.

"You just come avay," said Mr. Weller. "Battledore and shuttlecock's
a wery good game, when you ain't the shuttlecock and two lawyers the
battledores, in which case it gets too excitin' to be pleasant. Come
avay, sir. If you want to ease your mind by blowing up somebody come
out into the court and blow up me; but it's rayther too expensive work
to be carried on here."

With that good advice Mr. Weller took Mr. Pickwick away from the lawyers'
office. But before we say anything about the trial itself let me
introduce to you another solicitor not so well known as either Perker or
Dodson and Fogg, but to my mind the most interesting as he certainly is
the most humorous.

Mr. Pell had the honour of being the legal adviser of Mr. Weller, Senior.
The latter gentleman always stoutly maintained that if Mr. Pickwick had
had the services of Mr. Pell, and had established an _alibi_, the great
case of Bardell against Pickwick would have been decided otherwise. Mr.
Pell practised in the Insolvency Court. He "was a fat, flabby, pale man,
in a surtout which looked green one moment, and brown the next, with a
velvet collar of the same chameleon tints. His forehead was narrow, his
face wide, his head large, and his nose all on one side, as if Nature,
indignant with the propensities she observed in him at his birth, had
given it an angry tweak which it had never recovered. Being short-necked
and asthmatic, however, he respired principally through this feature; so,
perhaps, what it wanted in ornament, it made up in usefulness."

Mr. Pell had successfully piloted Mr. Weller through the Insolvency
Court, and his services were sought to carry out the process by which Sam
Weller became a voluntary prisoner in the Fleet at the suit of his
obdurate parent.

"The late Lord Chancellor, gentlemen, was very fond of me," said Mr.
Pell.

"And wery creditable in him, too," interposed Mr. Weller.

"Hear, hear," assented Mr. Pell's client. "Why shouldn't he be?"

"Ah, why, indeed!" said a very red-faced man, who had said nothing
yet, and who looked extremely unlikely to say anything more. "Why
shouldn't he?"

A murmur of assent ran through the company.

"I remember, gentlemen," said Mr. Pell, "dining with him on one
occasion. There was only us two, but everything as splendid as if
twenty people had been expected--the great seal on a dumb-waiter at
his right, and a man in a ba