‘Don’t I know? Don’t I know human nature? In old times things were different, but this generation is all alike. Do you think he’ll go on taking £100 a year when he could get £120 or £150? Not likely! And then this agent wants me to show my hand, and say if I want to stay on—as if I should be such a simpleton as that—and tells me his client may possibly wish to live in the house himself, as though I would turn out of my house for anyone, landlord or no landlord. It is quite disgusting to be treated so, ordered about by a mere boy.’ ‘Who is a boy?’ questioned Horace, as Ethel was too much inclined to laugh to put in a word. ‘The agent or the landlord?’ ‘The landlord, of course; that Wetherby is as old as I am.’ ‘How do you know he is a boy?’ ‘How do I know that you are a boy?’ snapped Miss Marjory, ‘because I have eyes and ears, and am not an idiot. Ears, indeed! one need hardly have had ears to hear that child yell. He was a baby when that lease was drawn up, as cross and crying a brat as ever tired a nurse’s patience. His mother died at his birth, and Guy Torwood couldn’t bear to live in the house after. My father took it—we had been friends for years—and we have lived here ever since. The poor man took his child away, and travelled about, trying to forget his trouble. He died eight or ten years later; so, unless the son is dead too, that screaming baby is my landlord. Fancy that! What an odd world we do live in! As if I should turn out of my house for a baby in long-clothes!’ And then Miss Marjory, her explosion of wrath having blown itself off, laughed heartily at the picture her fancy had drawn. ‘If you knew his father, and were friends, perhaps he will not behave badly,’ suggested Horace. ‘Pooh! As though young men ever cared for their father’s friends nowadays! All that is quite a thing of the past, quite old-fashioned. He will just do what his agent advises.’ ‘Write to the agent, and ask him not to say anything,’ suggested simple-minded Ethel. ‘Tell him what you have spent over the garden, and explain that it wouldn’t be fair to raise the rent. I should think he would do as you told him then.’ Horace laughed, and Miss Marjory smiled silently, by which Ethel was made aware that she had said something foolish.