"Two, three, or four weeks." "When d'you want it?" "About the seventh or eighth." He pondered the matter, and barked, "Come in." I went in. It was charming. Nicely, though plainly, furnished, and as clean as a new pin. I went all over it. Two sitting, four bedrooms, kitchen, scullery, wire spring mattresses, wool beds, two blankets to each bed, blankets very white and almost new. "And the rent?" I asked, wondering how much above my limit I would not go to possess all this for a month. "Well," he said, slowly, "three guineas a week is what we generally get, but if you could wait till the twelfth I'd let it go for two and a half, if you'll buy the stuff in the garden. I reckon there's a good pound's worth between the potatoes and cabbages and beans, and they'll be just about ready by the time you come in. I've made a good let for the three weeks before you come, and they don't want to go out till the eleventh, and" (dropping his voice to a confidential whisper) "my missus, she's expecting to be laid up very soon, and she wants to go to her folks at Wilborough, else I wouldn't let it go so cheap." [Illustration: "I GAVE A DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF MY ADVENTURES TO MY RECEPTIVE FAMILY CIRCLE."] Diplomatically veiling my satisfaction, I closed the bargain on the spot, and sat down then and there and wrote out a couple of agreements, by which Joseph Scorer agreed to let, and John Oxenham agreed to take, for one month, from August 12th, the cottage known as Sandybank Cottage in the town of Eastnor, with the furniture, etc., named in the inventory attached, for the sum of ten guineas, whereof the receipt of one pound was hereby acknowledged. "What about the inventory?" I asked. "I've got one ready for the other folks. If you like to check it I'll make you a copy and send it on." It was a strange and wonderful document, that inventory, but with Mr. Scorer's assistance I succeeded in checking the main points of it. Many of the items were strange; the spelling was phonetic and curious, and at times stumped us both, and then Mr. Scorer would scratch his head and opine that it must mean so-and-so. "One cundler" in the kitchen brought us to a dead-lock for full five minutes. At last Mr. Scorer pointed to a battered implement with its bottom full of holes, hanging on the wall, and said, triumphantly, "That's it." "What in heaven's name is it?" I asked, gazing suspiciously at the shapeless object. "Why, you squeedge your cabbages through it," he said. "Oh, I see, a colander." The humours of that inventory come upon me still in the dark night watches at times, and I laugh internally till my wife wakes up and advises me to get up and take a dose of camphor if I feel as bad as all that. The larger articles, such as bedsteads and chairs and washstands, we easily identified, and these we triumphantly ticked off first, and then gradually worried out the smaller ones.