'Confound your impudence,' Sir George answered, and stared at him, marvelling at the little man's shrewdness.
Peter smiled in a sickly fashion. 'If your honour would but allow me?' he said. He saw a great chance slipping from him, and his voice was plaintive.
It moved Sir George to compassion. 'Where is your practice?' he asked ungraciously.
The attorney felt a surprising inclination to candour. 'At Wallingford,' he said, 'it should be. But--' and there he stopped, shrugging his shoulders, and leaving the rest unsaid.
'Can you make a will?' Sir George retorted.
'No man better,' said Peter with confidence; and on the instant he drew a chair to the table, seized the pen, and bent the nib on his thumbnail; then he said briskly, 'I wait your commands, sir.'
Sir George stared in some embarrassment--he had not expected to be taken so literally; but, after a moment's hesitation, reflecting that to write down his wishes with his own hand would give him more trouble, and that he might as well trust this stranger as that, he accepted the situation. 'Take down what I wish, then,' he said. 'Put it into form afterwards, and bring it to me when I rise. Can you be secret?'
'Try me,' Peter answered with enthusiasm. 'For a good client I would bite off my tongue.'
'Very well, then, listen!' Sir George said. And presently, after some humming and thinking, 'I wish to leave all my real property to the eldest son of my uncle, Anthony Soane,' he continued.
'Right, sir. Child already in existence, I presume? Not that it is absolutely necessary,' the attorney continued glibly. 'But--'