Now, Eustace had often, when in the Shorts' sitting-room in the
lodging-house in the Strand heard the barrister James hold forth
learnedly on the matter of wills, and, therefore, he naturally enough
turned towards him in his recent dilemma. Knowing the address of his
chambers in Pump-court, he hurried thither, and was in due course
admitted by a very small child, who apparently filled the responsible
office of clerk to Mr. James Short and several other learned gentlemen,
whose names appeared upon the door.
The infant regarded Eustace, when he opened the door, with a look of such
preternatural sharpness, that it almost frightened him. The beginning of
that eagle glance was full of inquiring hope, and the end of resigned
despair. The child had thought that Eustace might be a client come to
tread the paths which no client ever had trod. Hence the hope and the
despair in his eyes. Eustace had nothing of the solicitor's clerk about
him. Clearly he was not a client.
Mr. Short was in "that door to the right." Eustace knocked, and entered
into a bare little chamber about the size of a large housemaid's closet,
furnished with a table, three chairs (one a basket easy), and a
book-case, with a couple of dozen of law books, and some old volumes of
reports, and a broad window-sill, in the exact centre of which lay the
solitary and venerated brief.
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