Fin had his hand on his lips keeping his laughing apparatus in order until the solitary disappeared down the path to the trees, then he leaned my way.
"I know him, sor," he whispered. "He's a barrister down in Temple Bar. He don't remember me, sor, but I know him. He's always treadin' on something—something alive—always, sor, and wid both feet! He trod on me once. I thought it was him when I see him fust—but I wasn't sure till I asked Landlord Hull about him."
"How came you to know him?"
"Well, sor, he had an old lady on his list two years ago that was always disputin' distances and goin' to law about her cab-fares. I picked her up one day in St. James Street and druv her to Kensington Gardens and charged her the rates, and she kicked and had me up before the magistrate, and this old ink-bottle appeared for her. She's rich and always in hot water. Well, we had it measured and I was right, and it cost her me fare and fifteen bob besides. When it was figured up she owed me sixpence more measurement I hadn't charged her for the first time, and I summoned her and made her pay it and twelve bob more to teach her manners. What pay he got I don't know, but I got me sixpence. He was born back here about a mile—that's why he comes here for his holiday."
Fin stopped stowing cargo—two bottles of soda, a piece of ice in a bucket, two canvases, my big easel and a lunch-basket—and moving his cap back from his freckled forehead said, with as much gravity as he could maintain:
"I ought to have been a barrister, sor; I started as one."
The statement did not surprise me. Had he added that he had coached the winning crew of the regatta the year before, laid the marquetry floors of Cliveden (not far away), or led the band at the late Lord Mayor's show, I should have received his statements with equal equanimity. So I simply remarked, "When was that, Fin"? quite as I should had I been gathering details for his biography—my only anxiety being to get the facts chronologically correct.
"When I was a gossoon of twenty, sor—maybe eighteen—I'm fifty now, so it's far back enough, God knows. And it all happened, too, not far from that old ink-bottle's place in Temple Bar. I was lookin' at it wan day last winter when I had a fare down there that I took up in old Bond Street. I did the sweepin' out and startin' fires. Wan day wan of the clerks got fired because he couldn't serve a writ on another barrister chap who owed a bill that me boss was tryin' to collect. Nobody could git into his rooms, try every way they could. He had nigh broke the head o' wan o' the young fellers in the office who tried it the day before. He niver come out, but had his grub sent him. This had been goin' on for a month. All kinds o' games had been put up on him and he beat 'em all.
"'I'll do it,' I says, 'in a week's time or less.' The manager was goin' through the office and heard the laugh they give me. 'What's this?' he says, cross like. 'Fin says he kin serve the writ,' the clerk says. 'I kin,' I says, startin' up, 'or I'll throw up me job.'
"'Give him the writ,' he says, 'and give him two days off. It kin do no harm for him to try.'