say that very day, nobody but ourselves would
have been cruelly disappointed, or a penny the worse.'

Clennam, who had been almost incessantly shaking hands with him
throughout the narrative, was reminded by this to say, in an amazement
which even the preparation he had had for the main disclosure smoothed
down, 'My dear Mr Pancks, this must have cost you a great sum of money.'

'Pretty well, sir,' said the triumphant Pancks. 'No trifle, though we
did it as cheap as it could be done. And the outlay was a difficulty,
let me tell you.'

'A difficulty!' repeated Clennam. 'But the difficulties you have so
wonderfully conquered in the whole business!' shaking his hand again.

'I'll tell you how I did it,' said the delighted Pancks, putting his
hair into a condition as elevated as himself. 'First, I spent all I had
of my own. That wasn't much.'

'I am sorry for it,' said Clennam: 'not that it matters now, though.
Then, what did you do?'

'Then,' answered Pancks, 'I borrowed a sum of my proprietor.'

'Of Mr Casby?' said Clennam. 'He's a fine old fellow.'

'Noble old boy; an't he?' said Mr Pancks, entering on a series of the
dryest snorts. 'Generous old buck. Confiding old boy. Philanthropic old
buck. Benevolent old boy! Twenty per cent. I engaged to pay him, sir.
But we never do business for less at our shop.'

Arthur felt an awkward consciousness of having, in his exultant
condition, been a little premature.

'I said to that boiling-over old Christian,' Mr Pancks pursued,
appearing greatly to relish this descriptive epithet, 'that I had got a
little project on hand; a hopeful one; I told him a hopeful one; which
wanted a certain small capital. I proposed to him to lend me the
money on my note. Which he did, at twenty; sticking the twenty on in a
business-like way, and putting it into the note, to look like a part of
the principal. If I had broken down after that, I should have been his
grubber for the next seven years at half wages and double grind. But
he's a perfect Patriarch; and it would do a man good to serve him on
such terms--on any terms.'

Arthur for his life could not have said with confidence whether Pancks
really thought so or not.

'When that was gone, sir,' resumed Pancks, 'and it did go, though I
dribbled it out like so much blood, I had taken Mr Rugg into the secret.
I proposed to borrow of Mr Rugg (or of Miss Rugg; it's the same thing;
she made a little money by a speculation in the Common Pleas