He was moved to reverence for a moment; but very soon to exasperation, as the heads hidden from him by the full-bottomed wigs drawled on hour after hour, and one or another of the five old gentlemen, but particularly the bald one, would jerk in a fusillade of questions, using words of another world. Then (what was really intolerable!) they would laugh at some jest of theirs, and the Bar would discreetly join. It was interminable.
In the midst of it a tall, sad young man lounged in and sat far away in a dark corner. John K. Petre wondered what secret ritual that might mean; but the tall sad young man found it boring, and lounged out again. He had but exercised one of those privileges for which his father, the glue manufacturer, had paid half a million after the fiber scandal; and he had never yet got his father’s money’s worth out of the place.
The hours, the days, went by, and judgment was delivered.
Lady Boole went to the Woolsack and in a beautifully distinct, silvery articulation spoke, for some hours, words meaningless to mortal man. But it was one of the great judgments of our time, and has been the basis of the law ever since. There was a rustle, and a movement, and the beginnings of a departure.
Mr. John K. Petre, his gaunt powerful figure striding vigorously, for all its age, by the side of Jacob King, was thundering down to the central hall. He didn’t understand what had happened.
“Well,” sighed the solicitor, in an unpleasant tone of content, “so that’s that.”
Ermyntrude, First (and Last) Viscountess Boole: Lord Chancellor of England.
“Which way did it go?” said John K. Petre.