MY AUNT'S GREAT POLICE CASE. 219 



telling her maid (she now lives in lodgings with Doddridge) 

 to get a cab, she drove down to see me. 



I am her resort in difficulties. She is under the impression 

 that, because I happen to have been called to the Bar, and 

 to have " read " in a Conveyancer's chambers, I must be 

 thoroughly acquainted with the Law, and, as a relation, will 

 give her good sound advice, thus obviating a consultation 

 with a solicitor, which she associates, indistinctly and gene- 

 rally, with the Police Courts, Old Bailey, and witness boxes. 



" I don't want to have anything to do with Law, my dear," 

 my Aunt says to me. " But I don't mind coming to you^^ 

 which, seeing that I am a barrister, is scarcely complimentary 

 to my legal knowledge. Perhaps she little knows,— in fact I 

 am sure she little knows what a very small amount of Law 

 I managed to bring away from the Temple Lecture rooms 

 and Lincoln's Inn Hall, in exchange for regular payments 

 for dinners (which, after the first few indispensable ones, I 

 never ate), attendance on Lecturers (where I made some 

 very pleasant acquaintances, and got through a deal of light 

 literature), a wig, a gown (sold afterwards, at a loss, to a 

 friend), some law books, enormous precedent books (which 

 subsequently became account-books, scrap-books, odds-and- 

 ends books), and a hundred pounds to a Conveyancing 

 Barrister for the privilege of having a place to sit in, when I 

 visited Lincoln's Inn, in the company of four pleasant young 

 gentlemen of more or less studious habits, but with very 

 clear ideas on the subject of luncheon at one o'clock daily. 



If that Conveyancer had ever called me into his room, and 

 in a fit of remorse had said, " You paid a hundred pounds to 



