“Will you really do anything I want? Promise.”
“Of course I promise.” He looked at her and wondered if she knew how hard it would be to him to refuse her anything: for Mr Guillemot had been fancy free, and this gracious vision, re-risen from old times, had turned his head a little.
“Good! You must be my solicitor.”
“But I can’t. Jones——”
“Bother Jones!” she said. “I shan’t go near him. I won’t be worried by Jones. What is the use of having a fortune—and it’s a big fortune, I can tell you—if I mayn’t even choose my own solicitor? Look here, Stephen—really—I have no relations and no friends in England—no man friends, I mean—and you won’t charge me more than you ought, but you will charge me enough. Oh, I feel like Mr Boffin—and you are Mortimer Lightwood, and Andrew is Eugene. Do you call him Dora still?”
It was the first question she had asked about the boy who had shared all their youth with them.
“Oh, Dornington is all right. He’d be awfully sick if you called him Dora nowadays. He’s got on a little—not much. He goes in for journalism. He’s at Lymchurch just now; he lives here with me generally.”
“Yes—I know; I saw his name on the door.” And Stephen did not wonder till later why she had not mentioned that name earlier in the interview.
“Here, give me paper and pens, the best there is time to procure. Now tell me what to say to Jones. I want to tell him that I loathe his very name; that I know I could never bear the sight of him; and that you are going to look after everything for me.”
He resisted—she pleaded; and at last the letter was written, not quite in those terms, and Stephen at her request reluctantly instructed her as to the method of giving a Power of Attorney.