"I was," I say boldly, "going to ask you if you would let me read with you."
"Were you?" replies DICK, apparently intensely astonished at the idea; "By Jove! I should be really sorry to disappoint you. Yes," he goes on in a burst of generosity, "I will make room for you—there!"
This is really kind of DICK FIBBINS. We finally arrange that I am to come in two days' time—at the usual, and rather pretentious, fee of one hundred guineas for a year's "coaching"—and begin work.
"You'll see some good cases with me—good fighting cases," FIBBINS remarks, as I take my leave. "When there are no briefs, why, you can read up the Law Reports, you know. My books are quite at your disposal."
"But," I remark, a little surprised at that hint about no briefs—I thought DICK FIBBINS had more than he knew what to do with—"I suppose—er—there's plenty of business going on here?"
"Oh, heaps," replies FIBBINS, hastily. Then, as if to do away with any bad impression which his thoughtless observation about no briefs might have occasioned in my mind, he says, heartily,—
"And, when I take old PROSER up to the Court of Appeal, you shall come too, and hear me argue!"
I express suitable gratitude—but isn't it rather "contempt of Court" on FIBBINS's part to talk about "taking up" a Judge?—and feel, as I depart, that I shall soon see something of the real inner life of the Profession.