“That sounds easy. But Mr. Carr has started me on another line. He insists that it’s all work; and he seems to practise what he preaches.”
Merriam glanced at the somber shelves and shrugged his shoulders.
“Maybe Carr’s right. I think he’s right in most things. How soon is he going to take you into partnership?”
“Never, probably. As head clerk he can make me do work that I might want to dodge if I were a partner.”
“Well, he will treat you right. Don’t get restless. The law is changing fast. It has ceased to be a profession nowadays; it’s a business. But somebody’s got to write the briefs that win the cases, just as Carr does, and you’d better get in the line of succession.”
Leighton leaned far back in the cane-bottomed chair—there was never a decent chair in the offices of Knight, Kittredge and Carr—and clasped his hands about his head. A sudden look of liking leaped into Rodney Merriam’s eyes. That lounging pose, the long nervous hands clasped behind the head; the steady gray eyes, the straight nose, firm jaw and humorous kind mouth—all suggested to Merriam other years when there was another Morris Leighton, who wore a blue uniform and drilled his battery to a degree of efficiency that made him a marked man in the Army of the Tennessee.
“I don’t think you will ever want to dodge work or anything else, Morris. That is, if you’re as much like your father inside as out, you won’t be a dodger. Your father was a gentleman, and the tribe is getting scarce.”
Merriam continued talking for an hour, apparently without motive; but he was listening, nevertheless, for signs of life from Michael Carr’s private office.
Mr. Carr was heard presently in the outer hall, and Merriam rose, as though he suddenly remembered an appointment.
“Don’t forget the lobster, Sunday night, as usual,” he said; “and don’t forget what I told you about looking up Mrs. Forrest. She’s been around a bit and knows a few things. Well, gentlemen,”—to Carr and Dameron who were exchanging the last words of their interview in the hall—“I hope you’ve parted on good terms. Going, Ezra? Then I’ll walk down the street with you a little way.”