Ada’s colour had entirely left her, and Richard was scarcely less pale.  Nor could I wonder, judging even from my emotions, and I was no party in the suit, that to hearts so untried and fresh it was a shock to come into the inheritance of a protracted misery, attended in the minds of many people with such dreadful recollections.  I had another uneasiness, in the application of the painful story to the poor half-witted creature who had brought us there; but, to my surprise, she seemed perfectly unconscious of that and only led the way upstairs again, informing us with the toleration of a superior creature for the infirmities of a common mortal that her landlord was “a little M, you know!”

She lived at the top of the house, in a pretty large room, from which she had a glimpse of Lincoln’s Inn Hall.  This seemed to have been her principal inducement, originally, for taking up her residence there.  She could look at it, she said, in the night, especially in the moonshine.  Her room was clean, but very, very bare.  I noticed the scantiest necessaries in the way of furniture; a few old prints from books, of Chancellors and barristers, wafered against the wall; and some half-dozen reticles and work-bags, “containing documents,” as she informed us.  There were neither coals nor ashes in the grate, and I saw no articles of clothing anywhere, nor any kind of food.  Upon a shelf in an open cupboard were a plate or two, a cup or two, and so forth, but all dry and empty.  There was a more affecting meaning in her pinched appearance, I thought as I looked round, than I had understood before.

“Extremely honoured, I am sure,” said our poor hostess with the greatest suavity, “by this visit from the wards in Jarndyce.  And very much indebted for the omen.  It is a retired situation.  Considering.  I am limited as to situation.  In consequence of the necessity of attending on the Chancellor.  I have lived here many years.  I pass my days in court, my evenings and my nights here.  I find the nights long, for I sleep but little and think much.  That is, of course, unavoidable, being in Chancery.  I am sorry I cannot offer chocolate.  I expect a judgment shortly and shall then place my establishment on a superior footing.  At present, I don’t mind confessing to the wards in Jarndyce (in strict confidence) that I sometimes find it difficult to keep up a genteel appearance.  I have felt the cold here.  I have felt something sharper than cold.  It matters very little.  Pray excuse the introduction of such mean topics.”

She partly drew aside the curtain of the long, low garret window and called our attention to a number of bird-cages hanging there, some containing several birds.  There were larks, linnets, and goldfinches—­I should think at least twenty.

“I began to keep the little creatures,” she said, “with an object that the wards will readily comprehend.  With the intention of restoring them to liberty.  When my judgment should be given.  Ye-es!  They die in prison, though.  Their lives, poor silly things, are so short in comparison with Chancery proceedings that, one by one, the whole collection has died over and over again.  I doubt, do you know, whether one of these, though they are all young, will live to be free!  Ve-ry mortifying, is it not?”