Chapter 8 - Page 2

Clennam regarded as
among the implied obligations of his partnership. A revival of the
passing interest in the subject which had been by chance awakened
at the door of the Circumlocution Office, originated in this
feeling. He asked his partner to explain the invention to him;
'having a lenient consideration,' he stipulated, 'for my being no
workman, Doyce.'

'No workman?' said Doyce. 'You would have been a thorough workman
if you had given yourself to it. You have as good a head for
understanding such things as I have met with.'

'A totally uneducated one, I am sorry to add,' said Clennam.

'I don't know that,' returned Doyce, 'and I wouldn't have you say
that. No man of sense who has been generally improved, and has
improved himself, can be called quite uneducated as to anything.
I don't particularly favour mysteries. I would as soon, on a fair
and clear explanation, be judged by one class of man as another,
provided he had the qualification I have named.'

'At all events,' said Clennam--'this sounds as if we were
exchanging compliments, but we know we are not--I shall have the
advantage of as plain an explanation as can be given.'

'Well!' said Daniel, in his steady even way,'I'll try to make it
so.'

He had the power, often to be found in union with such a character,
of explaining what he himself perceived, and meant, with the direct
force and distinctness with which it struck his own mind. His
manner of demonstration was so orderly and neat and simple, that it
was not easy to mistake him. There was something almost ludicrous
in the complete irreconcilability of a vague conventional notion
that he must be a visionary man, with the precise, sagacious
travelling of his eye and thumb over the plans, their patient
stoppages at particular points, their careful returns to other
points whence little channels of explanation had to be traced up,
and his steady manner of making everything good and everything
sound at each important stage, before taking his hearer on a
line's-breadth further. His dismissal of himself from his
description, was hardly less remarkable. He never said, I
discovered this adaptation or invented that combination; but showed
the whole thing as if the Divine artificer had made it, and he had
happened to find it; so modest he was about it, such a pleasant
touch of respect was mingled with his quiet admiration of it, and
so calmly convinced he was that it was established on irrefragable
laws.

Not only that evening, but for several succeeding evenings, Clennam
was quite charmed by this investigation. The more he pursued it,
and the oftener he glanced at the grey head bending over it, and
the shrewd eye kindling with pleasure in it and