by George IV., and Inspector Bucket
     was a friend of the author in the Metropolitan Police Force. 
     Harold Skimpole was identified with Leigh Hunt.  Dickens
     himself admitted the resemblance; but only in so far as none
     of Skimpole’s vices could be attributed to his prototype.  The
     original of Bleak House was a country mansion in
     Hertfordshire, near St. Albans, though it is usually said to
     be a summer residence of the novelist at Broadstairs.

I.—­In Chancery

London.  Implacable November weather.  The Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall.  Fog everywhere, and at the very heart of the fog sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery.  The case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce drones on.  No man alive knows what it means.  It has passed into a joke.  It has been death to many, but it is a joke in the profession.

Mr. Kenge (of Kenge and Carboy, solicitors, Lincoln’s Inn) first mentioned Jarndyce and Jarndyce to me, and told me that the costs already amounted to from sixty to seventy thousand pounds.

My godmother, who brought me up, was just dead, and Mr. Kenge came to tell me that Mr. Jarndyce proposed, knowing my desolate position, that I should go to a first-rate school, where my education should be completed and my comfort secured.  What did I say to this?  What could I say but accept the proposal thankfully?

I passed at this school six happy, quiet years, and then one day came a note from Kenge and Carboy, mentioning that their client, Mr. Jarndyce, being in the house, desired my services as an eligible companion to this young lady.

So I said good-bye to the school and went to London, and was driven to Mr. Kenge’s office.  He was not altered, but he was surprised to see how altered I was, and appeared quite pleased.

“As you are going to be the companion of the young lady who is now in the Chancellor’s private room, Miss Summerson,” he said, “we thought it well that you should be in attendance also.”

Mr. Kenge gave me his arm, and we went out of his office and into the court, and then into a comfortable sort of room where a young lady and a young gentleman were standing talking.

They looked up when I came in, and I saw in the young lady a beautiful girl, with rich golden hair, and a bright, innocent, trusting face.

“Miss Ada,” said Mr. Kenge, “this is Miss Summerson.”

She came to meet me with a smile of welcome and her hand extended, but seemed to change her mind in a moment, and kissed me.

The young gentleman was her distant cousin, she told me, and his name Richard Carstone.  He was a handsome youth, and after she had called him up to where we sat, he stood by us, talking gaily, like a light-hearted boy.  He was very young, not more than nineteen then, but nearly two years older than she was.  They were both orphans, and had never met before that day.  Our all three coming together for the first time in such an unusual place was a thing to talk about, and we talked about it.