f every one,
the law was the muddle secret of the legal profession. Poor people,
overworked people, had constantly to submit to petty wrongs because
of the intolerable uncertainty not only of law but of cost, and of
the demands upon time and energy, proceedings might make. There
was indeed no justice for any one too poor to command a good
solicitor's deference and loyalty; there was nothing but rough
police protection and the magistrate's grudging or eccentric advice
for the mass of the population. The civil law, in particular, was
a mysterious upper-class weapon, and I can imagine no injustice that
would have been sufficient to induce my poor old mother to appeal
to it.

All this begins to sound incredible. I can only assure you that it
was so.

But I, when I learned that old Pettigrew had been down to tell my
mother all about his rheumatism, to inspect the roof, and to allege
that nothing was needed, gave way to my most frequent emotion in
those days, a burning indignation, and took the matter into my own
hands. I wrote and asked him, with a withering air of technicality,
to have the roof repaired "as per agreement," and added, "if not
done in one week from now we shall be obliged to take proceedings."
I had not mentioned this high line of conduct to my mother at first,
and so when old Pettigrew came down in a state of great agitation
with my letter in his hand, she was almost equally agitated.

"How could you write to old Mr. Pettigrew like that?" she asked
me.

I said that old Pettigrew was a shameful old rascal, or words to
that effect, and I am afraid I behaved in a very undutiful way to
her when she said that she had settled everything with him--she
wouldn't say how, but I could guess well enough--and that I was
to promise her, promise her faithfully, to do nothing more in the
matter. I wouldn't promise her.

And--having nothing better to employ me then--I presently went
raging to old Pettigrew in order to put the whole thing before him
in what I considered the proper light. Old Pettigrew evaded my
illumination; he saw me coming up his front steps--I can still see
his queer old nose and the crinkled brow over his eye and the little
wisp of gray hair that showed over the corner of his window-blind--and
he instructed his servant to put up the chain when she answered
the door, and to tell me that he would not see me. So I had to fall
back upon my pen.

Then it was, as I had no idea what were the proper "pr