The good creature’s look sent me into a fit of laughter.  She stared solemnly at me for a while through her tears, saying never a word.  Then the drooping corners of her mouth lifted; she folded her hands across her plump person and said: 

“Your father only gave me eighteen, Humphrey:  are you sure ’twas twenty the lawyer said?”

“Quite sure.  The devil isn’t as black as he’s painted, eh Becky?”

“Ah! you never know a man till yon’ve lived with him.  Pennyquick was—­but there, he’s gone, poor soul, as we all must, and tis ill work saying anything against one as can’t answer ye back:  not that Pennyquick was ever much of a hand at that, poor soul!”

I heard no more vilification of Mr. Vetch.  Becky recovered her old activity with surprising ease, and went about the house collecting such personal belongings of her own and mine as the lawyer told us we might remove without question.  He himself came to the house on our last day, and made an inventory of the articles we removed, and having seen these safely bestowed in a pannier on the back of Ben Ivimey’s son, who came to carry them away, we shut the doors of the old place, Mr. Vetch pocketed the keys, and we set off for the town.

Mistress Pennyquick shed a plenitude of tears, and I had a monstrous lump in my throat that threatened to choke me if I tried to speak.  With a discretion that raised him mightily in Becky’s esteem, Mr. Vetch fell behind, leaving us two together; and so with full hearts we took the road, going into our new life hand in hand.

Chapter 7:  A Crown Piece.

This turn in our affairs was a nine days’ wonder in Shrewsbury.  And whether it was that some chord of sympathy was touched in our townsfolk, or that Mr. Vetch worsted his only rival, Mr. Moggridge, in a case of breach of covenant that was tried at the next assizes, I know not; but certain it is that my friend’s business took a leap upward from that very time.  Clients flocked to him; he soon had to employ an additional clerk; and Mistress Pennyquick, who was twice as tyrannical as before on the strength of her extra two pounds a year, declared privately to me one day that she wished for nothing now but that she might live to see me a partner with Mr. Vetch, in a house of my own, with a sensible wife and five pretty children.

But I have come to believe that as an Ethiopian can not change his skin, nor a leopard his spots, so a man can not alter the bent of mind he was born with, nor follow any course with success but the one to which his nature calls.  I entered Mr. Vetch’s office with the best will in the world to please him, and to master the principles of legal practice and procedure; but I found it hard to reconcile myself to the atmosphere of a stuffy room filled with musty tomes, and to the unvarying round of desk work—­copying from morning to night agreements, deeds and other documents bristling with a jargon unintelligible to me.