‘Our John,’ said Mrs Chivery.
Not to be deficient in interest, Clennam asked what he might be doing there?
‘It’s the only change he takes,’ said Mrs Chivery, shaking her head afresh. ‘He won’t go out, even in the back-yard, when there’s no linen; but when there’s linen to keep the neighbours’ eyes off, he’ll sit there, hours. Hours he will. Says he feels as if it was groves!’ Mrs Chivery shook her head again, put her apron in a motherly way to her eyes, and reconducted her visitor into the regions of the business.
‘Please to take a seat, sir,’ said Mrs Chivery. ‘Miss Dorrit is the matter with Our John, sir; he’s a breaking his heart for her, and I would wish to take the liberty to ask how it’s to be made good to his parents when bust?’
Mrs Chivery, who was a comfortable-looking woman much respected about Horsemonger Lane for her feelings and her conversation, uttered this speech with fell composure, and immediately afterwards began again to shake her head and dry her eyes.
‘Sir,’ said she in continuation, ‘you are acquainted with the family, and have interested yourself with the family, and are influential with the family. If you can promote views calculated to make two young people happy, let me, for Our John’s sake, and for both their sakes, implore you so to do!’
‘I have been so habituated,’ returned Arthur, at a loss, ‘during the short time I have known her, to consider Little—I have been so habituated to consider Miss Dorrit in a light altogether removed from that in which you present her to me, that you quite take me by surprise. Does she know your son?’
‘Brought up together, sir,’ said Mrs Chivery. ‘Played together.’
‘Does she know your son as her admirer?’
‘Oh! bless you, sir,’ said Mrs Chivery, with a sort of triumphant shiver, ‘she never could have seen him on a Sunday without knowing he was that. His cane alone would have told it long ago, if nothing else had. Young men like John don’t take to ivory hands a pinting, for nothing. How did I first know it myself? Similarly.’