"Is he likely to make a fuss?"

"I think he is," said Austen.

"Well," said the Honourable Hilary, "we must have Ham Tooting hurry
'round and fix it up with him as soon as he can talk, before one of these
cormorant lawyers gets his claw in him."

Austen said nothing, and after some desultory conversation, in which he
knew how to indulge when he wished to conceal the fact that he was
baffled, the Honourable Hilary departed. That student of human nature,
Mr. Hamilton Tooting, a young man of a sporting appearance and a free
vocabulary, made the next attempt. It is a characteristic of Mr.
Tooting's kind that, in their efforts to be genial, they often use an
awkward diminutive of their friends' names.

"Hello, Aust," said Mr. Tooting, "I dropped in to get those witnesses in
that Meagre accident, before I forget it."

"I think I'll keep 'em," said Austen, making a note out of the Revised
Statutes.

"Oh, all right, all right," said Mr. Tooting, biting off a piece of his
cigar. "Going to handle the case yourself, are you?"

"I may."

"I'm just as glad to have some of 'em off my hands, and this looks to me
like a nasty one. I don't like those Mercer people. The last farmer they