Mr. Waddington's face positively swelled with the choleric flush that swamped its genial fatuity. "It seems somebody told him you were going to do up the cottage and let it for more rent." "I don't know who could have spread that story." "I assure you, Mr. Waddington, it wasn't me!" "My dear Mrs. Levitt, of course.... I won't say I wasn't thinking of it, and that I wouldn't have done it, if I could have got rid of Ballinger...." He meditated. "I don't see why I shouldn't get rid of him. If he dares me, the scoundrel, he's simply asking for it. And he shall have it." "Oh, but I wouldn't for worlds have him turned into the street. With his wife and babies." "My dear lady, I shan't turn them into the street. I shouldn't be allowed to. There's a cottage at Lower Wyck they can go into. The one he had when he first came to me." He wondered why he hadn't thought of it before. It wasn't, as it stood, a decent cottage; but if he was prepared to spend fifty pounds or so on it, it could be made habitable; and, by George, he _was_ prepared, if it was only to teach Ballinger a lesson. For it meant that Ballinger would have to walk an extra mile up hill to his work every day. Serve him right, the impudent rascal. "Poor thing, he won't," said Mrs. Levitt, "have his nice garden." "He won't. Ballinger must learn," said Mr. Waddington with magisterial severity, "that he can't have everything. He certainly can't have it both ways. Abuse and threaten me and expect favours. He may go ... to Colonel Grainger." "If it really _must_ happen," said Mrs. Levitt, "do you mean that I may have the house?" "I shall be only too delighted to have such a charming tenant." "Well, I shan't threaten and abuse you and call you every nasty name under the sun. And you won't, you _won't_ turn me out when my lease is up?" He bowed over the hand she held out to him. "You shall never be turned out as long as you want to stay." By twelve o'clock they had arranged the details; Mr. Waddington was to put in a bathroom; to throw the two rooms on the ground floor into one; to build out a new sitting-room with a bedroom over it; and to paint and distemper the place, in cream white, throughout. And it was to be called the White House. By the time they had finished with it Ballinger's cottage had become the house Mrs. Levitt had dreamed of all her life, and not unlike the house Mr. Waddington had dreamed of that minute (while he planned the bathroom); the little bijou house where an adorable but not too rigorously moral lady--He stopped with a mental jerk, ashamed. He had no reason to suppose that Elise was or would become such a lady. And the poor innocent woman was saying, "Just one thing, Mr. Waddington, the rent?" (No earthly reason.) "We can talk about that another time. I shan't be hard on you." No. He wouldn't be hard on her. But in that other case there wouldn't have been any rent at all.