“I hope you will--will meet me half-way about this, sir,” he said. “You must remember that all my work lies in London. I want, naturally, to continue that as far as I can. If you go to Ashbridge it is completely interrupted. My friends are here too; everything I have is here.” His father seemed to swell a little; he appeared to fill the room. “And all my duties lie at Ashbridge,” he said. “As you know, I am not of the type of absentee landlords. It is quite impossible that I should spend these months in idleness in town. I have never done such a thing yet, nor, I may say, would our class hold the position they do if we did. We shall come up to town after Easter, should your mother’s health permit it, but till then I could not dream of neglecting my duties in the country.” Now Michael knew perfectly well what his father’s duties on that excellently managed estate were. They consisted of a bi-weekly interview in the “business-room” (an abode of files and stags’ heads, in which Lord Ashbridge received various reports of building schemes and repairs), of a round of golf every afternoon, and of reading the lessons and handing the offertory-box on Sunday. That, at least, was the sum-total as it presented itself to him, and on which he framed his conclusions. But he left out altogether the moral effect of the big landlord living on his own land, and being surrounded by his own dependents, which his father, on the other hand, so vastly over-estimated. It was clear that there was not likely to be much accord between them on this subject. “But could you not go down there perhaps once or twice a week, and get Bailey to come and consult you here?” he asked. Lord Ashbridge held his head very high. “That would be completely out of the question,” he said. All this, Michael felt, had nothing to do with the problem of his mother and himself. It was outside it altogether, and concerned only his father’s convenience. He was willing to press this point as far as possible. “I had imagined you would stop in London,” he said. “Supposing under these circumstances I refuse to live with you?” “I should draw my own conclusion as to the sincerity of your profession of duty towards your mother.” “And practically what would you do?” asked Michael. “Your mother and I would go to Ashbridge tomorrow all the same.” Another alternative suddenly suggested itself to Michael which he was almost ashamed of proposing, for it implied that his father put his own convenience as outweighing any other consideration. But he saw that if only Lord Ashbridge was selfish enough to consent to it, it had manifest merits. His mother would be alone with him, free of the presence that so disconcerted her. “I propose, then,” he said, “that she and I should remain in town, as you want to be at Ashbridge.”