Chapter 28 - Page 2

regretted our place having had
anything to do with your difficulties.'

Clennam again assured him that he absolved it of the
responsibility.

'That's right,' said Ferdinand. 'I am very happy to hear it. I
was rather afraid in my own mind that we might have helped to floor
you, because there is no doubt that it is our misfortune to do that
kind of thing now and then. We don't want to do it; but if men
will be gravelled, why--we can't help it.'

'Without giving an unqualified assent to what you say,' returned
Arthur, gloomily, 'I am much obliged to you for your interest in
me.'

'No, but really! Our place is,' said the easy young Barnacle, 'the
most inoffensive place possible. You'll say we are a humbug. I
won't say we are not; but all that sort of thing is intended to be,
and must be. Don't you see?'

'I do not,' said Clennam.

'You don't regard it from the right point of view. It is the point
of view that is the essential thing. Regard our place from the
point of view that we only ask you to leave us alone, and we are as
capital a Department as you'll find anywhere.'

'Is your place there to be left alone?' asked Clennam.

'You exactly hit it,' returned Ferdinand. 'It is there with the
express intention that everything shall be left alone. That is
what it means. That is what it's for. No doubt there's a certain
form to be kept up that it's for something else, but it's only a
form. Why, good Heaven, we are nothing but forms! Think what a
lot of our forms you have gone through. And you have never got any
nearer to an end?'

'Never,' said Clennam.

'Look at it from the right point of view, and there you have us--
official and effectual. It's like a limited game of cricket. A
field of outsiders are always going in to bowl at the Public
Service, and we block the balls.'

Clennam asked what became of the bowlers? The airy young Barnacle
replied that they grew tired, got dead beat, got lamed, got their
backs broken, died off, gave it up, went in for other games.

'And this occasions me to congratulate myself again,' he pursued,
'on the circumstance that our place has had nothing to do with your
temporary retirement. It very easily might have had a hand in it;
because it is undeniable that we are sometimes a most unlucky
place, in our effects upon people who will not leave us alone. Mr
Clennam, I am quite unreserved with you. As between yourself and
myself, I know I may be. I was so, when I first saw you making the
mistake of not leaving us alone; because I perceived that you were
inexperienced and sanguine, and had--I hope you'll not object to my
saying--some simplicity.'

'Not at all.'

'Some simplicity. Therefore I