And now the final hour arrived when he and his family were to leave the prison for ever. The carriage was reported ready in the outer courtyard. Mr. Dorrit and his brother proceeded arm in arm, Edward Dorrit, Esq., and his sister Fanny followed, also arm in arm.
There was not a collegian within doors, nor a turnkey absent, as they crossed the yard. Mr. Dorrit--whose meat and drink had many a time been bought with money presented by some of those who stood to watch him go--yielding to the vast speculation how the poor creatures were to get on without him, was great, and sad, but not absorbed. He patted children on the head like Sir Roger de Coverley going to church, spoke to people in the background by their Christian names, and condescended to all present.
At last three honest cheers announced that he had passed the gate, and that the Marshalsea was an orphan.
Only when the family had got into their carriage, and not before, Miss Fanny exclaimed, "Good gracious I Where's Amy?"
Her father had thought she was with her sister. Her sister had thought she was somewhere or other. They had all trusted to find her, as they had always done, quietly in the right place at the right moment. This going away was, perhaps, the very first action of their joint lives that they had got through without her.
"Now I do say, Pa," cried Miss Fanny, flushed and indignant, "that this is disgraceful! Here is that child, Amy, in her ugly old shabby dress. Disgracing us at the last moment by being carried out in that dress after all. And by that Mr. Clennam too!"
Clennam appeared at the carriage-door, bearing the little insensible figure in his arms.
"She has been forgotten," he said. "I ran up to her room, and found the door open, and that she had fainted on the floor."
They received her in the carriage, and the attendant, getting between Clennam and the carriage-door, with a sharp "By your leave, sir!" bundled up the steps, and drove away.
_IV.--Another Prisoner in the Marshalsea_
The Dorrit family travelled abroad in handsome style, and in due time Miss Fanny married.
A sudden seizure carried off old Mr. Dorrit, and he died thinking himself back in the Marshalsea. His brother Frederick, stricken with grief, did not long survive him.