Two days later a gentleman, whose clean-shaven face had a habit of beaming suddenly into a professional smile, was seated at a huge writing-table in his office in Gray's Inn, when a clerk announced to him the arrival of Mrs. Agar, who desired to see him at once.
Mr. Rigg beamed instantaneously, and the clerk, who knew his master, waited until the paroxysm had passed. In the meantime Mrs. Agar was fuming in the waiting-room, wherein lay a copy of the Times and nothing else. The window looked out upon the neatly kept but depressing garden, where five antiquated rooks looked in vain for sustenance. Mrs. Agar watched these intelligent birds, but all her soul was in her ears. She had already set Mr. Rigg down in her own mind as a stupid because, forsooth, he had dared to keep her waiting.
But the truth is that they are accustomed to ladies in Gray's Inn, especially ladies in deep mourning, with a chastely important air which seems to demand that advice and sympathy be carefully mingled. Connues, these ladies whose deep crape and quite exceptional bereavement plead (not always dumbly) for a special equity, home-made and superior to any law, and infer that the ordinary foes are in their case more than any gentleman would think of accepting.
The clerk presently passed into an inner room and fetched therefrom a tin box, upon which were painted in dingy white the letters “J. E. M. A.,” and underneath “Stagholme Estate.” This the embryo lawyer carefully wiped with a duster, and set it up on some of its fellows immediately behind Mr. Rigg.
There was no hurry displayed in this scenic arrangement. Mr. Rigg made a practice of keeping ladies, especially those wearing crape, for a few minutes in the waiting-room. It calmed them down wonderfully, and introduced into their mental chambers a little legal atmosphere.
“Marks,” he said, when that youth was taking his last look round at the mise en scène before, as it were, raising the curtain, “eh—er—just go round to Corbyn's and get them to make up these pills.”
At the mention of the medicinal term he beamed, as if to intimate that between themselves no secret need be observed that he, Mr. Rigg, was subject to the usual anatomical laws of mankind.
“And—er—just call at the fishmonger's as you come back and get a parcel for me, ordered this morning.”
“Yes, sir,” answered the faithful Marks, taking the prescription as if it were a will or a transfer.
He knew his part so well that he moved towards the door and opened it as if Mrs. Agar's existence and attendance in the waiting-room were matters of the utmost indifference.