James Morton's taste did not
redeem the chambers in which he sat. From roof to floor the particular
apartment in which he sat was lined with bookshelves filled with
unprepossessing volumes and large black tin boxes. A large table stood
in the middle of the room, littered with papers, with bulwarks of the
same kind of tin boxes rising at either end.
Mr. Morton himself was a square-built man of some forty years,
clean-shaven, and rather pale and stout, with strongly marked
features, a good loud voice, and the pleasant, brusque manners that
befit a University and public school man who has taken seriously to
business.
Laurie and he got on excellently together. The younger man had an
admiration for the older, whose reputation as a rather distinguished
barrister certainly deserved it, and was sufficiently in awe of him to
pay attention to his directions in all matters connected with law. But
they did not meet much on other planes. Laurie had asked the other
down to Stantons once, and had dined with him three or four times in
return. And there their acquaintance found its limitations.
This morning, however, the boy's interested air, with its hints of
suppressed excitement and his marked inattention to the books and
papers which were his business, at last caused the older man to make a
remark.
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