Explore "The Story of Little Dorrit*" by Charles Dickens on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Among the ladies for whom Little Dorrit sewed by the day was a Mrs. Clennam, a cold, stern person who lived in a cold, stern house. Yet she gave the child plenty of work and paid her fairly well. So Little Dorrit was often to be found in some gloomy corner there, sewing away busily and adding nothing at all to the few far-away sounds of the quiet old rooms.
Mrs. Clennam lived alone, except for a dried-up servant or two, and she herself had lost the use of her limbs. So it is no wonder that the house was gloomy, and that Mrs. Clennam's son Arthur found it so, when he returned from a long visit in India. Arthur Clennam was a young man who had ideas of his own, and who had disappointed his mother by refusing to continue his father's business. They were not in sympathy -- which made the house seem all the colder. But he was kind, open-hearted, and impulsive.