elbow on each knee, “but I believe you're a Chancery suitor, if I have heard correct?”
“I am sorry to say I am.”
“I have had one your compatriots in my time, sir.”
“A Chancery suitor?” returned my guardian. “How was that?”
“Why, the man was so badgered and worried, and tortured, by being knocked about from post to pillar, and from pillar to post,” said Mr. George, “that he got out of sorts. I don't believe he had any idea of taking aim at anybody; but he was in that condition of resentment and violence, that he would come and pay for fifty shots, and fire away till he was red hot. One day I said to him, when there was nobody by, and he had been talking to me angrily about his wrongs, ‘If this practice is a safety-valve, comrade, well and good; but I don't altogether like your being so bent upon it, in your present state of mind; I'd rather you took to something else.’ I was on my guard for a blow, he was that passionate; but he received it in very good part, and left off directly. We shook hands, and struck up a sort of a friendship.”
“What was that man?” asked my guardian, in a new tone of interest.
“Why, he began by being a small Shropshire farmer, before they made a baited bull of him,” said Mr. George.
“Was his name Gridley?”
“It was, sir.”
Mr. George directed another succession of quick bright glances at me, as my guardian and I exchanged a word or two of surprise at the coincidence; and I therefore explained to him how we knew the name. He made me another of his soldierly bows, in acknowledgment of what he called my condescension.
“I don't know,” he said, as he looked at me, “what it is that sets me off again—but—bosh, what's my head running against!” He passed one of his heavy hands over his crisp dark hair, as if to sweep the broken thoughts out of his mind; and sat a little forward, with one arm akimbo and the other resting on his leg, looking in a brown study at the ground.
“I am sorry to learn that the same state of mind has got this Gridley into new troubles, and that he is in hiding,” said my guardian.
“So I am told, sir,” returned Mr. George, still musing and looking on the ground. “So I am told.”
“You don't know where?”
“No, sir,” returned the trooper, lifting up his eyes and coming out of his reverie. “I can't say anything about him. He will be worn out soon, I expect. You may file a strong man's heart away for a good many years, but it will tell all of a sudden at last.”
Richard's entrance stopped the conversation. Mr. George rose, made me another of his soldierly bows, wished my guardian a good day, and strode heavily out of the room.
This was the morning of the day appointed for Richard's departure. We had no more purchases to make now; I had completed all his packing early in the afternoon; and our time was disengaged until night, when he was to go to Liverpool for Holyhead. Jarndyce and Jarndyce being again expected to come on that day, Richard proposed to me that we should go down to the Court and hear what passed. As it was his last day, and he was eager to go, and I had never been there, I gave my
