Mr. Vholes was gratified, as a smaller practitioner striving to keep respectable, to be confirmed in any opinion of his own by such an authority.

“And when,” asked my guardian, rising after a pause, during which Mr. Kenge had rattled his money and Mr. Vholes had picked his pimples, “when is next term?”

“Next term, Mr. Jarndyce, will be next month,” said Mr. Kenge.  “Of course we shall at once proceed to do what is necessary with this document and to collect the necessary evidence concerning it; and of course you will receive our usual notification of the cause being in the paper.”

“To which I shall pay, of course, my usual attention.”

“Still bent, my dear sir,” said Mr. Kenge, showing us through the outer office to the door, “still bent, even with your enlarged mind, on echoing a popular prejudice?  We are a prosperous community, Mr. Jarndyce, a very prosperous community.  We are a great country, Mr. Jarndyce, we are a very great country.  This is a great system, Mr. Jarndyce, and would you wish a great country to have a little system?  Now, really, really!”

He said this at the stair-head, gently moving his right hand as if it were a silver trowel with which to spread the cement of his words on the structure of the system and consolidate it for a thousand ages.

CHAPTER LXIII

Steel and Iron

George’s Shooting Gallery is to let, and the stock is sold off, and George himself is at Chesney Wold attending on Sir Leicester in his rides and riding very near his bridle-rein because of the uncertain hand with which he guides his horse.  But not to-day is George so occupied.  He is journeying to-day into the iron country farther north to look about him.

As he comes into the iron country farther north, such fresh green woods as those of Chesney Wold are left behind; and coal pits and ashes, high chimneys and red bricks, blighted verdure, scorching fires, and a heavy never-lightening cloud of smoke become the features of the scenery.  Among such objects rides the trooper, looking about him and always looking for something he has come to find.

At last, on the black canal bridge of a busy town, with a clang of iron in it, and more fires and more smoke than he has seen yet, the trooper, swart with the dust of the coal roads, checks his horse and asks a workman does he know the name of Rouncewell thereabouts.

“Why, master,” quoth the workman, “do I know my own name?”

“’Tis so well known here, is it, comrade?” asks the trooper.

“Rouncewell’s?  Ah!  You’re right.”

“And where might it be now?” asks the trooper with a glance before him.

“The bank, the factory, or the house?” the workman wants to know.

“Hum!  Rouncewell’s is so great apparently,” mutters the trooper, stroking his chin, “that I have as good as half a mind to go back again.  Why, I don’t know which I want.  Should I find Mr. Rouncewell at the factory, do you think?”