a small foundation. It is like an overgrown mushroom, and the top will
fall off one day, however hard the lawyers try to prop it up. Perhaps
you can tell me----"

"No, I'm sure I cannot," he answered. "I'm not a Chancery man. I am
Common law, and _I_ don't take all knowledge for _my_ province. You
positively alarm me, Miss Granger. I wonder that the canoe does not sink
beneath so much learning."

"Do I?" she answered sweetly. "I am glad that I have lived to frighten
somebody. I meant that I like Equity to study; but if I were a
barrister, I would be Common law, because there is so much more life
and struggle about it. Existence is not worth having unless one is
struggling with something and trying to overcome it."

"Dear me, what a reposeful prospect," said Geoffrey, aghast. He had
certainly never met such a woman as this before.

"Repose is only good when it is earned," went on the fair philosopher,
"and in order to fit one to earn some more, otherwise it becomes
idleness, and that is misery. Fancy being idle when one has such a
little time to live. The only thing to do is to work and stifle thought.
I suppose that you have a large practice, Mr. Bingham?"

"You should not ask a barrister that question," he answered, laughing;
"it is like looking at the pictures which an artist has turned to the
wall. No, to be frank, I have not. I have only taken to practising in
earnest during the last two years. Before I was a barrister in name, and
that is all."