With a pitiful and plaintive look for everything, indeed, but with
something in it for only him that was like protection, this Child of
the Marshalsea and the child of the Father of the Marshalsea, sat by her
friend the turnkey in the lodge, kept the family room, or wandered about
the prison-yard, for the first eight years of her life. With a pitiful
and plaintive look for her wayward sister; for her idle brother; for the
high blank walls; for the faded crowd they shut in; for the games of the
prison children as they whooped and ran, and played at hide-and-seek,
and made the iron bars of the inner gateway 'Home.'
Wistful and wondering, she would sit in summer weather by the high
fender in the lodge, looking up at the sky through the barred window,
until, when she turned her eyes away, bars of light would arise between
her and her friend, and she would see him through a grating, too.
'Thinking of the fields,' the turnkey said once, after watching her,
'ain't you?' 'Where are they?' she inquired.
'Why, they're--over there, my dear,' said the turnkey, with a vague
flourish of his key. 'Just about there.' 'Does anybody open them, and shut them? Are they locked?' The turnkey was discomfited. 'Well,' he said. 'Not in general.'
'Are they very pretty, Bob?' She called him Bob, by his own particular
request and instruction. 'Lovely. Full of flowers. There's buttercups, and there's daisies,
and there's'--the turnkey hesitated, being short of floral
nomenclature--'there's dandelions, and all manner of games.'
'Is it very pleasant to be there, Bob?' 'Prime,' said the turnkey. 'Was father ever there?' 'Hem!' coughed the turnkey. 'O yes, he was there, sometimes.' 'Is he sorry not to be there now?' 'N-not particular,' said the turnkey. 'Nor any of the people?' she asked, glancing at the listless crowd
within. 'O are you quite sure and certain, Bob?'
At this difficult point of the conversation Bob gave in, and changed the
subject to hard-bake: always his last resource when he found his little
friend getting him into a political, social, or theological corner.
But this was the origin of a series of Sunday excursions that these two
curious companions made together. They used to issue from the lodge on
alternate Sunday afternoons with great gravity, bound for some meadows
or green lanes that had been elaborately appointed by the turnkey in
the course of the week; and there she picked grass and flowers to bring
home, while he smoked his pipe. Afterwards, there were tea-gardens,
shrimps, ale, and other delicacies; and then they would come back hand
in hand, unless she was more than usually tired, and had fallen asleep
on his shoulder. In those early days, the turnkey first began profoundly to consider
a question which cost him so much mental labour, that it remained
undetermined on the day of his death. He decided to will and bequeath
his little property of savings to his godchild, and the point arose how
could it be so 'tied up' as that only she should have the benefit of
it?