“And—and I don’t think I’m very clever at it, Pringle.”
“Clever! You’d be a rum one, sir, if you was. Nobody ever masters it all. They pretend to, but it would take a thousand men boiled down and double distilled to get one as could regularly tackle it. It’s an impossibility, sir.”
“What!” said Tom, with plenty of animation now. “Why, look at all the great lawyers!”
“So I do, sir, and the judges too, and what do I see? Don’t they all think different ways about things, and upset one another? Don’t you get thinking you’re not clever because you don’t get on fast. As I said before, you’d be a rum one if you did.”
“But my cousin does,” said Tom.
“Him? Ck!” cried the clerk, with a derisive laugh. “Why, it’s my belief that you know more law already than Mr Sam does, and what I say to you is—Look out! the guv’nor!”
The warning came too late, for Mr James Brandon entered the outer office suddenly, and stopped short, to look sharply from one to the other—a keen-eyed, well-dressed man of five-and-forty; and as his brows contracted he said sharply—
“Then you’ve finished the deed, Pringle?” just as the clerk was in the act of passing through the door leading to the room where he should have been at work.
“The deed, sir?—no, not quite, sir. Shan’t be long, sir.”
“You shall be long—out of work, Mr Pringle, if you indulge in the bad habit of idling and gossiping as soon as my back’s turned.”