Part 6 (2/2)
He wasn't prepared for that. The idea hit him hard in a place that he hadn't thought was tender.
”Quite seriously.”
”Dear me. This is very distressing. Very distressing indeed. But you would not take such a step without consulting your friends?”
”I _am_ consulting you.”
”Yes, yes. But have you thought it well over?”
”Thinking isn't any use. I shall have to, unless something can be done.”
He thought: ”Financial difficulties. Debts. An expensive lady. Unless something could be done?” He didn't know that he was exactly prepared to do it. But his tongue answered in spite of him.
”Something must be done. We can't let you go like this, my dear lady.”
”That's it. I don't see how I _can_ go, with dear Toby here. Nor yet how I'm to stay.”
”Won't you tell me what the trouble is?”
”The trouble is that Mrs. Trinder's son's just been demobilized, and she wants our rooms for his wife and family.”
”Come--surely we can find other rooms.”
”All the best ones are taken. There's nothing left that I'd care to live in.... Besides, it isn't rooms I want, Mr. Waddington, it's a house.”
It was, of course, the Ballingers' cottage. But she couldn't have it.
She couldn't have it.
”I wouldn't mind how small it was. If only I had a little home of my own. You don't know, Mr. Waddington, what it is to be without a home of your own. I haven't had a home for years. Five years. Not since the war.”
”I'm afraid,” said Mr. Waddington, ”at present there isn't a house for you in Wyck.”
He brooded earnestly, as though he were trying to conjure up, to create out of nothing, a house for her and a home.
”No. But I understand that the Ballingers will be leaving in June. You said that at any time, if you had a house, I should have it.”
”I said a house, Mrs. Levitt, not a cottage.”
”It's all the same to me. The Ballingers' cottage could be made into an adorable little house.”
”It could. With a few hundred pounds spent on it.”
”Well, you'd be improving your property, wouldn't you? And you'd get it back in the higher rent.”
”I'm not thinking about getting anything back. And nothing would please me better. Only, you see, I can't very well turn Ballinger out as long as he behaves himself.”
”I wouldn't have him turned out for the world.... But do you consider that Ballinger _has_ behaved himself?”
”Well, he played me a dirty trick, perhaps, when he went to Grainger; but if Grainger can afford to pay for him I've no right to object to his being bought. It isn't a reason for turning the man out.”
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