She took my hand and beckoned Richard and Ada to come too, and in a few moments she was at home.

She had stopped at a shop over which was written, “Krook, Rag and Bottle Warehouse.”  Inside was an old man in spectacles and a hair cap, and entering the shop the little old lady presented him to us.

“My landlord, Krook,” she said.  “He is called among the neighbours the Lord Chancellor.  His shop is called the Court of Chancery.”

She lived at the top of the house in a room from which she had a glimpse of the roof of Lincoln’s Inn Hall, and this seemed to be her principal inducement for living there.

II.—­Bleak House

We drove down to Bleak House, in Hertfordshire, next day, and all three of us were anxious and nervous when the night closed in, and the driver, pointing to a light sparkling on the top of a hill, cried, “That’s Bleak House!”

“Ada, my love, Esther, my dear, you are welcome.  Rick, if I had a hand to spare at present I would give it you!”

The gentleman who said these words in a clear, hospitable voice, kissed us both in a fatherly way, and bore us across the hall into a ruddy little room, all in a glow with a blazing fire.

“Now, Rick!” said he, “I have a hand at liberty.  A word in earnest is as good as a speech.  I am heartily glad to see you.  You are at home.  Warm yourself!”

While he spoke I glanced at his face.  It was a handsome face, full of change and motion; and his hair was a silvered iron grey.  I took him to be nearer sixty than fifty, but he was upright, hearty, and robust.

So this was our coming to Bleak House.

The very next morning I was installed as housekeeper and presented with two bunches of keys—­a large bunch for the housekeeping and a little bunch for the cellars.  I could not help trembling when I met Mr. Jarndyce, for I knew it was he who had done everything for me since my godmother’s death.

“Nonsense!” he said.  “I hear of a good little orphan girl without a protector, and I take it into my head to be that protector.  She grows up, and more than justifies my good opinion, and I remain her guardian and her friend.  What is there in all this?”

He soon began to talk to me confidentially as if I had been in the habit of conversing with him every morning for I don’t know how long.

“Of course, Esther,” he said, “you don’t understand this Chancery business?”

I shook my head.

“I don’t know who does,” he returned.  “The lawyers have twisted it into such a state of bedevilment that the original merits of the case have long disappeared.  Its about a will, and the trusts under a will—­or it was once.  It’s about nothing but costs now.  It was about a will when it was about anything.  A certain Jarndyce, in an evil hour, made a great fortune and made a great will.  In the question how the trusts under that will are to be administered, the fortune