“So you think there isn’t much chance for still another young lawyer to enter the field here?” queried Horace, bringing the discussion back to concrete matters.
“Oh, that’s another thing,” replied Reuben. “There is no earthly reason why you shouldn’t try. There are too many lawyers here, it is true, but then I suppose there are too many lawyers everywhere—except heaven. A certain limited proportion of them always prosper—the rest don’t. It depends upon yourself which class you will be in. Go ahead, and if I can help you in any way I shall be very glad.”
“You’re kind, I’m sure. But, you know, it won’t be as if I came a stranger to the place,” said Horace. “My father’s social connections will help me a good deal”—Horace thought he noted a certain incredulous gesture by his companion here, and wondered at it, but went on—“and then my having studied in Europe ought to count. I have another advantage, too, in being on very friendly terms with Mrs. and Miss Minster. I rode up with them from New York to-day, and we had a long talk. I don’t want anything said about it yet, but it looks mightily as if I were to get the whole law business of the ironworks and of their property in general.”
Young Mr. Boyce did not wince or change color under the meditative gaze with which Reuben regarded him upon hearing this; but he was conscious of discomfort, and he said to himself that his companion’s way of staring like an introspective ox at people was unpleasant.
“That would be a tremendous start for you,” remarked Reuben at last. “I hope you won’t be disappointed in it.”
“It seems a tolerably safe prospect,” answered Horace, lightly. “You say that you’re overworked.”
“Not quite that, but I don’t get as much time as I should like for outside matters. I want to go on the school board here, for example—I see ever so many features of the system which seem to me to be flaws, and which I should like to help remedy—but I can’t spare the time. And then there is the condition of the poor people in the quarter grown up around the iron-works and the factories, and the lack of a good library, and the saloon question, and the way in which the young men and boys of the village spend their evenings, and so on. These are the things I am really interested in; and instead of them I have to devote all my energies to deeds and mortgages and specifications for trestle-works. That’s what I meant.”
“Why don’t you take in a partner? That would relieve you of a good deal of the routine.”
“Do you know, I’ve thought of that more than once lately. I daresay that if the right sort of a young man had been at hand, the idea would have attracted me long ago. But, to tell the truth, there isn’t anybody in Thessaly who meets precisely my idea of a partner—whom I quite feel like taking into my office family, so to speak.”
“Perhaps I may want to talk with you again on this point,” said Horace.