The Battle of Life. A Love Story

“I don’t stand up for life in general,” he added, rubbing his hands and chuckling, “it’s full of folly; full of something worse. Professions of trust, and confidence, and unselfishness, and all that. Bah, bah, bah! We see what they’re worth. But you mustn’t laugh at life; you’ve got a game to play; a very serious game indeed! Everybody’s playing against you, you know; and you’re playing against them. Oh! it’s a very interesting thing. There are deep moves upon the board. You must only laugh, Doctor Jeddler, when you win; and then not much. He, he, he! And then not much,” repeated Snitchey, rolling his head and winking his eye; as if he would have added, ‘you may do this instead!’

“Well, Alfred!” cried the Doctor, “what do you say now?”

“I say, Sir,” replied Alfred, “that the greatest favor you could do me, and yourself too I am inclined to think, would be to try sometimes to forget this battle-field, and others like it, in that broader battle-field of Life, on which the sun looks every day.”

“Really, I’m afraid that wouldn’t soften his opinions, Mr. Alfred,” said Snitchey. “The combatants are very eager and very bitter in that same battle of Life. There’s a great deal of cutting and slashing, and firing into people’s heads from behind; terrible treading down, and trampling on; it’s rather a bad business.”

“I believe, Mr. Snitchey,” said Alfred, “there are quiet victories and struggles, great sacrifices of self, and noble acts of heroism, in it – even in many of its apparent lightnesses and contradictions – not the less difficult to achieve, because they have no earthly chronicle or audience; done every day in nooks and corners, and in little households, and in men’s and women’s hearts – any one of which might reconcile the sternest man to such a world, and fill him with belief and hope in it, though two-fourths of its people were at war, and another fourth at law; and that’s a bold word.”

Both the sisters listened keenly.

“Well, well!” said the Doctor, “I am too old to be converted, even by my friend Snitchey here, or my good spinster sister, Martha Jeddler; who had what she calls her domestic trials ages ago, and has led a sympathising life with all sorts of people ever since; and who is so much of your opinion (only she’s less reasonable and more obstinate, being a woman), that we can’t agree, and seldom meet. I was born upon this battle-field. I began, as a boy, to have my thoughts directed to the real history of a battle-field. Sixty years have gone over my head; and I have never seen the Christian world, including Heaven knows how many loving mothers and good enough girls, like mine here, anything but mad for a battle-field. The same contradictions prevail in everything. One must either laugh or cry at such stupendous inconsistencies; and I prefer to laugh.”

Britain, who had been paying the profoundest and most melancholy attention to each speaker in his turn, seemed suddenly to decide in favor of the same preference, if a deep sepulchral sound that escaped him might be construed into a demonstration of risibility. His face, however, was so perfectly unaffected by it, both before and afterwards, that although one or two of the breakfast party looked round as being startled by a mysterious noise, nobody connected the offender with it.

Except his partner in attendance, Clemency Newcome; who, rousing him with one of those favorite joints, her elbows, inquired, in a reproachful whisper, what he laughed at.

“Not you!” said Britain.

“Who then?”

“Humanity,” said Britain. “That’s the joke.”

“What between master and them lawyers, he’s getting more and more addle-headed every day!” cried Clemency, giving him a lunge with the other elbow, as a mental stimulant. “Do you know where you are? Do you want to get warning?”

“I don’t know anything,” said Britain, with a leaden eye and an immovable visage. “I don’t care for anything. I don’t make out anything. I don’t believe anything. And I don’t want anything.”

Although this forlorn summary of his general condition, may have been overcharged in an access of despondency, Benjamin Britain – sometimes called Little Britain, to distinguish him from Great; as we might say Young England, to express Old England with a difference – had defined his real state more accurately than might be supposed. For serving as a sort of man Miles, to the Doctor’s Friar Bacon; and listening day after day to innumerable orations addressed by the Doctor to various people, all tending to shew that his very existence was at best a mistake and an absurdity; this unfortunate servitor had fallen, by degrees, into such an abyss of confused and contradictory suggestions from within and without, that Truth at the bottom of her well, was on the level surface as compared with Britain in the depths of his mystification. The only point he clearly comprehended, was, that the new element usually brought into these discussions by Snitchey and Craggs, never served to make them clearer, and always seemed to give the Doctor a species of advantage and confirmation. Therefore he looked upon the Firm as one of the proximate causes of his state of mind, and held them in abhorrence accordingly.

“But this is not our business, Alfred,” said the Doctor. “Ceasing to be my ward (as you have said) to-day; and leaving us full to the brim of such learning as the Grammar School down here was able to give you, and your studies in London could add to that, and such practical knowledge as a dull old country Doctor like myself could graft upon both; you are away, now, into the world. The first term of probation appointed by your poor father, being over, away you go now, your own master, to fulfil his second desire: and long before your three years’ tour among the foreign schools of medicine is finished, you’ll have forgotten us. Lord, you’ll forget us easily in six months!”

“If I do – But you know better; why should I speak to you!” said Alfred, laughing.

“I don’t know anything of the sort,” returned the Doctor. “What do you say, Marion?”

Marion, trifling with her teacup, seemed to say – but she didn’t say it – that he was welcome to forget them, if he could. Grace pressed the blooming face against her cheek, and smiled.

“I haven’t been, I hope, a very unjust steward in the execution of my trust,” pursued the Doctor; “but I am to be, at any rate, formally discharged, and released, and what not, this morning; and here are our good friends Snitchey and Craggs, with a bagful of papers, and accounts, and documents, for the transfer of the balance of the trust fund to you (I wish it was a more difficult one to dispose of, Alfred, but you must get to be a great man and make it so), and other drolleries of that sort, which are to be signed, sealed, and delivered.”

“And duly witnessed, as by law required,” said Snitchey, pushing away his plate, and taking out the papers, which his partner proceeded to spread upon the table; “and Self and Craggs having been co-trustees with you, Doctor, in so far as the fund was concerned, we shall want your two servants to attest the signatures – can you read, Mrs. Newcome?”

“I a’n’t married, Mister,” said Clemency.

“Oh, I beg your pardon. I should think not,” chuckled Snitchey, casting his eyes over her extraordinary figure. “You can read?”

“A little,” answered Clemency.

“The marriage service, night and morning, eh?” observed the lawyer, jocosely.

“No,” said Clemency. “Too hard. I only reads a thimble.”

“Read a thimble!” echoed Snitchey. “What are you talking about, young woman?”

Clemency nodded. “And a nutmeg-grater.”

“Why, this is a lunatic! a subject for the Lord High Chancellor!” said Snitchey, staring at her.

“If possessed of any property,” stipulated Craggs.

Grace, however, interposing, explained that each of the articles in question bore an engraved motto, and so formed the pocket library of Clemency Newcome, who was not much given to the study of books.

“Oh, that’s it, is it, Miss Grace!” said Snitchey. “Yes, yes. Ha, ha, ha! I thought our friend was an idiot. She looks uncommonly like it,” he muttered, with a supercilious glance. “And what does the thimble say, Mrs. Newcome?”

“I a’n’t married, Mister,” observed Clemency.

“Well, Newcome. Will that do?” said the lawyer. “What does the thimble say, Newcome?”

How Clemency, before replying to this question, held one pocket open, and looked down into its yawning depths for the thimble which wasn’t there, – and how she then held an opposite pocket open, and seeming to descry it, like a pearl of great price, at the bottom, cleared away such intervening obstacles as a handkerchief, an end of wax candle, a flushed apple, an orange, a lucky penny, a cramp bone, a padlock, a pair of scissors in a sheath, more expressively describable as promising young shears, a handful or so of loose beads, several balls of cotton, a needle-case, a cabinet collection of curl-papers, and a biscuit, all of which articles she entrusted individually and severally to Britain to hold, – is of no consequence. Nor how, in her determination to grasp this pocket by the throat and keep it prisoner (for it had a tendency to swing and twist itself round the nearest corner), she assumed, and calmly maintained, an attitude apparently inconsistent with the human anatomy and the laws of gravity. It is enough that at last she triumphantly produced the thimble on her finger, and rattled the nutmeg-grater; the literature of both those trinkets being obviously in course of wearing out and wasting away, through excessive friction.

“That’s the thimble, is it, young woman?” said Mr. Snitchey, diverting himself at her expense. “And what does the thimble say?”

“It says,” replied Clemency, reading slowly round it as if it were a tower, “For-get and for-give.”

Snitchey and Craggs laughed heartily. “So new!” said Snitchey. “So easy!” said Craggs. “Such a knowledge of human nature in it,” said Snitchey. “So applicable to the affairs of life,” said Craggs.

“And the nutmeg-grater?” inquired the head of the Firm.

“The grater says,” returned Clemency, “Do as you – wold – be – done by.”

“‘Do, or you’ll be done brown,’ you mean,” said Mr. Snitchey.

“I don’t understand,” retorted Clemency, shaking her head vaguely. “I a’n’t no lawyer.”

“I am afraid that if she was, Doctor,” said Mr. Snitchey, turning to him suddenly, as if to anticipate any effect that might otherwise be consequent on this retort, “she’d find it to be the golden rule of half her clients. They are serious enough in that – whimsical as your world is – and lay the blame on us afterwards. We, in our profession, are little else than mirrors after all, Mr. Alfred; but we are generally consulted by angry and quarrelsome people, who are not in their best looks; and it’s rather hard to quarrel with us if we reflect unpleasant aspects. I think,” said Mr. Snitchey, “that I speak for Self and Craggs?”

“Decidedly,” said Craggs.

“And so, if Mr. Britain will oblige us with a mouthful of ink,” said Mr. Snitchey, returning to the papers, “we’ll sign, seal, and deliver as soon as possible, or the coach will be coming past before we know where we are.”

If one might judge from his appearance, there was every probability of the coach coming past before Mr. Britain knew where he was; for he stood in a state of abstraction, mentally balancing the Doctor against the lawyers, and the lawyers against the Doctor, and their clients against both; and engaged in feeble attempts to make the thimble and nutmeg-grater (a new idea to him) square with anybody’s system of philosophy; and, in short, bewildering himself as much as ever his great namesake has done with theories and schools. But Clemency, who was his good Genius – though he had the meanest possible opinion of her understanding, by reason of her seldom troubling herself with abstract speculations, and being always at hand to do the right thing at the right time – having produced the ink in a twinkling, tendered him the further service of recalling him to himself by the application of her elbows; with which gentle flappers she so jogged his memory, in a more literal construction of that phrase than usual, that he soon became quite fresh and brisk.

How he labored under an apprehension not uncommon to persons in his degree, to whom the use of pen and ink is an event, that he couldn’t append his name to a document, not of his own writing, without committing himself in some shadowy manner, or somehow signing away vague and enormous sums of money; and how he approached the deeds under protest, and by dint of the Doctor’s coercion, and insisted on pausing to look at them before writing (the cramped hand, to say nothing of the phraseology, being so much Chinese to him), and also on turning them round to see whether there was anything fraudulent, underneath; and how, having signed his name, he became desolate as one who had parted with his property and rights; I want the time to tell. Also, how the blue bag containing his signature, afterwards had a mysterious interest for him, and he couldn’t leave it; also, how Clemency Newcome, in an ecstasy of laughter at the idea of her own importance and dignity, brooded over the whole table with her two elbows like a spread eagle, and reposed her head upon her left arm as a preliminary to the formation of certain cabalistic characters, which required a deal of ink, and imaginary counterparts whereof she executed at the same time with her tongue. Also how, having once tasted ink, she became thirsty in that regard, as tigers are said to be after tasting another sort of fluid, and wanted to sign everything, and put her name in all kinds of places. In brief, the Doctor was discharged of his trust and all its responsibilities; and Alfred, taking it on himself, was fairly started on the journey of life.

“Britain!” said the Doctor. “Run to the gate, and watch for the coach. Time flies, Alfred!”

“Yes, Sir, yes,” returned the young man, hurriedly. “Dear Grace! a moment! Marion – so young and beautiful, so winning and so much admired, dear to my heart as nothing else in life is – remember! I leave Marion to you!”

“She has always been a sacred charge to me, Alfred. She is doubly so now. I will be faithful to my trust, believe me.”

“I do believe it, Grace. I know it well. Who could look upon your face, and hear your earnest voice, and not know it! Ah, good Grace! If I had your well-governed heart, and tranquil mind, how bravely I would leave this place to-day!”

“Would you?” she answered, with a quiet smile.

“And yet, Grace – Sister, seems the natural word.”

“Use it!” she said quickly, “I am glad to hear it, call me nothing else.”

“And yet, Sister, then,” said Alfred, “Marion and I had better have your true and stedfast qualities serving us here, and making us both happier and better. I wouldn’t carry them away, to sustain myself, if I could!”

“Coach upon the hill-top!” exclaimed Britain.

“Time flies, Alfred,” said the Doctor.

Marion had stood apart, with her eyes fixed upon the ground; but this warning being given, her young lover brought her tenderly to where her sister stood, and gave her into her embrace.

“I have been telling Grace, dear Marion,” he said, “that you are her charge; my precious trust at parting. And when I come back and reclaim you, dearest, and the bright prospect of our married life lies stretched before us, it shall be one of our chief pleasures to consult how we can make Grace happy; how we can anticipate her wishes; how we can show our gratitude and love to her; how we can return her something of the debt she will have heaped upon us.”

The younger sister had one hand in his; the other rested on her sister’s neck. She looked into that sister’s eyes, so calm, serene, and cheerful, with a gaze in which affection, admiration, sorrow, wonder, almost veneration, were blended. She looked into that sister’s face, as if it were the face of some bright angel. Calm, serene, and cheerful, it looked back on her and on her lover.

“And when the time comes, as it must one day,” said Alfred, – “I wonder it has never come yet: but Grace knows best, for Grace is always right, – when she will want a friend to open her whole heart to, and to be to her something of what she has been to us, – then, Marion, how faithful we will prove, and what delight to us to know that she, our dear good sister, loves and is loved again, as we would have her!”

Still the younger sister looked into her eyes, and turned not – even towards him. And still those honest eyes looked back, so calm, serene, and cheerful, on herself and on her lover.

“And when all that is past, and we are old, and living (as we must!) together – close together; talking often of old times,” said Alfred – “these shall be our favorite times among them – this day most of all; and telling each other what we thought and felt, and hoped and feared, at parting; and how we couldn’t bear to say good bye” —

“Coach coming through the wood,” cried Britain.

“Yes! I am ready – and how we met again, so happily, in spite of all; we’ll make this day the happiest in all the year, and keep it as a treble birth-day. Shall we, dear?”

“Yes!” interposed the elder sister, eagerly, and with a radiant smile. “Yes! Alfred, don’t linger. There’s no time. Say good bye to Marion. And Heaven be with you!”

He pressed the younger sister to his heart. Released from his embrace, she again clung to her sister; and her eyes, with the same blended look, again sought those so calm, serene, and cheerful.

“Farewell my boy!” said the Doctor. “To talk about any serious correspondence or serious affections, and engagements, and so forth, in such a – ha ha ha! – you know what I mean – why that, of course, would be sheer nonsense. All I can say is, that if you and Marion should continue in the same foolish minds, I shall not object to have you for a son-in-law one of these days.”

“Over the bridge!” cried Britain.

“Let it come!” said Alfred, wringing the Doctor’s hand stoutly. “Think of me sometimes, my old friend and guardian, as seriously as you can! Adieu, Mr. Snitchey! Farewell, Mr. Craggs!”

“Coming down the road!” cried Britain.

“A kiss of Clemency Newcome for long acquaintance' sake – shake hands, Britain – Marion, dearest heart, good bye! Sister Grace! remember!”

The quiet household figure, and the face so beautiful in its serenity, were turned towards him in reply; but Marion’s look and attitude remained unchanged.

The coach was at the gate. There was a bustle with the luggage. The coach drove away. Marion never moved.

“He waves his hat to you, my love,” said Grace. “Your chosen husband, darling. Look!”

The younger sister raised her head, and, for a moment, turned it. Then turning back again, and fully meeting, for the first time, those calm eyes, fell sobbing on her neck.

“Oh, Grace. God bless you! But I cannot bear to see it, Grace! It breaks my heart.”

PART THE SECOND

Snitchey and Craggs had a snug little office on the old Battle Ground, where they drove a snug little business, and fought a great many small pitched battles for a great many contending parties. Though it could hardly be said of these conflicts that they were running fights – for in truth they generally proceeded at a snail’s pace – the part the Firm had in them came so far within that general denomination, that now they took a shot at this Plaintiff, and now aimed a chop at that Defendant, now made a heavy charge at an estate in Chancery, and now had some light skirmishing among an irregular body of small debtors, just as the occasion served, and the enemy happened to present himself. The Gazette was an important and profitable feature in some of their fields, as well as in fields of greater renown; and in most of the Actions wherein they shewed their generalship, it was afterwards observed by the combatants that they had had great difficulty in making each other out, or in knowing with any degree of distinctness what they were about, in consequence of the vast amount of smoke by which they were surrounded.

The offices of Messrs. Snitchey and Craggs stood convenient with an open door, down two smooth steps in the market-place: so that any angry farmer inclining towards hot water, might tumble into it at once. Their special council-chamber and hall of conference was an old back room up stairs, with a low dark ceiling, which seemed to be knitting its brows gloomily in the consideration of tangled points of law. It was furnished with some high-backed leathern chairs, garnished with great goggle-eyed brass nails, of which, every here and there, two or three had fallen out; or had been picked out, perhaps, by the wandering thumbs and forefingers of bewildered clients. There was a framed print of a great judge in it, every curl in whose dreadful wig had made a man’s hair stand on end. Bales of papers filled the dusty closets, shelves, and tables; and round the wainscoat there were tiers of boxes, padlocked and fireproof, with people’s names painted outside, which anxious visitors felt themselves, by a cruel enchantment, obliged to spell backwards and forwards, and to make anagrams of, while they sat, seeming to listen to Snitchey and Craggs, without comprehending one word of what they said.

Snitchey and Craggs had each, in private life as in professional existence, a partner of his own. Snitchey and Craggs were the best friends in the world, and had a real confidence in one another; but Mrs. Snitchey, by a dispensation not uncommon in the affairs of life, was, on principle, suspicious of Mr. Craggs, and Mrs. Craggs was, on principle, suspicious of Mr. Snitchey. “Your Snitcheys indeed,” the latter lady would observe, sometimes, to Mr. Craggs; using that imaginative plural as if in disparagement of an objectionable pair of pantaloons, or other articles not possessed of a singular number; “I don’t see what you want with your Snitcheys, for my part. You trust a great deal too much to your Snitcheys, I think, and I hope you may never find my words come true.” While Mrs. Snitchey would observe to Mr. Snitchey, of Craggs, “that if ever he was led away by man he was led away by that man; and that if ever she read a double purpose in a mortal eye, she read that purpose in Craggs’s eye.” Notwithstanding this, however, they were all very good friends in general: and Mrs. Snitchey and Mrs. Craggs maintained a close bond of alliance against “the office,” which they both considered a Blue chamber, and common enemy, full of dangerous (because unknown) machinations.

In this office, nevertheless, Snitchey and Craggs made honey for their several hives. Here sometimes they would linger, of a fine evening, at the window of their council-chamber, overlooking the old battle-ground, and wonder (but that was generally at assize time, when much business had made them sentimental) at the folly of mankind, who couldn’t always be at peace with one another, and go to law comfortably. Here days, and weeks, and months, and years, passed over them; their calendar, the gradually diminishing number of brass nails in the leathern chairs, and the increasing bulk of papers on the tables. Here nearly three years’ flight had thinned the one and swelled the other, since the breakfast in the orchard; when they sat together in consultation, at night.

Not alone; but with a man of thirty, or about that time of life, negligently dressed, and somewhat haggard in the face, but well-made, well-attired, and well-looking, who sat in the arm-chair of state, with one hand in his breast, and the other in his dishevelled hair, pondering moodily. Messrs. Snitchey and Craggs sat opposite each other at a neighbouring desk. One of the fire-proof boxes, unpadlocked and opened, was upon it; a part of its contents lay strewn upon the table, and the rest was then in course of passing through the hands of Mr. Snitchey, who brought it to the candle, document by document, looked at every paper singly, as he produced it, shook his head, and handed it to Mr. Craggs, who looked it over also, shook his head, and laid it down. Sometimes they would stop, and shaking their heads in concert, look towards the abstracted client; and the name on the box being Michael Warden, Esquire, we may conclude from these premises that the name and the box were both his, and that the affairs of Michael Warden, Esquire, were in a bad way.

“That’s all,” said Mr. Snitchey, turning up the last paper. “Really there’s no other resource. No other resource.”

“All lost, spent, wasted, pawned, borrowed and sold, eh?” said the client, looking up.

“All,” returned Mr. Snitchey.

“Nothing else to be done, you say?”

“Nothing at all.”

The client bit his nails, and pondered again.

“And I am not even personally safe in England? You hold to that; do you?”

“In no part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland,” replied Mr. Snitchey.

“A mere prodigal son with no father to go back to, no swine to keep, and no husks to share with them? Eh?” pursued the client, rocking one leg over the other, and searching the ground with his eyes.

Mr. Snitchey coughed, as if to deprecate the being supposed to participate in any figurative illustration of a legal position. Mr. Craggs, as if to express that it was a partnership view of the subject, also coughed.

“Ruined at thirty!” said the client. “Humph!”

“Not ruined, Mr. Warden,” returned Snitchey. “Not so bad as that. You have done a good deal towards it, I must say, but you are not ruined. A little nursing – ”

“A little Devil,” said the client.

“Mr. Craggs,” said Snitchey, “will you oblige me with a pinch of snuff? Thank you, Sir.”

As the imperturbable lawyer applied it to his nose, with great apparent relish and a perfect absorption of his attention in the proceeding, the client gradually broke into a smile, and, looking up, said:

“You talk of nursing. How long nursing?”

“How long nursing?” repeated Snitchey, dusting the snuff from his fingers, and making a slow calculation in his mind. “For your involved estate, Sir? In good hands? S. and C.’s, say? Six or seven years.”

“To starve for six or seven years!” said the client with a fretful laugh, and an impatient change of his position.

“To starve for six or seven years, Mr. Warden,” said Snitchey, “would be very uncommon indeed. You might get another estate by shewing yourself, the while. But we don’t think you could do it – speaking for Self and Craggs – and consequently don’t advise it.”

“What do you advise?”

“Nursing, I say,” repeated Snitchey. “Some few years of nursing by Self and Craggs would bring it round. But to enable us to make terms, and hold terms, and you to keep terms, you must go away, you must live abroad. As to starvation, we could ensure you some hundreds a year to starve upon, even in the beginning, I dare say, Mr. Warden.”

“Hundreds,” said the client. “And I have spent thousands!”

“That,” retorted Mr. Snitchey, putting the papers slowly back into the cast-iron box, “there is no doubt about. No doubt a – bout,” he repeated to himself, as he thoughtfully pursued his occupation.

The lawyer very likely knew his man; at any rate his dry, shrewd, whimsical manner, had a favourable influence upon the client’s moody state, and disposed him to be more free and unreserved. Or perhaps the client knew his man; and had elicited such encouragement as he had received, to render some purpose he was about to disclose the more defensible in appearance. Gradually raising his head, he sat looking at his immovable adviser with a smile, which presently broke into a laugh.

“After all,” he said, “my iron-headed friend – ”

Mr. Snitchey pointed out his partner. “Self and – excuse me – Craggs.”

“I beg Mr. Craggs’s pardon,” said the client. “After all, my iron-headed friends,” he leaned forward in his chair, and dropped his voice a little, “you don’t know half my ruin yet.”

Mr. Snitchey stopped and stared at him. Mr. Craggs also stared.

“I am not only deep in debt,” said the client “but I am deep in – ”

“Not in love!” cried Snitchey.

“Yes!” said the client, falling back in his chair, and surveying the Firm with his hands in his pockets. “Deep in love.”

“And not with an heiress, Sir?” said Snitchey.

“Not with an heiress.”

“Nor a rich lady?”

“Nor a rich lady that I know of – except in beauty and merit.”

“A single lady, I trust?” said Mr. Snitchey, with great expression.

“Certainly.”

“It’s not one of Doctor Jeddler’s daughters?” said Snitchey, suddenly squaring his elbows on his knees, and advancing his face at least a yard.

“Yes!” returned the client.

“Not his younger daughter?” said Snitchey.

“Yes!” returned the client.

“Mr. Craggs,” said Snitchey, much relieved, “will you oblige me with another pinch of snuff? Thank you. I am happy to say it don’t signify, Mr. Warden; she’s engaged, Sir, she’s bespoke. My partner can corroborate me. We know the fact.”

“We know the fact,” repeated Craggs.

“Why, so do I perhaps,” returned the client quietly. “What of that? Are you men of the world, and did you never hear of a woman changing her mind?”

“There certainly have been actions for breach,” said Mr. Snitchey, “brought against both spinsters and widows, but in the majority of cases – ”

“Cases!” interposed the client, impatiently. “Don’t talk to me of cases. The general precedent is in a much larger volume than any of your law books. Besides, do you think I have lived six weeks in the Doctor’s house for nothing?”

“I think, Sir,” observed Mr. Snitchey, gravely addressing himself to his partner, “that of all the scrapes Mr. Warden’s horses have brought him into at one time and another – and they have been pretty numerous, and pretty expensive, as none know better than himself and you and I – the worst scrape may turn out to be, if he talks in this way, his having been ever left by one of them at the Doctor’s garden wall, with three broken ribs, a snapped collar-bone, and the Lord knows how many bruises. We didn’t think so much of it, at the time when we knew he was going on well under the Doctor’s hands and roof; but it looks bad now, Sir. Bad! It looks very bad. Doctor Jeddler too – our client, Mr. Craggs.”