“So it is; but as true as ever. And I weary for it, I weary for it!” cried the girl. “However, sit you there, and me here; and we’ll think it is our own house--that you will have come in, and you will have had your dinner, and you will be telling me every thing that has passed in the day.” “What, all the pleas before the Fifteen, and old Watty’s speeches, and the jokes of Johnny Law, and the wiles of----” “Every one of them! When you are in a profession, you should know every thing about it. If you were a--tailor, say, who would make your fine buttonholes, and the braiding of the grand waistcoats, but your wife? Or a--school-master it would be me to look after the exercises; and wherefore not an advocate’s wife to know all about the Parliament House, and how to conduct a case if there should be occasion?” “So that you might go down to the court instead of me, and plead for me if I had a headache,” said Ronald, laughing. “It would be grand for my clients, Lily, for I’ll answer for it, with Symington on the bench, and Hoodiecraw and the two Elders, you would gain every plea.” “That’s while I am young and----” said Lily, with a little toss of her head. She was saucy and gay and full of malice, as he had never seen her, for this was not much Lily’s way. “I did not say I would plead; but I would have to know. Every thing you would have to tell me, as well as the jokes of the old lords.” “Well,” said Ronald, “I might do that, and you would take no harm, for you would not understand them, my Lily. But they all like a bonnie lass, and you would win every plea. I’ll tell you all the stories, Lily, and there are plenty of them. The plainstanes of the Parliament House know more human trouble and vice than any other place in Edinburgh. I’ll tell you----” “Oh, not the wicked things!” cried Lily, clasping her hands, “for how could we help those that suffer by them? or what could that have to do with you and me?” “If you leave out the wicked things, there would be little to do,” said Ronald, “for the courts of law.” “But we will leave them out!” cried Lily. “All our cases shall be about mistakes, or something that comes from not understanding; so that as soon as you put it to them very clear they will see the right and own it and go back to the just way. For there is nobody that would not rather be in the right than in the wrong if they knew, and that is my principle; things are so twisted in and out it’s hard to understand; and bad advice and thinking too much of himself make a man do a sudden thing without thinking, till he finds that it is wrong. And then when he sees, he is sorry and puts it back.” “If it were so easy as all that, Lily, it would be new heavens and a new earth.”