“And do you know, I’ve rather a prejudice against barristers, I mean as being generally an awfully low, vulgar set; and I assure you, I know I may say whatever I think to you; but I, when I was thinking about all this thing, you know, I could not get the idea out of my head. I knew her father was a barrister, and he was always turning up in my mind; you know the sort of thing, as—as a sort of fellow one could not like.”
“But he’s a particularly gentlemanlike man,” broke in William, to whom Sergeant Darkwell had always been very kind.
“Oh! you need not tell me, for I walked with him home to Gilroyd, last Sunday, from church. I did not know who he was—stupid of me not to guess—and you can’t think what an agreeable—really nice fellow.”
“I know him; he has been always very kind to me, and very encouraging about the bar,” said Maubray.
“Yes,” interrupted Trevor, “and they say, certain to rise, and very high, too. Chancery, you know, and that—and—and such a really gentlemanlike fellow, might be anything, and so—and so clever, I’m sure.”
“Come down to draw the settlements,” thought William, with a pang. But he could not somehow say it. There are events to which you can submit, but the details of which you shrink from. Here was for William, in some sort, a death. A familiar face gone. The rest was the undertaker’s business. The stretching and shrouding, and screwing down, he had rather not hear of.
“You are going to tell the people here?” said William Maubray, not knowing well what to say.
“Tell them here, at Kincton! Not if I know it. Why, I know pretty well, for fifty reasons, how they’ll receive it. Oh! no, I’ll just send them the prettiest little bit of a note in a week or two, when everything is quite settled, and I’ll not mind seeing them again for some time, I can tell you. Here’s this little wretch coming again. Well, Howard, have you got the revolver?”
Master Howard’s face was swollen with tears and fury.
“No, they wouldn’t give it me. You knew right well they would not, without mamma told ’em. I wish mamma was hanged; I do; she’s always a plaguing every one; her and that great brute, Clara.”