d been joking. Then Ranny, beholding Jujubes for the lamentably flabby
thing he was, and considering that after all he had not dealt quite
fairly with him, undertook to find him quarters equal if not superior
to Granville; where, he assured him, he would not be comfortable. And
having shaken hands with Jujubes across the barrier of the counter, he
strode out of the shop with a formidable tightening and rippling of
muscles under his thin suit.

Mercier leaned back against the shelves of white jars and pondered.
Recovering presently, he made a minute inspection of his finger nails.
He then stroked his mustache into a tighter curl that revealed the rich
red curve of his upper lip. And as he caught the pleasing reflection of
himself in the looking-glass panel opposite he smiled with a peculiar
atrocity.

Up till then his mood had been the petty fury of a shopman balked of his
bargain and insulted. Now, in that moment, the moment of his recovery,
another thought had occurred to Mercier.

It accounted for his smile.

* * * * *

Ransome went back to Granville with his mind unalterably made up. He was
not going to let any rooms to anybody, ever. The letting of rooms was,
if you came to think of it, a desecration of the sanctity of the home
and an outrage to the dignity of Granville. When he thought of Jujubes
sprawling flabbily in the front sitting-room, strolling flabbily (as he
would stroll) in the garden, sleeping (and oh, with what frightful
flabbiness he would sleep!) in the back bedroom next his own, filling
the place (as he would) with the loathsome presence and the vision and
the memory of Flabbiness, he realized what it was to let your rooms. And
realizing it, he had no doubt that he could make Violet see the horror
and the nuisance of it. Come to that, she shrank from trouble, and
Jujubes would have been ten times more trouble than he was worth.

In fact, Ranny, having settled the affair so entirely to his own
satisfaction, could no longer perceive any necessity for caution, and
rushed on it recklessly at supper; though experience had taught him to
avoid all unpleasant subjects at the table. The unpleasantness soaked
through into the food, as it were, and made it more unappetizing and
more deleterious than ever. Besides, Violet was apt to be irritable at
meal-times.

"It's off, Vikes, that letting."

He saw nothing at all unpleasant in the statement as it stood, and he
was not