Chapter 3 - Page 2

some of his finest turns of words were in it, and the
preparation, execution, and attestation, in an hour and ten minutes
of the office clock, had never been equalled in Yorkshire before, and
perhaps never honestly in London--taking all these things into conscious
or unconscious balance, Mr. Jellicorse grew into the clear conviction
that "righteous and wise" were the words to be used whenever this will
was spoken of.

With pleasant remembrance of the starveling fees wherewith he used to
charge the public, ere ever his golden spurs were won, the prosperous
lawyer now began to run his eye through a duplicate of an abstract
furnished upon some little sale about forty years before. This would
form the basis of the abstract now to be furnished to Sir Walter
Carnaby, with little to be added but the will of Philip Yordas, and
statement of facts to be verified. Mr. Jellicorse was fat, but very
active still; he liked good living, but he liked to earn it, and could
not sit down to his dinner without feeling that he had helped the Lord
to provide these mercies. He carried a pencil on his chain, and liked to
use it ere ever he began with knife and fork. For the young men in the
office, as he always said, knew nothing.

The day was very bright and clear, and the sun shone through soft
lilac leaves on more important folios, while Mr. Jellicorse, with happy
sniffs--for his dinner was roasting in the distance--drew a single line
here, or a double line there, or a gable on the margin of the paper, to
show his head clerk what to cite, and in what letters, and what to omit,
in the abstract to be rendered. For the good solicitor had spent some
time in the chambers of a famous conveyancer in London, and prided
himself upon deducing title, directly, exhaustively, and yet tersely, in
one word, scientifically, and not as the mere quill-driver. The title
to the hereditaments, now to be given in exchange, went back for many
generations; but as the deeds were not to pass, Mr. Jellicorse, like an
honest man, drew a line across, and made a star at one quite old enough
to begin with, in which the little moorland farm in treaty now was
specified. With hum and ha of satisfaction he came down the records,
as far as the settlement made upon the marriage of Richard Yordas, of
Scargate Hall, Esquire, and Eleanor, the daughter of Sir Fursan de Roos.
This document created no entail, for strict settlements had never been
the manner of the race; but the property assured in trust, to satisfy
the jointure, was then declared subject to joint and surviving powers of
appointment limited to the issue of the marriage, with remainder to the
uses of the will of the aforesaid Richard Yordas, or, failing such will,
to his right heirs