Bustard, was a poor
thing, who did a great deal of work, but whose opinion was never taken.

So Soames went steadily on with his defence. Yet it would be idle to say
that his mind was at ease. He was suffering from a sense of impending
trouble, that had haunted him for some time past. He tried to think it
physical--a condition of his liver--but knew that it was not.

He looked at his watch. In a quarter of an hour he was due at the
General Meeting of the New Colliery Company--one of Uncle Jolyon's
concerns; he should see Uncle Jolyon there, and say something to him
about Bosinney--he had not made up his mind what, but something--in any
case he should not answer this letter until he had seen Uncle Jolyon. He
got up and methodically put away the draft of his defence. Going into a
dark little cupboard, he turned up the light, washed his hands with a
piece of brown Windsor soap, and dried them on a roller towel. Then he
brushed his hair, paying strict attention to the parting, turned down the
light, took his hat, and saying he would be back at half-past two,
stepped into the Poultry.

It was not far to the Offices of the New Colliery Company in Ironmonger
Lane, where, and not at the Cannon Street Hotel, in accordance with the
more ambitious practice of other companies, the General Meeting was
always held. Old Jolyon had from the first set his face against the
Press. What business--he said--had the Public with his concerns!

Soames arrived on the stroke of time, and took his seat alongside the
Board, who, in a row, each Director behind his own ink-pot, faced their
Shareholders.

In the centre of this row old Jolyon, conspicuous in his black,
tightly-buttoned frock-coat and his white moustaches, was leaning back
with finger tips crossed on a copy of the Directors' report and accounts.

On his right hand, always a little larger than life, sat the Secretary,
'Down-by-the-starn' Hemmings; an all-too-sad sadness beaming in his fine
eyes; his iron-grey beard, in mourning like the rest of him, giving the
feeling of an all-too-black tie behind it.

The occasion indeed was a melancholy one, only six weeks having elapsed
since that telegram had come from Scorrier, the mining expert, on a
private mission to the Mines, informing them that Pippin, their
Superintendent, had committed suicide in endeavouring, after his
extraordinary two years' silence, to write a letter to his Board. That
letter was on the table now; it wo