Chapter 7: A Crown Piece.


This turn in our affairs was a nine days' wonder in Shrewsbury. And
whether it was that some chord of sympathy was touched in our
townsfolk, or that Mr. Vetch worsted his only rival, Mr. Moggridge,
in a case of breach of covenant that was tried at the next assizes,
I know not; but certain it is that my friend's business took a leap
upward from that very time. Clients flocked to him; he soon had to
employ an additional clerk; and Mistress Pennyquick, who was twice
as tyrannical as before on the strength of her extra two pounds a
year, declared privately to me one day that she wished for nothing
now but that she might live to see me a partner with Mr. Vetch, in
a house of my own, with a sensible wife and five pretty children.

But I have come to believe that as an Ethiopian can not change his
skin, nor a leopard his spots, so a man can not alter the bent of
mind he was born with, nor follow any course with success but the
one to which his nature calls. I entered Mr. Vetch's office with
the best will in the world to please him, and to master the
principles of legal practice and procedure; but I found it hard to
reconcile myself to the atmosphere of a stuffy room filled with
musty tomes, and to the unvarying round of desk work--copying from
morning to night agreements, deeds and other documents bristling
with a jargon unintelligible to me.

I soon tired of freehold and copyhold tenure, of manorial rights
and customs, and the hundred and one legal fictions connected with