insolvent, client means something eminently disagreeable to him.

Nevertheless, we were all heartily glad to know the day of war was come.
Body and soul, we all went in for Miss Blake, and Helena, and the
"Uninhabited House." Even Mr. Taylor relented, and was to be seen
rushing about with papers in hand relating to the impending suit of
Blake _v_. Morris.

"She is a blank, blank woman," he remarked to me; "but still the case is
interesting. I don't think ghosts have ever before come into court in my
experience."

And we were all of the same mind. We girt up our loins for the fight.
Each of us, I think, on the strength of her celebrity, lent Miss Blake a
few shillings, and one or two of our number franked her to luncheon.

She patronized us all, I know, and said she should like to tell our
mothers they had reason to be proud of their sons. And then came a
dreadfully solemn morning, when we went to Westminster and championed
Miss Blake.

Never in our memory of the lady had she appeared to such advantage as
when we met her in Edward the Confessor's Hall. She looked a little
paler than usual, and we felt her general get-up was a credit to our
establishment. She wore an immense fur tippet, which, though then of an
obsolete fashion, made her look like a three-per-cent. annuitant going
to receive her dividends. Her throat was covered with a fine white lawn
handkerchief; her dress was mercifully long enough to conceal her
boots; her bonnet was perfectly straight, and the strings tied by some
one who understood that bows should be pulled out and otherwise