Ransome went back to Granville with his mind unalterably made up. He was not going to let any rooms to anybody, ever. The letting of rooms was, if you came to think of it, a desecration of the sanctity of the home and an outrage to the dignity of Granville. When he thought of Jujubes sprawling flabbily in the front sitting-room, strolling flabbily (as he would stroll) in the garden, sleeping (and oh, with what frightful flabbiness he would sleep!) in the back bedroom next his own, filling the place (as he would) with the loathsome presence and the vision and the memory of Flabbiness, he realized what it was to let your rooms. And realizing it, he had no doubt that he could make Violet see the horror and the nuisance of it. Come to that, she shrank from trouble, and Jujubes would have been ten times more trouble than he was worth. In fact, Ranny, having settled the affair so entirely to his own satisfaction, could no longer perceive any necessity for caution, and rushed on it recklessly at supper; though experience had taught him to avoid all unpleasant subjects at the table. The unpleasantness soaked through into the food, as it were, and made it more unappetizing and more deleterious than ever. Besides, Violet was apt to be irritable at meal-times. "It's off, Vikes, that letting." He saw nothing at all unpleasant in the statement as it stood, and he was not prepared for the manner in which she received it. "Off? What d'you mean?" "I've been down and I've seen Mercier." "He told you what?" She had raised her head. Her red mouth slackened as if with the passage of some cry inaudible. Her eyes stared, not at her husband, but beyond and a little above him; there was a look in them of terror and enraged desire, as if the object of their vision were retreating, vanishing. But it was all vague, meaningless, incomprehensible to Ranny. He only remembered afterward, long afterward, that on that night when he had spoken of Mercier she had "looked queer." And the queerest thing was that she did not know Mercier then, or hardly; hardly to speak to. He answered her question. "He told me he'd taken the rooms, of course." "And so he _did_ take them!" "Yes, he took them all right. But I had to tell him that he couldn't have them." "But you can't act like that. You can't turn him out if he wants to come." "Oh, _can't_ I? _He_ knows that. Jolly well he knows it. _He_ won't want to come. Anyhow, he isn't coming." "You stopped him?" "Should think I did. Rather," said Ranny, cheerfully. She shot at him from those covering brows of hers a look that was malignant and vindictive. It missed him clean. "Y--y--you----!" Whatever word she would have uttered she drew it back with her vehement breath. "_What_ did you do that for?" "Why, because I don't want the fellow in the house." "Why--don't--you want him?" Her shaking voice crept now as if under cover. "Because I don't approve of him. That's why." "What have you got against him?"