“By my soul, Jarndyce,” he said, very gently holding up a bit of bread to the canary to peck at, “if I were in your place I would seize every master in Chancery by the throat to-morrow morning and shake him until his money rolled out of his pockets and his bones rattled in his skin.  I would have a settlement out of somebody, by fair means or by foul.  If you would empower me to do it, I would do it for you with the greatest satisfaction!” (All this time the very small canary was eating out of his hand.)

“I thank you, Lawrence, but the suit is hardly at such a point at present,” returned Mr. Jarndyce, laughing, “that it would be greatly advanced even by the legal process of shaking the bench and the whole bar.”

“There never was such an infernal cauldron as that Chancery on the face of the earth!” said Mr. Boythorn.  “Nothing but a mine below it on a busy day in term time, with all its records, rules, and precedents collected in it and every functionary belonging to it also, high and low, upward and downward, from its son the Accountant-General to its father the Devil, and the whole blown to atoms with ten thousand hundredweight of gunpowder, would reform it in the least!”

It was impossible not to laugh at the energetic gravity with which he recommended this strong measure of reform.  When we laughed, he threw up his head and shook his broad chest, and again the whole country seemed to echo to his “Ha, ha, ha!” It had not the least effect in disturbing the bird, whose sense of security was complete and who hopped about the table with its quick head now on this side and now on that, turning its bright sudden eye on its master as if he were no more than another bird.

“But how do you and your neighbour get on about the disputed right of way?” said Mr. Jarndyce.  “You are not free from the toils of the law yourself!”

“The fellow has brought actions against me for trespass, and I have brought actions against him for trespass,” returned Mr. Boythorn.  “By heaven, he is the proudest fellow breathing.  It is morally impossible that his name can be Sir Leicester.  It must be Sir Lucifer.”

“Complimentary to our distant relation!” said my guardian laughingly to Ada and Richard.

“I would beg Miss Clare’s pardon and Mr. Carstone’s pardon,” resumed our visitor, “if I were not reassured by seeing in the fair face of the lady and the smile of the gentleman that it is quite unnecessary and that they keep their distant relation at a comfortable distance.”

“Or he keeps us,” suggested Richard.