"That's what the preacher said." But his landlord was "the Argand Estate," he added in a hopeless tone. He only knew the agent. He had been to him and so had the preacher; but he said he could do nothing—the rent must be paid—"the Argand Estate had to be kept up, or it couldn't do all the good it did"—so he was going to turn them out next day.
He had been to one or two lawyers, he said; but they wouldn't take the case against the Argand Estate, and then the lady had sent him to me.
"What lady?"
"The lady who teaches the little school—Miss Leigh—she teaches my Janet."
McNeil's name had at first made no impression on me, but the mention of Miss Leigh, "the Argand Estate," and of Wringman brought up an association. "McNeil—McNeil?" I said. "Did you have five children; and did your wife bring them on here some months ago—when the train was late, one day?"
"Yes, sorr; that's the way it was."
"Well, I will keep you in longer than to-morrow," I said. And I did. But Justice is too expensive a luxury for the poor. "Law is law," but it was made by landlords. I won his case for him and got his furniture released; I scored the Argand agent, an icy-faced gentleman, named Gillis, "of high character," as the Argand counsel, Mr. McSheen, indignantly declared, and incidentally "the Argand Estate," in terms which made me more reputation than I knew of at the time.
The case was a reasonably simple one, for my client was entitled to a poor debtor's exemption of a few household articles of primary need, and he had not half of what he could have claimed under his exemption. It appeared, however, that in the lease, which was in the regular form used by the Argand Estate, all exemptions were waived, and also that it was the regular practice of the estate to enforce the waiver, and it was alleged at the trial that this practice had always been sustained. It was the fact that this was the customary lease and that a principle was involved which brought Mr. McSheen into the case, as he stated, for a client who was the largest landlord in the city. And it was the fact that Miss Leigh had recommended me and that McSheen was in the case that made me put forth all my powers on it.
On the stand the Argand agent, Gillis, who, it appeared, had begun as an office-boy in the office of Mr. Argand and had then become his private secretary, from which he had risen to wealth and position, a fact I had learned from Kalender, was foolish enough to say that the case was gotten up by an unknown young lawyer out of spite against the Argand Estate and that it was simply an instance of "the eternal attacks on wealth"; that, in fact, there were "only two sides, the man with the dress-coat and the man without."
"You began poor. When did you change your coat?" I asked.