A footman calls with a note, a groom brings another, the letters are carelessly cast aside, till one of the juniors, who has been watching from the peephole, reports that the chief clerk is coming, and everybody scuttles back to his place.  Callers come still more thickly; another solicitor, well-to-do, and treated with the utmost deference; more tradesmen; farmers; two or three auctioneers, in quick succession; the well-brushed editor of a local paper; a second attorney, none too well dressed, with scrubby chin and face suspiciously cloudy, with an odour of spirits and water and tobacco clinging to his rusty coat.  He belongs to a disappearing type of country lawyer, and is the wreck, perhaps, of high hopes and good opportunities.  Yet, wreck as he is, when he gets up at the Petty Sessions to defend some labourer, the bench of magistrates listen to his maundering argument as deferentially as if he were a Q.C.  They pity him, and they respect his cloth.  The scrubby attorney whistles a tune, and utters an oath when he learns the principal is engaged.  Then he marches out, with his hat on one side of his head, to take another ‘refresher.’

Two telegrams arrive, and are thrown aside; then a gentleman appears, whom the senior goes out to meet with an air of deference, and whom he actually conducts himself upstairs to the principal’s room.  It is a local banker, who is thus admitted to the directors’ consultation.  The slow hand of the clock goes round, and, sitting wearily on the hard chair, you wonder if ever it will be possible to see this much-sought man.  By-and-by a door opens above, there is a great sound of voices and chatting, and half a dozen gentlemen—­mostly landed proprietors from their appearance—­come downstairs.  They are the directors, and the consultation is over.  The senior clerk immediately goes to the principal, and shortly afterwards reappears and asks you to come up.

As you mount the lead-covered stairs you glance down and observe the anxious tradesman, the ancient labourer, and several others who have crowded in, all eyeing you with jealous glances.  But the senior is holding the door open—­you enter, and it closes noiselessly behind you.  A hand with a pen in it points to a chair, with a muttered ’Pardon—­half a moment’ and while the solicitor just jots down his notes you can glance round the apartment.  Shelves of calf-bound law books; piles of japanned deed-boxes, some marked in white letters ‘Trustees of,’ or ‘Executors of’ and pigeon-holes full of papers seem to quite hide the walls.  The floor is covered with some material noiseless to walk on (the door, too, is double, to exclude noise and draught); the furniture is solid and valuable; the arm-chair you occupy capacious and luxurious.  On the wall hangs a section of the Ordnance map of the district.  But the large table, which almost fills the centre of the room, quickly draws the attention from everything else.