?« asks the moody client.
    Vholes, sitting with his arms on the desk, quietly bringing the tips of his
five right fingers to meet the tips of his five left fingers, and quietly
separating them again, and fixedly and slowly looking at his client, replies:
    »A good deal is doing, sir. We have put our shoulders to the wheel, Mr.
Carstone, and the wheel is going round.«
    »Yes, with Ixion on it. How am I to get through the next four or five
accursed months?« exclaims the young man, rising from his chair and walking
about the room.
    »Mr. C.,« returns Vholes, following him close with his eyes wherever he
goes, »your spirits are hasty, and I am sorry for it on your account. Excuse me
if I recommend you not to chafe so much, not to be so impetuous, not to wear
yourself out so. You should have more patience. You should sustain yourself
better.«
    »I ought to imitate you, in fact, Mr. Vholes?« says Richard, sitting down
again with an impatient laugh, and beating the Devil's Tattoo with his boot on
the patternless carpet.
    »Sir,« returns Vholes, always looking at the client, as if he were making a
lingering meal of him with his eyes as well as with his professional appetite.
»Sir,« returns Vholes, with his inward manner of speech and his bloodless
quietude; »I should not have had the presumption to propose myself as a model,
for your imitation or any man's. Let me but leave the good name to my three
daughters, and that is enough for me; I am not a self-seeker. But, since you
mention me so pointedly, I will acknowledge that I should like to impart to you
a little of my - come, sir, you are disposed to call it insensibility, and I am
sure I have no objection - say insensibility - a little of my insensibility.«
    »Mr. Vholes,« explains the client, somewhat abashed, »I had no intention to
accuse you of insensibility.«
    »I think you had, sir, without knowing it,« returns the equable Vholes.
»Very naturally. It is my duty to attend to your interests with a cool head, and
I can quite understand that to your excited feelings I may appear, at such times
as the present, insensible. My daughters may know me better; my aged father may
know me better. But they have known me much
