, obeying orders, »Hear,
Hear, Hear!« and »Read!« Then would the noble or right honourable Barnacle
perceive, sir, from this little document, which he thought might carry
conviction even to the perversest mind (Derisive laughter and cheering from the
Barnacle fry), that within the short compass of the last financial half-year,
this much-maligned Department (Cheers) had written and received fifteen thousand
letters (Loud cheers), had made twenty-four thousand minutes (Louder cheers),
and thirty-two thousand five hundred and seventeen memoranda (Vehement
cheering). Nay, an ingenious gentleman connected with the Department, and
himself a valuable public servant, had done him the favour to make a curious
calculation of the amount of stationery consumed in it during the same period.
It formed a part of this same short document; and he derived from it the
remarkable fact that the sheets of foolscap paper it had devoted to the public
service would pave the footways on both sides of Oxford Street from end to end,
and leave nearly a quarter of a mile to spare for the park (Immense cheering and
laughter); while of tape - red tape - it had used enough to stretch, in graceful
festoons, from Hyde Park Corner to the General Post Office. Then, amidst a burst
of official exultation, would the noble or right honourable Barnacle sit down,
leaving the mutilated fragments of the Member on the field. No one, after that
exemplary demolition of him, would have the hardihood to hint that the more the
Circumlocution Office did, the less was done, and that the greatest blessing it
could confer on an unhappy public would be to do nothing.
    With sufficient occupation on his hands, now that he had this additional
task - such a task had many and many a serviceable man died of before his day -
Arthur Clennam led a life of slight variety. Regular visits to his mother's dull
sick room, and visits scarcely less regular to Mr. Meagles at Twickenham, were
its only changes during many months.
    He sadly and sorely missed Little Dorrit. He had been prepared to miss her
very much, but not so much. He knew to the full extent only through experience,
what a large place in his life was left blank when her familiar little figure
went out of it. He felt, too, that he must relinquish the hope of its return,
understanding the family character sufficiently well to be assured that he and
she were divided by a broad ground of separation. The old interest he had had in
her, and her old