Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 12.pdf/272

 Leaves from an English Solicitor s Note Book.

245

LEAVES FROM AN ENGLISH SOLICITOR'S NOTE BOOK. VI.

A SUNDAY AFTERNOON NAP AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. BY BAXTER BORRET. WHEN I was in practice in George town, in one of the midland counties of England, a near neighbor and intimate friend of mine was Ralph Jackson, a doctor who hailed from Lancashire. He was a very good fellow, skillful in his profession, and hardworking, with a large practice amongst the poor of the town; but excessive compe tition, bad debts, and ill luck generally com bined to make him at the end of ten years, lose heart, and he came to me, one evening, with a long and sad story of his troubles, and announced to me his intention of throwing up his practice and going to try for better luck in Adelaide. "You will never surely take your delicate wife and your little girl out with you to face the trials of colonial life, Jackson," said I. "No, Borret, that is the hardest wrench of all. I must leave them behind me." "Well, old fellow, all that my wife and I can do for them in your absence shall be done, I need not say; but is there no rela tive of your own, or of your wife who will take them in for a year or two?" "No, my wife has not a single relative in the world, nor have I; I was an only child, and so was my father — no, there I am wrong. My father had a sister, who made an unfor tunate marriage and died soon after." He told me the story more fully as we sat smoking in my study. Within a month of this conversation Jackson left Georgetown for Adelaide, a lonely exile to an unknown land. At first letters came regularly by each mail, then they grew less frequent, and be came more and more despondent. At the end of the second year his wife fell ill, and to add to her troubles little Margaret, her daugh

ter, caught scarlet fever, and had a bad time of it; then the mother caught the same ill ness, and had not the strength to battle with it. In a few days little Margaret was left a motherless little pet of only seven years old. My wife had helped to nurse mother and child in their illness and now took the little one to her heart; we had no children of our own; we had loved one little one and lost her; and so Margaret came as a bright sunbeam into our house. On me fell the sad task of writing to tell Jackson that he was a widower, but I could at least comfort him by telling him that his little girl had a home with us. Five more years passed, with letters now and then from Jackson telling me of his strug gles against poverty and starvation. Early in 1878, business took me to Lanca shire, and I stayed with a friend, a brother lawyer in Manchester. One evening after dinner our conversation turned on the subject of the Duchy of Lancaster, and of the right of the Queen to windfalls in the shape of escheats; that is, whenever any one dies within the limits of the Duchy, without a will, and without relatives, the Queen in right of the Duchy claims all the property. My host told me that a very substantial pro perty had recently escheated to the Duchy on the death of aman named Ainsworth, who had in his earlier years married a young lady; that she had died a few years after the mar riage, and that after her death Ainsworth had led the life of a miser, making money-getting the sole object of his life; that he had hired a housekeeper to look after his comfort, and she had inveigled him into marrying her, and into making a will in her favor, but she had died a few days before Ainsworth, and there