“Declares he’ll sue me?”
“As true as there’s another lawyer in all Filadelphy.”
“That would be bad!”
“Wouldn’t it?”
“Silence, you vagabond. I suppose I must pay this,” muttered the attorney to himself. “It’s not my plan to pay these small bills! What is a lawyer’s profession good for, if he can’t get clear paying his own bills? He’ll sue me! ’Tis just five dollars! It comes hard, and he don’t want the money! His boy could have earned it in the time he has been sending him to me to dun for it.—So your master will sue for it if I don’t pay?”
“He says he will do it, and charge you a new pair o’ shoes for me.”
“Hark’ee. I can’t pay to-day; and so if your boss will sue, just be so kind as to ask him to employ me as his attorney.”
“You?”
“Yes; I’ll issue the writ, have it served, and then you see I shall put the costs into my own pocket, instead of seeing them go into another lawyer’s. So you see if I have to pay the bill I’ll make the costs. Capital idea.”
The boy scratched his head a while, as if striving to comprehend this “capital idea,” and then shook it doubtingly. “I don’t know about this; it looks tricky. I’ll ask boss though, if as how you say you won’t pay it no how without being sued.”