Hear him, hear
him!'

The positive refusal expressed in Mr Pancks's continued snorts, no less
than in these exclamations, to entertain the sentiment for a single
instant, drove Arthur away from it. Indeed, he was fearful of something
happening to Mr Pancks in the violent conflict that took place between
the breath he jerked out of himself and the smoke he jerked into
himself. This abandonment of the second topic threw him on the third.

'Young, old, or middle-aged, Pancks,' he said, when there was a
favourable pause, 'I am in a very anxious and uncertain state; a state
that even leads me to doubt whether anything now seeming to belong to
me, may be really mine. Shall I tell you how this is? Shall I put a
great trust in you?'

'You shall, sir,' said Pancks, 'if you believe me worthy of it.'

'I do.'

'You may!' Mr Pancks's short and sharp rejoinder, confirmed by the
sudden outstretching of his coaly hand, was most expressive and
convincing. Arthur shook the hand warmly.

He then, softening the nature of his old apprehensions as much as was
possible consistently with their being made intelligible and never
alluding to his mother by name, but speaking vaguely of a relation
of his, confided to Mr Pancks a broad outline of the misgivings he
entertained, and of the interview he had witnessed. Mr Pancks listened
with such interest that, regardless of the charms of the Eastern pipe,
he put it in the grate among the fire-irons, and occupied his hands
during the whole recital in so erecting the loops and hooks of hair
all over his head, that he looked, when it came to a conclusion, like a
journeyman Hamlet in conversation with his father's spirit.

'Brings me back, sir,' was his exclamation then, with a startling touch
on Clennam's knee, 'brings me back, sir, to the Investments! I don't
say anything of your making yourself poor to repair a wrong you never
committed. That's you. A man must be himself. But I say this,
fearing you may want money to save your own blood from exposure and
disgrace--make as much as you can!'

Arthur shook his head, but looked at him thoughtfully too.

'Be as rich as you can, sir,' Pancks adjured him with a powerful
concentration of all his energies on the advice. 'Be as rich as you
honestly can. It's your duty. Not for your sake, but for the sake of
others. Take time by the forelock. Poor Mr Doyce (who really is growing
old) depends upon you. Your relative depends upon you. You don't know