“We’ve been through all the drawers,” Mr. Nutley said, his briskness redoubled in his partner’s presence. “We’ve got all the necessary papers—they weren’t even locked up—so now we can get to business. With any luck Mr. Chase ought to see himself back at Wolverhampton within the week, in spite of the delay over the funeral. I’ve told Mr. Chase that it isn’t strictly correct to open the papers before the funeral is over, but that, having regard to his affairs in Wolverhampton, and in view of the fact that there are no other relatives whose susceptibilities we might offend, we are setting to work at once.” He was bending over the table, sorting out the papers as he talked, but now he looked up and saw Chase still standing in embarrassment near the door. “Dear me, I was forgetting. Mr. Chase, you don’t know Colonel Stanforth, your trustee, I think? Colonel Stanforth has lived outside the park gates all his life, and I wager he knows every acre of your estate better than you ever will yourself, Mr. Chase.” Mr. Farebrother, a round little rosy man in large spectacles, smiled benignly as Chase and Stanforth shook hands. He liked bringing the heir and the trustee together, but his pleasure was clouded by Nutley’s last remark, suggesting as it did that Chase would never have the opportunity of learning his estate; he felt this remark to be in poor taste. “Oh, come! I hope we shall have Mr. Chase with us for some time,” he said pleasantly, “although,” he added, recollecting himself, “under such melancholy circumstances.” He had never been known to make any more direct allusion to death than that contained in this or similarly consecrated phrases. Mr. Nutley pounced instantly upon the evasion. “After all, Farebrother, Chase never knew the old lady, remember. The melancholy part of it, to my mind, is the muddle the estate is in. Mortgaged up to the last shilling, and over-run with peacocks. Won’t you come and sit at the table, Mr. Chase? Here’s a pencil in case you want to make any notes.” Colonel Stanforth came up to the table at the same time. Chase shied away, and went to sit on the window-seat. Mr. Farebrother began a little preamble. “We sent for you immediately, Mr. Chase; that is to say, Colonel Stanforth, who was on the spot at the moment of the regrettable event, communicated with us and with you simultaneously. We should like to welcome you, with all the sobriety required by the cloud which must hang over this occasion, to the estate which has been in the possession of your family for the past five hundred years. We should like to express our infinite regret at the embarrassments under which the estate will be found to labour. We should like to assure you—I am speaking now for my partner and myself—that our firm has been in no way responsible for the management of the estate. Miss Chase, your aunt, whom I immensely revered, was a lady of determined character and charitable impulses....”