CHAPTER II
THE GENERAL PHILANTHROPIC REMOVAL COMPANY MAKES A BEGINNING
We had the excellent dinner our careful thought in choosing it deserved, and some bottles of excellent wine, which we drank to the success of our effort to further human progress. The next morning I found my mind dreamy and musing, hardly in condition for the hard thinking needful to proceed fittingly with so august an enterprise. But I made shift to go to Lincoln's Inn Fields about eleven, assured that a short contact with the practical Morton would brace my wandering mind to its normal power of concentration. A long intimacy with him had taught me how good he was for it. He was an old friend of mine; we had been at Oxford together; to him I owed most of my briefs; and they would have been many more had he not been only a junior partner in a firm which affected old counsel.
But even before I reached his wholesome presence I was stirred from my dreaminess. As I drew near his door, there passed me a young girl—a very pretty young girl indeed. In any case she
