me; and never know it.

She knows nothing about 'em. She knows nothing about any relative
whatever. Never did. Never will.' 'Mr Casby could enlighten her,
perhaps?'

'May be,' said Pancks. 'I expect so, but don't know. He has long had
money (not overmuch as I make out) in trust to dole out to her when
she can't do without it. Sometimes she's proud and won't touch it for
a length of time; sometimes she's so poor that she must have it. She
writhes under her life. A woman more angry, passionate, reckless,
and revengeful never lived. She came for money to-night. Said she had
peculiar occasion for it.'

'I think,' observed Clennam musing, 'I by chance know what occasion--I
mean into whose pocket the money is to go.'

'Indeed?' said Pancks. 'If it's a compact, I recommend that party to be
exact in it. I wouldn't trust myself to that woman, young and handsome
as she is, if I had wronged her; no, not for twice my proprietor's
money! Unless,' Pancks added as a saving clause, 'I had a lingering
illness on me, and wanted to get it over.'

Arthur, hurriedly reviewing his own observation of her, found it to
tally pretty nearly with Mr Pancks's view.

'The wonder is to me,' pursued Pancks, 'that she has never done for my
proprietor, as the only person connected with her story she can lay
hold of. Mentioning that, I may tell you, between ourselves, that I am
sometimes tempted to do for him myself.'

Arthur started and said, 'Dear me, Pancks, don't say that!'

'Understand me,' said Pancks, extending five cropped coaly finger-nails
on Arthur's arm; 'I don't mean, cut his throat. But by all that's
precious, if he goes too far, I'll cut his hair!'

Having exhibited himself in the new light of enunciating this tremendous
threat, Mr Pancks, with a countenance of grave import, snorted several
times and steamed away.

CHAPTER 10. The Dreams of Mrs Flintwinch thicken

The shady waiting-rooms of the Circumlocution Office, where he passed a
good deal of time in company with various troublesome Convicts who were
under sentence to be broken alive on that wheel, had afforded Arthur
Clennam ample leisure, in three or four successive days, to exhaust the
subject of his late glimpse of Miss Wade and Tattycoram. He had been
able to make no more of it and no less of it, and in this unsatisfactory
condition he was fain to leave it.

During this space he had not been to his mother's dismal old house.

One of his customary evenings