ordon Square and Southampton Row, Solicitor, w

ous exercise of the art of dropping bad clients and picking up good, and retaining the good when pi

with the fact that your wife is in a madhouse and not on a visit to her aunt; with the reason why your son requires cutting off with a shilling; why you ha

traight dealing and right living, had placed the Hancocks in the first

suggestive of port wine, and a fidgety manner, you would never have guessed him at first sight to be one of the keenest

tch guard crossed his waistcoat, and he habitually[Pg 28] carried an umbrel

ession, had been "born with the key of the coal cellar in her pocket." She certainly carried the key of the wine cellar there, and the keys of the plate pantry, larder, jam depository

nature, it was her misfortune, not her fault, for despite her acidit

ently. His affair with Miss Wilkinson, eldest daughter of Alderman[Pg 29] Wilkinson, an affair which occurred twenty years ago, had been withered, or blasted, if you like the expression bett

ss failed for no especial reason, and of late years, from all external signs, he appe

ad jellified and set, she had almost given up espionage, and had settled down before the prospect of a comfo

an of seventy adorned with the simplicity of a

the Wilkinson affair twenty years before. He had played the part of spy several times, unconsciously, or partl

in short frocks, and besides this weak-minded adoration he regarded her as part and parc

elor's fire at nights rubbing his shins and thinking and dreaming, sometimes across his recollective faculty

manner waned, and, failing a more valid reason, he put it down to that change