intment Book?'
Young Blight made a great show of fetching from his desk a long thin
manuscript volume with a brown paper cover, and running his finger down
the day's appointments, murmuring, 'Mr Aggs, Mr Baggs, Mr Caggs, Mr
Daggs, Mr Faggs, Mr Gaggs, Mr Boffin. Yes, sir; quite right. You are a
little before your time, sir. Mr Lightwood will be in directly.'

'I'm not in a hurry,' said Mr Boffin

'Thank you, sir. I'll take the opportunity, if you please, of entering
your name in our Callers' Book for the day.' Young Blight made another
great show of changing the volume, taking up a pen, sucking it, dipping
it, and running over previous entries before he wrote. As, 'Mr Alley,
Mr Balley, Mr Calley, Mr Dalley, Mr Falley, Mr Galley, Mr Halley, Mr
Lalley, Mr Malley. And Mr Boffin.'

'Strict system here; eh, my lad?' said Mr Boffin, as he was booked.

'Yes, sir,' returned the boy. 'I couldn't get on without it.'

By which he probably meant that his mind would have been shattered to
pieces without this fiction of an occupation. Wearing in his solitary
confinement no fetters that he could polish, and being provided with no
drinking-cup that he could carve, he had fallen on the device of ringing
alphabetical changes into the two volumes in question, or of entering
vast numbers of persons out of the Directory as transacting business
with Mr Lightwood. It was the more necessary for his spirits, because,
being of a sensitive temperament, he was apt to consider it personally
disgraceful to himself that his master had no clients.

'How long have you been in the law, now?' asked Mr Boffin, with a
pounce, in his usual inquisitive way.

'I've been in the law, now, sir, about three years.'

'Must have been as good as born in it!' said Mr Boffin, with admiration.
'Do you like it?'

'I don't mind it much,' returned Young Blight, heaving a sigh, as if its
bitterness were past.

'What wages do you get?'

'Half what I could wish,' replied young Blight.

'What's the whole that you could wish?'

'Fifteen shillings a week,' said the boy.

'About how long might it take you now, at a average rate of going, to be
a Judge?' asked Mr Boffin, after surveying his small stature in silence.

The boy answered that he had not yet quite worked out that little
calculation.

'I suppose there's nothing to prevent your going in for it?' said Mr
Boffin.

The boy virtually replied that as he had the honour to be a Briton who
never never never