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Though sorely tried by the ‘pernicketty’ nature of his niece, Steer had been borne up by the thought that he had only to hold on a little longer to obtain justice. How he had got her to the starting-post he really did not know, so pitiably had she ‘jibbed.’ The conviction that good solid damages would in the end be better for her than anything else had salved and soothed a conscience really affected by her nervous distress. Her pale face and reddened eyes on the way to the court disturbed him, and yet, he knew they were valuable—she was looking her best for the occasion! It would be all over—he told her—in an hour, and then she should go to the seaside—what did she say to Weston-super-Mare (with one syllable)? She said nothing, and he had entered the Law Courts with his arm through hers, and his upper lip very long. The sight of the two Bowdens seated on a bench in the corridor restored the burning in his heart. He marked his niece’s eyes slide round as they passed young Bowden. Yes! She would take him even now! He saw Ned shuffle his feet and Bowden grin, and he hurried her on—not for anything would he forego the five hundred out of that fellow’s pocket. At that moment the feud between him and his neighbour showed naked—those young people were but the catspaw of it. The custom of the court compelled them all presently to be sitting in a row, divided faction from faction by not more than the breadth of a pig. Steer’s thin face, racked by effort to follow the patter of the chap in a wig, acquired a sort of maniacal fixity; but he kept hold of his niece’s arm, squeezing it half-consciously now and again, and aware of her shrinking faint look. As for ‘those two fellers,’ there they sat, like as at an auction, giving nothing away, as if they thought—darn them—that the case must fail if they sat tight and did nothing. It seemed unjust to Steer that they should seem unmoved while his niece was wilting beside him. When she went up, trembling, into the ‘dock,’ a strong scent of camphor floated from Steer, stirred from his clothes by the heat within him. He could hardly hear her, and they kept telling her to speak up. He saw tears roll down her cheeks; and the ginger in his greying hair and beard brightened while he glared at those Bowdens, who never moved. They didn’t ask her much—not even Bowden’s counsel—afraid to, he could see! And, vaguely, through his anger and discomfort, Steer felt that, with her ‘ladylikeness,’ her tears, her shrinking, she was making a good impression on judge and jury. It enraged him to see her made to shrink and weep, but it delighted him too.