great people, draw up leases, make legal assignments, get the family
marriage settlements made, and look after wills. Occasionally, also,
they had to raise money; but it was generally understood that this
was done by proxy.

The firm had been going on for a hundred and fifty years, and the
designation had often been altered; but it always consisted of
Gumptions and Gazebees differently arranged, and no less hallowed
names had ever been permitted to appear. It had been Gazebee, Gazebee
& Gumption; then Gazebee & Gumption; then Gazebee, Gumption &
Gumption; then Gumption, Gumption & Gazebee; and now it was Gumption,
Gazebee & Gazebee.

Mr Gazebee, the junior member of this firm, was a very elegant young
man. While looking at him riding in Rotten Row, you would hardly have
taken him for an attorney; and had he heard that you had so taken
him, he would have been very much surprised indeed. He was rather
bald; not being, as people say, quite so young as he was once. His
exact age was thirty-eight. But he had a really remarkable pair of
jet-black whiskers, which fully made up for any deficiency as to his
head; he had also dark eyes, and a beaked nose, what may be called a
distinguished mouth, and was always dressed in fashionable attire.
The fact was, that Mr Mortimer Gazebee, junior partner in the firm
Gumption, Gazebee & Gazebee, by no means considered himself to be
made of that very disagreeable material which mortals call small
beer.

When this great firm was applied to, to get Mr Gresham through his
difficulties, and when the state of his affairs was made known to
them, they at first expressed rather a disinclination for the work.
But at last, moved doubtless by their respect for the de Courcy
interest, they assented; and Mr Gazebee, junior, went down to
Greshamsbury. The poor squire passed many a sad day after that before
he again felt himself to be master even of his own domain.

Nevertheless, when Mr Mortimer Gazebee visited Greshamsbury, which
he did on more than one or two occasions, he was always received _en
grand seigneur_. To Lady Arabella he was by no means an unwelcome
guest, for she found herself able, for the first time in her life, to
speak confidentially on her husband's pecuniary affairs with the man
who had the management of her husband's property. Mr Gazebee also was
a pet with Lady de Courcy; and being known to be a fashionable man in
London, and quite a different sort of person from poor Mr Umbl