“If you ask my advice, my lord, I would say better wait a year. It will be advisable for you to go yourself to South Africa and look into your uncle’s investments there — as a private individual, of course, not as a public servant. Two-thirds of the receipts have fallen off since the war; learn what may be saved from the wreckage, or if there be a wreckage. I’m inclined to think not all, for the investments were varied. Your uncle may have been a silent member, but he was certainly a man of good business judgment — ” Mr. Stretton paused and coughed a little apologetically before adding: “Not an inherited talent, only — ah — cultivated — cultivated — you know. Good business judgment is not a trait inherent in our peerage, as a rule.”

David was amused