‘Young John, I am very sorry to have been hasty with you, but—ha— some remembrances are not happy remembrances, and—hum—you shouldn’t have come.’

‘I feel that now, sir,’ returned John Chivery; ‘but I didn’t before, and Heaven knows I meant no harm, sir.’

‘No. No,’ said Mr Dorrit. ‘I am—hum—sure of that. Ha. Give me your hand, Young John, give me your hand.’

Young John gave it; but Mr Dorrit had driven his heart out of it, and nothing could change his face now, from its white, shocked look.

‘There!’ said Mr Dorrit, slowly shaking hands with him. ‘Sit down again, Young John.’

‘Thank you, sir—but I’d rather stand.’

Mr Dorrit sat down instead. After painfully holding his head a little while, he turned it to his visitor, and said, with an effort to be easy:

‘And how is your father, Young John? How—ha—how are they all, Young John?’

‘Thank you, sir, They’re all pretty well, sir. They’re not any ways complaining.’

‘Hum. You are in your—ha—old business I see, John?’ said Mr Dorrit, with a glance at the offending bundle he had anathematised.

‘Partly, sir. I am in my’—John hesitated a little—’father’s business likewise.’

‘Oh indeed!’ said Mr Dorrit. ‘Do you—ha hum—go upon the ha—’

‘Lock, sir? Yes, sir.’

‘Much to do, John?’

‘Yes, sir; we’re pretty heavy at present. I don’t know how it is, but we generally are pretty heavy.’

‘At this time of the year, Young John?’

‘Mostly at all times of the year, sir. I don’t know the time that makes much difference to us. I wish you good night, sir.’

‘Stay a moment, John—ha—stay a moment. Hum. Leave me the cigars, John, I—ha—beg.’

‘Certainly, sir.’ John put them, with a trembling hand, on the table.

‘Stay a moment, Young John; stay another moment. It would be a—ha—a gratification to me to send a little—hum—Testimonial, by such a trusty messenger, to be divided among—ha hum—them them— according to their wants. Would you object to take

it, John?’

‘Not in any ways, sir. There’s many of them, I’m sure, that would be the better for it.’

‘Thank you, John. I—ha—I’ll write it, John.’

His hand shook so that he was a long time writing it, and wrote it in a tremulous scrawl at last. It was a cheque for one hundred pounds. He folded it up, put it in Young john’s hand, and pressed the hand in his.