By Advice of Counsel
until proper time for its removal and failed to securely bundle, tie up
and pack the newspapers and other light refuse and rubbish contained
therein, and, further, that you caused and permitted certain tin
receptacles, in the shape and form of barrels, containing such swill or
garbage, to be filled to a greater height with such swill or garbage
than a line within such receptacle four inches from the top thereof."
"Now what do you know about that?" remarked the vice president of Cuban
Crucible to the senior partner of Edgerton & Edgerton.
"I don't know anything about it!" answered the elegant Wilfred
miserably. "I don't know the law of garbage, and there's no use
pretending that I do. You'd better get a garbage lawyer."
"I thought all lawyers were supposed to know the law!" sniffed Mrs.
Pumpelly. "What's that you got in your hand?"
"It's another summons, for keeping a bird," answered the attorney.
"A bird? You don't suppose it's Moses?" she exclaimed indignantly.
"The name of the bird isn't mentioned," said Wilfred. "But very likely
it is Moses if Moses belongs to you."
"But I've had Moses ever since I was a little girl!" she protested.
"And no one ever complained of him before."
"Beg pardon, madam," interposed Simmons, parting the Flemish arras, upon
which was depicted the sinking of the Spanish Armada. "Officer Roony is
back again with two more papers. 'E says it isn't necessary for him to
see you again, as once is enough, but 'e was wondering whether being as
it was rather chilly--"
"Lead him to it!" hastily directed Pierpont, who was beginning to get a
certain amount of enjoyment out of the situation. "But tell him he
needn't call again."
"Give 'em here!" snapped Mrs. Pumpelly, grasping the documents. "This is
a little too much! 'Lulu' this time. Fictitious as usual. Who's Julius
Aberthaw? He says I caused a certain rug to be shaken in such place and
manner that certain particles of dust passed therefrom into the public
street or highway, to wit, East Seventy-third Street, contrary to
Section Two Hundred and Fifty-three of Article Twelve of Chapter Twenty
of the Municipal Ordinances. Huh!"
"What's the other one?" inquired her husband with a show of sympathy.
"For violating Section Fifteen of Article Two of Chapter Twenty, in that
on May 7, 1920, I permitted a certain unmuzzled dog, to wit, a Pekingese
brown spaniel dog, to be on a public highway, to wit, East Seventy-third
Street in the City of New York. But that was Randolph!"
"Was Randolph muzzled?" inquired Mr. Edgerton maliciously.
"Of course not! He only weighs two pounds and a quarter!" protested Mrs.
Pumpelly.
"He can bite all right, just the same!" interpolated Pierpont.
"But what shall I do?" wailed Mrs. Pumpelly, now thoroughly upset.
"Guess you'll have to take your medicine, same's other violators of the
law," commented her husband.
"I never heard of such ridiculous laws!"
"Ignorance of the law excuses no one!" murmured Wilfred.
"It don't excuse a lawyer!" she snorted. "I have an idea you don't know
much more about the law--this kind of law, anyway--than I do. I bet it
is against the law to go round a corner at more than four miles! Do you
want to bet me?"
"No, I don't!" snapped Edgerton. "What you want is a police-court
lawyer--if you're goin' in for this sort of thing."
"My Lord! What's this now, Simmons?" she raved as the butler
deprecatingly made his appearance again with another paper.
"I think, madam," he answered soothingly, "that it's a summons for
allowing the house man to use the hose on the sidewalk after eight A.M.
Roony just brought it."
"H'm!" remarked Mr. Pumpelly. "Don't lead him to it again!"
"But I wouldn't have disturbed you if it hadn't been for a young
gentleman who 'as called with another one regardin' the window boxes."
"What about window boxes?" moaned Mrs. Pumpelly.
"'E says," explained Simmons, "'e 'as a summons for you regardin' the
window boxes, but that if you'd care to speak to him perhaps the matter
might be adjusted--"
"Let's see the summons!" exclaimed Wilfred, coming to life.
"'To Edna Pumpelly,'" he read.
"They're gettin' more polite," she commented ironically.
"'For violating Section Two Hundred and Fifty of Article Eighteen of
Chapter Twenty-three in that you did place, keep and maintain upon a
certain window sill of the premises now being occupied by you in the
City of New York a window box for the cultivation or retention of
flowers, shrubs, vines or other articles or things without the same
being firmly protected by iron railings--'"
"Heavens," ejaculated Mr. Pumpelly, "there'll be somebody here in a
minute complaining that I don't use the right length of shaving stick."
"I understand," remarked Mr. Edgerton, "that in a certain Western state
they regulate the length of bed sheets!"
"What's that for?" asked Edna with sudden interest.
"About seeing this feller?" hurriedly continued Mr. Pumpelly. "Seems to
me they've rather got you, Edna!"
"But what's the use seein' him?" she asked. "I'm summoned, ain't I?"
"Why not see the man?" advised Mr. Edgerton, gladly seizing this
possibility of a diversion. "It cannot do any harm."
"What is his name?"
"Mr. Bonright Doon," answered Simmons encouragingly. "And he is a very
pleasant-spoken young man."
"Very well," yielded Mrs. Pumpelly.
Two minutes later, "Mr. Doon!" announced Simmons.
Though the friends of Tutt & Tutt have made the acquaintance of Bonnie
Doon only casually, they yet have seen enough of him to realize that he
is an up-and-coming sort of young person with an elastic conscience and
an ingratiating smile. Indeed the Pumpellys were rather taken with his
breezy "Well, here we all are again!" manner as well as impressed by the
fact that he was arrayed in immaculate evening costume.
"I represent Mr. Ephraim Tutt, who has been retained by your neighbor,
Mrs. Rutherford Wells, in connection with the summons which you caused
to be issued against her yesterday," he announced pleasantly by way of
introduction. "Mrs. Wells, you see, was a little annoyed by being
referred to in the papers as Jane when her proper name is Beatrix.
Besides, she felt that the offense charged against her was--so to
speak--rather trifling. However--be that as it may--she and her friends
in the block are not inclined to be severe with you if you are disposed
to let the matter drop."
"Inclined to be severe with me!" ejaculated Mrs. Pumpelly, bristling.
"Edna!" cautioned her husband. "Mr. Doon is not responsible."
"Exactly. I find after a somewhat casual investigation that you have
been consistently violating a large number of city ordinances--keeping
parrots, beating rugs, allowing unmuzzled dogs at large, overfilling
your garbage cans, disregarding the speed laws and traffic regulations,
using improperly secured window boxes--"
"Anything else?" inquired Pierpont jocularly. "Don't mind us."
Bonnie carelessly removed from the pocket of his dress coat a sheaf of
papers.
"One for neglecting to have your chauffeur display his metal badge on
the outside of his coat--Section Ninety-four of Article Eight of Chapter
Fourteen.
"One for allowing your drop awnings to extend more than six feet from
the house line--Section Forty-two of Article Five of Chapter Twenty-two.
"One for failing to keep your curbstone at a proper level--Section One
Hundred and Sixty-four of Article Fourteen of Chapter Twenty-three.
"One for maintaining an ornamental projection on your house--a statue, I
believe, of the Goddess Venus--to project more than five feet beyond the
building line--Section One Hundred and Eighty-one of Article Fifteen of
Chapter Twenty-three.
"One for having your area gate open outwardly instead of
inwardly--Section One Hundred and Sixty-four of Article Fourteen of
Chapter Twenty-three.
"And one for failing to affix to the fanlight or door the street number
of your house--Section One Hundred and Ten of Article Ten of Chapter
Twenty-three.
"I dare say there are others."
"I'd trust you to find 'em!" agreed Mr. Pumpelly. "Now what's your
proposition? What does it cost?"
"It doesn't cost anything at all! Drop your proceedings and we'll drop
ours," answered Bonnie genially.
"What do you say, Edgerton?" said Pumpelly, turning to the disgruntled
Wilfred and for the first time in years assuming charge of his own
domestic affairs.
"I should say that it was an excellent compromise!" answered the lawyer
soulfully. "There's something in the Bible, isn't there, about pulling
the mote out of your own eye before attempting to remove the beam from
anybody's else?"
"I believe there is," assented Bonnie politely. "'You're another'
certainly isn't a statutory legal plea, but as a practical defense--"
"Tit for tat!" said Mr. Edgerton playfully. "Ha, ha! Ha!"
"Ha, ha! Ha!" mocked Mrs. Pumpelly, her nose high in air. "A lot of good
you did me!"
"By the way, young man," asked Mr. Pumpelly, "whom do you say you
represent?"
"Tutt & Tutt," cooed Bonnie, instantly flashing one of the firm's cards.
"Thanks," said Pumpelly, putting it carefully into his pocket. "I may
need you sometime--perhaps even sooner. Now, if by any chance you'd care
for a highball--"
"Lead me right to it!" sighed Bonnie ecstatically.
"Me, too!" echoed Wilfred, to the great astonishment of those assembled.
Beyond a Reasonable Doubt
"For twelve honest men have decided the cause,
Who are judges alike of the fact and the laws."
--The Honest Jury.
"Lastly," says Stevenson in his Letter to a Young Gentleman Who Proposes
to Embrace the Career of Art, "we come to those vocations which are at
once decisive and precise; to the men who are born with the love of
pigments, the passion of drawing, the gift of music, or the impulse to
create with words, just as other and perhaps the same men are born with
the love of hunting, or the sea, or horses, or the turning lathe. These
are predestined; if a man love the labor of any trade, apart from any
question of success or fame, the gods have called him."
Had anybody told Danny Lowry that the gods had called him he would have
stigmatized his informant as a liar--yet they had. For apart from any
question of success or fame he had loved horses from the day when as a
baby he had first sprawled in the straw of his Uncle Mike Aherne's
livery and hitching stable in Dublin City. He had grown up to the scrape
and whiffle of the currycomb, breathing ammonia, cracking the skin of
his infantile knuckles with harness soap. Out of the love that he bore
for the beautiful dumb brutes grew an understanding that in time became
almost uncanny. All the jockeys and hostlers said there was magic in
the lad's hands. He could ride anything on hoofs with a slack rein; and
the worst biter in the stable would take a bridle from him as it were an
apple.
"Oft, now, I hear him talkin' to 'em, so I do." Mike Aherne was wont to
say between spits. "An' they know what he says, I'm tellin' ye. He's a
charmer, he is; like the Whisperin' Blacksmith. You've heard tell of
him, belike? Well, Danny can spake to 'em widout even a whisper, so he
can that!"
That was near seventy years agone, and now Danny was a shrunken little
white-haired old wastrel who haunted Mulqueen's Livery over on
Twenty-fourth Street near Tenth Avenue, disappearing in and out of the
cellar and loft and stalls like a leprechaun haunts a hollow tree.
Nobody knew where he had come from or where he lived except that he
could always be found wherever there was a suffering animal, be it dog,
cat or squirrel, and the rest of the time at Mulqueen's, with whom he
had an understanding about the telephone. He was short, wiry, unshaven,
with the legs of a jockey; and when he could get it he drank. That,