I went in. It was charming. Nicely, though plainly, furnished, and as
clean as a new pin. I went all over it. Two sitting, four bedrooms,
kitchen, scullery, wire spring mattresses, wool beds, two blankets to
each bed, blankets very white and almost new.
"And the rent?" I asked, wondering how much above my limit I would not
go to possess all this for a month.
"Well," he said, slowly, "three guineas a week is what we generally get,
but if you could wait till the twelfth I'd let it go for two and a half,
if you'll buy the stuff in the garden. I reckon there's a good pound's
worth between the potatoes and cabbages and beans, and they'll be just
about ready by the time you come in. I've made a good let for the three
weeks before you come, and they don't want to go out till the eleventh,
and" (dropping his voice to a confidential whisper) "my missus, she's
expecting to be laid up very soon, and she wants to go to her folks at
Wilborough, else I wouldn't let it go so cheap."
[Illustration: "I GAVE A DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF MY ADVENTURES TO MY
RECEPTIVE FAMILY CIRCLE."]
Diplomatically veiling my satisfaction, I closed the bargain on the
spot, and sat down then and there and wrote out a couple of agreements,
by which Joseph Scorer agreed to let, and John Oxenham agreed to take,
for one month, from August 12th, the cottage known as Sandybank Cottage
in the town of Eastnor, with the furniture, etc., named in the
inventory attached, for the sum of ten guineas, whereof the receipt of
one pound was hereby acknowledged.
"What about the inventory?" I asked.
"I've got one ready for the other folks. If you like to check it I'll
make you a copy and send it on."
It was a strange and wonderful document, that inventory, but with Mr.
Scorer's assistance I succeeded in checking the main points of it. Many
of the items were strange; the spelling was phonetic and curious, and at
times stumped us both, and then Mr. Scorer would scratch his head and
opine that it must mean so-and-so.
"One cundler" in the kitchen brought us to a dead-lock for full five
minutes. At last Mr. Scorer pointed to a battered implement with its
bottom full of holes, hanging on the wall, and said, triumphantly,
"That's it."
"What in heaven's name is it?" I asked, gazing suspiciously at the
shapeless object.
"Why, you squeedge your cabbages through it," he said.
"Oh, I see, a colander."
The humours of that inventory come upon me still in the dark night
watches at times, and I laugh internally till my wife wakes up and
advises me to get up and take a dose of camphor if I feel as bad as all
that.
The larger articles, such as bedsteads and chairs and washstands, we
easily identified, and these we triumphantly ticked off first, and then
gradually worried out the smaller ones.
"One indimat" caused us some trouble in the best bedroom, but finally a
strip of straw matting, two feet by one, was hauled out from its
lurking-place under the washstand, whither it had crept for concealment,
and reluctantly answered to its name.
The crockery was heterogeneous, and was slumped under colour-headings.
"Three cupps pink; one sosir pink; three cupps blew; four sosirs blew
(one crack)," and so on.
That searching inventory went right to the root of things, and by its
_fiat-justitia-ruat-c[oe]lum_ candour impressed me most favourably with
the stark, staring, straight-forward honesty of Mr. Joseph Scorer.
"One bird in glass case, bird's leg broke--four orments, all crack--one
ormlu clock (won't go)"--could transparent honesty go further than this?
Moreover Mr. Scorer asked me casually, "Did you know Mr. William Henry
Sawyer, Esquire, of the 'Ome Office?"