I knocked at the door, and it was opened by Mr Chaffers. I presented my card, and in a minute found myself seated at Mrs Weldon's desk. There could be no doubt, from the appearance of the room, that it was devoted to business, and to a business in which much paper was required. Mrs Weldon was buried in papers – on the desk before her were scattered documents, manuscripts, letters, books, newspapers; the pigeon-holes were stuffed full of them; a table behind groaned under their weight. Two loaves found a precarious resting-place in another mass, packed up out of reach. In fact, Mrs Weldon is a woman of affairs. And a very clever woman. ‘Then you are not disheartened, Mrs Weldon?’ ‘Disheartened! Good gracious, no, indeed. I have just made a motion to set aside the nonsuit, and asked for a new trial on the ground of misdirection – and all the rest of it. Then I have an action against Sir Henry de Bathe, and an action against – but there – there is no end to them.’ This indomitable woman stood up at her desk, and, with her arms extended, pointed proudly, with a look of especial elation, to a shelf under the window where lay, neatly docketed, a number of legal documents. ‘There are my seventeen cases. My children, they are all going on. They shall all go on. Through this court, through that one. Superior, inferior. Before my lord this judge, and my lord that judge. There are no intricacies, no subtleties that shall be too much for me. I will never let them rest. I will never cease from troubling them until I have swept every cobweb away.’

Look at the symbolical title page.