“The House Agent,” said Redwood, “is a thing with a big mouth and made of dense wood. It pretends someone else is after the house—it always does, you know—and won’t understand there’s a hurry. ‘This is a matter of life and death,’ I said, ‘don’t you understand?’ It drooped its eyes half shut and said, ‘Then why don’t you go the other two hundred pounds?’ I’d rather live in a world of solid wasps than give in to the stonewalling stupidity of that offensive creature. I—”
He paused, feeling that a sentence like that might very easily be spoiled by its context.
“It’s too much to hope,” said Bensington, “that one of the wasps—”
“The wasp has no more idea of public utility than a—than a House Agent,” said Redwood.
He talked for a little while about house agents and solicitors and people of that sort, in the unjust, unreasonable way that so many people do somehow get to talk of these business calculi (“Of all the cranky things in this cranky world, it is the most cranky to my mind of all, that while we expect honour, courage, efficiency, from a doctor or a soldier as a matter of course, a solicitor or a house agent is not only permitted but expected to display nothing but a sort of greedy, greasy, obstructive, over-reaching imbecility—” etc.)—and then, greatly relieved, he went to the window and stared out at the Sloane Street traffic.
Bensington had put the most exciting novel conceivable on the little table that carried his electric standard. He joined the fingers of his opposed hands very carefully and regarded them. “Redwood,” he said. “Do they say much about Us?”
“Not so much as I should expect.”
“They don’t denounce us at all?”
“Not a bit. But, on the other hand, they don’t back up what I point out must be done. I’ve written to the Times, you know, explaining the whole thing—”
“We take the Daily Chronicle,” said Bensington.