won't have any client that isn't a gentleman, you might as well put
up your shutters at once."

"I haven't said so. Isn't Runciman my client?" "He always goes with
the gentry. He a'most thinks he's one of them himself."

"And old Nobbs, the greengrocer. But it's all nonsense. Any man is
my client, or any woman, Who can come and pay me for business that
is fit for me to do."

"Why isn't this fit to be done? If the man's been damaged, why
shouldn't he be paid?"

"He's had money offered him."

"If he thinks it ain't enough, who's to say that it is,--unless a
jury?" said Mrs. Masters, becoming quite eloquent. "And how's a
poor man to get a jury to say that, unless he comes to a lawyer? Of
course, if you won't have it, he'll go to Bearside. Bearside won't
turn him away." Bearside was another attorney, an interloper of
about ten years' standing, whose name was odious to Mr. Masters.

"You don't know anything about it, my dear," said he, aroused at
last to anger.

"I know you're letting anybody who likes take the bread out of the
children's mouths." The children, so called, were sitting round the
table and could not but take an interest in the matter. The eldest
was that Mary Masters, the daughter of the former wife, whom Lady
Ushant had befriended, a tall girl, with dark brown hair, so dark