the Father of the Marshalsea would be beside himself if he knew the truth. The thing was incomprehensible to Tip, and altogether a fanciful notion.
#CharlesDickens
#LittleDorrit

‘Oh! Don’t say you are a prisoner, Tip! Don’t, don’t!’
‘Well, I don’t want to say it,’ he returned in a reluctant tone; ‘but if you can’t understand me without my saying it, what am I to do? I am in for forty pound odd.’
#CharlesDickens
#LittleDorrit

‘Why—yes.’
‘Not expecting this time that what you had found would answer very well, I am less surprised and sorry than I might have been, Tip.’
#CharlesDickens
#LittleDorrit

but it never reached her ears. One evening she was alone at work—standing up at the window, to save the twilight lingering above the wall—when he opened the door and walked in.
#CharlesDickens
#LittleDorrit

‘What is it, Tip?’
‘Why, you know Slingo by sight?’
‘Not the man they call the dealer?’
‘That’s the chap. He’ll be out on Monday, and he’s going to give me a berth.’
‘What is he a dealer in, Tip?’
‘Horses. All right! I shall do now, Amy.’
#CharlesDickens
#LittleDorrit

Carrying out which intention, he presented himself before her at the expiration of a month, in rags, without shoes, and much more tired than ever.
#CharlesDickens
#LittleDorrit

and disposed in its turn to cut even that, he graciously consented to go to Canada. And there was grief in her bosom over parting with him, and joy in the hope of his being put in a straight course at last.
#CharlesDickens
#LittleDorrit

and to prowl about within their narrow limits in the old slip-shod, purposeless, down-at-heel way; until the real immovable Marshalsea walls asserted their fascination over him, and brought him back.
#CharlesDickens
#LittleDorrit

into the law again, into a coach office, into a waggon office, into the law again, into a general dealer’s, into a distillery, into the law again, into a wool house, into a dry goods house, into the Billingsgate trade, into the foreign fruit trade, and into the docks.
#CharlesDickens
#LittleDorrit

‘Not going back again?’ said the poor little anxious Child of the Marshalsea, always calculating and planning for Tip, in the front rank of her charges.

‘I am so tired of it,’ said Tip, ‘that I have cut it.’

#CharlesDickens
#LittleDorrit

at that time one of a considerable list of everlasting bulwarks to the dignity and safety of Albion, whose places know them no more.

#CharlesDickens
#LittleDorrit

But Tip had thanked him, and said he didn’t seem to care for his country.

‘Well, my dear,’ said the turnkey, ‘something ought to be done with him. Suppose I try and get him into the law?’
‘That would be so good of you, Bob!’

#CharlesDickens
#LittleDorrit

‘Dear Bob,’ said she, ‘what is to become of poor Tip?’ His name was Edward, and Ted had been transformed into Tip, within the walls.
#CharlesDickens
#LittleDorrit

At eighteen he would have dragged on from hand to mouth, from hour to hour, from penny to penny, until eighty. Nobody got into the prison from whom he derived anything useful or good, and she could find no patron for him but her old friend and godfather.
#CharlesDickens
#LittleDorrit

‘Well, Amy, well. I don’t quite follow you, but it’s natural I suppose that Fanny should prefer to be outside, and even that you often should, too. So, you and Fanny and your uncle, my dear, shall have your own way. Good, good. I’ll not meddle; don’t mind me.’

#CharlesDickens
#LittleDorrit

And as to Fanny, perhaps besides keeping uncle company and taking care of him, it may be as well for her not quite to live here, always. She was not born here as I was, you know, father.’

#CharlesDickens
#LittleDorrit