“Oh, holler to him to come down here,” drawled Amazeen, loath to leave his seat. “There ain’t chairs enough in his office to go ’round amongst us—and I’ve been sick of the smell of law books ever since I lost my bound’ry line case.”
Therefore Babb threw back his head and bawled huskily, “Squire Phin! Squire Phin Look!” From his mouth, as from the mouths of all Palermo, the title sounded like “Square.” At the second call they heard a chair’s legs pushed squeakingly on the floor and an answering bellow that was jovial though wordless. And those who had straightened up to listen lounged lazily down again to wait for him.
A rickety outside stairway led up to the Squire’s office.
On the old tin sign between the dusty front windows was:
PHINEAS LOOK
Attorney and Notary
The purr of the coffee grinder in the store beneath was a frequent obbligato to the conferences between Squire Phin and his clients, and the savour of spice and odour of kerosene stole up through the floor cracks to mingle with the decidedly athletic fragrance of the Squire’s blackened T. D. pipe.
Once he forgot one of those sooty-hued pipes and left it in the attorney’s room at county court, and the young lawyers got ribbons and hung it from a chandelier with a card reading, “Erected in Memory of Phin Look.” Squire Look patiently hunted for that pipe when he went to county court again, for its stoutness, after many months of careful seasoning, appealed to his taste. But he never looked as high as the chandelier.
Folks who knew Squire Phin well declared that he had never looked high enough in life—not as high as his merits entitled. Men who understood such things said that he knew enough law to match any judge on the State bench, but in middle life he was still sitting up in his little office over Brickett’s store, smoking his pipe and reading his fat law books, with their shiny, hand-smooched bindings.
“Well, boys!” he said, as he came out upon the landing above them and leaned over the rail. “What do you want to do—nominate me for Congress at a mass-meeting?”