"Not one hundredth part of the chance in London that there is here!" affirmed Eldrick. "We badly want two or three barristers in this place. A man who's really well up in commercial and company law would soon have his hands full. There's work, I tell you. Take my advice, and come!"
"I couldn't come—in any case—for a few months," said Collingwood, musingly. "Of course, if you really think there's an opening——"
"I know there is!" asserted Eldrick. "I'll guarantee you lots of work—our work. I'm sick of fetching men down all the way from town, or getting them from Leeds. Come!—and you'll see."
"I might come in a few months' time, and try things for a year or two," replied Collingwood. "But I'm off to India, you know, next week, and I shall be away until the end of spring—four months or so."
"To India!" exclaimed Eldrick. "What are you going to do there?"
"Sir John Standridge," said Collingwood, mentioning a famous legal luminary of the day, "is going out to Hyderabad to take certain evidence, and hold a sort of inquiry, in a big case, and I'm going with him as his secretary and assistant—I was in his chambers for two years, you know. We leave next week, and we shall not be back until the end of April."
"Lucky man!" remarked the solicitor. "Well, when you return, don't forget what I've said. Come back!—you'll not regret it. Come and settle down. Bye-the-bye, you're not engaged, are you?"
"Engaged?" said Collingwood. "To what—to whom—what do you mean?"
"Engaged to be married," answered Eldrick coolly. "You're not? Good! If you want a wife, there's Miss Mallathorpe. Nice, clever girl, my boy—and no end of what Barford folk call brass. The very woman for you."
"Do you Barford people ever think of anything else but what you call brass?" asked Collingwood, laughing.