'Oh!' said he, when Arthur told him how he came to be there. 'Very well.

That's right. If he should ask for Pancks, will you be so good as to say

that Pancks is come in?' And so, with a snort and a puff, he worked out

by another door.

Now, in the old days at home, certain audacious doubts respecting the

last of the Patriarchs, which were afloat in the air, had, by some

forgotten means, come in contact with Arthur's sensorium. He was aware

of motes and specks of suspicion in the atmosphere of that time; seen

through which medium, Christopher Casby was a mere Inn signpost, without

any Inn--an invitation to rest and be thankful, when there was no place

to put up at, and nothing whatever to be thankful for. He knew that some

of these specks even represented Christopher as capable of harbouring

designs in 'that head,' and as being a crafty impostor. Other motes

there were which showed him as a heavy, selfish, drifting Booby, who,

having stumbled, in the course of his unwieldy jostlings against other

men, on the discovery that to get through life with ease and credit,

he had but to hold his tongue, keep the bald part of his head well

polished, and leave his hair alone, had had just cunning enough to seize

the idea and stick to it.

It was said that his being town-agent to

Lord Decimus Tite Barnacle was referable, not to his having the least

business capacity, but to his looking so supremely benignant that nobody

could suppose the property screwed or jobbed under such a man; also,

that for similar reasons he now got more money out of his own wretched

lettings, unquestioned, than anybody with a less nobby and less shining

crown could possibly have done. In a word, it was represented (Clennam

called to mind, alone in the ticking parlour) that many people select

their models, much as the painters, just now mentioned, select theirs;

and that, whereas in the Royal Academy some evil old ruffian of a

Dog-stealer will annually be found embodying all the cardinal virtues,

on account of his eyelashes, or his chin, or his legs (thereby planting

thorns of confusion in the breasts of the more observant students of

nature), so, in the great social Exhibition, accessories are often

accepted in lieu of the internal character.

Calling these things to mind, and ranging Mr Pancks in a row with them,

Arthur Clennam leaned this day to the opinion, without quite deciding

on it, that the last of the Patriarchs was the drifting Booby aforesaid,

with the one idea of keeping the bald part of his head highly polished:

and that, much as an unwieldy ship in the Thames river may sometimes be

seen heavily driving with the tide, broadside on, stern first, in its

own way and in the way of everything else, though making a great show

of navigation, when all of a sudden, a little coaly steam-tug will bear

down upon it, take it in tow, and bustle off with it; similarly the

cumbrous Patriarch had been taken in tow by the snorting Pancks, and was

now following in the wake of that dingy little craft.




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