Matthew Macfadyen in Little Dorrit.

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when she was again so overcome by the contemptible comicality of his disinterestedness as to splutter some ambrosial drops of rum and water around, and withdraw in confusion.
#CharlesDickens
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When all were supplied, Mr Rugg rose, and silently holding out his glass at arm’s length above the centre of the table, by that gesture invited the other three to add theirs, and to unite in a general conspiratorial clink.
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Meanwhile Mr Pancks, looking, not without some pity, at Young John, slowly and thoughtfully twisted up his canvas bag as if he were wringing its neck.
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because nothing would give me greater satisfaction than to walk myself off my legs without fee or reward.’
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‘Cash goes out fast,’ he said anxiously, as he pushed a portion to each of his male companions, ‘very fast.’
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‘Here’s a Clerk at Durham for you, John, and an old seafaring gentleman at Dunstable for you, Mr Rugg. Two to me, was it? Yes, two to me. Here’s a Stone; three to me. And a Still-born Baby; four to me. And all, for the present, told.’
#CharlesDickens
#LittleDorrit

‘I’m not good for York,’ said Mr Rugg.
‘Then perhaps,’ pursued Pancks, ‘you’ll be so obliging, John Chivery?’
Young John assenting, Pancks dealt him his card, and consulted his hand again.
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#LittleDorrit

When Mr Pancks, who supported the character of chief conspirator, had completed his extracts, he looked them over, corrected them, put up his note-book, and held them like a hand at cards.
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Umm v cheeky to crash land back here after many months away with this, but Little Dorrit experts/ fans: anyone know which brother is older, William or Frederick? I can't find evidence either way in the novel, though it's probably there. (Criticism is divided!) #dickens #littledorrit #aging

They shook hands and parted. The collegians, assembled in Symposium in the Snuggery that night, marvelled what had happened to their Father; he walked so late in the shadows of the yard, and seemed so downcast.

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and asked pardon so honestly, that he could make him no less acknowledgment than, ‘I know you meant it kindly. Say no more.’

‘Bless your soul, sir,’ urged the Plasterer, ‘I did indeed. I’d do more by you than the rest of ‘em do, I fancy.’

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#FatherOfTheMarshalsea

but fustian splashed with white lime, bestowing halfpence on him, front to front, was new.
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‘It ain’t much,’ said the Plasterer, putting a little pile of halfpence in his hand, ‘but it’s well meant.’
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had ‘settled’ in the course of that afternoon, and was going out too. The man was a mere Plasterer in his working dress; had his wife with him, and a bundle; and was in high spirits.
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But, to the last, the irresolute hand of old would remain in the pocket into which he had slipped the money during two or three turns about the yard, lest the transaction should be too conspicuous to the general body of collegians.

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He would look round surprised.‘Me?’ he would say, with a smile.
By this time the collegian would be up with him, and he would paternally add, ‘What have you forgotten? What can I do for you?’
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The collegian under treatment, after shaking hands, would occasionally stop to wrap up something in a bit of paper, and would come back again calling ‘Hi!’
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but he considered this in bad taste, and was always a little hurt by it.
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It looked small at first, but there was very good company there—among a mixture—necessarily a mixture—and very good air.
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He received them in his poor room (he disliked an introduction in the mere yard, as informal—a thing that might happen to anybody), with a kind of bowed-down beneficence.
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A disposition began to be perceived in him to exaggerate the number of years he had been there; it was generally understood that you must deduct a few from his account; he was vain, the fleeting generations of debtors said.
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a Marshalsea generation might be calculated as about three months—that the shabby old debtor with the soft manner and the white hair, was the Father of the Marshalsea.
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#MrsBangham
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He sat in an arm-chair with a cushion, and sometimes wheezed so, for minutes together, that he couldn’t turn the key. When he was overpowered by these fits, the debtor often turned it for him.
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His son began to supersede Mrs Bangham, and to execute commissions in a knowing manner, and to be of the prison prisonous, of the streets streety.
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But he got pretty well over it in a month or two; and in the meantime the children played about the yard as regularly as ever, but in black.
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He remained shut up in his room for a fortnight afterwards; and an attorney’s clerk, who was going through the Insolvent Court, engrossed an address of condolence to him, which looked like a Lease, and which all the prisoners signed.
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#MrsBangham
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You’ll find some characters behind other locks, I don’t say you won’t; but if you want the top sawyer in such respects as I’ve mentioned, you must come to the Marshalsea.’
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#MrsBangham
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The turnkey really was proud of him. He would mention him in laudatory terms to new-comers, when his back was turned. ‘You took notice of him,’ he would say, ‘that went out of the lodge just now?’
New-comer would probably answer Yes.
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#MrsBangham
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and his elder children now played regularly about the yard, and everybody knew the baby, and claimed a kind of proprietorship in her.
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