pt as a
creature that must be foreign to me. I cannot make such a one my
friend as I would a man, because I should be in love with her at
once. And I do not dare to be in love because I would not see a
wife and children starve. I regard my position as one of enforced
monasticism, and myself as a monk under the cruellest compulsion. I
often wish that I had been brought up as a journeyman hatter."

"Why a hatter?"

"I'm told it's an active sort of life. You're fast asleep, and I
was just now, when you were preaching. We'd better go to bed. Nine
o'clock for breakfast, I suppose?"

CHAPTER XXV

Mr. Dove's Opinion

Mr. Thomas Dove, familiarly known among club-men, attorneys' clerks,
and, perhaps, even among judges when very far from their seats of
judgment, as Turtle Dove, was a counsel learned in the law. He was a
counsel so learned in the law, that there was no question within the
limits of an attorney's capability of putting to him, that he could
not answer with the aid of his books. And when he had once given
an opinion, all Westminster could not move him from it,--nor could
Chancery Lane and Lincoln's Inn and the Temple added to Westminster.
When Mr. Dove had once been positive, no man on earth was more
positive. It behoved him, therefore, to be right when he was
positive; and though whether wrong or right he was equally stubborn,
it must be acknowledged that he was seldom proved to be wrong.
Consequently the attorneys believed in him, and he prospered. He was
a thin man, over fifty years of age, very full of scorn and wrath,
impatient of a fool, and thinking most men to be fools; afraid of
nothing on earth,--and, so his enemies said, of nothing elsewhere;
eaten up by conceit; fond of law, but fonder, perhaps, of dominion;
soft as milk to those who acknowledged his power, but a tyrant
to all who contested it; conscientious, thoughtful, sarcastic,
bright-witted, and laborious. He was a man who never spared himself.
If he had a case in hand, though the interest to himself in it was
almost nothing, he would rob himself of rest for a week should a
point arise which required such labour. It was the theory of Mr.
Dove's life that he would never be beaten. Perhaps it was some fear
in this respect that had kept him from Parliament and confined him to
the courts and the company of attorneys. He was, in truth, a married
man with a family; but they who knew him as the terror of opponents
and as the divulger of lega