against the lawyers, and the lawyers against the Doctor, and their
clients against both, and engaged in feeble attempts to make the
thimble and nutmeg-grater (a new idea to him) square with anybody's
system of philosophy; and, in short, bewildering himself as much as
ever his great namesake has done with theories and schools. But,
Clemency, who was his good Genius - though he had the meanest
possible opinion of her understanding, by reason of her seldom
troubling herself with abstract speculations, and being always at
hand to do the right thing at the right time - having produced the
ink in a twinkling, tendered him the further service of recalling
him to himself by the application of her elbows; with which gentle
flappers she so jogged his memory, in a more literal construction
of that phrase than usual, that he soon became quite fresh and
brisk.

How he laboured under an apprehension not uncommon to persons in
his degree, to whom the use of pen and ink is an event, that he
couldn't append his name to a document, not of his own writing,
without committing himself in some shadowy manner, or somehow
signing away vague and enormous sums of money; and how he
approached the deeds under protest, and by dint of the Doctor's
coercion, and insisted on pausing to look at them before writing
(the cramped hand, to say nothing of the phraseology, being so much
Chinese to him), and also on turning them round to see whether
there was anything fraudulent underneath; and how, having signed
his name, he became desolate as one who had parted with his
property and rights; I want the time to tell. Also, how the blue
bag containing his signature, afterwards had a mysterious interest
for him, and he couldn't leave it; also, how Clemency Newcome, in
an ecstasy of laughter at the idea of her own importance and