About this story
Mr Guppy proves in a London room that your mother is Lady Dedlock, Inspector Bucket drives you north through snow on her track, and Richard dies at dawn still beginning the world. Sixty-seven chapters carry you from a hushed house at Windsor to the suit dying of its own costs and a new Bleak House in Yorkshire.
How it opens
Your godmother's house near Windsor kept its carpets hushed, its windows dim, and its clocks painfully exact.
On your birthday, winter rain traced the panes while the little doll you trusted waited beneath your pillow.
Miss BarbaryEsther, vanity does not become a child whose duty is to be useful and grateful.
Miss BarbaryYou have been fed, instructed, and spared questions that could bring you no good.
Choose
I am grateful, but I still wish to know who my mother was.
Have I done something wrong by being born?