With that he put up his spectacle-case, and said to Arthur, ‘If I don’t complain, Mr Clennam, I can feel gratitude; and I assure you that I feel it towards our mutual friend. Many’s the day, and many’s the way in which he has backed me.’

‘Stuff and nonsense,’ said Mr Meagles.

Arthur could not but glance at Daniel Doyce in the ensuing silence.

Though it was evidently in the grain of his character, and of his respect for his own case, that he should abstain from idle murmuring, it was evident that he had grown the older, the sterner, and the poorer, for his long endeavour. He could not but think what a blessed thing it would have been for this man, if he had taken a lesson from the gentlemen who were so kind as to take a nation’s affairs in charge, and had learnt How not to do it.

Mr Meagles was hot and despondent for about five minutes, and then began to cool and clear up.

‘Come, come!’ said he. ‘We shall not make this the better by being grim. Where do you think of going, Dan?’

‘I shall go back to the factory,’ said Dan. ‘Why then, we’ll all go back to the factory, or walk in that direction,’ returned Mr Meagles cheerfully. ‘Mr Clennam won’t be deterred by its being in Bleeding Heart Yard.’

‘Bleeding Heart Yard?’ said Clennam. ‘I want to go there.’

‘So much the better,’ cried Mr Meagles. ‘Come along!’

As they went along, certainly one of the party, and probably more than one, thought that Bleeding Heart Yard was no inappropriate destination for a man who had been in official correspondence with my lords and the Barnacles—and perhaps had a misgiving also that Britannia herself might come to look for lodgings in Bleeding Heart Yard some ugly day or other, if she over-did the Circumlocution Office.