Book The First: Poverty Chapter 14 Little Dorrit's Party

Arthur Clennam rose hastily, and saw her standing at the door. This
history must sometimes see with Little Dorrit's eyes, and shall begin
that course by seeing him.

Little Dorrit looked into a dim room, which seemed a spacious one to
her, and grandly furnished. Courtly ideas of Covent Garden, as a place
with famous coffee-houses, where gentlemen wearing gold-laced coats and
swords had quarrelled and fought duels; costly ideas of Covent Garden,
as a place where there were flowers in winter at guineas a-piece,
pine-apples at guineas a pound, and peas at guineas a pint; picturesque
ideas of Covent Garden, as a place where there was a mighty theatre,
showing wonderful and beautiful sights to richly-dressed ladies and
gentlemen, and which was for ever far beyond the reach of poor Fanny or
poor uncle; desolate ideas of Covent Garden, as having all those arches
in it, where the miserable children in rags among whom she had just now
passed, like young rats, slunk and hid, fed on offal, huddled together
for warmth, and were hunted about (look to the rats young and old, all
ye Barnacles, for before God they are eating away our foundations, and
will bring the roofs on our heads!); teeming ideas of Covent Garden, as
a place of past and present mystery, romance, abundance, want, beauty,
ugliness, fair country gardens, and foul street gutters; all confused
together,--made the room dimmer than it was in Little Dorrit's eyes, as
they timidly saw it from the door.