On the eastern borders of Chancery Lane, that is to say, moreparticularly in Cook's Court, Cursitor Street, Mr. Snagsby, law-stationer, pursues his lawful calling. In the shade of Cook'sCourt, at most times a shady place, Mr. Snagsby has dealt in allsorts of blank forms of legal process; in skins and rolls ofparchment; in paper--foolscap, brief, draft, brown, white, whitey-brown, and blotting; in stamps; in office-quills, pens, ink, India-rubber, pounce, pins, pencils, sealing-wax, and wafers; in red tapeand green ferret; in pocket-books, almanacs, diaries, and law lists;in string boxes, rulers, inkstands--glass and leaden--pen-knives,scissors, bodkins, and other small office-cutlery; in short, inarticles too numerous to mention, ever since he was out of his timeand went into partnership with Peffer. On that occasion, Cook'sCourt was in a manner revolutionized by the new inscription in freshpaint, PEFFER AND SNAGSBY, displacing the time-honoured and noteasily to be deciphered legend PEFFER only. For smoke, which is theLondon ivy, had so wreathed itself round Peffer's name and clung tohis dwelling-place that the affectionate parasite quite overpoweredthe parent tree.

　　Peffer is never seen in Cook's Court now. He is not expected there,for he has been recumbent this quarter of a century in thechurchyard of St. Andrews, Holborn, with the waggons and hackney-coaches roaring past him all the day and half the night like onegreat dragon. If he ever steal forth when the dragon is at rest toair himself again in Cook's Court until admonished to return by thecrowing of the sanguine cock in the cellar at the little dairy inCursitor Street, whose ideas of daylight it would be curious toascertain, since he knows from his personal observation next tonothing about it--if Peffer ever do revisit the pale glimpses ofCook's Court, which no law-stationer in the trade can positivelydeny, he comes invisibly, and no one is the worse or wiser.

　　In his lifetime, and likewise in the period of Snagsby's "time" ofseven long years, there dwelt with Peffer in the same law-stationering premises a niece--a short, shrewd niece, something tooviolently compressed about the waist, and with a sharp nose like asharp autumn evening, inclining to be frosty towards the end. TheCook's Courtiers had a rumour flying among them that the mother ofthis niece did, in her daughter's childhood, moved by too jealous asolicitude that her figure should approach perfection, lace her upevery morning with her maternal foot against the bed-post for astronger hold and purchase; and further, that she exhibitedinternally pints of vinegar and lemon-juice, which acids, they held,had mounted to the nose and temper of the patient. With whichsoeverof the many tongues of Rumour this frothy report originated, iteither never reached or never influenced the ears of young Snagsby,who, having wooed and won its fair subject on his arrival at man'sestate, entered into two partnerships at once. So now, in Cook'sCourt, Cursitor Street, Mr. Snagsby and the niece are one; and theniece still cherishes her figure, which, however tastes may differ,is unquestionably so far precious that there is mighty little of it.

　　Mr. and Mrs. Snagsby are not only one bone and one flesh, but, tothe neighbours' thinking, one voice too. That voice, appearing toproceed from Mrs. Snagsby alone, is heard in Cook's Court veryoften. Mr. Snagsby, otherwise than as he finds expression throughthese dulcet tones, is rarely heard. He is a mild, bald, timid manwith a shining head and a scrubby clump of black hair sticking outat the back. He tends to meekness and obesity. As he stands at hisdoor in Cook's Court in his grey shop-coat and black calico sleeves,looking up at the clouds, or stands behind a desk in his dark shopwith a heavy flat ruler, snipping and slicing at sheepskin incompany with his two 'prentices, he is emphatically a retiring andunassuming man. From beneath his feet, at such times, as from ashrill ghost unquiet in its grave, there frequently arisecomplainings and lamentations in the voice already mentioned; andhaply, on some occasions when these reach a sharper pitch thanusual, Mr. Snagsby mentions to the 'prentices, "I think my littlewoman is a-giving it to Guster!"This proper name, so used by Mr. Snagsby, has before now sharpenedthe wit of the Cook's Courtiers to remark that it ought to be thename of Mrs. Snagsby, seeing that she might with great force andexpression be termed a Guster, in compliment to her stormycharacter. It is, however, the possession, and the only possessionexcept fifty shillings per annum and a very small box indifferentlyfilled with clothing, of a lean young woman from a workhouse (bysome supposed to have been christened Augusta) who, although she wasfarmed or contracted for during her growing time by an amiablebenefactor of his species resident at Tooting, and cannot fail tohave been developed under the most favourable circumstances, "hasfits," which the parish can't account for.

　　Guster, really aged three or four and twenty, but looking a roundten years older, goes cheap with this unaccountable drawback offits, and is so apprehensive of being returned on the hands of herpatron saint that except when she is found with her head in thepail, or the sink, or the copper, or the dinner, or anything elsethat happens to be near her at the time of her seizure, she isalways at work. She is a satisfaction to the parents and guardiansof the 'prentices, who feel that there is little danger of herinspiring tender emotions in the breast of youth; she is asatisfaction to Mrs. Snagsby, who can always find fault with her;she is a satisfaction to Mr. Snagsby, who thinks it a charity tokeep her. The law-stationer's establishment is, in Guster's eyes, atemple of plenty and splendour. She believes the little drawing-room upstairs, always kept, as one may say, with its hair in papersand its pinafore on, to be the most elegant apartment inChristendom. The view it commands of Cook's Court at one end (notto mention a squint into Cursitor Street) and of Coavinses' thesheriff's officer's backyard at the other she regards as a prospectof unequalled beauty. The portraits it displays in oil--and plentyof it too--of Mr. Snagsby looking at Mrs. Snagsby and of Mrs.

　　Snagsby looking at Mr. Snagsby are in her eyes as achievements ofRaphael or Titian. Guster has some recompenses for her manyprivations.

　　Mr. Snagsby refers everything not in the practical mysteries of thebusiness to Mrs. Snagsby. She manages the money, reproaches thetax-gatherers, appoints the times and places of devotion on Sundays,licenses Mr. Snagsby's entertainments, and acknowledges noresponsibility as to what she thinks fit to provide for dinner,insomuch that she is the high standard of comparison among theneighbouring wives a long way down Chancery Lane on both sides, andeven out in Holborn, who in any domestic passages of arms habituallycall upon their husbands to look at the difference between their(the wives') position and Mrs. Snagsby's, and their (the husbands')behaviour and Mr. Snagsby's. Rumour, always flying bat-like aboutCook's Court and skimming in and out at everybody's windows, doessay that Mrs. Snagsby is jealous and inquisitive and that Mr.

　　Snagsby is sometimes worried out of house and home, and that if hehad the spirit of a mouse he wouldn't stand it. It is even observedthat the wives who quote him to their self-willed husbands as ashining example in reality look down upon him and that nobody doesso with greater superciliousness than one particular lady whose lordis more than suspected of laying his umbrella on her as aninstrument of correction. But these vague whisperings may arisefrom Mr. Snagsby's being in his way rather a meditative and poeticalman, loving to walk in Staple Inn in the summer-time and to observehow countrified the sparrows and the leaves are, also to loungeabout the Rolls Yard of a Sunday afternoon and to remark (if in goodspirits) that there were old times once and that you'd find a stonecoffin or two now under that chapel, he'll be bound, if you was todig for it. He solaces his imagination, too, by thinking of themany Chancellors and Vices, and Masters of the Rolls who aredeceased; and he gets such a flavour of the country out of tellingthe two 'prentices how he HAS heard say that a brook "as clear ascrystial" once ran right down the middle of Holborn, when Turnstilereally was a turnstile, leading slap away into the meadows--getssuch a flavour of the country out of this that he never wants to gothere.

　　The day is closing in and the gas is lighted, but is not yet fullyeffective, for it is not quite dark. Mr. Snagsby standing at hisshop-door looking up at the clouds sees a crow who is out late skimwestward over the slice of sky belonging to Cook's Court. The crowflies straight across Chancery Lane and Lincoln's Inn Garden intoLincoln's Inn Fields.

　　Here, in a large house, formerly a house of state, lives Mr.

　　Tulkinghorn. It is let off in sets of chambers now, and in thoseshrunken fragments of its greatness, lawyers lie like maggots innuts. But its roomy staircases, passages, and antechambers stillremain; and even its painted ceilings, where Allegory, in Romanhelmet and celestial linen, sprawls among balustrades and pillars,flowers, clouds, and big-legged boys, and makes the head ache--aswould seem to be Allegory's object always, more or less. Here,among his many boxes labelled with transcendent names, lives Mr.

　　Tulkinghorn, when not speechlessly at home in country-houses wherethe great ones of the earth are bored to death. Here he is to-day,quiet at his table. An oyster of the old school whom nobody canopen.

　　Like as he is to look at, so is his apartment in the dusk of thepresent afternoon. Rusty, out of date, withdrawing from attention,able to afford it. Heavy, broad-backed, old-fashioned, mahogany-and-horsehair chairs, not easily lifted; obsolete tables withspindle-legs and dusty baize covers; presentation prints of theholders of great titles in the last generation or the last but one,environ him. A thick and dingy Turkey-carpet muffles the floorwhere he sits, attended by two candles in old-fashioned silvercandlesticks that give a very insufficient light to his large room.

　　The titles on the backs of his books have retired into the binding;everything that can have a lock has got one; no key is visible.

　　Very few loose papers are about. He has some manuscript near him,but is not referring to it. With the round top of an inkstand andtwo broken bits of sealing-wax he is silently and slowly working outwhatever train of indecision is in his mind. Now tbe inkstand topis in the middle, now the red bit of sealing-wax, now the black bit.

　　That's not it. Mr. Tulkinghorn must gather them all up and beginagain.

　　Here, beneath the painted ceiling, with foreshortened Allegorystaring down at his intrusion as if it meant to swoop upon him, andhe cutting it dead, Mr. Tulkinghorn has at once his house andoffice. He keeps no staff, only one middle-aged man, usually alittle out at elbows, who sits in a high pew in the hall and israrely overburdened with business. Mr. Tulkinghorn is not in acommon way. He wants no clerks. He is a great reservoir ofconfidences, not to be so tapped. His clients want HIM; he is allin all. Drafts that he requires to be drawn are drawn by special-pleaders in the temple on mysterious instructions; fair copies thathe requires to be made are made at the stationers', expense being noconsideration. The middle-aged man in the pew knows scarcely moreof the affairs of the peerage than any crossing-sweeper in Holborn.

　　The red bit, the black bit, the inkstand top, the other inkstandtop, the little sand-box. So! You to the middle, you to the right,you to the left. This train of indecision must surely be worked outnow or never. Now! Mr. Tulkinghorn gets up, adjusts hisspectacles, puts on his hat, puts the manuscript in his pocket, goesout, tells the middle-aged man out at elbows, "I shall be backpresently." Very rarely tells him anything more explicit.

　　Mr. Tulkinghorn goes,............