Me and my wife, we are well acquainted with Miss Dorrit.' 'Intimate!' cried Mrs Plornish.

Indeed, she was so proud of the acquaintance, that she had awakened some bitterness of spirit in the Yard by magnifying to an enormous amount the sum for which Miss Dorrit's father had become insolvent.

The Bleeding Hearts resented her claiming to know people of such distinction.
'It was her father that I got acquainted with first.

And through getting acquainted with him, you see--why--I got acquainted with her,' said Plornish tautologically.
'I see.' 'Ah! And there's manners! There's polish! There's a gentleman to have run to seed in the Marshalsea jail! Why, perhaps you are not aware,' said Plornish, lowering his voice, and speaking with a perverse admiration of what he ought to have pitied or despised, 'not aware that Miss Dorrit and her sister dursn't let him know that they work for a living.

No!' said Plornish, looking with a ridiculous triumph first at his wife, and then all round the room.