For all her smile Mrs. Ransome seemed to be breaking down all of a sudden, as if in another moment the truth would have come out of her; but she recovered, and she kept it up.
"He's had the Headache come on more than ever. I've never known a time when His Headache has been so bad. Most constant it is."
"He's worrying. That's 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.
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.
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.