“What was your remark, my dear friend?” inquires the old man with his hand to his ear.
“Bosh!”
“Ho!” says Grandfather Smallweed. “ Mr. George, of my opinion you can judge for yourself according to the questions asked of me and the reasons given for asking ’em. Now, what do you think the lawyer making the inquiries wants?”
“A job,” says Mr. George.
“Nothing of the kind!”
“Can’t be a lawyer, then,” says Mr. George, folding his arms with an air of confirmed resolution.
“My dear friend, he is a lawyer, and a famous one. He wants to see some fragment in Captain Hawdon’s writing. He don’t want to keep it. He only wants to see it and compare it with a writing in his possession.”
“Well?”
“Well, Mr. George. Happening to remember the advertisement concerning Captain Hawdon and any information that could be given respecting him, he looked it up and came to me—just as you did, my dear friend. Will you shake hands? So glad you came that day! I should have missed forming such a friendship if you hadn’t come!”
“Well, Mr. Smallweed?” says Mr. George again after going through the ceremony with some stiffness.
“I had no such thing. I have nothing but his signature. Plague pestilence and famine, battle murder and sudden death upon him,” says the old man, making a curse out of one of his few remembrances of a prayer and