ould be managed and protected
without the intervention of lawyers. The outside world to them was a
world of pretty, laughing, ignorant children; and lawyers were the
parents, guardians, pastors, and masters by whom the children should
be protected from the evils incident to their childishness.

"Yes, sir; he's here," said the Turtle Dove's clerk. "He is talking
of going away, but he won't go. He's told me I can have a week, but I
don't know that I like to leave him. Mrs. Dove and the children are
down at Ramsgate, and he's here all night. He hadn't been out for so
long that when he wanted to go as far as the Temple yesterday, we
couldn't find his hat." Then the clerk opened the door, and ushered
Mr. Camperdown into the room. Mr. Dove was the younger man by five or
six years, and his hair was still black. Mr. Camperdown's was nearer
white than grey; but, nevertheless, Mr. Camperdown looked as though
he were the younger man. Mr. Dove was a long, thin man, with a
stoop in his shoulders, with deep-set, hollow eyes, and lanthorn
cheeks, and sallow complexion, with long, thin hands, who seemed to
acknowledge by every movement of his body and every tone of his voice
that old age was creeping on him,--whereas the attorney's step was
still elastic, and his speech brisk. Mr. Camperdown wore a blue
frock-coat, and a coloured cravat, and a light waistcoat. With Mr.
Dove every visible article of his raiment was black, except his
shirt, and he had that peculiar blackness which a man achieves when
he wears a dress-coat over a high black waistcoat in the morning.

"You didn't make much, I fear, of what I sent you about heirlooms,"
said Mr. Dove, divining the purport of Mr. Camperdown's visit.

"A great deal more than I wanted, I can assure you, Mr. Dove."

"There is a common error about heirlooms."

"Very common, indeed, I should say. God bless my soul! when one knows
how often the word occurs in family deeds, it does startle one to be
told that there isn't any such thing."

"I don't think I said quite so much as that. Indeed, I was careful to
point out that the law does acknowledge heirlooms."

"But not diamonds," said the attorney.

"I doubt whether I went quite so far as that."

"Only the Crown diamonds."

"I don't think I ever debarred all other diamonds. A diamond in a
star of honour might form a part of an heirloom; but I do not think
that a diamond itself could be an heirloom."

"If in a star of honour, why not in a