what it is. Your father's got too much on His
mind. The business isn't doing quite so well as it did now He can't see
to things. And here's Mercier saying that he's going to leave."

"What? Old Eno? What's he want to leave for?"

"To better himself, I suppose. You can't blame him."

They rose and went on their way that plunged presently into Wandsworth
High Street.

* * * * *

By the time he got home again Ransome had braced himself to the prospect
of the thing he hated. They might let the rooms, perhaps, for a little
while, say, till Michaelmas when he would have got his rise. Yes,
perhaps; if they could find a lady.

But Violet wouldn't hear of a lady. Ladies gave too much trouble; they
nagged at you, and they beat you down.

Well, then, if she liked, a gentleman. A gentleman who would be out all
day, and whose hours of occupation would coincide strictly with his own.
But he impressed it on her that no rooms were to be let in his absence
to any applicant whom he had not first inspected.

So they settled it.

Then, as if they had scented trouble, Mr. and Mrs. Usher came up from
Hertfordshire the very next Saturday. They looked strangely at each
other when the idea of the lodger was put before them, and Mr. Usher
took Ranny out into the garden.

"I wouldn't do it," Mr. Usher said. "Let her work, let her work with her
'ands. A big, strapping girl like her, it won't hurt her. Why, my Missis
there could turn out your little doll-'ouse in a hour. Don't you take no
gentlemen lodgers. Don't you let her do it, Randall, my boy, or there'll
be trouble."

The advice came too late. That very evening Violet informed her husband
that she had let the rooms.

And while Ranny raged she assured him that it was all right. She had
done exactly what he had told her. She had let them to a friend of
his--Leonard Mercier.

CHAPTER XIX

She gathered from his silence that it was all right. Not a muscle of
Ranny's face betrayed to her that it was all wrong.

Ever since his marriage he had kept Leonard Mercier at a distance. He
had had to meet him, of course, and Violet had had to meet him, now and
again at dinner or supper in his father's house; but Ranny was not going
to let him hang round his own house if he could help it. When Jujubes
suggested dropping in on a Sunday, Ranny assured him that on Sundays
they were always out. And Mercier had met the statement with his
atrocious smile. H