the shop the little old lady presented him to us.

"My landlord, Krook," she said. "He is called among the neighbours the
Lord Chancellor. His shop is called the Court of Chancery."

She lived at the top of the house in a room from which she had a glimpse
of the roof of Lincoln's Inn Hall, and this seemed to be her principal
inducement for living there.

_II.--Bleak House_

We drove down to Bleak House, in Hertfordshire, next day, and all three
of us were anxious and nervous when the night closed in, and the driver,
pointing to a light sparkling on the top of a hill, cried, "That's Bleak
House!"

"Ada, my love, Esther, my dear, you are welcome. Rick, if I had a hand
to spare at present I would give it you!"

The gentleman who said these words in a clear, hospitable voice, kissed
us both in a fatherly way, and bore us across the hall into a ruddy
little room, all in a glow with a blazing fire.

"Now, Rick!" said he, "I have a hand at liberty. A word in earnest is as
good as a speech. I am heartily glad to see you. You are at home. Warm
yourself!"

While he spoke I glanced at his face. It was a handsome face, full of
change and motion; and his hair was a silvered iron grey. I took him to
be nearer sixty than fifty, but he was upright, hearty, and robust.

So this was our coming to Bleak House.

The very next morning I was installed as housekeeper and presented with
two bunches of keys--a large bunch for the housekeeping and a little
bunch for the cellars. I could not help trembling when I met Mr.
Jarndyce, for I knew it was he who had done everything for me since my
godmother's death.

"Nonsense!" he said. "I hear of a good little orphan girl without a
protector, and I take it into my head to be that protector. She grows
up, and more than justifies my good opinion, and I remain her guardian
and her friend. What is there in all this?"

He soon began to talk to me confidentially as if I had been in the habit
of conversing with him every morning for I don't know how long.

"Of course, Esther," he said, "you don't understand this Chancery
business?"

I shook my head.

"I don't know who does," he returned. "The lawyers have twisted it into
such a state of bedevilment that the original merits of the case have
long disappeared. Its about a will, and the trusts under a will--or it
was once. It's about nothing but costs now. It was about a will when it
was about anything. A certain Jarndyce, in an evil hour