Thus the bailiff of the Home Farm, the steward, the gamekeeper, the policeman, or any one who wished to see him on business, could come to the side door from the back and be shown in to him without passing through the mansion.

This certainly was a convenient arrangement; yet one would have thought that he would have had a second and more private study in which to follow his own natural bent of mind.

But the squire received the gardener and gave him directions about the cucumbers--for he descended even to such minutiae as that--sitting at the same table on which he had just written to an Italian art collector respecting a picture, or to some great friend begging him to come and inspect a fresh acquisition.

The bookcase contained a few law books, a manual for the direction of justices--the squire was on the commission--a copy of Burke, and in one corner of a shelf a few musty papers referring to family history.

These were of some value, and the squire was proud of showing them to those who took an interest in archaeology; yet he kept them much as if they had been receipts for the footman's livery, or a dozen bottles of stable medicine.