ld. Very much,' said Clennam, drily.

'And after all,' cried Gowan, with that characteristic balancing of his
which reduced everything in the wide world to the same light weight,
'though I can't deny that the Circumlocution Office may ultimately
shipwreck everybody and everything, still, that will probably not be in
our time--and it's a school for gentlemen.'

'It's a very dangerous, unsatisfactory, and expensive school to the
people who pay to keep the pupils there, I am afraid,' said Clennam,
shaking his head.

'Ah! You are a terrible fellow,' returned Gowan, airily. 'I can
understand how you have frightened that little donkey, Clarence, the
most estimable of moon-calves (I really love him) nearly out of his
wits. But enough of him, and of all the rest of them. I want to present
you to my mother, Mr Clennam. Pray do me the favour to give me the
opportunity.'

In nobody's state of mind, there was nothing Clennam would have desired
less, or would have been more at a loss how to avoid.

'My mother lives in a most primitive manner down in that dreary
red-brick dungeon at Hampton Court,' said Gowan. 'If you would make
your own appointment, suggest your own day for permitting me to take
you there to dinner, you would be bored and she would be charmed. Really
that's the state of the case.'

What could Clennam say after this? His retiring character included a
great deal that was simple in the best sense, because unpractised and
unused; and in his simplicity and modesty, he could only say that he was
happy to place himself at Mr Gowan's disposal. Accordingly he said it,
and the day was fixed. And a dreaded day it was on his part, and a very
unwelcome day when it came and they went down to Hampton Court together.

The venerable inhabitants of that venerable pile seemed, in those times,
to be encamped there like a sort of civilised gipsies. There was a
temporary air about their establishments, as if they were going away the
moment they could get anything better; there was also a dissatisfied air
about themselves, as if they took it very ill that they had not already
got something much better. Genteel blinds and makeshifts were more or
less observable as soon as their doors were opened; screens not half
high enough, which made dining-rooms out of arched passages, and warded
off obscure corners where footboys slept at nights with their heads
among the knives and forks; curtains which called upon you to believe
that they di