It had now been decided that Bagwax was to be sent out to Sydney at the expense of the Caldigates.  There had been difficulty as to leave of absence for such a purpose.  The man having been convicted, the postmaster-general was bound to regard him as guilty, and hesitated to allow a clerk to be absent so long on behalf of a man who was already in prison.  But the Secretary of State overruled this scruple, and the leave was to be given.  Bagwax was elate,—­first and chiefly because he trusted that he would become the means of putting right a foul and cruel wrong.  For in these days Bagwax almost wept over the hardships inflicted on that poor lady at Folking.  But he was elated also by the prospect of his travels, and by the godsend of a six months’ leave of absence.  He was a little proud, too, at having had this personal attention paid to him by the Secretary of State.  All this was very gratifying.  But that which gratified him was not so charming to his brother clerks.  They had never enjoyed the privilege of leaving that weary office for six months.  They were not allowed to occupy themselves in contemplating an envelope.  They were never specially mentioned by the Secretary of State.  Of course there was a little envy, and a somewhat general feeling that Bagwax, having got to the weak side of Sir John Joram, was succeeding in having himself sent out as a first-class overland passenger to Sydney, merely as a job.  Paris to be seen, and the tunnel, and the railways through Italy, and the Suez Canal,—­all these places, not delightful to the wives of Indian officers coming home or going out, were an Elysium to the post-office mind.  His expenses to be paid for six months on the most gentleman-like footing, and his salary going on all the time!  Official human nature, good as it generally is, cannot learn that such glories are to be showered on one not specially deserving head without something akin to enmity.  The general idea, therefore, in the office, was that Bagwax would do no good in Sydney, that others would have been better than Bagwax,—­in fact, that of all the clerks in all the departments, Bagwax was the very last man who ought to have been selected for an enterprise demanding secrecy, discretion, and some judicial severity.

Curlydown and Bagwax occupied the same room at the office in St. Martin’s-le-Grand; and there it was their fate in life to arrange, inspect, and generally attend to those apparently unintelligible hieroglyphics with which the outside coverings of our correspondence are generally bedaubed.  Curlydown’s hair had fallen from his head, and his face had become puckered with wrinkles, through anxiety to make these markings legible and intelligible.  The popular newspaper, the popular member of Parliament, and the popular novelist,—­the name of Charles Dickens will of course present itself to the reader who remembers the Circumlocution office,—­have had it impressed on their several minds,—­and have endeavoured to impress the same idea on the minds of