or later, is not that what comes to every mother concerning
the child she loves best?

CHAPTER XXIL.

MR. PRYME'S VISITORS.

For courage mounteth with occasion.

Shakespeare, "King John."

Mr. Herbert Pryme stood by a much ink-stained and littered table in his
chambers in the Temple, with his hands in his trousers pockets, whistling
a slow and melancholy tune.

It was Mr. Pryme's habit to whistle when he was dejected or perplexed;
and the whistling generally partook of the mournful condition of his
feelings. Indeed, everything that this young man did was of a ponderous
and solemn nature; there was always the inner consciousness of the
dignity of the Bar vested in his own person, to be discerned in his outer
bearing. Even in the strictest seclusion of the, alas! seldom invaded
privacy of his chambers Mr. Pryme never forgot that he was a
barrister-at-law.

But when this young gentleman was ill at ease within himself he was in
the habit of whistling. He also was given to the thrusting of his hands
into his pockets. The more unhappy he was, the more he whistled, and the
deeper he stuffed in his hands.

Just now, to all appearances, he was very unhappy indeed.

The air he had selected for his musical self-refreshment was the lively
and slightly vulgar one of "Tommy make Room for your Uncle;" but let
anybody just try to whistle that same vivacious tune to the time of the
Dead March in "Saul," and with a lingering and plaintive emphasis upon
each note, with "linked sweetness long drawn out," and then say whether
the gloomiest of dirges would not be festive indeed in comparison.

Thus did Herbert Pryme whistle it as he looked down upon the piles of
legal documents heaped up together upon his table.

All of them meant work, but none of them meant money. For Herbert was
fain to accept the humble position of "devil" to a great legal light who
occupied the floor below him, and who considered, and perhaps rightly,
that he was doing the young man above him, who had been sent up from the
country with a letter of introduction to him from a second cousin, a
sufficient and inestimable benefit in allowing him to do his dirty work
gratis.

It was all very useful to him, doubtless, but it was not remunerative;
and Herbert wanted money badly.

"Oh, if I could only reckon upon a couple of hundred a year," he sighed,
half aloud to himself, "I might have a chance of winning her! It seems
hard that heaps of these fe