successor in business.

In this way I came to live in London, in my uncle's house, not far
from Gray's Inn, and to be treated and esteemed as his son, and to
labour with him in his office. I was very fond of the old gentleman.
He was the confidential agent of many country squires, and had
attained to his present position as much by knowledge of human nature
as by knowledge of law; though he was learned enough in the latter.
He used to say his business was law, his pleasure heraldry. From his
intimate acquaintance with family history, and all the tragic courses
of life therein involved, to hear him talk, at leisure times, about
any coat of arms that came across his path was as good as a play or a
romance. Many cases of disputed property, dependent on a love of
genealogy, were brought to him, as to a great authority on such
points. If the lawyer who came to consult him was young, he would
take no fee, only give him a long lecture on the importance of
attending to heraldry; if the lawyer was of mature age and good
standing, he would mulct him pretty well, and abuse him to me
afterwards as negligent of one great branch of the profession. His
house was in a stately new street called Ormond Street, and in it he
had a handsome library; but all the books treated of things that were
past; none of them planned or looked forward into the future. I
worked away--partly for the sake of my family at home, partly because
my uncle had really taught me to enjoy the kind of practice in which
he himself took such delight. I suspect I worked too hard; at any
rate, in seventeen hundred and eighteen I was far from well, and my
good uncle was disturbed by my ill looks.

One day, he rang the bell twice into the clerk's room at the dingy
office in Grey's Inn Lane. It was the summons for me, and I went