"Martha S——; your late sister, I presume?"
My uncle nodded assent.
"Gilbert Hodgon—your servant?"
"The same. To what purpose, sir, are these questions?" angrily inquired my uncle.
"Merely matters of form—a habit we lawyers cannot easily throw aside whenever we get a sight of musty parchments. I hope you will pardon my freedom?"
"Oh! as for that you are welcome to ask as many questions as you think proper; they will be easily answered, I take it."
"
Doubtless," said the persevering man of words. "Whenever I take up a deed, for instance,—it is just the habit of the thing, Mr S——,—I always look at it as a banker looks at a note. He could not for the life of him gather one up without first ascertaining that it was genuine."
"Genuine!" exclaimed my uncle, thrown off his guard. "You do not suspect that I have forged it?"
"Forged it! why, how could that enter your head, Mr S——? I should as soon suspect you of forging a bank-note or coining a guinea. Ringing a guinea, sir, does not at all imply that the payee suspects the payer to be an adept in that ingenious and much-abused art. We should be prodigously surprised if the payer were to start up in a tantrum, and say, 'Do you suspect me, sir, of having coined it?'"