“You wouldna believe it!” said Kate. “Thank God she'll soon be carrying on as bad as ever!”
Mr. Dyce would not have cared a rap that morning if he had come upon his clerks at Catch-the-Ten, or even playing leap-frog on their desks. He was humming a psalm you may guess at as he looked at the documents heaped on his table—his calf-bound books and the dark, japanned deed-boxes round his room.
“Everything just the same, and business still going on!” he said to his clerk. “Dear me! dear me! what a desperate world! Do you know, I had the notion that everything was stopped. No, when I think of it, I oftener fancied all this was a dream.”
“Not Menzies vs. Kilblane, at any rate,” said the clerk, with his hand on a bulky Process, for he was a cheery soul and knew the mind of Daniel Dyce.
“I dare say not,” said the lawyer. “That plea will last a while, I'm thinking. And all about a five-pound fence! Let you and me, Alexander, thank our stars there are no sick bairns in the house of either Menzies or Kilblane, for then they would understand how much their silly fence mattered, and pity be on our Table-of-Fees!” He tossed over the papers with an impatient hand. “Trash!” said he. “What frightful trash! I can't be bothered with them—not to-day. They're no more to me than a docken leaf. And last week they were almost everything. You'll have heard the child has got the turn?”
“I should think I did!” said Alexander. “And no one better pleased to hear it!”
“Thank you, Alick. How's the family?”
“Fine,” said the clerk.
“Let me think, now—seven, isn't it? A big responsibility.”
“Not so bad as long's we have the health,” said Alexander.