question, Miss Haye."

"Does that mean you don't know?"

"I cannot say that. I like it as a place of business."

"And not as a place of pleasure?"

"No. Except in so far as the pushing on of business may be
pleasure."

"You are drawing a distinction in one breath which you
confound in the next," said Elizabeth.

"I didn't know that you would detect it," he said with a half
smile.

"Detect what?"

"The distinction between business and pleasure."

"Do you think I don't know the difference?"

"You cannot know the difference, without knowing the things to
be compared."

"The things to be compared! --" said she, with a good look at
him out of her dark eyes. "And which of them do you think I
don't know?"

"I supposed you were too busy to have much time for pleasure,"
he said quietly.

"It is possible to be busy in more ways than one," said
Elizabeth, after a minute of not knowing how to take him up.

"That is just what I was thinking."

"What are _you_ busy about, Mr. Landholm, in this place of
business?"

"I am only learning my trade," he answered.

"A trade! -- May I ask what?" she said, with another surprised
and inquisitive look.

"A sort of cobbling trade, Miss Elizabeth -- the trade of the
law."

"What does the law cobble?"

"People's name and estate."

"_Cobble?_" said Elizabeth. "What is the meaning of 'cobble?'"

"I don't recollect," said Winthrop. "What meaning do you give
it, Miss Haye?"

"I thought it was a poor kind of mending."

"I am afraid there is some of that work done in the
profession," said Winthrop smiling. "Occasionally. But it is
the profession and not the law that is chargeable, for the
most part."

"I wouldn't be a lawyer if that were not so," said Elizabeth.
"I wouldn't be a _cobbler_ of anything."

"To be anything else might depend on a person's faculties."

"I don't care," said Elizabeth, -- "I _would_ not be. If I could
not mend, I would let alone. I wouldn't cobble."

"What if one could neither mend nor let alone?"

"One would have less power over himself than I have, or than
you have, Mr. Landholm."

"One thing at least doesn't need cobbling," he said with a
smile.

"I never heard such a belittling character of the profession,"
she went on. "Your mother would have given it a very different
one, Mr. Landholm. She would have told you, 'Open thy mouth,
judge' -- what is it? -- 'and plead the cause of the poor.'"

Whether it were the unexpected bring