e, Kit,' said the attorney in a
mysterious and yet business-like way. 'You are to step in here, if you
please. Dear me, dear me! When I look at you,' said the lawyer,
quitting his stool, and standing before the fire with his back towards
it, 'I am reminded of the sweetest little face that ever my eyes
beheld. I remember your coming there, twice or thrice, when we were in
possession. Ah Kit, my dear fellow, gentleman in my profession have
such painful duties to perform sometimes, that you needn't envy us--you
needn't indeed!'

'I don't, sir,' said Kit, 'though it isn't for the like of me to judge.'

'Our only consolation, Kit,' pursued the lawyer, looking at him in a
sort of pensive abstraction, 'is, that although we cannot turn away the
wind, we can soften it; we can temper it, if I may say so, to the shorn
lambs.'

'Shorn indeed!' thought Kit. 'Pretty close!' But he didn't say SO.

'On that occasion, Kit,' said Mr Brass, 'on that occasion that I have
just alluded to, I had a hard battle with Mr Quilp (for Mr Quilp is a
very hard man) to obtain them the indulgence they had. It might have
cost me a client. But suffering virtue inspired me, and I prevailed.'

'He's not so bad after all,' thought honest Kit, as the attorney pursed
up his lips and looked like a man who was struggling with his better
feelings.

'I respect you, Kit,' said Brass with emotion. 'I saw enough of your
conduct, at that time, to respect you, though your station is humble,
and your fortune lowly. It isn't the waistcoat that I look at. It is
the heart. The checks in the waistcoat are but the wires of the cage.
But the heart is the bird. Ah! How many sich birds are perpetually
moulting, and putting their beaks through the wires to peck at all
mankind!'

This poetic figure, which Kit took to be in a special allusion to his
own checked waistcoat, quite overcame him; Mr Brass's voice and manner
added not a little to its effect, for he discoursed with all the mild
austerity of a hermit, and wanted but a cord round the waist of his
rusty surtout, and a skull on the chimney-piece, to be completely set
up in that line of business.

'Well, well,' said Sampson, smiling as good men smile when they
compassionate their own weakness or that of their fellow-creatures,
'this is wide of the bull's-eye. You're to take that, if you please.'
As he spoke, he pointed to a couple of half-crowns on the desk.

Kit looked at the coins, and then at Sam