IN the process of time the clock on the drawing-room chimneypiece chimed six and Josiah “stepped round” to Lawyer Mossop’s.

That celebrity lived at The Gables, the next house but one along The Rise. Outwardly a more modest dwelling than Strathfieldsaye, it was less modern in style, more reticent, more compact. As Josiah walked up the drive he noted with approval its well kept appearance and its fine display of rhododendrons, phlox, delphiniums, purple irises and many other things that spoke to him. He was a genuine lover of flowers.

Mr. Munt’s pressure of the electric button was answered by a manservant in a starched shirt and a neat black cutaway. The visitor noted him carefully as he noted everything. “I wonder what he pays a month for that jockey!” was the form the memorandum took on the tablets of his mind.

“Mr. Mossop in?”

“If you’ll come this way I’ll inquire, sir.”

Josiah was led across a square-tiled hall, covered in the center by a Persian rug, into a room delightfully cool, with a large window in a western angle opening on to a pergola ablaze with roses, along which the westering sun streamed amazingly.

“What name, sir?”

“Hey?” Josiah frowned. As if there was a man, woman or child in Blackhampton who didn’t know him! Still, it was good style. “Munt—Mr. Munt.”

“Thank you, sir!” The manservant bowed and withdrew.

Yes, it was good style. And this cool, clean but rather somber room had the same elusive quality. Three of its four walls were covered with neat rows of books, for the most part in expensive bindings. Style again. All the same the visitor looked a little doubtfully upon those shining shelves. Books were not in his line, and although he did not go quite to the length of despising them he was well content that they shouldn’t be. Books stood for education, and in the purview of Mr. Josiah Munt, “if they didn’t watch it education was going to be the ruin of the country.”

Still to that room, plainly but richly furnished, those rows of shining leather lent a tone, a value. A shrewd eye ran them up and down. Meredith—Swinburne—Tennyson—Browning—Dickens—Thackeray—all flams, of course, but harmless, if not carried too far. Personally he preferred a good billiard room, but no one in Blackhampton disputed that Lawyer Mossop was the absolute head of his profession; he could be trusted therefore to know what he was doing. There was one of these books open on a very good table—forty guineas worth of anybody’s money—printed in a foreign language, French probably, of which he couldn‘t read a word. Il Purgatorio, Dante. Fine bit of printing. Wonderful paper! Yes, wonderful! He handled it appraisingly. And then he realized that Lawyer Mossop was in the room and smiling at him in that polite way, that was half soft sawder, half good feeling. The carpet was so thick that he had not heard him come in.

“Good evening, Mr. Munt.” The greeting was very friendly and pleasant. “Sit down, won‘t you?”

“No, I’ll stand—and grow better.“ Mr. Munt had a stock of stereotyped pleasantries which he kept for social use. They seemed to make for ease and geniality.

The two men stood looking at each other, the solicitor all rounded corners and quiet ease, the client stiff, angular, assertive, perhaps a shade embarrassed.

“Anything I can do for you, Mr. Munt?”

The answer was slow in coming. It was embodied in a harsh growl. “Mossop, I want you to take that gel of mine, Sally, out of my will.”

The lawyer said nothing, but pursed his lips a little, a way he had when setting the mind to work, but that was the only expression of visible feeling in the heavily lined face.

“Excuse my troubling you to-night, Mossop. But I felt I couldn’t wait. Give me an appointment for the morning and I’ll look in at the office. Nice goings on! And to think what her education cost me!”

The lawyer made a silent gesture, spreading his hands like a stage Frenchman, half dismay, half tacit protest.

“Better have a new document, eh?” The outraged parent had been already dismissed; the highly competent man of affairs was now in control. “My second girl, Ethel, Mrs. Doctor Cockburn, can have it all now, except”—Josiah hesitated an instant—“except five thousand pounds I shall leave to Gertrude Preston.”

Lawyer Mossop was still silent. But the mobile lips were working curiously. “Not for me to advise,” he said at last, very slowly, with much hesitation, “but if I might——”

Josiah cut him short with a stern lift of the hand.

“I know what you’re going to say, but if she was your gel what’d you do, eh?”

Lawyer Mossop rubbed his cheek perplexedly. “At bottom I might be rather proud of her.”

“You—might—be—rather—proud—of—her!” It was the tone of Alderman Munt J.P. to a particularly unsatisfactory witness at a morning session at the City Hall. An obvious lie, yet a white one because it was used for a moral purpose. Mossop had no ax to grind; he merely wanted to soften things a bit for a client and neighbor. “You can’t tell me, Mossop, you really think that.”

The solicitor gazed steadily past the purple face of his client through the open window to the riot of color beyond. “Why not?” he said. “Think of the pluck required to do a thing like that.”

Josiah shook his head angrily. “It’s the devil that’s in her.” He spoke with absolute conviction. “And it’s always been there. When she was that high”—he made an indication with his hand—“I’ve fair lammoxed her, but I could never turn her an inch. If she wanted to do a thing she‘d do it—and if she didn’t nothing would make her.”

“A lady of strong character.”

“Cussedness, my friend, cussedness. The devil. And it’s brought her to this.”

The lawyer, however, shook his head gently. “Well, Mr. Munt, as I say, it is not for me to advise, but if she was a daughter of mine——”

“You’d be proud of her.” The sneer was rather ugly.

“In a way—yes—perhaps ... I don’t say positively ... because one quite sees.... On the other hand, I might ... I don’t say I should ... I might be just as angry as you are.”

The thundercloud began to lift a little. “Come now, that‘s sense. Of course, Mossop, you‘d be as mad as anybody—it‘s human nature. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry pointin‘ the finger of scorn”—Sally out of Quod yet was still searing him like a flame—“you‘d be so mad, Mossop, that you’d want to forget that she belonged to you.”

“It might be so.” Mr. Mossop’s far-looking eyes were still fixed on the pergola. “At the same time, before I took any definite step, I think I should give myself a clear fortnight in which to think it over.”

Josiah laughed harshly. “No, Mossop—not if you were as mad as I am.”

It was so true that the solicitor was not able to reply.

“When I think on her”—the great veins began to swell in the head and neck of the lord of Strathfieldsaye—“I feel as if I’d like to kill her. Did you see that picture in the Morning Mirror? And that paragraph in the Mail? It’s horrible, Mossop, horrible. And first and last her education‘s cost me every penny of three thousand pound.”

Mr. Mossop nodded appreciatively; then, sympathetically, he lifted the lid of a silver box on a charming walnut-wood stand and asked his visitor to have a cigar.

“No, I never smoke before my dinner,” said Josiah sternly. “She hasn’t been home a month from Germany.” The veins in his forehead grew even more distended.

“Where—in Germany?”

“Eight months at Dresden. Pity she didn’t stop there. Fact o‘ the matter is she’s over-educated.”

The lawyer looked a little dubious.

“Oh, yes, Mossop. Not having a boy, I don’t mind tellin‘ you I’ve been a bit too ambitious for that gel. And over-education is what this country is suffering from at the present time. It’s the national disease. And women take it worse than men. School—college—Paris—and Germany on the top of ’em. I must have been mad. However ... there it is! ... let me know when the document’s ready and I’ll look in at the office and sign it.”

The lawyer would have liked to continue his protest but the face of his client forbade. He crossed to his writing table, took up a pencil and a sheet of notepaper and said, “Miss Sarah‘s portion to Mrs. Cockburn except——”

“Five thousand pounds to Gertrude Preston.”

The lawyer made a brief note. “Right,” he said gravely. “I hope a codicil will be sufficient; we’ll avoid a new instrument, if we can. You shall know when it’s ready.”

Josiah gave a curt nod.

“Going to be war in Europe, do you think?” said the solicitor in a lighter, more conversational tone. It was merely to relieve the tension; somehow the atmosphere of the room was heavy and electric.

“Don’t know,” said Josiah. “But I’ll not be surprised if there is—and a big one.”

Mr. Mossop showed a courteous surprise. This question of a coming big war was a perennial subject for discussion in social and business circles. It had been for years and it had now come to rank in his mind as purely academic. He could not bring himself to believe in “the big burst up” that to some astute minds had long seemed inevitable.

“Any particular reason for thinking so just now?” To the lawyer it was hardly a live issue; somehow it was against all his habits of thought; but it was an act of charity at this moment to direct the mind of his client.

“Stands to reason,” Josiah spoke with his usual decision. “Germany’s got thousands of millions locked up in her army. She‘ll soon be looking for some return in the way of dividends.”

“But one might say the same of us and our navy.”

“That’s our insurance.”

“That’s how they speak of their army, don’t they?—with Russia one side of them, France the other.”

“I daresay, but”—there was a pause which, brief as it was, seemed to confer upon Mr. Munt an air of profound wisdom—“mark my words, Mossop, they’re not piling up all these armaments for nothing. It’s not their way.”

“But they are so prosperous,” said the lawyer. “They are hardly likely to risk the loss of their foreign markets.”

“Nothing venture, nothing win. And they do say the German workingman is waking up and that he is asking for a share in the government.”

“One hears all sorts of rumors, but in these matters one likes to be an optimist.”

“I daresay,” Josiah looked very dour. “But I’ll tell you this. I’m main glad I got out of all my Continental investments a year last March.”

The solicitor had to own that that was a matter in which his client had shown uncommon foresight. The present state of the market was a remarkable vindication of his sagacity.

There was another little pause in which the solicitor, himself an able man of business, could not help reflecting upon the native shrewdness of this client so keen, so hardheaded, so self-willed. And then it was broken by Mr. Munt taking a step towards the door and saying, “When are you and the wife and daughter coming to see us, Mossop? Come to a meal one evening, won’t you?”

The invitation was point blank; but behind the lawyer’s genial courtesy was the trained fencer, the ready-witted man of the world. “Most kind of you,” he said heartily. “Only too delighted, but, unfortunately, my womenfolk are going up to Scotland to-morrow”—he gave private thanks to Allah that it was so!—“and I follow on Saturday, so perhaps if we may leave it till our return”—the solicitor raised his frank and ready smile to the stern eyes.

“Quite so, Mossop!” The client frowned a little. “Leave it open. But I’d like you to see the house. And Mrs. M. would like to know your wife and daughter.”

“They’ll like to know her, I’m sure.” The air of sincerity was balm. “But they’ve been so busy gadding about just lately”—the laugh was charming—“that they’ve had to neglect their social duties.”

Josiah was far too elemental to feel slighted, even if the lawyer had not been so disarming. “But you people here on The Rise have the name of being a stuck-up lot, especially some of you old standards. And I’m bound to say, Mossop, my experience is that you seem to live up to it.”

Lawyer Mossop laughed his soft rich note as he followed Mr. Munt across the hall. He opened the front door for his client, and then, hatless as he was, accompanied the visitor down the short drive as far as the gate.

“Nice things here, Mossop,” Josiah pointed to the flower beds on either side. “That a Charlotte Fanning?” A finger indicated a glorious white rose whose dazzling purity of color stood out beyond all the rest.

Mr. Mossop said it was a Charlotte Fanning.

“Not sure you are going to beat mine, though.”

Mr. Mossop said modestly that he did not expect to do that. Mr. Munt had long been famous for his roses; and by comparison the lawyer declared he was but a novice. The client was flattered considerably by the compliment.

At the gate, the proprietor of the Duke of Wellington pointed to the distant gables of Strathfieldsaye, and said, “Well, come round when you get back. The garden won’t be much of a show for twelve months yet, but the house is first class. I designed it myself.”

With the winning charm which even Josiah, who felt that he paid for it on the High Court scale could not resist, Mr. Mossop promised that he would come round when he got back.

“An’ don’t forget the wife and daughter.”

The wife and daughter should come round too. And then as the lord of Strathfieldsaye said, “Good-night, Mossop,” and was about to turn away from the open gate, he felt suddenly the hand of the solicitor upon his shoulder and the impact of a pair of grave, kind eyes. “I wish, my dear friend,” said Lawyer Mossop, “you could see your way to taking a fortnight to think over that little matter.”

It was not mere conventional man-of-the-worldly good feeling. It was the human father, and the sheer unexpectedness of the obtrusion through the highly polished surface of the city’s foremost solicitor caused his client to take a sharp breath. But Josiah’s strength had always been that he knew his own mind. And he knew it now. “No, Mossop.” A final shake of the dour head. “That gel is comin’ out of my will. Good-night.”

The solicitor sighed gently and closed the gate. And then he stood a moment to watch the slow-receding lurch of the elephantine figure up the road.

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