“So I told him, sir, and he says he’ll wait. It is that Captain Thorn who is staying here with John Herbert.”
Mr. Carlyle raised his eyes, and they encountered those of the old man; a peculiar expression was in the face of both. Mr. Carlyle glanced down at the parchment he was perusing, as if calculating his time. Then he looked up again and spoke.
“I will see him, Dill. Send him in.”
The business leading to the visit was quite simple. Captain Frederick Thorn had got himself into some trouble and vexation about “a bill”—as too many captains will do—and he had come to crave advice of Mr. Carlyle.
Mr. Carlyle felt dubious about giving it. This Captain Thorn was a pleasant, attractive sort of a man, who won much on acquaintance; one whom Mr. Carlyle would have been pleased, in a friendly point of view, and setting professional interest apart, to help out of his difficulties; but if he were the villain they suspected him to be, the man with crime upon his hand, then Mr. Carlyle would have ordered his office door held wide for him to slink out of it.
“Cannot you advise me what my course ought to be?” he inquired, detecting Mr. Carlyle’s hesitation.
“I could advise you, certainly. But—you must excuse my being plain, Captain Thorn—I like to know who my clients are before I take up their cause or accept them as clients.”
“I am able to pay you,” was Captain Thorn’s reply. “I am not short of ready money; only this bill—”
Mr. Carlyle laughed out, after having bit his lip with annoyance. “It was a natural inference of yours,” he said, “but I assure you I was not thinking of your purse or my pocket. My father held it right never to undertake business for a stranger—unless a man was good, in a respectable point of view, and his cause was good, he did not mention it—and I have acted on the same principle. By these means, the position and character of our business, is rarely attained by a solicitor. Now, in saying that you are a stranger to me, I am not casting any doubt upon you, Captain Thorn, I am merely upholding my common practice.”
“My family is well connected,” was Captain Thorn’s next venture.