The Safety Pin

Shelmore, then three-and-twenty years old, had been in practice as a

solicitor for precisely six months, and, probably because he had set up

in his own native city of Southernstowe, the end of that period found him

with exactly twelve clients on his roll. His line was the eminently safe

one of conveyancing and the clients were profitable ones; he knew enough

of his profession to know that his first half-year's experience was

satisfactory and promising. Another fledgling, lower down the street, a

former fellow-articled-clerk, admitted at the same time as himself, who

had gone in for police-court practice, was doubtless having livelier

times, but not making so much substantial gain; his office, perhaps, was

more crowded, but Shelmore preferred the dignified quiet of his own,

wherein he and his clients talked of nothing less important than the

transference or acquisition of real estate.

In a youthful fashion he was somewhat proud of that office. At the street

door there was a beautiful, highly-polished brass plate, engraved in the

very best of taste: Francis D. Shelmore, Solicitor; at the head of the

stair leading up from it there was a smaller one, similarly inscribed, on

an oak door; within that door, in the dark room liberally provided with

all the proper show of papers, parchments, and japanned tin boxes, sat

Shelmore's one clerk, an astute, sharp-eyed, precocious youth named

Simmons Hackdale; within an inner door, duly covered with green baize,

sat Shelmore himself, in a private office very neatly and tastefully

furnished and ornamented.