The Patriarch insisted on his staying to dinner, and Flora signalled
'Yes!' Clennam so wished he could have done more than stay to dinner--so
heartily wished he could have found the Flora that had been, or that
never had been--that he thought the least atonement he could make for
the disappointment he almost felt ashamed of, was to give himself up to
the family desire. Therefore, he stayed to dinner.
Pancks dined with them. Pancks steamed out of his little dock at a
quarter before six, and bore straight down for the Patriarch, who
happened to be then driving, in an inane manner, through a stagnant
account of Bleeding Heart Yard. Pancks instantly made fast to him and
hauled him out. 'Bleeding Heart Yard?' said Pancks, with a puff and a snort. 'It's a
troublesome property. Don't pay you badly, but rents are very hard to
get there. You have more trouble with that one place than with all the
places belonging to you.' Just as the big ship in tow gets the credit, with most spectators, of
being the powerful object, so the Patriarch usually seemed to have said
himself whatever Pancks said for him.
'Indeed?' returned Clennam, upon whom this impression was so efficiently
made by a mere gleam of the polished head that he spoke the ship instead
of the Tug. 'The people are so poor there?'
'You can't say, you know,' snorted Pancks, taking one of his dirty hands
out of his rusty iron-grey pockets to bite his nails, if he could find
any, and turning his beads of eyes upon his employer, 'whether they're
poor or not. They say they are, but they all say that. When a man says
he's rich, you're generally sure he isn't. Besides, if they ARE poor,
you can't help it. You'd be poor yourself if you didn't get your rents.'
'True enough,' said Arthur. 'You're not going to keep open house for all the poor of London,'
pursued Pancks. 'You're not going to lodge 'em for nothing. You're not
going to open your gates wide and let 'em come free. Not if you know it,
you ain't.' Mr Casby shook his head, in Placid and benignant generality.
'If a man takes a room of you at half-a-crown a week, and when the week
comes round hasn't got the half-crown, you say to that man, Why have you
got the room, then? If you haven't got the one thing, why have you got
the other? What have you been and done with your money? What do you mean
by it? What are you up to? That's what YOU say to a man of that sort;
and if you didn't say it, more shame for you!' Mr Pancks here made a
singular and startling noise, produced by a strong blowing effort in the
region of the nose, unattended by any result but that acoustic one.