“That’s quite true. If Mr. Tredgold had kept up his business as I have done; but you see I can provide for my boys without touching my capital. They are both in the business, and smart fellows, too, I can tell you. It does not suffer in their hands.” “We haven’t got girls going into business--yet,” said the solicitor; “there is no saying, though, what we may see in that way in a year or two; they are going it now, the women are.” “No girls of mine certainly shall ever do so. A woman’s sphere is ’ome. Let ’em marry and look after their families, that is what I always say to mine.” “They are best off who have none,” said the solicitor briefly. He was an old bachelor, and much looked down upon by his city clients, who thought little of a man who had never achieved a wife and belongings of his own. “Well, that depends,” Mr. Turny said. “I think we may as well go to bed,” said the other. “It’s not much of a journey, but the coming is always a bother, and we’ll have a heavy day to-morrow. I like to keep regular hours.” “Nothing like ’em,” said Mr. Turny, rising too; “no man ever succeeds in business that doesn’t keep regular hours. I suppose you’ll have to find out to-morrow if there’s been any other solicitor employed.” “Yes, I’ll see after that--funeral’s at two, I think?” “At two,” said the other. They lit their candles with some solemnity, coming out one after the other into the lighted hall. The hall was lighted, but the large staircase and corridors above were dark. They separated at the head of the stairs and went one to the right and the other to the left, Mr. Turny’s bald head shining like a polished globe in the semi-darkness, and the solicitor, with his thin head and projecting spectacles, looking like some strange bird making its way through the night. Mr. Sturgeon passed the door within which his dead client was lying, and hesitated a moment as he did so. “If we only knew what was in that damned head of yours before the face was covered over,” he said to himself. He was not in an easy condition of mind. It was nothing to him; not a penny the poorer would he be for anything that might happen to the Tredgold girls. Bob Tredgold would be turned off into the workhouse, which was his proper place, and there would be an end of him. But it was an ugly trick for that old beast to play, to get some trumpery, country fellow, who no doubt would appear to-morrow, like the cock-o’-the-walk, with his new will and all the importance of the family solicitor. Family, indeed. They hadn’t a drop of blood in their veins that was better than mud, though that eldest one was a nice girl. It was something in her favour, too, that she would not have Fred Turny, that City Swell. But the great point of offence with Mr. Sturgeon was that the old beast should have called in some local man.