And I
ought to add that I always intended going into the law after I'd had a
fling. It isn't fair to leave you with the impression that this is a
sudden determination. Prodigals don't become good as quick as all that."

Ripton caught its breath a second time the day Austen hired a law office,
nor did the surprise wholly cease when, in one season, he was admitted to
the bar, for the proceeding was not in keeping with the habits and
customs of prodigals. Needless to say, the practice did not immediately
begin to pour in, but the little office rarely lacked a visitor, and
sometimes had as many as five or six. There was an irresistible
attraction about that room, and apparently very little law read there,
though sometimes its occupant arose and pushed the visitors into the hall
and locked the door, and opened the window at the top to let the smoke
out. Many of the Honourable Hilary's callers preferred the little room in
the far corridor to the great man's own office.

These visitors of the elder Mr. Vane's, as has been before hinted, were
not all clients. Without burdening the reader too early with a treatise
on the fabric of a system, suffice it to say that something was
continually going on that was not law; and gentlemen came and went--fat
and thin, sharp-eyed and red-faced--who were neither clients nor lawyers.
These were really secretive gentlemen, though most of them had a
hail-fellow-well-met manner and a hearty greeting, but when they talked
to the Honourable Hilary it was with doors shut, and even then they sat
very close to his ear. Many of them preferred now to wait in Austen's
office instead of the anteroom, and some of them were not so cautious
with the son of Hilary Vane that they did not let drop certain
observations to set him thinking. He had a fanciful if somewhat facetious
way of calling them by feudal titles which made them grin.

"How is the Duke of Putnam this morning?" he would ask of the gentleman
of whom the Ripton Record would frequently make the following
announcement: "Among the prominent residents of Putnam County in town
this week was the Honourable Brush Bascom."

The Honourable Brush and many of his associates, barons and earls, albeit
the shrewdest of men, did not know exactly how to take the son of Hilary
Vane. This was true also of the Honourable Hilary himself, who did not
wholly appreciate the humour in Austen's parallel of the feudal system.
Although Austen had set up for himself, th