you should then be dissatisfied with it, you can but test its
soundness for yourself; if on the other hand, you should be
satisfied with it, and it should be what it now is, it may spare all
sides what is best spared. What do you say?”
“How long would you keep me in town?”
“Oh! It is only a question of a few hours. I could go down to
Soho in the evening, and come to your chambers afterwards.”
“Then I say yes,” said Stryver: “I won’t go up there now, I am
not so hot upon it as that comes to: I say yes, and I shall expect you
to look in tonight. Good morning.”
Then Mr. Stryver turned and burst out of the Bank, causing
such a concussion of air on his passage through, that to stand up
against it bowing behind the two counters, required the utmost
remaining strength of the two ancient clerks. Those venerable and
feeble persons were always seen by the public in the act of bowing,
and were popularly believed, when they had bowed a customer
out, still to keep on bowing in the empty office until they bowed
another customer in.
The barrister was keen enough to divine that the banker would
not have gone so far in his expression of opinion on any less solid
ground than moral certainty. Unprepared as he was for the large
pill he had to swallow, he got it down. “And now,” said Mr.
Stryver, shaking his forensic forefinger at the Temple in general,
when it was down, “my way out of this is to put you all in the
wrong.”
It was a bit of the art of an Old Bailey tactician, in which he
found great relief. “You shall not put me in the wrong, young
lady,” said Mr. Stryver; “I’ll do that for you.”