oftener he glanced at the grey head bending over it, and the shrewd eye
kindling with pleasure in it and love of it--instrument for probing his
heart though it had been made for twelve long years--the less he could
reconcile it to his younger energy to let it go without one effort more.
At length he said:

'Doyce, it came to this at last--that the business was to be sunk with
Heaven knows how many more wrecks, or begun all over again?'

'Yes,' returned Doyce, 'that's what the noblemen and gentlemen made of
it after a dozen years.'

'And pretty fellows too!' said Clennam, bitterly.

'The usual thing!' observed Doyce. 'I must not make a martyr of myself,
when I am one of so large a company.'

'Relinquish it, or begin it all over again?' mused Clennam.

'That was exactly the long and the short of it,' said Doyce.

'Then, my friend,' cried Clennam, starting up and taking his
work-roughened hand, 'it shall be begun all over again!'

Doyce looked alarmed, and replied in a hurry--for him, 'No, no. Better
put it by. Far better put it by. It will be heard of, one day. I can
put it by. You forget, my good Clennam; I HAVE put it by. It's all at an
end.'

'Yes, Doyce,' returned Clennam, 'at an end as far as your efforts and
rebuffs are concerned, I admit, but not as far as mine are. I am younger
than you: I have only once set foot in that precious office, and I am
fresh game for them. Come! I'll try them. You shall do exactly as you
have been doing since we have been together. I will add (as I easily
can) to what I have been doing, the attempt to get public justice done
to you; and, unless I have some success to report, you shall hear no
more of it.'

Daniel Doyce was still reluctant to consent, and again and again urged
that they had better put it by. But it was natural that he should
gradually allow himself to be over-persuaded by Clennam, and should
yield. Yield he did. So Arthur resumed the long and hopeless labour of
striving to make way with the Circumlocution Office.

The waiting-rooms of that Department soon began to be familiar with his
presence, and he was generally ushered into them by its janitors much
as a pickpocket might be shown into a police-office; the principal
difference being that the object of the latter class of public business
is to keep the pickpocket, while the Circumlocution object was to
get rid of Clennam. However, he was resolved to stick to the Great
Department; and so the work of form-