“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.