Race. The source of
this one seemed to be Sapps proprietor, who was responsible for the
restrictions on Mr. Bartlett's enthusiasm, which might else have pulled
the house down and rebuilt it. "Wot couldn't he do like I told him
for?"--thus ran the indictment--"Goard A'mighty don't know, nor yet
anybody else! Why--_he_ don't know, hisself! I says to him, I says, just
you clear out them lodgers, I says, and give me the run of the premises,
I says, and it shan't cost you a fi'-pun note more in the end, I says.
Then if he don't go and tie me down to a price for to make good front
wall and all dy-lapidations. And onlest he says wot he means by good,
who's to know?... Mortar, John!" John supplied mortar with a slamp--a
sound like the fall of a pasty Titan on loose boards. The grievance was
resumed, but with a consolation. "Got 'im there, accordin' as I think of
it! Wot's his idear of _good?_--that's wot _I_ want to know. Things is
as you see 'em...." Mr. Bartlett would have said the _esse_ of things
was _percipi,_ had he been a Philosopher, and would have felt as if he
knew something. Not being one, he subsided--with truisms--into silence,
content with the weakness of Sapps owner's entrenchments.

Mr. Bartlett completed his contract, according to his interpretation of
the word "good"; and it seems to have passed muster, and been settled
for on the nail. Which meant, in this case, as soon as a surveyor had
condemned it on inspection, and accepted a guinea from Mr. Bartlett to
overlook its shortcomings; two operations which, taken jointly,
constituted a survey, and were paid for on another nail later. The new
bit of brickwork didn't look any so bad, to the eye of impartiality, now
it was pointed up; only it would have looked a lot better--mind you!--if
Mr. Bartlett had been allowed to do a bit more pointing up on the
surrounding brickwork afore he struck his scaffold. But Sapps landlord
was a narrer-minded party--a Conservative party--who wouldn't go to a
sixpence more than he was drove, though an economy in the long-run. The
remarks of the Court and its friends are embodied in these statements,
made after Mr. Bartlett had got his traps away on a truck, which
couldn't come down the Court by reason of the jam. It was, however, a
source of satisfaction to Dave Wardle, whose friends climbed into it
while he sat on the handle, outweighing him and lifting him into the
air. Only, of course, this joy lasted no longer than till they star