Here there was a roar of laughter.
“And invited her to go back to South Africa with him,” resumed Samuel. “Yes, she’s got a good case, no doubt o’ that. But the question is, how far any o’ you ’ull be the better for it?”
“How’s that?” cried Jim, while the other love-sick swains nudged each other, and murmured indignantly.
“Why, I think she’s fair bent on taking out that action,” responded their legal adviser, “and that o’ course will keep him in the neighbourhood. Poor chap, it ’ull take your young ladies all their time to console him, I should think.”
The listeners stared at him in blank dismay; he wagged his head again, very knowingly, and crossed one leg over the other. “Yes,” he repeated reflectively, “Anne Clarke has got about as good a case as ever I heard on, and I advised her to follow it up.”
“You advised her,” shouted Tom indignantly. “Come, that’s a pretty thing. I thought you was on our side, Sam’el Cross.”
“A lawyer,” returned Samuel sententiously, “a lawyer is on the side what pays best; an’ this here job ought to be good for a rise for me. ’Twill be but fair that I should share some of the governor’s pickings, and he’ll make a good thing out of it, you might be sure.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” said one of the lovers dolefully. “He be uncommon near, your boss be, and it do seem ’ard o’ you, Sam’el, to go a-desertin’ of we, arter leadin’ us on, so to speak. You could stop Anne Clarke from takin’ out this here summons or whatever it be, so soon as look at her, couldn’t ’ee now?”
“I dessay I could,” said Cross calmly.
“And if you was to go and threaten Willcocks with the notion of it, he’d be off like a shot, that’s easy seen.”