“I suppose,” said Smith, “if any customer in your shop—I beg your pardon, emporium—were to ask one of your servants for a sheet of notepaper, he would give him one?”
“I hope not, sir,” said Sir William, with expansive dignity, “I hope he would hand him two or three.”
Old Anderson looked at Sir William in Scot’s surprise, and said in his broadest accent, “Do you really mean that, now?”
I do not think I ever saw the ultimate written judgment of the Official Referee. I believe both sides appealed from it, and no appeal was ever heard. It was, from the point of view of English litigation, one of our failures. There ought to be a compulsory conciliation court for troubles of this nature, at least to sift out what the quarrel and dispute really is. But I look back to the case with pleasure. I don’t think the result left M‘Lachlan worse than it found him, and it certainly did me a good turn. During those days I heard from Smith of the wonderful possibilities of the Bar in Manchester, and I made up my mind I would at least join the Northern Circuit. This I did without delay, and before the summer I had taken a little house in Heaton Road, Withington, and turned my back on London for ever.
Just to show what a lot I knew about Manchester, I moved down in Whit-week—or tried to. For Manchester has an excellent and sacred custom in Whit-week. Nobody does any work.
CHAPTER V
EARLY MEMORIES OF MANCHESTER
I see the huge warehouses of Manchester, the many-storied mills, the great bale-laden drays, the magnificent horses.
“Towards Democracy.”