He seemed to understand completely. Then he asked if there would be any practical difficulty in having one man to attend, say, to banking, and another to look after sending things by sea; especially if there were problems far away from the place where one of the solicitors worked. I asked him to explain more fully, so that I might not mislead him by accident, so he said

"I shall give an example. Your friend and mine, Mr. Peter Hawkins, works under the shadow of your beautiful cathedral at Exeter, which is far from London. With your help he buys for me a place in London. Good! Now here let me say frankly that you might think it strange that I have decided to employ someone so far off from London instead of someone who lives there. My motive was that the work should be done for my benefit only. Someone living in London might, perhaps, have some idea how this business might help himself or a friend. Therefore I went out of town to seek my agent, who would work only for my own good. Now, suppose I, who have a lot of business, wish to ship goods, say, to Newcastle, or Durham, or Harwich, or Dover, might it not be that it could be done more easily by giving the business to someone working in these ports?"

I answered that certainly it would be very easy, but that we solicitors had a system of agency each solicitor employing another. In this way local work can be done on the instructions of any solicitor. The client simply has to employ one man, and many others could carry out his wishes without further trouble.

Vocabulary:

Attend: Deal with
Mislead: Cause someone to have a wrong idea
Frankly: Honestly and directly
Motive: Reason for doing something
Seek: Look for
Agency: When someone does the job for you