might take it into their heads to laugh — and then
where are you?"

Mr. Jeffrey was understood to wheeze forth
the announcement that " they'd laugh if you so
much as held up one of your fingers to them."

"Now I'll tell you what," said Mr. Craft, as
he filled himself a fresh glass of brandy-and-water,
and kindled a fresh cigar. " Suppose,
in order that we may form a candid opinion, and
a fair one, that your friend Mr. Penmore was
to give us a specimen of his speaking. We've
only heard him in the course of conversation,
you know, as yet, and if he was to make a
regular set speech, it might be different. Here,
you've got a lot of law-books here, Mr. Lethwaite —
not that you make much use of them,
I suspect — and there are speeches of Lord
Brougham's and Lord Campbell's, and lots of
other law swells. Suppose, now, that Mr. Penmore
was to take one of these and recite it to us;
or maybe he has something of the sort by heart,
something he may have learnt to build his style
upon; let him give us a speech of that sort, and
we might, perhaps, form a more favourable
judgment."

"Oh, you can't expect a man to do a thing
of the sort in cold blood," said Lethwaite, with
rather an anxious look towards his friend notwithstanding.

Gilbert was silent. Such a proceeding as
that suggested by Mr. Craft was peculiarly repugnant
to him. To attempt such a thing in
cold blood, as his friend had said, was terrible.
How could he do himself justice? Was it not
sure to be a failure? But then he thought of
Gabrielle, of the comforts she stood in need of,
of the privations she had to put up with. He
thought of his own ambition to excel in the
law, and of all he had already sacrificed to that
desire. And then he determined that he would
endure yet this annoyance also, and do the
thing that was required of him.

He turned over the leaves of one of his friend's
books, containing various reports of trials, till
he came to one containing a speech of Lord
Stowel's, which it happened that he knew to a
great extent by heart. And in this, after pausing
a little while, as a bather delays before descending
into the cold water, he fairly embarked,
while the attorneys, prepared to criticise, were
encamped over against him in formidable array.

The speech was one of those in which great
eloquence and the soundest logic and the most
astute reasoning were combined together. In
short, it was a model of what such an address
ought to be, and, truth to say, it was really done
justice to by Gilbert Penmore, in spite of his
accent. A more enlightened set of judges than
our three solicitors must have perceived this,
but to them the peculiar pronunciation of some
of the words was the only thing worthy of
note, and even when the address, as it advanced
increased in strength of language and eloquence,
when men of a less matter-of-fact sort would
have been carried away by the earnestness and
intelligence with which the speaker made his
points — even then it was of the accent with
which the words were uttered that the lawyers
thought, far more than of the meaning which
those words conveyed, and the power with
which that meaning was enforced.

It may have been that Gilbert felt the critical
attitude of his audience, and saw that he had to
fight against a hopeless amount of prejudice.
For a time he contended against this feeling,
and indeed throughout he never gave in to it,
but it annoyed him, and made him nervous
nevertheless, and that caused him to make one
or two mistakes, at every one of which he could
see his auditors exchange glances, manifesting
at the same time a strong desire to laugh, probably
only kept in check by the imperturbable
gravity of their host, who saw that his friend
was beginning to get into difficulties, and did all
he could to give him nerve and courage.

Gilbert went through to the end, sustained by
the determination with which he had started,
but he felt that he had not succeeded in winning
the favourable opinion of his auditors, and when
he had got to the end of the speech, he said so
in so many words.

"Now, look you here, Mr. Penmore," said
Craft. " You take the advice of a man who's
been engaged in the practice of the law for
something like twenty years, and you turn your
attention to some other branch of the profession
than that which you're now aiming at. As a
conveyancer or a chamber counsel there's a vast
deal of money to be made; your law studies
would not be thrown away, and any defects of
speech, such as we've been talking about, would
not be of so much consequence. But as to your
going into court in the capacity of advocate, as
you seem bent on doing, take my word for it, it
won't act, and the sooner you give up the idea
the better for you."

"And is that your opinion, Mr. Phipps?"
asked Gilbert.

"Well, sir, I am constrained to admit that it
is," replied that gentleman.

"And yours, sir," continued the young barrister,
addressing Mr. Jeffrey.

Mr. Jeffrey wheezed assent.

"Well then, gentlemen," said Gilbert, nothing
daunted, " I have only to say that I'm very much
obliged to you for your advice, and for the
patience with which you have heard me, and for
the restraint you have put upon yourselves when
you have felt inclined to laugh at me; but as to
my giving up the object which I have kept
before me for so many years — as to my pursuing
some other branch of the profession than that to
which I am at present devoted — nothing shall
induce me to think of so acting till I have had
the opportunity, once at any rate, of pleading
in open court, and bringing this question which
you have settled so quickly against me among
yourselves, to the test of what may, to some
extent, be called public opinion."

"Bravo!" cried Mr. Lethwaite. " Well said.
You shall prove them all wrong yet."

"Very good, gentlemen — very good," retorted
Craft, with a grin. "All I can say is,
that — we shall see."