Yes, it was good style. And this cool, clean but rather somber room had the same elusive quality. Three of its four walls were covered with neat rows of books, for the most part in expensive bindings. Style again. All the same the visitor looked a little doubtfully upon those shining shelves. Books were not in his line, and although he did not go quite to the length of despising them he was well content that they shouldn't be. Books stood for education, and in the purview of Mr. Josiah Munt, "if they didn't watch it education was going to be the ruin of the country." Still to that room, plainly but richly furnished, those rows of shining leather lent a tone, a value. A shrewd eye ran them up and down. Meredith--Swinburne--Tennyson--Browning--Dickens--Thackeray--all flams, of course, but harmless, if not carried too far. Personally he preferred a good billiard room, but no one in Blackhampton disputed that Lawyer Mossop was the absolute head of his profession; he could be trusted therefore to know what he was doing. There was one of these books open on a very good table--forty guineas worth of anybody's money--printed in a foreign language, French probably, of which he couldn't read a word. Il Purgatorio, Dante. Fine bit of printing. Wonderful paper! Yes, wonderful! He handled it appraisingly. And then he realized that Lawyer Mossop was in the room and smiling at him in that polite way, that was half soft sawder, half good feeling. The carpet was so thick that he had not heard him come in. "Good evening, Mr. Munt." The greeting was very friendly and pleasant. "Sit down, won't you?" "No, I'll stand--and grow better." Mr. Munt had a stock of stereotyped pleasantries which he kept for social use. They seemed to make for ease and geniality. The two men stood looking at each other, the solicitor all rounded corners and quiet ease, the client stiff, angular, assertive, perhaps a shade embarrassed. "Anything I can do for you, Mr. Munt?" The answer was slow in coming. It was embodied in a harsh growl. "Mossop, I want you to take that gel of mine, Sally, out of my will." The lawyer said nothing, but pursed his lips a little, a way he had when setting the mind to work, but that was the only expression of visible feeling in the heavily lined face. "Excuse my troubling you to-night, Mossop. But I felt I couldn't wait. Give me an appointment for the morning and I'll look in at the office. Nice goings on! And to think what her education cost me!" The lawyer made a silent gesture, spreading his hands like a stage Frenchman, half dismay, half tacit protest. "Better have a new document, eh?" The outraged parent had been already dismissed; the highly competent man of affairs was now in control. "My second girl, Ethel, Mrs. Doctor Cockburn, can have it all now, except"--Josiah hesitated an instant--"except five thousand pounds I shall leave to Gertrude Preston."