The secret in the hill

To MISS PRECISION AND “YOUR AFFECNUT LITTLE FRIEND” THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED WITH DEFERENCE BY ITS AUTHOR AND THEIRS
When I was a very little boy my mother died. I was too young to feel her loss long, though I missed her badly at first; but the compensation was that it brought my father nearer to me. He was a barrister, a prodigal love of a man, dear bless him! And he felt his bereavement so cruelly that for a time he seemed incapable of rallying from the blow. But presently he plucked up heart, and went, for my sake, to his business again.
He was more liked than lucky, I believe. I had evidence enough, at least of the former; for after my mother’s death, not bearing that we should be parted, he carried me with him on the last circuit he was ever to go. Those were the days when Bench and Bar dined well, and sat up late telling tales. Sometimes my father would slip me into his pocket, so to speak, and from its shelter—when, to be candid, I had been much better in bed—I heard fine stories related by the gentlemen who put off gravity with the horsehair they wore all day. They were a merry and irresponsible lot, rather like a strolling company of actors; and, indeed, it was no less their business to play many parts. There were types among them which I came to associate with certain qualities: such as the lean vivacious ones, who ate and drank hungrily, and presently grew incoherent and quarrelsome; such as the rosy bald-headed ones, who always seemed to make most laughter; such as the large, heavy-browed ones, who sulked when they were bettered in argument. But my friend amongst them all, next to my father, was Mr. Quayle, Q.C.
I fancied I had discovered, after much consideration, why he was called Q.C. He was a little man, quite bald and round all over his head and face except for a tuft of hair on his chin, and there was the Q; and he wore a pouter-pigeon ruff under his chin like this, Q/C, and there was the Q.C. I may have been wrong; but anyhow I had precedent to justify me, for many of these jolly souls bore such characteristic nicknames. There was Plain John, for instance, who had so christened himself for ever during a dispute about the uses or abuses of multiple titles. “Plain John” had been enough for him, he had said. Again, there was Blind Fogle, so called from his favourite cross-examination phrase. “I don’t quite see.” They were all boys together when off duty, chaffing and horse-playing, and my father was the merriest and most irrepressible of the crew.