‘Acting on behalf of clients, you understand, Mr. Fenellan.’
‘Professional, but charitable; I am with you.’
‘Poor things! we—if we have to condemn—we owe them something.’
‘A kind word for poor Polly Venus, with all the world against her! She doesn’t hear it often.’
‘A real service,’ Carling’s voice deepened to the legal ‘without prejudice,’—‘I am bound to say it—a service to Society.’
‘Ah, poor wench! And the kind of reward she gets?’
‘We can hardly examine... mysterious dispensations... here we are to make the best we can of it.’
‘For the creature Society’s indebted to? True. And am I to think there’s a body of legal gentlemen to join with you, my friend, in founding an Institution to distribute funds to preach charity over the country, and win compassion for her, as one of the principal persons of her time, that Society’s indebted to for whatever it’s indebted for?’
‘Scarcely that,’ said Carling, contracting.
‘But you ‘re for great Reforms?’