NINTH ENTRY.
Curious thing, now that I am installed as a pupil in FIBBINS'S Chambers in Waste Paper Buildings, Temple, how few new briefs I am given to read. Usual routine is for DICK FIBBINS to hand me a brief on which the dust of ages has collected, and to leave me to "get up the law about it"; but when he (FIBBINS) comes back from his day's business in Court, about 4·30 P.M., he doesn't seem to care a bit to know what the law is. Seems tired, and prefers to gossip and smoke; so I do the same, or "follow on the same side," as he expresses it.
"It strikes me forcibly," I begin, "that the Plaintiff, SMITHERS, in that running-down case you asked me to read to-day, hasn't got the ghost of a chance. Why, in Blatherson v. Snipe, the Court ruled—"
"Tried the lawn-tennis in the gardens yet?" FIBBINS interrupts, in the rudest possible manner.
"No," I reply, "I was speaking of the Court, not lawn-tennis courts." (One for FIBBINS, I think.) "All the Judges held in Blatherson v. Snipe, that—"
"Oh, did they?" he interrupts again: "doosid interesting. Was I for plaintiff or defendant?"
"Plaintiff, SMITHERS. A running-down case."
"Wish it had been a running-up case—a case of running-up the fees," he laughs. Then, resuming a more professional style, "You see, I've had such multitudes of cases since then, that I've forgotten the precise details. But you write out your own Opinion—not to-day; tomorrow will do. Then I'll see what it's like. Now let's go a trot down the Strand."
Another circumstance that strikes me as remarkable, is the frequency with which I hear the Impressive Clerk (in the little room next to mine) requesting persons who have called to "settle up that other little matter." Then the strange voice laughs, and says—"Oh, your Governor can wait." "No, he can't,"—it's the Clerk who says this—"it's been going on for three years, now." "Well," chimes in the unknown, "let it go a bit longer. When'll your Governor have settled those pleadings?" "When your people settle about the five guineas, and not before," replies the Impressive Clerk in his best Parliamentary debating style. Then follows a long wrangle, not on law, but on finance, which never—as far as I can judge—ends in the Clerk getting his way, and his money.
