--less weekly than if
he rented it. Ordinarily you paid your rent out of income or
investments. He would be investing every time he paid his rent. People
made these difficulties because they hadn't grasped our system--or for
other reasons. Maybe (the Agent fired at him a glance of divination) he
was calculating the expense of furnishing?

He was.

Nothing simpler. Why--you furnished on the hire-purchase system.

"Not much," said Ranny. He knew all about the hire-purchase system.

So he backed out of it. He backed out of his Paradise, out of his dream.
But to save his face he said he would think it over and let the Agent
know on Monday.

And the Agent smiled. He said he could take his time. There was no
hurry. The house wouldn't run away. And he gave Ranny a copy of the
Prospectus with a beautiful picture of the house on it.

All the way home Violet reproached him. It was a shame, she said, that
he couldn't afford the furniture. There was nothing in the world she
wanted so much as that beautiful little house. She hung on his arm and
pleaded. Would he ever be able to afford the furniture? And Ranny said
he thought he could afford it in two years. Meanwhile the house wouldn't
run away. It would wait two years.

And as if it had been waiting for him, motionless, from all eternity,
the house, with its allurements and solicitations, caught him before six
o'clock on the evening of that very day.

Ranny's mother, as if she had known what the house was after, played
into its hands. Attracted by the Prospectus and the picture, she walked
over to Southfields directly after tea. She looked at the house and fell
in love with it at first sight. It had taken her no time to grasp the
system. You couldn't get a house like that in Wandsworth, not for fifty
or fifty-five, not counting rates and taxes. It was a sin, she said, to
throw away the chance. As for furnishing, she had seen to that. In fact,
Ranny without knowing it had seen to it himself. For the last five years
he had kept his father's books, conceiving that herein he was fulfilling
an essentially unproductive filial duty. And all the time his mother,
with a fine sense of justice, had been putting by for him the
remuneration that he should have had. Out of his seven years' weekly
payments for board and lodging she had saved no less than a hundred
pounds. Thus she had removed the one insurmountable obstacle from
Ranny's path.

It might have been better for Ranny if she