“But he won’t keep his money, by what I can make out,” said the glazier.  “Don’t they say as there’s somebody can strip it off him?  By what I can understan’, they could take every penny off him, if they went to lawing.”

“No such thing!” said the barber, who felt himself a little above his company at Dollop’s, but liked it none the worse.  “Fletcher says it’s no such thing.  He says they might prove over and over again whose child this young Ladislaw was, and they’d do no more than if they proved I came out of the Fens—­he couldn’t touch a penny.”

“Look you there now!” said Mrs. Dollop, indignantly.  “I thank the Lord he took my children to Himself, if that’s all the law can do for the motherless.  Then by that, it’s o’ no use who your father and mother is.  But as to listening to what one lawyer says without asking another—­I wonder at a man o’ your cleverness, Mr. Dill.  It’s well known there’s always two sides, if no more; else who’d go to law, I should like to know?  It’s a poor tale, with all the law as there is up and down, if it’s no use proving whose child you are.  Fletcher may say that if he likes, but I say, don’t Fletcher me!”

Mr. Dill affected to laugh in a complimentary way at Mrs. Dollop, as a woman who was more than a match for the lawyers; being disposed to submit to much twitting from a landlady who had a long score against him.

“If they come to lawing, and it’s all true as folks say, there’s more to be looked to nor money,” said the glazier.  “There’s this poor creetur as is dead and gone; by what I can make out, he’d seen the day when he was a deal finer gentleman nor Bulstrode.”

“Finer gentleman!  I’ll warrant him,” said Mrs. Dollop; “and a far personabler man, by what I can hear.  As I said when Mr. Baldwin, the tax-gatherer, comes in, a-standing where you sit, and says, `Bulstrode got all his money as he brought into this town by thieving and swindling,’—­I said, `You don’t make me no wiser, Mr. Baldwin:  it’s set my blood a-creeping to look at him ever sin’ here he came into Slaughter Lane a-wanting to buy the house over my head:  folks don’t look the color o’ the dough-tub and stare at you as if they wanted to see into your backbone for nothingk.’  That was what I said, and Mr. Baldwin can bear me witness.”

“And in the rights of it too,” said Mr. Crabbe.  “For by what I can make out, this Raffles, as they call him, was a lusty, fresh-colored man as you’d wish to see, and the best o’ company—­though dead he lies in Lowick churchyard sure enough; and by what I can understan’, there’s them knows more than they should know about how he got there.”