“Serious!” cried the Doctor. “If you allowed such things to be serious, you must go mad, or die, or climb up to the top of a mountain, and turn hermit.”

“Besides – so long ago,” said Alfred.

“Long ago!” returned the Doctor. “Do you know what the world has been doing, ever since? Do you know what else it has been doing? I don’t!”

“It has gone to law a little,” observed Mr. Snitchey, stirring his tea.

“Although the way out has been always made too easy,” said his partner.

“And you’ll excuse my saying, Doctor,” pursued Mr. Snitchey, “having been already put a thousand times in possession of my opinion, in the course of our discussions, that, in its having gone to law, and in its legal system altogether, I do observe a serious side – now, really, a something tangible, and with a purpose and intention in it – ”

Clemency Newcome made an angular tumble against the table, occasioning a sounding clatter among the cups and saucers.

“Heyday! what’s the matter there?” exclaimed the Doctor.

“It’s this evil-inclined blue bag,” said Clemency, “always tripping up somebody!”

“With a purpose and intention in it, I was saying,” resumed Snitchey, “that commands respect. Life a farce, Doctor Jeddler? With law in it?”

The Doctor laughed, and looked at Alfred.

“Granted, if you please, that war is foolish,” said Snitchey. “There we agree. For example. Here’s a smiling country,” pointing it out with his fork, “once overrun by soldiers – trespassers every man of ’em – and laid waste by fire and sword. He, he, he! The idea of any man exposing himself, voluntarily, to fire and sword! Stupid, wasteful, positively ridiculous; you laugh at your fellow-creatures, you know, when you think of it! But take this smiling country as it stands. Think of the laws appertaining to real property; to the bequest and devise of real property; to the mortgage and redemption of real property; to leasehold, freehold, and copyhold estate; think,” said Mr. Snitchey, with such great emotion that he actually smacked his lips, “of the complicated laws relating to title and proof of title, with all the contradictory precedents and numerous acts of parliament connected with them; think of the infinite number of ingenious and interminable chancery suits, to which this pleasant prospect may give rise; – and acknowledge, Doctor Jeddler, that there is a green spot in the scheme about us! I believe,” said Mr. Snitchey, looking at his partner, “that I speak for Self and Craggs?”

Mr. Craggs having signified assent, Mr. Snitchey, somewhat freshened by his recent eloquence, observed that he would take a little more beef, and another cup of tea.

“I don’t stand up for life in general,” he added, rubbing his hands and chuckling, “it’s full of folly; full of something worse. Professions of trust, and confidence, and unselfishness, and all that. Bah, bah, bah! We see what they’re worth. But you mustn’t laugh at life; you’ve got a game to play; a very serious game indeed! Everybody’s playing against you, you know; and you’re playing against them. Oh! it’s a very interesting thing. There are deep moves upon the board. You must only laugh, Doctor Jeddler, when you win; and then not much. He, he, he! And then not much,” repeated Snitchey, rolling his head and winking his eye; as if he would have added, ‘you may do this instead!’

“Well, Alfred!” cried the Doctor, “what do you say now?”

“I say, Sir,” replied Alfred, “that the greatest favor you could do me, and yourself too I am inclined to think, would be to try sometimes to forget this battle-field, and others like it, in that broader battle-field of Life, on which the sun looks every day.”

“Really, I’m afraid that wouldn’t soften his opinions, Mr. Alfred,” said Snitchey. “The combatants are very eager and very bitter in that same battle of Life. There’s a great deal of cutting and slashing, and firing into people’s heads from behind; terrible treading down, and trampling on; it’s rather a bad business.”

“I believe, Mr. Snitchey,” said Alfred, “there are quiet victories and struggles, great sacrifices of self, and noble acts of heroism, in it – even in many of its apparent lightnesses and contradictions – not the less difficult to achieve, because they have no earthly chronicle or audience; done every day in nooks and corners, and in little households, and in men’s and women’s hearts – any one of which might reconcile the sternest man to such a world, and fill him with belief and hope in it, though two-fourths of its people were at war, and another fourth at law; and that’s a bold word.”

Both the sisters listened keenly.

“Well, well!” said the Doctor, “I am too old to be converted, even by my friend Snitchey here, or my good spinster sister, Martha Jeddler; who had what she calls her domestic trials ages ago, and has led a sympathising life with all sorts of people ever since; and who is so much of your opinion (only she’s less reasonable and more obstinate, being a woman), that we can’t agree, and seldom meet. I was born upon this battle-field. I began, as a boy, to have my thoughts directed to the real history of a battle-field. Sixty years have gone over my head; and I have never seen the Christian world, including Heaven knows how many loving mothers and good enough girls, like mine here, anything but mad for a battle-field. The same contradictions prevail in everything. One must either laugh or cry at such stupendous inconsistencies; and I prefer to laugh.”

Britain, who had been paying the profoundest and most melancholy attention to each speaker in his turn, seemed suddenly to decide in favor of the same preference, if a deep sepulchral sound that escaped him might be construed into a demonstration of risibility. His face, however, was so perfectly unaffected by it, both before and afterwards, that although one or two of the breakfast party looked round as being startled by a mysterious noise, nobody connected the offender with it.

Except his partner in attendance, Clemency Newcome; who, rousing him with one of those favorite joints, her elbows, inquired, in a reproachful whisper, what he laughed at.

“Not you!” said Britain.

“Who then?”

“Humanity,” said Britain. “That’s the joke.”

“What between master and them lawyers, he’s getting more and more addle-headed every day!” cried Clemency, giving him a lunge with the other elbow, as a mental stimulant. “Do you know where you are? Do you want to get warning?”

“I don’t know anything,” said Britain, with a leaden eye and an immovable visage. “I don’t care for anything. I don’t make out anything. I don’t believe anything. And I don’t want anything.”

Although this forlorn summary of his general condition, may have been overcharged in an access of despondency, Benjamin Britain – sometimes called Little Britain, to distinguish him from Great; as we might say Young England, to express Old England with a difference – had defined his real state more accurately than might be supposed. For serving as a sort of man Miles, to the Doctor’s Friar Bacon; and listening day after day to innumerable orations addressed by the Doctor to various people, all tending to shew that his very existence was at best a mistake and an absurdity; this unfortunate servitor had fallen, by degrees, into such an abyss of confused and contradictory suggestions from within and without, that Truth at the bottom of her well, was on the level surface as compared with Britain in the depths of his mystification. The only point he clearly comprehended, was, that the new element usually brought into these discussions by Snitchey and Craggs, never served to make them clearer, and always seemed to give the Doctor a species of advantage and confirmation. Therefore he looked upon the Firm as one of the proximate causes of his state of mind, and held them in abhorrence accordingly.

“But this is not our business, Alfred,” said the Doctor. “Ceasing to be my ward (as you have said) to-day; and leaving us full to the brim of such learning as the Grammar School down here was able to give you, and your studies in London could add to that, and such practical knowledge as a dull old country Doctor like myself could graft upon both; you are away, now, into the world. The first term of probation appointed by your poor father, being over, away you go now, your own master, to fulfil his second desire: and long before your three years’ tour among the foreign schools of medicine is finished, you’ll have forgotten us. Lord, you’ll forget us easily in six months!”

“If I do – But you know better; why should I speak to you!” said Alfred, laughing.

“I don’t know anything of the sort,” returned the Doctor. “What do you say, Marion?”

Marion, trifling with her teacup, seemed to say – but she didn’t say it – that he was welcome to forget them, if he could. Grace pressed the blooming face against her cheek, and smiled.

“I haven’t been, I hope, a very unjust steward in the execution of my trust,” pursued the Doctor; “but I am to be, at any rate, formally discharged, and released, and what not, this morning; and here are our good friends Snitchey and Craggs, with a bagful of papers, and accounts, and documents, for the transfer of the balance of the trust fund to you (I wish it was a more difficult one to dispose of, Alfred, but you must get to be a great man and make it so), and other drolleries of that sort, which are to be signed, sealed, and delivered.”

“And duly witnessed, as by law required,” said Snitchey, pushing away his plate, and taking out the papers, which his partner proceeded to spread upon the table; “and Self and Craggs having been co-trustees with you, Doctor, in so far as the fund was concerned, we shall want your two servants to attest the signatures – can you read, Mrs. Newcome?”

“I a’n’t married, Mister,” said Clemency.

“Oh, I beg your pardon. I should think not,” chuckled Snitchey, casting his eyes over her extraordinary figure. “You can read?”

“A little,” answered Clemency.

“The marriage service, night and morning, eh?” observed the lawyer, jocosely.

“No,” said Clemency. “Too hard. I only reads a thimble.”

“Read a thimble!” echoed Snitchey. “What are you talking about, young woman?”

Clemency nodded. “And a nutmeg-grater.”

“Why, this is a lunatic! a subject for the Lord High Chancellor!” said Snitchey, staring at her.

“If possessed of any property,” stipulated Craggs.

Grace, however, interposing, explained that each of the articles in question bore an engraved motto, and so formed the pocket library of Clemency Newcome, who was not much given to the study of books.

“Oh, that’s it, is it, Miss Grace!” said Snitchey. “Yes, yes. Ha, ha, ha! I thought our friend was an idiot. She looks uncommonly like it,” he muttered, with a supercilious glance. “And what does the thimble say, Mrs. Newcome?”

“I a’n’t married, Mister,” observed Clemency.

“Well, Newcome. Will that do?” said the lawyer. “What does the thimble say, Newcome?”

How Clemency, before replying to this question, held one pocket open, and looked down into its yawning depths for the thimble which wasn’t there, – and how she then held an opposite pocket open, and seeming to descry it, like a pearl of great price, at the bottom, cleared away such intervening obstacles as a handkerchief, an end of wax candle, a flushed apple, an orange, a lucky penny, a cramp bone, a padlock, a pair of scissors in a sheath, more expressively describable as promising young shears, a handful or so of loose beads, several balls of cotton, a needle-case, a cabinet collection of curl-papers, and a biscuit, all of which articles she entrusted individually and severally to Britain to hold, – is of no consequence. Nor how, in her determination to grasp this pocket by the throat and keep it prisoner (for it had a tendency to swing and twist itself round the nearest corner), she assumed, and calmly maintained, an attitude apparently inconsistent with the human anatomy and the laws of gravity. It is enough that at last she triumphantly produced the thimble on her finger, and rattled the nutmeg-grater; the literature of both those trinkets being obviously in course of wearing out and wasting away, through excessive friction.

“That’s the thimble, is it, young woman?” said Mr. Snitchey, diverting himself at her expense. “And what does the thimble say?”

“It says,” replied Clemency, reading slowly round it as if it were a tower, “For-get and for-give.”

Snitchey and Craggs laughed heartily. “So new!” said Snitchey. “So easy!” said Craggs. “Such a knowledge of human nature in it,” said Snitchey. “So applicable to the affairs of life,” said Craggs.

“And the nutmeg-grater?” inquired the head of the Firm.

“The grater says,” returned Clemency, “Do as you – wold – be – done by.”

“‘Do, or you’ll be done brown,’ you mean,” said Mr. Snitchey.

“I don’t understand,” retorted Clemency, shaking her head vaguely. “I a’n’t no lawyer.”