“He has bought a place in the country.”
“Oh! Well, you just ask him if he was thinking about me when he fixed up those ‘improvements’? If he was, I’ll give him a hundred dollars! But if he was planning out all those things for himself and his own comfort, and now wants me to pay for what he got the newest and best of, he’s just as mean a cuss as ever hung between this world and the next!”
This was a sort of logic not accepted by house-agents,—and the consequence of his refusal to pay the premium demanded lost him the “desirable residence” he had been inclined to take. But it is still unlet, and seems likely to remain so. It may here be remarked that house-agents themselves generally suggest the asking of premiums. And why? Because they get their own percentage out of it. In the business of house-letting, as in other trades and professions, things would go on much better without the “middle-man.” If owners of houses could and would come into direct communication with intending tenants, they would find matters much more satisfactory in every respect, but no doubt it will take some time, and a good deal of bitter experience as well, to persuade them of the fact. And meantime, excellent houses remain empty for years, given over to dirt and neglect and “care-takers” who do not pay for the roof that shelters them, and who take no sort of interest in their employer’s loss or gain.
One of the strangest “care-takers” I ever came across was a small old boy with a wizened pale face,—and spectacles. Out of sheer curiosity I asked him how old he was—he said fourteen, and I was bound to believe him. But he looked more like seventy, and badly worn at that. He had the most precocious knowledge of domestic arrangements,—he knew all about gas-stoves and “kitcheners,”—and, what was rather remarkable, he had an æsthetic taste in colours. He showed me over a newly-decorated house, not far off Cadogan Square, and observed that it would probably have to be re-done for “any person of taste who was still young enough to care!”
“The colouring in the drawing-room,” said the small old boy, with an inimitable air of fastidious repugnance, “is quite trying to the nerves.”
I looked in, and found it really was so—garish and gaudy to an extreme—and I asked him playfully how he managed to stand it.
“I am accustomed to it,” said the small old boy wearily, taking off his spectacles, wiping them, and putting them on again—“that is, in a way, you know. One never does get out-and-out hardened to it. This—” and he threw open a door—“is the dining-room. It should have had an oak dado!”
“Of course!” I said, delighted with the small old boy’s feeling for art. He seemed cheered by my encouragement and proceeded:
“An oak dado and overmantel to match. The tint of the ceiling would then have to be modified. As it is at present no person of taste would stand it—not as a permanency.”
“How long have you been here?” I inquired.