tter of my uncle's money, I'll try to
forget it. I'll try at any rate to do without it. When I first knew
you, and found--found that I liked you so much, I own that I did have
hopes. But if it must be, there shall be an end of that. The children
don't starve, I suppose."

"Oh, John!"

"As for me, I won't hanker after your money. But, for your own sake,
Margaret--"

"There will be more than enough for me, you know; and, John--"

She was going to make him some promise; to tell him something of her
intention towards his son, and to make some tender of assistance to
himself; being now in that mind to live on the smallest possible
pittance, of which I have before spoken, when he ceased speaking or
listening, and hurried her on to the attorney's chambers.

"Do what you like with it. It is your own," said he. "And we shall do
no good by talking about it any longer out here."

So at last they made their way up to Mr Slow's rooms, on the first
floor in the old house in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and were informed
that that gentleman was at home. Would they be pleased to sit down in
the waiting-room?

There is, I think, no sadder place in the world than the waiting-room
attached to an attorney's chambers in London. In this instance it was
a three-cornered room, which had got itself wedged in between the
house which fronted to Lincoln's Inn Fields, and some buildings in a
narrow lane that ran at the back of the row. There was no carpet in
it, and hardly any need of one, as the greater part of the floor was
strewed with bundles of dusty papers. There was a window in it, which
looked out from the point of the further angle against the wall of
the opposite building. The dreariness of this aspect had been thought
to be too much for the minds of those who waited, and therefore the
bottom panes had been clouded, so that there was in fact no power of
looking out at all. Over the fireplace there was a table of descents
and relationship, showing how heirship went; and the table was very
complicated, describing not only the heirship of ordinary real and
personal property, but also explaining the wonderful difficulties of
gavelkind, and other mysteriously traditional laws. But the table was
as dirty as it was complicated, and the ordinary waiting reader could
make nothing of it. There was a small table in the room, near the
window, which was always covered with loose papers; but these loose
papers were on this occasion again covered with