building the street door will be found to be wide open to the public, and, if you venture still closer, a name may be seen painted in black letters upon the side of the passage wall, after the manner of the brokers in the courts off Throgmorton Street, or of the lawyers in the Temple.  It is, in fact, the office of a country solicitor—­most emphatically one of Hodge’s many masters—­and is admirably suited for his purpose, on account of its roomy interior.

The first door within opens on the clerks’ room, and should you modestly knock on the panels instead of at once turning the handle, a voice will invite you to ‘Come in.’  Half of the room is partitioned off for the clerks, who sit at a long high desk, with a low railing or screen in front of them.  Before the senior is a brass rail, along which he can, if he chooses, draw a red curtain.  He is too hard at work and intent upon some manuscript to so much as raise his head as you enter.  But the two younger men, eager for a change, look over the screen, and very civilly offer to attend to your business.  When you have said that you wish to see the head of the firm, you naturally imagine that your name will be at once shouted up the tube, and that in a minute or two, at farthest, you will be ushered into the presence of the principal.  In that small country town there cannot surely be much work for a lawyer, and a visitor must be quite an event.  Instead, however, of using the tube they turn to the elder clerk, and a whispered conversation takes place, of which some broken sentences may be caught—­’He can’t be disturbed,’ ‘It’s no use,’ ‘Must wait.’  Then the elder clerk looks over his brass rail and says he is very sorry, but the principal is engaged, the directors of a company are with him, and it is quite impossible to say exactly when they will leave.  It may be ten minutes, or an hour.  But if you like to wait (pointing with his quill to a chair) your name shall be sent up directly the directors leave.

You glance at the deck, and elect to wait.  The older clerk nods his head, and instantly resumes his writing.  The chair is old and hard—­the stuffing compressed by a generation of weary suitors; there are two others at equal distances along the wall.  The only other furniture is a small but solid table, upon which stands a brass copying-press.  On the mantelpiece there are scales for letter-weighing, paper clips full of papers, a county Post-office directory, a railway time-table card nailed to the wall, and a box of paper-fasteners.  Over it is a map, dusty and dingy, of some estate laid out for building purposes, with a winding stream running through it, roads passing at right angles, and the points of the compass indicated in an upper corner.