“I’d rather be sued if he’ll employ me, boy!”
“But who’s to pay them costs—the boss?”
The lawyer looked at once very serious, and then gave another of those long whistles peculiar to him.
“Well, I am a sensible man, truly! My anxiety to get the costs of the suit blinded me to the fact that they had got to come out of one of my own pockets before they could be safely put into the other pocket! Ah; well, my boy, I suppose I must pay. Here is a five-dollar bill. Is it receipted?—it is so dirty and greasy I can’t see.”
“It was nice and clean three months ago when boss gin it to me, and the writin’ shined like Knapp’s Blackin’—it’s torn so of a dunnin’ so much.”
“Well, here’s your money,” said the man of law, taking a solitary five-dollar note from his watch fob; “now, tell your master, Mr. Last, that if he has any other accounts he wants sued, I will attend to them with the greatest pleasure.”
“Thank’ee,” answered the boy, pocketing five, “but you is the only regular dunnin’ customer boss has, and now you’ve paid up, he hasn’t none but cash folks. Good day to you.”
“Now there goes a five-dollar note that will do that fellow, Last, no good. I am in great want of it, but he is not. It is a five thrown away. It wouldn’t have left my pocket but that I was sure his patience was worn out, and that costs would come out of it. I like to have costs, but I don’t think a lawyer has anything to do with paying them.”
As Peter Chancery, Esq. did not believe in his own mind that paying his debt to Mr. Last was to be of any benefit to him, and was of opinion that it was “money thrown away,” let us follow the fate of this five-dollar bill through the day.
“He has paid,” said the boy, placing the five-dollar bill in his master’s hand.