I fancied I had discovered, after much consideration, why he was called Q.C. He was a little man, quite bald and round all over his head and face except for a tuft of hair on his chin, and there was the Q; and he wore a pouter-pigeon ruff under his chin like this, Q/C, and there was the Q.C. I may have been wrong; but anyhow I had precedent to justify me, for many of these jolly souls bore such characteristic nicknames. There was Plain John, for instance, who had so christened himself for ever during a dispute about the uses or abuses of multiple titles. “Plain John” had been enough for him, he had said. Again, there was Blind Fogle, so called from his favourite cross-examination phrase. “I don’t quite see.” They were all boys together when off duty, chaffing and horse-playing, and my father was the merriest and most irrepressible of the crew. There was one treat, however, of which he was persistent in baulking me. Pray him as I might, he would never let me see or hear him in his character of Counsel. The Court where he would be working by day was forbidden ground to me, and for that very reason I longed, like Bluebeard’s wife, to peep into it. This was not right, even in thought, for I knew his wishes. But worse is to be confessed. I once took an opportunity, which ought never to have been given me, to disobey him; and dreadful were the consequences, as you shall hear. We were travelling on what is called the Home Circuit, and one day we came to Ipswich, a town to mark itself red in the annals of my young life. On the second morning after our arrival I was playing at horses with George, my father’s man, when Mr. Quayle looked in at our hotel, and, dismissing George, took and sat me upon his knee. “Dad gone to Court?” said he. “Yes,” I answered; “just.” He grunted, and rubbed his bald head, with a look half comical, half aggravated. His eyes were rather blinky and red, and he seemed confused in manner and at a loss for words. “Dicky,” he said, suddenly, “did you live very well, very rich-like, when mamma was alive?” “Yes,” I answered; “’cept when mamma said we must retrench, and cried; and by’m-by papa laughed, and threw the rice pudding into the fire, and took us to dine at a palace.” “And that was--very long before--hey?” “It was a very little while before mamma went away for good,” I murmured, and hung my head, inclined to whimper. Mr. Quayle twitched at me compunctious. “O, come!” he said, “we must all bear our losses like men. They teach us the best in the world to stand square on our own toeses. There! Shall I tell you a story--hey?” I brightened at once. He knew some good ones. “Yes, please,” I said. “O, lud!” he exclaimed, rubbing his nose with his eye-glasses. “I am committed! Judex damnatur. Dicky, I sat up late last night, devouring briefs, and they’ve given me an indigestion. Never sit up late, Dicky, _or you’ll have to pay for it_!” He said the last words with an odd emphasis, giving me a little shake.