an exceeding short
space of time, be not a single Barnacle left sticking to a post.
    Daniel Doyce faced his condition with its pains and penalties attached to
it, and soberly worked on for the work's sake. Clennam, cheering him with a
hearty co-operation, was a moral support to him, besides doing good service in
his business relation. The concern prospered, and the partners were fast
friends.
    But Daniel could not forget the old design of so many years. It was not in
reason to be expected that he should; if he could have lightly forgotten it, he
could never have conceived it, or had the patience and perseverance to work it
out. So Clennam thought, when he sometimes observed him of an evening looking
over the models and drawings, and consoling himself by muttering with a sigh as
he put them away again, that the thing was as true as it ever was.
    To show no sympathy with so much endeavour, and so much disappointment,
would have been to fail in what Clennam regarded as among the implied
obligations of his partnership. A revival of the passing interest in the subject
which had been by chance awakened at the door of the Circumlocution Office,
originated in this feeling. He asked his partner to explain the invention to
him; »having a lenient consideration,« he stipulated, »for my being no workman,
Doyce.«
    »No workman?« said Doyce. »You would have been a thorough workman if you had
given yourself to it. You have as good a head for understanding such things as I
have met with.«
    »A totally uneducated one, I am sorry to add,« said Clennam.
    »I don't know that,« returned Doyce, »and I wouldn't have you say that. No
man of sense, who has been generally improved, and has improved himself, can be
called quite uneducated as to anything. I don't particularly favour mysteries. I
would as soon, on a fair and clear explanation, be judged by one class of man as
another, provided he had the qualification I have named.«
    »At all events,« said Clennam - »this sounds as if we were exchanging
compliments, but we know we are not - I shall have the advantage of as plain an
explanation as can be given.«
    »Well!« said Daniel, in his steady even way, »I'll try to make it so.«
    He had the power, often to be found in union with such a character, of
explaining what he himself