all?" he asked.

"All?" retorted the cynical vagabond. "You're a pretty lawyer! What more
can I say, when I don't know for certain whether the witness who has
given me my information has misled me or not? Have I spoken to the girl
and formed my own opinion? No! Have I been introduced among the servants
(as errand-boy, or to clean the boots and shoes, or what not), and
have I formed my own judgement of _them?_ No! I take your opinions for
granted, and I tell you how I should set to work myself if they
were _my_ opinions too--and that's a guinea's-worth, a devilish good
guinea's-worth to a rich man like you!"

Old Sharon's logic produced a certain effect on Mr. Troy, in spite of
himself. It was smartly put from his point of view--there was no denying
that.

"Even if I consented to your proposal," he said, "I should object to
your annoying the young lady with impertinent questions, or to your
being introduced as a spy into a respectable house."

Old Sharon doubled his dirty fists and drummed with them on the rickety
table in a comical frenzy of impatience while Mr. Troy was speaking.

"What the devil do you know about my way of doing my business?" he burst
out when the lawyer had done. "One of us two is talking like a born
idiot--and (mind this) it isn't me. Look here! Your young lady goes out
for a walk, and she meets with a dirty, shabby old beggar--I look like
a shabby old beggar already, don't I? Very good. This dirty old wretch
whines and whimpers and tells a long story, and gets sixpence out of the
girl--and knows her by that time, inside and out, as well as if he had
made her--and, mark! hasn't asked her a single ques tion, and, instead
of annoying her, has made her happy in the performance of a charitable
action. Stop a bit! I haven't done with you yet. Who blacks your boots
and shoes? Look here!" He pushed his pug-dog off his lap, dived under
the table, appeared again with an old boot and a bottle of blackening,
and set to work with tigerish activity. "I'm going out for a walk, you
know, and I may as well make myself smart." With that announcement, he
began to sing over his work--a song of sentiment, popular in England in
the early part of the present century--"She's all my fancy painted her;
she's lovely, she's divine; but her heart it is another's; and it never
can be mine! Too-ral-loo-ral-loo'. I like a love-song. Brush away! brush
away! till I see my own pretty face in the blacking. Hey! Here's a nice,
ha