s what you ought to do
yourself! Why don't you do as I do?'

Of whom Mr Pancks had taken the prevalent disease, he could no more have
told than if he had unconsciously taken a fever. Bred at first, as many
physical diseases are, in the wickedness of men, and then disseminated
in their ignorance, these epidemics, after a period, get communicated to
many sufferers who are neither ignorant nor wicked. Mr Pancks might, or
might not, have caught the illness himself from a subject of this class;
but in this category he appeared before Clennam, and the infection he
threw off was all the more virulent.

'And you have really invested,' Clennam had already passed to that word,
'your thousand pounds, Pancks?'

'To be sure, sir!' replied Pancks boldly, with a puff of smoke. 'And
only wish it ten!'

Now, Clennam had two subjects lying heavy on his lonely mind that night;
the one, his partner's long-deferred hope; the other, what he had seen
and heard at his mother's. In the relief of having this companion,
and of feeling that he could trust him, he passed on to both, and both
brought him round again, with an increase and acceleration of force, to
his point of departure.

It came about in the simplest manner. Quitting the investment subject,
after an interval of silent looking at the fire through the smoke of his
pipe, he told Pancks how and why he was occupied with the great National
Department. 'A hard case it has been, and a hard case it is on Doyce,'
he finished by saying, with all the honest feeling the topic roused in
him.

'Hard indeed,' Pancks acquiesced. 'But you manage for him, Mr Clennam?'

'How do you mean?'

'Manage the money part of the business?'

'Yes. As well as I can.'

'Manage it better, sir,' said Pancks. 'Recompense him for his toils and
disappointments. Give him the chances of the time. He'll never benefit
himself in that way, patient and preoccupied workman. He looks to you,
sir.'

'I do my best, Pancks,' returned Clennam, uneasily. 'As to duly weighing
and considering these new enterprises of which I have had no experience,
I doubt if I am fit for it, I am growing old.'

'Growing old?' cried Pancks. 'Ha, ha!'

There was something so indubitably genuine in the wonderful laugh, and
series of snorts and puffs, engendered in Mr Pancks's astonishment at,
and utter rejection of, the idea, that his being quite in earnest could
not be questioned.

'Growing old?' cried Pancks. 'Hear, hear, hear! Old?