have had something real about her or she could not have
existed, but it was certainly not her hair or her teeth or her figure
or her complexion; so was a grey old gentleman of dignified and sullen
appearance; both of whom had come to dinner. But, as they had all
been in the British Embassy way in sundry parts of the earth, and as
a British Embassy cannot better establish a character with the
Circumlocution Office than by treating its compatriots with illimitable
contempt (else it would become like the Embassies of other countries),
Clennam felt that on the whole they let him off lightly.

The dignified old gentleman turned out to be Lord Lancaster
Stiltstalking, who had been maintained by the Circumlocution Office for
many years as a representative of the Britannic Majesty abroad.

This noble Refrigerator had iced several European courts in his time,
and had done it with such complete success that the very name of
Englishman yet struck cold to the stomachs of foreigners who had the
distinguished honour of remembering him at a distance of a quarter of a
century.

He was now in retirement, and hence (in a ponderous white cravat, like
a stiff snow-drift) was so obliging as to shade the dinner. There was a
whisper of the pervading Bohemian character in the nomadic nature of
the service and its curious races of plates and dishes; but the noble
Refrigerator, infinitely better than plate or porcelain, made it superb.
He shaded the dinner, cooled the wines, chilled the gravy, and blighted
the vegetables.

There was only one other person in the room: a microscopically small
footboy, who waited on the malevolent man who hadn't got into the
Post-Office. Even this youth, if his jacket could have been unbuttoned
and his heart laid bare, would have been seen, as a distant adherent of
the Barnacle family, already to aspire to a situation under Government.

Mrs Gowan with a gentle melancholy upon her, occasioned by her son's
being reduced to court the swinish public as a follower of the low Arts,
instead of asserting his birthright and putting a ring through its nose
as an acknowledged Barnacle, headed the conversation at dinner on the
evil days. It was then that Clennam learned for the first time what
little pivots this great world goes round upon.

'If John Barnacle,' said Mrs Gowan, after the degeneracy of the times
had been fully ascertained, 'if John Barnacle had but abandoned his most
unfortunate idea of conciliating the mo