“We did so before, and the sub-sheriff was shot.”
“Attorneys are plenty,—we 'll send down another.”
“Hump!” muttered Joe, as he turned over a folio of papers before him. “Ay, here it is,” said he. “Oliver Moore wishes to go to America, and will give up his lease; he only begs that you will vouchsafe to him some small compensation—”
“Compensation! That word is one of yours, Mr. Raper, and I've no doubt has a classical origin,—you got it in Homer, perhaps; but, let me tell you, sir, that it is a piece of vulgar cant, and, what is worse, a swindle! Ay, grow pale if you like; but I 'll repeat the word,—a swindle! When a man wants to sell a pair of old boots, does he think of charging for all the blacking he has put on them for the three years before? And yet that is precisely what you dignify with the name of compensation. Tell him if he built a house, that he lived in it; if he fenced the land, that the neighbors' cattle made fewer trespasses; if he drained, the soil was the drier. Your cry of compensation won't do, Raper. I might as well ask an insurance office to pay me for taking care of my health, and give me a bonus whenever I took castor oil!”
“The cases are not alike, sir. If his improvements be of a permanent character—”
“Is this an office, Mister Raper, or is it a debating society?” broke in Fagan. “My answer to Moore is, pay, and go—to the devil, if he likes.”
“Sir Harry Wheeler,” continued Joe, “writes from Cheltenham that he thinks there must be a mistake about the bill for three hundred and forty odd,—that it was included In the bond he gave in September last.”
“File a bill, send for Crowther, and let him proceed against him.”
“But I think he 's right, sir; the memorandum is somewhere here. I put it amongst the W's; for we have no box for Sir Harry.”
“It's a nice way to keep accounts, Mister Raper; I must say it's very creditable to you,” said Fagan, who, when any inaccuracy occurred, always reproached Joe with the system that he rigidly compelled him to follow. “Perhaps it's classical, however; maybe it's the way the ancients did it! But I 'll tell you what, sir, you 'd cut an ugly figure before the courts if you came to be examined; your Latin and Greek wouldn't screen you there.”