Little Polly had to stay behind. Mahony would have liked to give her the
trip and show her the sights of the capital; but the law-courts were no
place for a woman; neither could he leave her sitting alone in a hotel.
And a tentative letter to her brother John had not called forth an
invitation: Mrs. Emma was in delicate health at present, and had no mind
for visitors. So he committed Polly to the care of Hempel and Long Jim,
both of whom were her faithful henchmen. She herself, in proper wifely
fashion, proposed to give her little house a good red-up in its master's
absence.
Mahony and Johnny dismounted from the coach in the early afternoon,
sore, stiff and hungry: they had broken their fast merely on half-a-dozen
sandwiches, keeping their seats the while that the young toper
might be spared the sight of intoxicating liquors. Now, stopping only to
brush off the top layer of dust and snatch a bite of solid food, Mahony
hastened away, his witness at heel, to Chancery Lane.
It was a relief to find that Ocock was not greatly put out at Purdy
having failed them. "Leave it to us, sir. We'll make that all right." As
on the previous visit he dry-washed his hands while he spoke, and his
little eyes shot flashes from one to the other, like electric sparks. He
proposed just to run through the morrow's evidence with "our young
friend there"; and in the course of this rehearsal said more than once:
"Good . . . good! Why, sonny, you're quite smart.
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