‘I flatter myself you won’t see better work anywhere,’ said the millionnaire. ‘We City men know a thing or two, Mr. Frank. We may not be so fine as you soldiers, but we have an eye for practical matters. I was not much to brag of in the way of prosperity when I first came to this neighbourhood. We took a little house down here, my wife and I, for change in the summer; and I set my eye on this place. I said to myself, ‘If I thrive I’ll settle there, if money will buy it.’ And there’s nothing money will not buy. Here I am, you see, and my children after me. What would the Beauchamps have thought if they had known that the very name of their place was to be changed, and it was to be called after the Riches, people nobody ever heard of? But a great many people have heard of me now.’ ‘Immense numbers, I am sure, sir,’ said Frank, throwing away his cigar. He had the natural civility of his family, and could not turn an absolutely deaf ear, sick as he was of the monologue. Even Alf took his cigar out of his mouth, and looked at it curiously, as if it perhaps could clear up the situation. ‘All the same; I don’t see that we are anything remarkable,’ said Alf; which was almost as great a puzzle to his father as a similar accident was to Balaam. ‘Oh dear, no, not all remarkable,’ said Mr. Rich, after he had stared wildly at his son; and he gave a glance at Frank, and a little nod, to signify his appreciation of his boy. ‘I don’t suppose you soldiers have much need for brains,’ he added, with benevolent jocularity. ‘But to return to the subject. I don’t know if you have observed how much I have done to the house, Mr. Frank. That music-room Nelly is so fond of was the merest wreck and ruin. Lumber in it,--actually lumber!--old pictures turned against the wall that were not worth sixpence, and trunks full of old papers, and everything that is most dreary. I had Runnymede, the architect, down, who knows all about that style of thing. I said, “Name your own price, and take your time, and come and dine with me whenever you are in the county.” These were all the conditions I made, and in six months, sir, I had everything restored; and as pretty a little domestic chapel,--the best judges tell me,--as exists in England. All money, sir,--money and a little taste. You may think I have too high an opinion of what money can do; but I don’t think one can have too high an idea. It can do anything. It’s the greatest power known. You may have the best intentions in the world, but you can’t carry them out without money. You can’t serve your friends without money; for influence means money, you know, however incorruptible we are now-a-days. When I stand and look round me, and see all the changes that have been made, I feel that nothing but money could have done it. We did not have all this by birth, as the Beauchamps had. You should see my cattle at the farm. The Beauchamps never could afford to keep up that home-farm. I feel sorry