"A great trust, sir, a great trust, Mr. Dingwell, is time. Ah, sir, how little we make of it, with eternity yawning at our feet, and retribution before us!"
"Our and us; you don't narrow it to the legal profession, Mr. Larkin?"
"I speak of time, generally, Mr. Dingwell, and of eternity and retribution as applicable to all professions," said Mr. Larkin, sadly.
"I don't follow you, sir. Here's a paper, gentlemen, on which I have noted exactly what I can prove."
"Can I have it, Mr. Dingwell?" said the attorney, whose dove-like eyes for a moment contracted with a hungry, rat-like look.
"No, I think, no," said Mr. Dingwell, withdrawing it from the long, red fingers extended to catch the paper; Mr. Levi's fingers, at a more modest distance, were also extended, and also disappointed; "anything I write myself I have a kind of feeling about it; I'd rather keep it to myself, or put it in the fire, than trouble the most artless Jew or religious attorney I know with the custody of it: so, if you just allow me, I'll read it. It's only half a dozen lines, and I don't care if you make a note of it, Mr. Larkin."
"Well," he resumed, after he had glanced through the paper, Mr. Larkin sitting expectant arrectis auribus, and with a pen in his fingers, "you may say that I, Mr. Dingwell, knew the late Honourable Arthur Verney, otherwise Hakim Frank, otherwise Hakim Giaour, otherwise Mamhoud Ali Ben-Nezir, for five years and two months, and upwards—three days, I think—immediately preceding his death; for the latter four years very intimately. That I frequently procured him small loans of money, and saw him, one way or another, nearly every day of my life: that I was with him nearly twice a day during his last illness: that I was present when he expired, and was one of the three persons who saw him buried: and that I could point out his grave, if it were thought desirable to send out persons acquainted with his appearance, to disinter and identify the body."
"No need of that, I think," said Mr. Larkin, looking up and twiddling his eye-glass on his finger.
He glanced at Levi, who was listening intensely, and almost awfully, and, reading no sign in his face, he added,—
"However, I see no harm in making the note."