The men got on the top of the roof most mornings at about half-past six, and apparently started to play golf up there—judging by the sounds overhead. But they always found it too windy, or too wet, or too something, to stay up there, once they had awakened the whole household. So they invariably went away again till about three-thirty in the afternoon—by which time I suppose the roof was thoroughly well aired, and it was safe for them to sit on it and smoke a pipe or two.
It was a fortnight before that roof was finished. Finally they left. And the kitchen staff grew pensive.
But the very day after they had cleared their ladders away, I saw a tiny stream oozing out of the sodden grass in the front garden. I knew, even before the builder returned and looked wise, that it was a leak in the pipe leading from the water-main.
The pipe-mending squad that arrived next morning was not the same as the roof-mending squad; but the kitchen, being quite impartial, recovered its spirits immediately.
These men, evidently most competent, started work in a business-like manner, by removing the two sets of gates, that terminate the semi-circular carriage drive, and blocking up the stable door with them. Next they dug what looked like a network of trenches for giants. They piled up the edging tiles from the beds, and the gravel from the paths, on the front door step; they banked up turf and more gravel under the windows; they uprooted laurels and privet, and the usual array of evergreens that are the only things that will keep alive in a London front garden, and laid them one on top of the other, effectually barricading the tradesmen’s entrance. And when they had made it delightfully impossible for anyone to get either in or out of the house, they one and all came to a halt, and leant wearily on their picks.
Just then a brilliant idea seemed to strike one of them whereby he might make himself a still greater nuisance, and he hurriedly turned off the water.
They spent the remainder of the day resting on their tools—save when they were gallantly passing in cans and jugs of water (borrowed from my neighbour) to smiling Cook or Abigail at the side door.
It rained hard all night, and by next morning we had quite a spacious lake in the front garden. The squad returned to the post of duty, and once more disposed themselves like guardian angels on its banks. When, in sheer exasperation, I asked them how long they were going to leave things like that, and the house without a drop of water, the foreman replied, politely but non-committally, that he couldn’t exactly say, but the Boss was coming round to see me shortly.
The builder arrived later, to inform me that this was a most serious leak; he didn’t know when he had seen one precisely like it before. Of course, it was partly due to the pipe; how any man could have called himself a plumber, and put in such a pipe as that!—well, words failed him! He himself was not a man to boast of his own doings, but he didn’t mind telling me that I could take up any piece of ground I liked, where he had laid a pipe, and see the sort he put underground.
Then it transpired that the leakage was of such a character that he dare not proceed an inch farther with it without calling in the water company’s officials. Did I authorise him to do so? Of course they would charge special fees for “opening up the ground.” I wondered where else they would find any to “open up” on my premises, seeing that by this time the whole estate was a gaping void! As I saw the turncock and a variety of other gentlemen with gold letters embroidered on their collars, propping themselves up against my holly hedge, I just said, “Oh, yes; do anything you please.”