On the way, Arthur elicited from his new friend a confused summary of the interior life of Bleeding Heart Yard.

They was all hard up there, Mr Plornish said, uncommon hard up, to be sure.

Well, he couldn't say how it was; he didn't know as anybody could say how it was; all he know'd was, that so it was.
When a man felt, on his own back and in his own belly, that poor he was, that man (Mr Plornish gave it as his decided belief) know'd well that he was poor somehow or another, and you couldn't talk it out of him, no more than you could talk Beef into him.

Then you see, some people as was better off said, and a good many such people lived pretty close up to the mark themselves if not beyond it so he'd heerd, that they was 'improvident' (that was the favourite word) down the Yard.

For instance, if they see a man with his wife and children going to Hampton Court in a Wan, perhaps once in a year, they says, 'Hallo! I thought you was poor, my improvident friend!' Why, Lord, how hard it was upon a man! What was a man to do?
He couldn't go mollancholy mad, and even if he did, you wouldn't be the better for it.