"You really must excuse me, Miss Tinker, I've said, even now, more than I'd any right to say." "But don't you see, I want to help Mr. Pinder to win. That's what I came for. Didn't I tell you? Dear me, I wish I'd gone to Lizzie first. _She_ isn't slow, at any rate." Mr. Sykes smiled. "No, my wife is not slow-witted, and I'm afraid I am. Perhaps that's why she took pity on me." "Shouldn't wonder. Now the question is, how can we help Mr. Pinder, I mean Lucy, of course." Mr. Sykes felt his brain beginning to give way in the vain striving after his visitor's drift. "Lucy," he murmured hopelessly. "Yes, Lucy. She's my dearest friend. And she's to marry Tom,--Mr. Pinder I mean. That is to say she would if he would; but she says he wont, and perhaps she's right. Anyway, she wanted him to win this case, and I want him to win this case, and what's more, I mean him to win this case,--for Lucy's sake, of course, because she says it's all spite, and neither law nor justice, and you say so too, don't you?" "Yes, I do." "Now Lucy says it's all a matter o' money, I don't mean matrimony; for goodness sake _don't_ repeat that stupid jest. But I've had a long talk with Lucy, and she says it will cost Tom and Ben, that's Lucy's father, you know, heaps and heaps of money to fight the case to the end, and that's just what they haven't got. You're the blood-sucker, I suppose?" "Yes, Miss Tinker, I'm afraid I'm one of them--for Lizzie's sake, of course." Dorothy looked sharply at Mr. Sykes, and there was a slight flush of colour on her cheek as she repeated "Oh, yes, for Lizzie's sake, of course." Was it possible that this very sedate young man could guess beyond his brief? "Now _I've_ got some money; at least I suppose so; though I've never seen it. But I've always understood my poor father that I don't remember, made a will, and I was the only child. Now you must get to know all about that, and Mr. Pinder and Ben are not to go to the wall for want of money. Do you understand that?" "But am I really to understand, Miss Tinker, that you propose to spend your money in helping my clients in fighting your own uncle?" "I don't care if he's twenty times my uncle, though once time once is enough, thank you. But if he's mean enough to try to ruin Ben Garside--" "And Mr. Pinder?" put in the lawyer, quite casually. "And I thought this lawyer stupid," thought Dorothy, but ignored the interruption. "Then I'm mean enough to fight him with his own weapons, uncle or no uncle." "It sounds parlously like champerty and maintenance," said Mr. Sykes, more to himself than to Dorothy. "There's no sham about it, sir. I mean every word of it. I'll let my uncle see he can't treat me as he does poor aunt, like dirt under his feet." "God grant I'm spared the aunt," groaned Edwin Sykes inwardly "what with her Lucy and her own quite bewildering self there are quite women enough in the case, without introducing an aunt."