me. It’s a very fine skin, as you may see, but I didn’t have it stripped off! That warn’t like Chancery practice though, says you!”
He had by this time led us across the shop, and now opened a door in the back part of it, leading to the house-entry. As he stood with his hand upon the lock, the little old lady graciously observed to him before passing out, “That will do, Krook. You mean well, but are tiresome. My young friends are pressed for time. I have none to spare myself, having to attend court very soon. My young friends are the wards in Jarndyce.”
“Jarndyce!” said the old man with a start.
“Jarndyce and Jarndyce. The great suit, Krook,” returned his lodger.
“Hi!” exclaimed the old man in a tone of thoughtful amazement and with a wider stare than before. “Think of it!”
He seemed so rapt all in a moment and looked so curiously at us that Richard said, “Why, you appear to trouble yourself a good deal about the causes before your noble and learned brother, the other Chancellor!”
“Yes,” said the old man abstractedly. “Sure! Your name now will be—”
“Richard Carstone.”
“Carstone,” he repeated, slowly checking off that name upon his forefinger; and each of the others he went on to mention upon a separate finger. “Yes. There was the name of Barbary, and the name of Clare, and the name of Dedlock, too, I think.”
“He knows as much of the cause as the real salaried Chancellor!” said Richard, quite astonished, to Ada and me.
“Aye!” said the old man, coming slowly out of his abstraction. “Yes! Tom Jarndyce—you’ll excuse me, being related; but he was never known