p, foot, or
sitz,' which he understood were the baths of the establishment. 'Suppose
you try all three,' she suggested. 'They're all yours, you know, sir.'

He would have renewed his sorrows with the daylight, but her words
struck him pleasantly. Everything his eyes opened upon was his very own
to keep for ever. The carved four-post Chippendale bed, obviously worth
hundreds; the wavy walnut William and Mary chairs--he had seen worse
ones labelled twenty guineas apiece; the oval medallion mirror; the
delicate eighteenth-century wire fireguard; the heavy brocaded curtains
were his--all his. So, too, a great garden full of birds that faced him
when he shaved; a mulberry tree, a sun-dial, and a dull, steel-coloured
brook that murmured level with the edge of a lawn a hundred yards away.
Peculiarly and privately his own was the smell of sausages and coffee
that he sniffed at the head of the wide square landing, all set round
with mysterious doors and Bartolozzi prints. He spent two hours after
breakfast in exploring his new possessions. His heart leaped up at such
things as sewing-machines, a rubber-tyred bath-chair in a tiled passage,
a malachite-headed Malacca cane, boxes and boxes of unopened stationery,
seal-rings, bunches of keys, and at the bottom of a steel-net reticule a
little leather purse with seven pounds ten shillings in gold and eleven
shillings in silver.

'You used to play with that when my sister brought you down here after
your measles,' said Rhoda as he slipped the money into his pocket. 'Now,
this was your pore dear auntie's business-room.' She opened a low door.
'Oh, I forgot about Mr. Sidney! There he is.' An enormous old man with
rheumy red eyes that blinked under downy white eyebrows sat in an Empire
chair, his cap in his hands. Rhoda withdrew sniffing. The man looked
Midmore over in silence, then jerked a thumb towards the door. 'I reckon
she told you who I be,' he began. 'I'm the only farmer you've got.
Nothin' goes off my place 'thout it walks on its own feet. What about my
pig-pound?'

'Well, what about it?' said Midmore.

'That's just what I be come about. The County Councils are getting more
particular. Did ye know there was swine fever at Pashell's? There _be_.
It'll 'ave to be in brick.'

'Yes,' said Midmore politely.

'I've bin at your aunt that was, plenty times about it. I don't say she
wasn't a just woman, but she didn't read the lease same way I did. I be
used to bein' put upon, but