tone, the outline of
each porch being picked out and made clear and decisive with woodwork
painted white. Then, and not till then, did you see that the
all-important detail was the porphyry pillar, for it was as if every two
houses sprang from it as two flowers from one stem.

Inside, each little house had the same narrow passage and steep stairs;
each had the same small room at the front and one still smaller at the
back; the same little scullery behind the same back door at the end of
the passage that led off into the garden; and upstairs the same bathroom
over the scullery, the same bedrooms back and front, and the same tiny
dressing-room with its little window looking out over the porch.

"Quite enough, if we can run to it," Violet said.

Violet, hitherto somewhat indifferent to the adventure, was caught by
the redness and whiteness, the brandnewness and compactness of the
little houses; she was seduced beyond prudence by the sham porphyry
pillar.

"Quite enough. More than we want, really," said Ranny.

But that was before they had seen the Agent and the Prospectus.

They went to the Agent, not because they could afford to take a house,
but just for curiosity, just to say they'd been, just to supply Ranny
with that information that he craved for, now that the passion of the
house hunt was upon him.

"No good going," said Violet. "The rent will be something awful--why,
that pillar alone--"

And Ranny, too, said he was afraid the rent wouldn't be any joke.

But that was precisely what the rent was--a joke. A joke so good that
Ranny took for granted it couldn't possibly be true. Ranny chaffed the
Agent; he told him he was trying to get at him; he said you didn't find
houses with bathrooms and gardens back and front, going for thirteen
shillings a week, not in this country.

And the Agent, who was very busy and preoccupied with making notes in a
large notebook at his table, mumbled all among his notes that that was
right. Of course you didn't find 'em unless you knew where to look for
'em. And that was not because a good 'ouse couldn't be made to pay for
thirteen shillings a week, if there was capital and enterprise at the
back of the Company that built 'em. This here Estate was the only estate
in England--or anywhere--where you could pick up a house, a house built
in an up-to-date style with all the modern improvements, for thirteen
shillings a week.

And Ranny with a fine shrewdness posed him. "Yes, but w