proved fatal to the inquiry for ten years — “Mr Vholes is considered, in the profession, a most respectable man.”

So in familiar conversation, private authorities no less disinterested will remark that they don’t know what this age is coming to; that we are plunging down precipices; that now here is something else gone; that these changes are death to people like Vholes: a man of undoubted respectability, with a father in the Vale of Taunton, and three daughters at home. Take a few steps more in this direction, say they, and what is to become of Vholes’s father? Is he to perish? And of Vholes’s daughters? Are they to be shirt- makers, or governesses? As though, Mr Vholes and his relations being minor cannibal chiefs, and it being proposed to abolish cannibalism, indignant champions were to put the case thus: Make man-eating unlawful, and you starve the Vholeses!

In a word, Mr Vholes, with his three daughters and his father in the Vale of Taunton, is continually doing duty, like a piece of timber, to shore up some decayed foundation that has become a pitfall and a nuisance. And with a great many people, in a great many instances, the question is never one of a change from Wrong to Right (which is quite an extraneous consideration), but is always one of injury or advantage to that eminently respectable legion, Vholes.

The Chancellor is, within these ten minutes, “up” for the long vacation. Mr Vholes, and his young client, and several blue bags hastily stuffed out of all regularity of form, as the larger sort of serpents are in their first gorged state, have returned to the official den. Mr Vholes, quiet and unmoved, as a man of so much respectability ought to be, takes off his close black gloves as if he were skinning his hands, lifts off his tight hat as if he were scalping himself, and sits down at his desk. The client throws his hat and gloves upon the ground — tosses them anywhere, without looking after them or caring where they go; flings himself into a chair, half sighing and half groaning; rests his aching head upon his hand, and looks the portrait of Young Despair.

“Again nothing done!” says Richard. “Nothing, nothing done!”

“Don’t say nothing done, sir,” returns the placid Vholes. “That is scarcely fair, sir, scarcely fair!”

“Why, what is done?” says Richard, turning gloomily upon him.

“That may not be the whole question,” returns Vholes, “The question may branch off into what is doing, what is doing?”

“And what is doing?” asks the moody client.

Vholes, sitting with his arms on the desk, quietly bringing the tips of his five right fingers to meet the tips of his five left fingers, and quietly separating them again, and fixedly and slowly looking at his client, replies:

“A good deal is doing, sir. We have put our shoulders to the wheel, Mr Carstone, and the wheel is going round.”

“Yes, with Ixion on it. How am I to get through the next four or five accursed months?” exclaims the young man, rising from his chair and walking about the room.

“Mr C,” returns Vholes, following him close with his eyes wherever he goes, “your spirits are hasty, and I am sorry for it on your account. Excuse me if I recommend you not to chafe so much, not to be so impetuous, not to wear yourself out so. You should have more patience. You should sustain yourself better.”

“I ought to imitate you, in fact, Mr Vholes?” says Richard, sitting down again with an impatient laugh, and beating the devil’s Tattoo with his boot on the patternless carpet.