Patriarch was the name which many people delighted to give him. Various old ladies in the neighbourhood spoke of him as The Last of the Patriarchs. So grey, so slow, so quiet, so impassionate, so very bumpy in the head, Patriarch was the word for him. He had been accosted in the streets, and respectfully solicited to become a Patriarch for painters and for sculptors; with so much importunity, in sooth, that it would appear to be beyond the Fine Arts to remember the points of a Patriarch, or to invent one. Philanthropists of both sexes had asked who he was, and on being informed, ‘Old Christopher Casby, formerly Town-agent to Lord Decimus Tite Barnacle,’ had cried in a rapture of disappointment, ‘Oh! why, with that head, is he not a benefactor to his species! Oh! why, with that head, is he not a father to the orphan and a friend to the friendless!’ With that head, however, he remained old Christopher Casby, proclaimed by common report rich in house property; and with that head, he now sat in his silent parlour. Indeed it would be the height of unreason to expect him to be sitting there without that head.
Arthur Clennam moved to attract his attention, and the grey eyebrows turned towards him.
‘I beg your pardon,’ said Clennam, ‘I fear you did not hear me announced?’
‘No, sir, I did not. Did you wish to see me, sir?’
‘I wished to pay my respects.’
Mr Casby seemed a feather’s weight disappointed by the last words, having perhaps prepared himself for the visitor’s wishing to pay something else. ‘Have I the pleasure, sir,’ he proceeded—‘take a chair, if you please—have I the pleasure of knowing—? Ah! truly, yes, I think I have! I believe I am not mistaken in supposing that I am acquainted with those features? I think I address a gentleman of whose return to this country I was informed by Mr Flintwinch?’
‘That is your present visitor.’
‘Really! Mr Clennam?’
‘No other, Mr Casby.’
‘Mr Clennam, I am glad to see you. How have you been since we met?’