nsion.

Mr. Phunky bowed. He _had_ had the pleasure of seeing the Serjeant,
and of envying him too, with all a poor man's envy, for eight years
and a quarter.

"You are with me in this case, I understand?" said the Serjeant.

If Mr. Phunky had been a rich man he would have instantly sent for his
clerk to remind him; if he had been a wise one he would have applied
his forefinger to his forehead, and endeavoured to recollect whether,
in the multiplicity of his engagements, he had undertaken this one or
not; but as he was neither rich nor wise (in this sense, at all
events) he turned red and bowed.

"Have you read the papers, Mr. Phunky?" inquired the Serjeant.

Here again Mr. Phunky should have professed to have forgotten all
about the merits of the case; but as he had read such papers as had
been laid before him in the course of the action, and had thought of
nothing else, waking or sleeping, throughout the two months during
which he had been retained as Mr. Serjeant Snubbin's junior, he turned
a deeper red and bowed again.

"This is Mr. Pickwick," said the Serjeant, waving his pen in the
direction in which that gentleman was standing.

Mr. Phunky bowed to Mr. Pickwick with a reverence which a first client
must ever awaken, and again inclined his head towards his leader.

"Perhaps you will take Mr. Pickwick away," said the Serjeant,
"and--and--and--hear anything Mr. Pickwick may wish to communicate. We
shall have a consultation, of course." With this hint that he had
been interrupted quite long enough, Mr. Serjeant Snubbin, who had been
gradually growing more and more abstracted, applied his glass to his
eye for an instant, bowed slightly round, and was once more deeply
immersed in the case before him, which arose out of an interminable
law-suit originating in the act of an individual, deceased a century
or so ago, who had stopped up a pathway leading from some place which
nobody ever came from to some other place which nobody ever went to.

Mr. Phunky would not hear of passing through any door until Mr.
Pickwick and his solicitor had passed through before him, so it was
some time before they got into the Square; and when they did reach it
they walked up and down, and held a long conference, the result of
which was that it was a very difficult matter to say how the verdict
would go; that nobody could