“It is remarkable that a story of this nature should be in such general circulation,” said John, “and no one be able to tell who brought it to Biberry. Parts of it seem extravagant. Do they not strike you so, sir?” “There is nothing too extravagant for some women to do,” answered Millington, thoughtfully. “Now, on such a person as Sarah, or even on Anna Updyke, some calculations might be made—certain calculations, I might say; but, there are women, Jack, on whom one can no more depend, than on the constancy of the winds.” “I admire your—‘even on Anna Updyke!’” “Do you not agree with me?” returned the unobservant Millington. “I have always considered Sarah’s friend as a particularly reliable and safe sort of person.” “Even on Anna Updyke!—and a particularly reliable and safe sort of person!—You have thought this, Mike, because she is Sarah’s bosom friend!” “That _may_ have prejudiced me in her favour, I will allow; for I like most things that Sarah likes.” John looked at his friend and future brother-in-law with an amused surprise; the idea of liking Anna Updyke on any account but her own, striking him as particularly absurd. But they were soon at Timms’s door, and the conversation dropped as a matter of course. No one who has ever travelled much in the interior of America, can easily mistake the character of one of the small edifices, with the gable to the street, ornamented with what are erroneously termed Venitian blinds, painted white, and with an air of tobacco-smoke and the shabby-genteel about it, notwithstanding its architectural pretensions. This is a lawyer’s office, thus brought edgeways to the street, as if its owner felt the necessity of approaching the thoroughfare of the world a little less directly than the rest of mankind. It often happens that these buildings, small as they usually are, contain two, or even three rooms; and that the occupants, if single men, sleep in them as well as transact their business. Such was the case with Timms, his “office,” as the structure was termed, containing his bed-room, in addition to an inner and an outer apartment devoted to the purposes of the law. Dunscomb was in the sanctum, while a single clerk and three or four clients, countrymen of decent exterior and very expecting countenances, occupied the outer room. John and Millington went into the presence with little or no hesitation.