Sketches by Boz 7. "A Passage in the Life of Mr. Watkins Tottle". Chapter the Second

Well, well, well, it turns out that the second chapter of "A Passage in the Life of Mr. Watkins Tottle" is not the longest of the Sketches after all. Rather, the edition I am reading is faulty and transfers the reader back in time just before Mr. Tottle is going to deliver Miss Lillerton's note to the clergyman Mr. Timson, so that one goes back to the debtor-prison and has once again the whole account of the young married couple, Mr. Gabriel Parsons's release of Mr. Tottle, the conditions he establishes, the dinner with the Parsons and Miss Lillerton, the confusing proposal and then goes back to the moment in which Mr. Timson's violoncello stops playing and the clergyman is about to enter the scene. Quite a bittersweet sketch this one, which includes a glimpse at life within a debtors' prison. I feel so sorry for poor Mr. Tottle.