United States or Japan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"What was the precise date of the er sad event?" "Last Tuesday, the fourteenth." "To be sure," reflected Mr. Rigg, fixing his eyes sadly on an engraving of London Bridge in the seventeenth century a spot specially reserved for the sadder moments of probate and other testamentary work. "Very sad, very sad."
It would be well, certainly, if we could help to reduce their number, and something might perhaps be done by not lightly giving occasion to their existence. Socially speaking, Joshua Rigg would have been generally pronounced a superfluity. But those who like Peter Featherstone never had a copy of themselves demanded, are the very last to wait for such a request either in prose or verse.
But the advantage now was on the side of Rigg, and auditors of this conversation might probably have expected that Raffles would retire with the air of a defeated dog. Not at all. He made a grimace which was habitual with him whenever he was "out" in a game; then subsided into a laugh, and drew a brandy-flask from his pocket.
It is true that already I had Jacob Rigg, and perhaps the protector promised by my cousin; but the former was as ignorant as he was honest, and of the latter, as he made no sign, how could I tell any thing? Above all things, Mrs. Busk's position, as mistress of the letters, gave me very great advantage both for offense and defense.
The doctor almost forgets the pain he inflicts. The lawyer gradually loses his sense of right and wrong. Mr. Rigg was an honest man as honesty is understood in the law. He was keenly alive to all the motives of this woman, who, in the law of humanity, was a criminal. He had started from a lawyer's standpoint id est, personal advantage.
Rigg, and where there was property left, the buzzing presence of such large blue-bottles seemed natural enough. How he could be "kin" to Bulstrode as well was not so clear, but Mrs. Abel agreed with her husband that there was "no knowing," a proposition which had a great deal of mental food for her, so that she shook her head over it without further speculation.
"Of course," he observed, "he may have made one out there." "I do not think that it is likely," replied the lady, whose small thoughts always came into the world in charge of a very obvious father in the shape of a wish. "There are no facilities out there no lawyers." "There are quite a number of lawyers in India," said Mr. Rigg, with sudden gravity.
Rigg," I replied, as he stopped, looking hotter in mind than in body, "is it not Mrs. Rigg, your good wife, who sells all the nuts on a Saturday for the boys to crack on a Sunday?" "My missus do sell some, to be sure; yes, just a few. But not of a Saturday more than any other day." "Then surely, Mr. Rigg, you might stop it, by not permitting any sale of nuts except to good boys of high principles.
He might have known how this would vex and perplex me. I could not bear to hinder him in his work as important as any to be done by man for man and yet it was beyond my power to go home and leave him there, and wonder what it was that he had been so afraid to tell. So I quietly said, "Then I will wish you a very good evening again, Mr. Rigg, as you are too busy to be spoken with."
But it seemed doubtful whether he looked out for the sake of contemplation or of turning his back to a person who stood in the middle of the room, with his legs considerably apart and his hands in his trouser-pockets: a person in all respects a contrast to the sleek and cool Rigg.
Word Of The Day