The Battle of Life | Page 7

in which she took so lively an interest, that she was continually
trying to turn them round and get impossible views of them. In general, a little cap placed
somewhere on her head; though it was rarely to be met with in the place usually occupied
in other subjects, by that article of dress; but, from head to foot she was scrupulously
clean, and maintained a kind of dislocated tidiness. Indeed, her laudable anxiety to be
tidy and compact in her own conscience as well as in the public eye, gave rise to one of
her most startling evolutions, which was to grasp herself sometimes by a sort of wooden
handle (part of her clothing, and familiarly called a busk), and wrestle as it were with her
garments, until they fell into a symmetrical arrangement.
Such, in outward form and garb, was Clemency Newcome; who was supposed to have
unconsciously originated a corruption of her own Christian name, from Clementina (but
nobody knew, for the deaf old mother, a very phenomenon of age, whom she had
supported almost from a child, was dead, and she had no other relation); who now busied
herself in preparing the table, and who stood, at intervals, with her bare red arms crossed,
rubbing her grazed elbows with opposite hands, and staring at it very composedly, until
she suddenly remembered something else she wanted, and jogged off to fetch it.
'Here are them two lawyers a-coming, Mister!' said Clemency, in a tone of no very great
good-will.

'Ah!' cried the Doctor, advancing to the gate to meet them. 'Good morning, good morning!
Grace, my dear! Marion! Here are Messrs. Snitchey and Craggs. Where's Alfred!'
'He'll be back directly, father, no doubt,' said Grace. 'He had so much to do this morning
in his preparations for departure, that he was up and out by daybreak. Good morning,
gentlemen.'
'Ladies!' said Mr. Snitchey, 'for Self and Craggs,' who bowed, 'good morning! Miss,' to
Marion, 'I kiss your hand.' Which he did. 'And I wish you' - which he might or might not,
for he didn't look, at first sight, like a gentleman troubled with many warm outpourings of
soul, in behalf of other people, 'a hundred happy returns of this auspicious day.'
'Ha ha ha!' laughed the Doctor thoughtfully, with his hands in his pockets. 'The great
farce in a hundred acts!'
'You wouldn't, I am sure,' said Mr. Snitchey, standing a small professional blue bag
against one leg of the table, 'cut the great farce short for this actress, at all events, Doctor
Jeddler.'
'No,' returned the Doctor. 'God forbid! May she live to laugh at it, as long as she CAN
laugh, and then say, with the French wit, "The farce is ended; draw the curtain."'
'The French wit,' said Mr. Snitchey, peeping sharply into his blue bag, 'was wrong,
Doctor Jeddler, and your philosophy is altogether wrong, depend upon it, as I have often
told you. Nothing serious in life! What do you call law?'
'A joke,' replied the Doctor.
'Did you ever go to law?' asked Mr. Snitchey, looking out of the blue bag.
'Never,' returned the Doctor.
'If you ever do,' said Mr. Snitchey, 'perhaps you'll alter that opinion.'
Craggs, who seemed to be represented by Snitchey, and to be conscious of little or no
separate existence or personal individuality, offered a remark of his own in this place. It
involved the only idea of which he did not stand seized and possessed in equal moieties
with Snitchey; but, he had some partners in it among the wise men of the world.
'It's made a great deal too easy,' said Mr. Craggs.
'Law is?' asked the Doctor.
'Yes,' said Mr. Craggs, 'everything is. Everything appears to me to be made too easy,
now-a-days. It's the vice of these times. If the world is a joke (I am not prepared to say it
isn't), it ought to be made a very difficult joke to crack. It ought to be as hard a struggle,
sir, as possible. That's the intention. But, it's being made far too easy. We are oiling the
gates of life. They ought to be rusty. We shall have them beginning to turn, soon, with a
smooth sound. Whereas they ought to grate upon their hinges, sir.'
Mr. Craggs seemed positively to grate upon his own hinges, as he delivered this opinion;
to which he communicated immense effect - being a cold, hard, dry, man, dressed in grey
and white, like a flint; with small twinkles in his eyes, as if something struck sparks out
of them. The three natural kingdoms, indeed, had each a fanciful representative among
this brotherhood of disputants; for Snitchey was like a magpie or raven (only not so
sleek), and the Doctor had a streaked face like