“Ah! That’s a comfort. Now I can tell you everything. You wouldn’t think now I’m in great trouble, and I want you to help me out of it, and not a living soul but you must know about it.” As Dorothy looked radiantly happy as she made this doleful plaint it may be assumed that Mr. Sykes argued her case was not so desperate as her words.
“If you will tell me, Miss Tinker, the nature of your trouble I may be able to prescribe for you. We poor lawyers are not so clever as the doctors. We can’t diagnose by the looks, or, I confess, I should not advise you to abandon hope.”
“And this is the lawyer Ben said couldn’t say Boh! to a goose,” thought Dorothy.
“Now, how shall I begin?” she said.
“Suppose you try the beginning,” he suggested.
“You know Mr. Pinder, of Holmfirth?” asked Dorothy, glancing at a formidable pile of papers on the desk labelled “Pinder at the suit of Tinker.”
“If you mean Mr. Tom Pinder, of Co-op Mill, Hinchliff Mill, I think I may go so far as to say I do.”
“Come, that’s something,” said Dorothy. “You are so very cautious you might have added ‘without prejudice.’ Now is it a very bad case?” she concluded.
“Really! Miss Tinker.”
“Now I don’t want any humming and ha-ing, you know, Mr. Sykes. I take a very great interest in Mr. Pinder—well, not in him you know. That’s ridiculous: but in Lucy, you know” and Dorothy nodded with great significance, whilst the lawyer felt that he was getting deeper and deeper into a bog.