Thus Mr. Bintrey; talking quite is much at Wilding as to Vendale.  And yet, in spite of his care for his client, he was so amused by his client’s Quixotic conduct, as to eye him from time to time with twinkling eyes, in the light of a highly comical curiosity.

“Nothing,” observed Wilding, “can be clearer.  I only wish my head were as clear as yours, Mr. Bintrey.”

“If you feel that singing in it coming on,” hinted the lawyer, with an alarmed glance, “put it off.—­I mean the interview.”

“Not at all, I thank you,” said Wilding.  “What was I going to—­”

“Don’t excite yourself, Mr. Wilding,” urged the lawyer.

“No; I wasn’t going to,” said the wine-merchant.  “Mr. Bintrey and George Vendale, would you have any hesitation or objection to become my joint trustees and executors, or can you at once consent?”

“I consent,” replied George Vendale, readily.

“I consent,” said Bintrey, not so readily.

“Thank you both.  Mr. Bintrey, my instructions for my last will and testament are short and plain.  Perhaps you will now have the goodness to take them down.  I leave the whole of my real and personal estate, without any exception or reservation whatsoever, to you two, my joint trustees and executors, in trust to pay over the whole to the true Walter Wilding, if he shall be found and identified within two years after the day of my death.  Failing that, in trust to you two to pay over the whole as a benefaction and legacy to the Foundling Hospital.”

“Those are all your instructions, are they, Mr. Wilding?” demanded Bintrey, after a blank silence, during which nobody had looked at anybody.

“The whole.”

“And as to those instructions, you have absolutely made up your mind, Mr. Wilding?”

“Absolutely, decidedly, finally.”

“It only remains,” said the lawyer, with one shrug of his shoulders, “to get them into technical and binding form, and to execute and attest.  Now, does that press?  Is there any hurry about it?  You are not going to die yet, sir.”

“Mr. Bintrey,” answered Wilding, gravely, “when I am going to die is within other knowledge than yours or mine.  I shall be glad to have this matter off my mind, if you please.”

“We are lawyer and client again,” rejoined Bintrey, who, for the nonce, had become almost sympathetic.  “If this day week—­here, at the same hour—­will suit Mr. Vendale and yourself, I will enter in my Diary that I attend you accordingly.”

The appointment was made, and in due sequence, kept.  The will was formally signed, sealed, delivered, and witnessed, and was carried off by Mr. Bintrey for safe storage among the papers of his clients, ranged in their respective iron boxes, with their respective owners’ names outside, on iron tiers in his consulting-room, as if that legal sanctuary were a condensed Family Vault of Clients.