laughing afresh, »they
are darling fellows! Even poor little Clarence, the born idiot of the family, is
the most agreeable and most endearing blockhead! And by Jupiter, with a kind of
cleverness in him too, that would astonish you!«
    »It would. 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 the 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