“Why should I until I was ready?”
“I’m a lawyer.”
“Would you take the case?”
“No, but I could advise you.”
So he did, and being a very smart lawyer instead of giving her a check for the money she wanted he gave her what in his opinion was $5,000 worth of advice. You see, the substance of his love of the fall had fallen away to a shadow, and hard-headed business men don’t invest in shadows or even pay money to build a monument over a sentiment that is either dead or dying. Hearts are rarely trumps; spades have the call to-day.
“I’m going ahead anyhow,” she went on, “and I suppose when I am free that even your memory will suffer from an attack of dry rot, and that you’ll forget everything you have ever said to me—or deny it, which amounts to the same thing in the end.”
So the next day she told her story to a lawyer, not the story of Ben and the dinners, but the tales of the man to whom she was married, and when she produced certain dates and facts she was told she had the clearest kind of a clear case and that it would go through with bells on, with hubby paying the shot.
The complaint was drawn up and the papers served; and here comes the great part of this recital.
Just one week later a clean-cut, well-built young business man, of about 35, walked into Ben’s office and asked for a consultation.
“You have been recommended to me,” he began, “by a business friend of mine. I have been sued for divorce by my wife. My morals are none too good, but neither are hers. Will you take the case and defend me?”