“Quite so, quite so,” answers the solicitor, coldly, in a tone which intimates that he will not have that patience. “I have certainly never seen the announcement of an inheritance received in such a manner.”
“But why,” says Bertram—“why did this relative, whom I never knew, leave his property to me?”
“I cannot tell, sir. It was certainly not by the advice of our firm.”
“Are there any conditions attached to this extraordinary bequest?”
“None, sir. You can realise at once and invest everything in dynamite and pyretic acid,” replies the solicitor, with a rasping scorn showing through the velvet of his admirable manners.
“Oh, my dear sir! Can you fall into the vulgar error of confounding collectivism and altruism with anarchy? They are as far apart as the Poles. One is love; the other hatred.”
“I confess, sir, that such love nauseates me. I prefer of the two the hatred. But I am an old-fashioned person, and I know little of literature later than the ’Sixties.”
“A most debased period in every form of production.”
“It may be so. Macaulay was alive in it and Tennyson. But I did not come here to discuss the characteristics of generations. I came to inform you of an event which I immaturely concluded would appear to you both important and agreeable.”
“You did not know me, my dear sir.”