“I was hopin’ to save up this scheme,” says he, “and maybe not use it at all. But we g-got to. So come on.”
“Where?” says I.
“Lawyer Sturgis’s,” says he.
Mark and I went across the street and climbed up to Mr. Sturgis’s office. He was one of those dignified men that always wear silk hats and long coats that flop around their knees, and he talked like he’d been exposed to grammar and rhetoric and had caught them both so bad he couldn’t be cured. He made speeches at election-times and at any other times when there was any excuse. For that matter, everything he said came close to being a speech. My, my, but he was a talker! He knew words that the man who made the dictionary hasn’t heard of yet. But folks said he was a good lawyer and honest and dependable. They said other things about him, too—that he was good. In spite of the high-and-mighty way he carried himself, and the way he barked at folks, he was said to be the kind of man who goes out of his way to do folks a favor. Heaps of poor folks had got law from him without paying a cent. Everybody in Wicksville laughed at him a little—and liked him a heap. Wicksville folks could laugh at him if they wanted to, but you let a man from Sunfield come over and start to make fun of Lawyer Sturgis and there’d be a fight in a second. It makes a heap of difference who does the laughing.
Well, we knocked at his door and he yelled to come in so loud people could have heard it across the street. We went right in. He was sitting in front of his desk, with one hand shoved through the front of his vest and the other on his hip—just like pictures of the signing of the Declaration of Independence; and he was frowning like pictures of Daniel Webster.
“Ah-ha!” says he, “what have we here? To what, if I may be permitted to inquire, do I owe the honor of this call? Ha! Marcus Aurelius Fortunatus Tidd, is it not? Indeed! And young Smalley. Will you enter and be seated?”
We entered and were seated.
“Now,” says Lawyer Sturgis, “let us to business, laying aside all our several and conflicting employments. You have, I judge, come to consult me professionally. Am I right?”
“You are r-right,” says Mark. “It’s about Jehoshaphat P. Skip.”
“Ah, indeed! Jehoshaphat P. Skip! Extraordinary individual.”