"Ay, but you forget the if," said Martin Sykes, with a laugh. "An if makes every thing in law. It is as potent as 'any thing hereinbefore contained to the contrary notwithstanding,' or 'always provided nevertheless,' or any other of those sweet phrases with which we double up the sense of our documents or give a sweet and polite contradiction to what we have just been saying the moment before. As to the battle, my dear young friend, it has begun already. Acting on your behalf, as your next friend, I have managed to get possession of Buckley, have served Sir Richard's lawyer and agent with all sorts of processes,—some sixteen or seventeen, I think,—ejectments, quo warrantos, rules nisi, and others; and the poor fool, who is nothing at all unless he has a Londoner at his back, has let me have very nearly my own way, having no orders, not knowing where to get any, and standing like a goose under the first drops of a thunder-shower, with his eyes staring and his mouth half open."
"But where is the contract?" asked Monsieur de Soubise, in French. "If I understood him aright, he said he knew where it was."
Edward interpreted, feeling very sure that good Mr. Sykes was not very abundantly provided with French; but the little lawyer shook his head, saying, "No, no; I did not profess to know absolutely where it is; but there is one not very far from here who I think does know. I think he does,—I am sure he does. He tells me a box of valuable papers were lost at the great fire; and he shakes his head, and looks wise, and talks of its being 'made worth his while.' He is the most avaricious old devil in the world. It is a curious thing, Ned, all sextons are avaricious. They deal so much with dust and ashes that they learn to like the only sort of dross which does not decay when you bury it. He is a very old man now, and could not enjoy for more than a few months any thing he had, were it millions."
"What! you are not speaking of the old sexton at Langley, are you?" asked Edward,—"the man with the lame hip? He used to say he got that injury at the fire; and my father gave him many a guinea for it. I used to give him shillings and sixpences, too, to make him tell me all about the fire, till one day I caught him taking away a groat I had given to a poor child, and then I knocked him over the shoulder with my fishing-rod. He has never liked me after, but hobbles away into his cottage whenever he sees me, and shuts the door tight."
What there was in this little anecdote which peculiarly struck good Mr. Sykes I cannot tell, but he fell into a fit of thought, still standing,—for there were no chairs in the room, except one, which had lost a leg, (in what action I do not know,) and the high stools on which the clerks were sitting, if they could be called chairs. He kept a finger of his right hand resting on the side of his nose, however, for two or three minutes; and then, suddenly rousing himself, he said, "Let us go into the house. We can sit down there and talk. This is a poor place for such company. It does well enough for roystering farmers' sons who have been breaking each others' heads, or for a deputy tax-collector, or for gossiping women who have been slandering and being slandered. I don't want them to sit down at all; and that is the reason I have only one chair with a broken leg, to which I always hand old Mistress Skillet, the doctor's widow, who abuses every young girl in the place who has got a pretty face and wears a pink ribbon. Then down she comes, and declares she has broken her hip-bone, and walks away in great indignation, never coming back until she has another peck of lies upon her stomach. I must not do it any more, for she has grown as large as an elephant; and the last time she tumbled she had nearly shaken the office down. Besides, it cost me two ounces of peppermint to bring all those boys there out of their convulsions. But come, gentlemen, let us go."
Thus saying, he led the way through a little door at the back of the office, across a small passage, into an exceedingly neat old fashioned parlor, where, having seated his guests, he rushed at a corner cupboard and brought forth some tall-stalked cut and gilded wineglasses, and a square-sided bottle, likewise cut and gilded, from which he pressed his visitors to help themselves. Monsieur de Soubise remarked it was too early to drink wine; but the old man pressed them, saying, "It is not wine at all. It is fine old Dutch cinnamon." And, each having taken a little, good Mr. Sykes leaned his arms upon the table, remarking, "Now, this looks really like the commencement of a conspiracy; and a conspiracy we must have. I have settled it all. We must go over to the old place,—that is, old Langley Court, prince. I will enact my own character. The doctor here is too reverent to undergo transformation. You, my noble sir, must be a French nobleman about to buy Langley Court, and Buckley too,—in fact, half the estates in the neighborhood. Edward here must be your cornet of horse. There will be no need to mention his name; but the old wretch, who is as sharp as Satan, will most likely know him. He is aware, however, that Master Ned has been over in the wars in France: so the story will go down."
"It seems to me, my good friend Sykes," said Dr. Winthorne, "that you are going to tell a vast quantity of lies. Mark you, now: I will have nothing to do with them. I don't even know that I ought to stand by and hear them."
"You shall not hear a lie come out of my mouth," said Sykes, laughing. "My lord the prince, I dare say you are willing enough to buy Langley Court and the estate, if I will sell it to you for a gold crown,—what you call in France an écu d'or?"
"Oh, very willingly," answered Soubise: "this cinnamon is worth an écu d'or." And he helped himself to some more.
"Well, then, I will sell you the whole estate for that sum,—if ever I can prove my title to it," said Sykes. "It is a bargain. Now, Dr. Winthorne, do not you by any scruples spoil your young friend's only chance, if you would not have us take you for a cropped-eared Puritan instead of a good old sound Church-of-England man."