The advocate, trembling in every limb, was conscious of a powerful and confident grasp of the hand. And then as his eyes encountered the outlines of his visitor, he was seized with a pang of disappointment, for he had looked to see something different.
“Don’t you know me, Mr. Northcote?” said the voice—the conventional voice which had already smote the starving man with a sense of the intolerable.
“I am afraid I do not,” he said, heavily.
“Well, I thought Samuel Whitcomb was known to every member of the bar.”
Mr. Whitcomb’s whimsical air strove to cloak a wound to his professional feelings.
“Ah, yes, of course, Mr. Whitcomb; of course,” said the young man, with a deeper disappointment fixing its talons upon him. “Of course—Mr. Whitcomb, the solicitor,” he added, hastily, as through the haze of the unreal which still enveloped his amazed and stupefied senses he caught a familiar aspect and a tone that he recalled.
“The same.”
“Excuse this inhospitable darkness,” said Northcote. “Here is a chair; and try, if you please, to keep your patience while I put some oil in the lamp and seek a piece of coal for the fire.”
“No elaborate scheme of welcome, I beg. Your client is not a prince of the blood, but a common lawyer.”
A well-fed and highly sagacious chuckle accompanied this sally on the part of the solicitor.