“Yes, he is a very young man,” replied the attorney. “He was only called the other day. Let me see—he has not been at the Bar eight years yet.”
“Ah, I thought not,” said the Serjeant, in that sort of pitying tone in which ordinary folks would speak of a very helpless little child. “Mr. Mallard, send round to Mr.—Mr.——”
“Phunky’s—Holborn Court, Gray’s Inn,” interposed Perker. (Holborn Court, by-the-bye, is South Square now). “Mr. Phunky, and say I should be glad if he’d step here, a moment.”
Mr. Mallard departed to execute his commission; and Serjeant Snubbin relapsed into abstraction until Mr. Phunky himself was introduced.
Although an infant barrister, he was a full-grown man. He had a very nervous manner, and a painful hesitation in his speech; it did not appear to be a natural defect, but seemed rather the result of timidity, arising from the consciousness of being “kept down” by want of means, or interests, or connection, or impudence, as the case might be. He was overawed by the Serjeant, and profoundly courteous to the attorney.
“I have not had the pleasure of seeing you before, Mr. Phunky,” said Serjeant Snubbin, with a haughty condescension.
Mr. Phunky bowed. He had had the pleasure of seeing the Serjeant, and of envying him too, with all a poor man’s envy, for eight years and a quarter.
“You are with me in this case, I understand?” said the Serjeant.
If Mr. Phunky had been a rich man, he would have instantly sent for his clerk to remind him; if he had been a wise one, he would have applied his forefinger to his forehead, and endeavoured to recollect, whether, in the multiplicity of his engagements, he had undertaken this one, or not; but as he was neither rich nor wise (in this sense at all events) he turned red, and bowed.
“Have you read the papers, Mr. Phunky?” inquired the Serjeant.