By Celia's Arbour - A Tale of Portsmouth Town (1888) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: panion. It was good of Mrs. Tyrrell to trust her to me; it was an education for me to have the charge. No brother and sister could have been drawn more closely together than we two. And I am quite sure that no man could love a girl more than I at all times loved Celia. CHAPTER VII. AUGUSTUS IN THE LEGAL. I HAD one short experience of the way in which other people work for money. It lasted three months, and happened when Mr. Tyrrell, out of pure kindness, proposed that I should enter his office. He said many handsome things about me, in making this offer, especially in reference to his daughter, and pledged himself to give me my articles if I took to the work. I accepted, on the condition that I kept my afternoons free for Celia, and began the study of the law. Well, suffice it to say, that after three months the Captain became my ambassador to convey my resignation. And the only good thing I got out of my legal experience was the friendship of the Bramblers. Augustus Brambler, the head of the family, was one of Mr. Tyrrell's clerks. Not the head clerk, who was a man of consideration, and had an office to himself, but one of half- a-dozen who sat in the room built for them at the side of the house, and drove the quill for very slender wage from nine in the morning to eight at night. Augustus was no longer young when I first met him, being then past forty years of age. And although the other clerks were little more than boys, Augustus sat among them with cheerful countenance and contented heart. He was short of stature, and his face was innocent of whisker and as smooth as any woman's; his features were sketchy, his eyes were large and bright, but his expression, in office hours, was maintained at a high pressure of uurelenting zeal. Nature intended him to be ston...