But although Miss Panney took pleasure in the company of clergymen and physicians, she boldly asserted that she liked lawyers better.

“In the law,” she would say, “you find things fixed and settled.  A law is a law, the same for everybody, and no matter how much people may wrangle and dispute about it, it is there, and you can read it for yourself.  But the practice of medicine has to be shifted to suit individual cases, and the practice of theology is shifted to suit individual creeds, and you can’t put your finger on steady principles as you can in law.  When I put my finger down, I like to be sure what is under it.”

Miss Panney had other reasons for liking lawyers, for her first real friend had been her legal guardian, old Mr. Bannister of Thorbury.  She was one of the few people of the place who remembered this old gentleman, and she had often told how shocked and pained she had been when summoned from boarding-school to attend his funeral, and how she had been impressed by the idea that the preparations for this important event consisted mainly in beating up eggs, stemming raisins, baking cakes and pies, and making all sorts of provision for the sumptuous entertainment of the people who should be drawn together by the death of the principal citizen of the town.  To her mind it would have been more appropriate had the company been fed on bread and water.

Thomas Bannister, who succeeded to his father’s business, had been Miss Panney’s legal friend and counsellor for many years.  But he, too, was dead, and the office had now devolved on Herbert Bannister, the grandson of the old gentleman, and the brother of Miss Dora.

Herbert and Miss Panney were very good friends, but not yet cronies.  He was still under thirty, and there were many events of the past of which he knew but little, and about which he could not wholly sympathize with her.  But she believed that years would ripen him, and that the time would come when she would get along as well with him as she had with his father and grandfather.

She was not supposed to be a rich woman, and she had not been much engaged in suits at law, but it was surprising how much legal business Miss Panney had, as well as business of many other kinds.

When Mrs. Tolbridge had left her, the old lady put away her scrap-book, and prepared to go downstairs.

“It is a great pity,” she said to herself, “that one of the bodily ailments which is bound to show itself in the family in the course of the spring, should not have turned up to-day.  I want very much to talk to the doctor about the young man at Cobhurst, and I cannot drive about the country in such weather as this.”

CHAPTER III

BROTHER AND SISTER

There were other people in and around Thorbury, who very much wanted to know something about the young man at Cobhurst, but this desire was interfered with by the fact that the young man was not yet at Cobhurst, and did not seem to be in a hurry to get there.