And you also, Mr.Sent Leger, as there is this letter to submit to you.

It is necessary that you should open it in the presence of the executors, but there is no necessity that anyone else should be present." The first to speak was my father.

Of course, as a county gentleman of position and estate, who is sometimes asked to take the chair at Sessions--of course, when there is not anyone with a title present--he found himself under the duty of expressing himself first.

Old MacKelpie has superior rank; but this was a family affair, in which my father is Head of the House, whilst old MacKelpie is only an outsider brought into it--and then only to the distaff side, by the wife of a younger brother of the man who married into our family.

Father spoke with the same look on his face as when he asks important questions of witnesses at Quarter Sessions.
"I should like some points elucidated." The attorney bowed (he gets his 120 thou', any way, so he can afford to be oily--suave, I suppose he would call it); so father looked at a slip of paper in his hand and asked: "How much is the amount of the whole estate ?" The attorney answered quickly, and I thought rather rudely.