“Well, of course I think so, or I shouldn’t have advised the proceedings.”
“But I suppose you advised the application for a what-do-you call it injunction. But you failed in that? Now I want you to tell me all about uncle’s grievances against Mr. Pinder. It is so delightful to find a lawyer who can make things so beautifully simple to a poor ignoramus of a girl like me. I can see now why you have so many cases in the Courts.”
“Oh! Dorothy, Dorothy.”
And forthwith the willing victim of woman’s guile talked at large of water encroachment, of unlawful ochre-water diverted from its natural course so that it passed by the head-goit of Co-op Mill, and only entered the river as it sped on to Wilberlee, to Mr. Tinker’s great damage and detriment. Never was Nehemiah more eloquent, never had he so wrapt and intent a listener.
“She’s just the woman for a lawyer’s wife,” thought Nehemiah, as he talked. “I’ll practise my speeches on her.”
“But, after all, it’s no use wearying you with all these details, Miss Tinker. We shall never reach a final trial. Your uncle isn’t the man to take a beating, and if we’re trounced in one Court we shall go to another. Pinder can’t stand the racket. I call it downright dishonest of him taking the savings of those deluded Co-opers, as they call them, and spending it on Sykes. Of course it’s all the better for me. But the whole thing’ll fizzle out in the Bankruptcy Court, and I take it there’ll be no necessity to wait for the Court of Chancery’s decision. Want of shekels will decide the question before we’re much older, mark my words.”
“How very charming!” quoth Dorothy. “Really, Mr. Wimpenny, I don’t know how to thank you for making everything so clear to me. Now these water-foulings by Mr. Pinder, I suppose anyone can see them? You’ve interested me so much I’ve a good notion to turn myself into an amateur expert; if that isn’t a contradiction in terms.”
“Not more anomalous than a woman with sense,” reflected Nehemiah. But he said with something of an effort.
“Well, the fact is Miss Tinker, there isn’t very much to see. It’s the eye of science, don’tcherknow, that we go by in these cases. The eye of science,” he repeated, evidently pleased with that phrase.
“Well, anyway, I’ll try what the eye of a woman can see some fine day. Perhaps I may find out something that has escaped all you clever men, and then you’ll have to take me up to London as a witness, I hope.”