"I don't recollect," said Winthrop. "What meaning do you give it, Miss Haye?"
"I thought it was a poor kind of mending."
"I am afraid there is some of that work done in the profession," said Winthrop smiling. "Occasionally. But it is the profession and not the law that is chargeable, for the most part."
"I wouldn't be a lawyer if that were not so," said Elizabeth.
"I wouldn't be a cobbler of anything."
"To be anything else might depend on a person's faculties."
"I don't care," said Elizabeth, — "I would not be. If I could not mend, I would let alone. I wouldn't cobble."
"What if one could neither mend nor let alone?"
"One would have less power over himself than I have, or than you have, Mr. Landholm."
"One thing at least doesn't need cobbling," he said with a smile.
"I never heard such a belittling character of the profession," she went on. "Your mother would have given it a very different one, Mr. Landholm. She would have told you, 'Open thy mouth, judge' — what is it? — 'and plead the cause of the poor.'"