Indeed, this office, with its great fireplace, its Turkey carpet, its shapely bureau that had been Reuben’s, and its chairs, authentically old, chosen to be on terms with the historic bureau, its padded leather sofa and the armchairs before the fire, and above all, the paintings on the wall, had all the appearance of a writing-room in a wealthy club. “This is where I work, Rupert,” said Sir Philip, and Rupert wondered if “work” was quite the justifiable word. He thought the room urbane and almost drowsily urbane, he thought of work rather as the Staithley people thought of cleanliness, as a thing that went with mortification of the flesh, and things looked very easy in this room. But he reserved judgment. Sir Philip was apt to come home looking very tired. Perhaps the easiness was deceptive. A telephone rang, and his father went to the instrument with an apology. “This is your day, Rupert, but I must steal five minutes of it now.” He spoke to his broker in Liverpool, and there were little jokes and affabilities mingled with mysterious references to “points on” and other technicalities. There was an argument about the “points on,” and Sir Philip seemed very easily to get the better of it, and then, having bought a thousand bales of raw cotton futures, he put the telephone down and said, “That’s the end of business for to-day.” An insider would have known that something rather important had happened, that the brain of Sir Philip had been very active indeed in those few minutes when he lingered over the market-reports at the breakfast-table, that trained judgment had decided a largish issue and that a brilliant exhibition of the art of buying had been given on the telephone. Rupert’s impression was that some enigmatic figures had casually intruded while Sir Philip passed the time of day with a friend in Liverpool who had rather superfluously rung him up. At Harrow, veneration of the business man was at a discount, and he believed Harrow was right. To write Greek verse was a stiffer job than to be a cotton-lord--on the evidence so far before the court.