And all the time, in secret, it was taking hold of him, the delicious thought of property, of possession, of Granville as a thing that in twenty years' time would be his own. Brooding over Granville, Ranny's brain became fertile in ideas. He was always calling out to Violet: "Vikes! I've got _another_ idea! When he gets all dirty next year I'll paint him green. That'll give him a distinctive character, if you like." Or, "How would it be if I was to cover him up all over with creepers, back and front?" Or, "Some day I'll whip off those tiles and clap him on a balcony. He'd look O.K. if he only had a balcony over his porch." His porch was the one thing wrong with Granville, because it wasn't absolutely and entirely his. The porphyry pillar for instance; he had only half a share in it; the other half belonged to Number Forty-five; and you couldn't rightly tell where Number Forty-five's share ended and his began. Still it wasn't as if anybody ever wanted to swarm up the pillar. But there was a party wall, and that was a serious thing. It was so low that a child could clear it at a stride. And when the postman and errand boys and tradespeople went their rounds, instead of going down Forty-five's front walk and up Granville's, they all straddled insolently over the party wall. Ransome said it was "like their bally cheek," by which he meant that it was an insult to the privacy and dignity of Granville. And he stopped it by setting a high box, planted with a perfect little hedge of euonymus, on Granville's half of the top of the party wall. And he and Violet hid behind the window curtains all one Saturday afternoon, and watched "the poor johnnies being sold." There was no end to the fun he was getting out of Granville. Every evening he hurried home from Woolridge's that he might put in an hour's work in his garden before supper. He was never tired of digging and planting and watering the long strip at the back, or of clipping the privet hedge that screened his green mat at the front. Only Violet got tired of seeing him doing it. More than once, when Ranny's innocent back was turned she watched it, scowling. She was so far "gone on him" that she couldn't bear to see him taken up with Granville. She hated the very flowers as his hands caressed them. She hated the little tree he had planted at the bottom of the back garden. For the little tree had kept him out one night till nearly ten o'clock, after Violet had expressly told him that she was going to bed at nine. * * * * * Violet was not tired; but she was tired of Granville.