“And fine to be you, I should say! Spending your time in gossip at the busiest part of the day.”
“Unfortunately I have to-day no business to do,” returned Tom, smiling in the old lawyer’s face. “And I was just telling Miss Paul why. I have left the office, sir, and am looking out for another situation.”
Mr. Paul stared at him. “Why, it is your own office. What’s that for?”
“It ought to be my own office in part, as it was my father’s before me. But Valentine cannot see that, sir. He tells me he will not take me into partnership; that I ought not to expect it. I refuse to remain on any other terms; and so I have left him for good. These are my rattletraps. Odds and ends of things that I am bringing away.”
Mr. Paul continued to look at Tom in silence for a minute or two. Tom thought he was considering what he should next say. It was not that, however. “How well he would suit me! How I should like to take him! What a load of work he’d lift off my shoulders!” Those were the thoughts that were running rapidly through Mr. Paul’s mind.
But he did not speak them. In fact, he had no intention of speaking them, or of taking on Tom, much as he would have liked to do it.
“When Jacob Chandler lay dying only yesterday, as it were, he told me you would join his son; that the two of you would carry on the practice together.”
“Yes, he said the same thing to me,” replied Tom. “But Valentine refuses to carry it out. So I told him I would not be a servant where I ought to be a master, and came away.”
“And what are you going to do, young man?”
Tom smiled. He was just as much a lawyer as Mr. Paul was. “I should like to set up in practice for myself,” he answered; “but I do not yet see my way sufficiently clear to do so. There may be a chance for me at Worcester, as managing clerk. I have written to ask if the place is filled up. May I join your party to the concert to-night, sir?” he asked.