“Glad to see you, sir,” said the woman to “Cobbler” Horn. “Will you please to walk in, gentlemen.”
“Just cast your eye up there, Mr. Gray,” she added when they were inside. “It’s come through at last.”
Sure enough it had. Above their heads was a vast hole in the ceiling, and above that a huge gap in the thatch; and at their feet lay a heap of bricks, mortar, and fragments of rotten wood.
“Why the chimney has come through!” exclaimed Mr. Gray.
“Little doubt of that,” said Mrs. Blobs.
“Was anybody hurt?”
“No, but they might ha’ bin. It was this very morning. The master was at his work, and the children away at school; but, if I hadn’t just stepped out to have a few words with a neighbour, I might ha’ bin just under the very place. Isn’t it disgraceful, sir,” she added, turning to “Cobbler” Horn, “that human beings should be made to live in such tumbledown places? I believe Mr. Gray, here, would have put things right long ago; but he’s been kept that tight by the old skin-flint what’s just died. They do say as now the property have got into better hands; but——”
“Well, well, Mrs. Blobs” interposed the agent; “we shall soon see a change now I hope.”
“Yes,” assented “Cobbler” Horn, “we’ll have——that is, I’m sure Mr. Gray will soon make you snug, ma’am.”
“We must call at every house, sir,” said Mr. Gray, as they passed to the next door. “There isn’t one of the lot but wants patching up almost every day.”