But he was not now dwelling upon the funeral. To-morrow he must leave Blackboys. No doubt he would find his affairs in Wolverhampton in a terrible way. He said to himself, “Tut-tut,” his mind absent, though his eyes were still upon the tulips; but his annoyance over the office in Wolverhampton was largely superficial. Business had a claim on him, certainly; the business of his employers; but his own private business had a claim too, that, moreover, would take up but a month or two out of his life; after that Blackboys would be sold, and would engage no more of his time away from Wolverhampton. Blackboys would pass to other hands, making no further demands upon Peregrine Chase. It would be a queer little incident to look back upon; his few acquaintances in Wolverhampton, with whom he sometimes played billiards of an evening, or joined in a whist drive, would stare, derisive and incredulous, if the story ever leaked out, at the idea of Chase as a landed proprietor. As a squire! As the descendant of twenty generations! Why, no one in Wolverhampton knew so much as his Christian name; he had been careful always to sign his letters with a discreet initial, so that if they thought of it at all they probably thought him Percy. A friend would have nosed it out. There was a safeguard in friendlessness. Chase was a reticent little man, as his solicitors had had occasion to remark. Nutley found this very convenient: Chase, making no comment, left him free to manage everything according to his own ideas. Indeed, Nutley frequently forgot his very existence. It was most convenient. As for Chase, he wondered sometimes absently which he disliked least: Farebrother with his weak sentimentality, or Nutley, who was so astute, so bent upon getting Blackboys brilliantly into the market, and whose grudging respect for old Miss Chase, beneath his impatience of the tyranny she had imposed upon him, was so readily divined. Chase stood looking at the bowl of tulips; it seemed to him that he spent his days for ever looking at something, and deriving from it that new, quiet satisfaction. He was revolving in his mind a phrase of Mr. Farebrother’s, to the effect that he ought to go the rounds and call upon his tenants. “They’ll expect it, you know,” Farebrother had said, examining Chase over the top of his spectacles. Chase had gone through a moment of panic, until he remembered that his departure on the morrow would postpone this ordeal. But it remained uncomfortably with him. He had seen his tenants at the funeral, and had eyed them surreptitiously when he thought they were not noticing him. They were all farmers, big, heavy, kindly men, whose manner had adopted little Chase into the shelter of an interested benevolence. He had liked them; distinctly he had liked them. But to call upon them in their homes, to intrude upon their privacy—he who of all men had a wilting horror of intrusion, that was another matter.