Only yesterday, when she thought she was absolutely alone, I heard her saying—
“You wouldn’t like it, you know, once you were fixed up there again. It’s out of the way, of course, quiet, but you wouldn’t like it.”
And then, having told herself the truth, she began immediately to contradict it.
Why they do this is more than I can tell you. The only people who can tell the truth, they seemingly dislike it more than any one else. A man loves the truth, lives for it, dies for it, but seldom tells it. With a woman it is just the opposite, and I cannot for the life of me tell you why.
“You’d be a fool if you took it,” she said to herself as she went away to the house agent’s. “You don’t know who you’ll have for neighbours. They might be disgusting people.”
I followed her to the house agent’s, and this, if you please, was the first question she put to him—
“What sort of people do you think’ll take the house over the way?”
I pitied the house agent from the bottom of my heart, because how on earth could he know? Yet upon his answer hung all his chances of letting. I thought he replied very cleverly.
“They’re sure to be good people,” said he; “we only get the best class round here.”