"Poor thing, he won't," said Mrs. Levitt, "have his nice garden."
"He won't. Ballinger must learn," said Mr. Waddington with magisterial severity, "that he can't have everything. He certainly can't have it both ways. Abuse and threaten me and expect favours. He may go … to Colonel Grainger."
"If it really must happen," said Mrs. Levitt, "do you mean that I may have the house?"
"I shall be only too delighted to have such a charming tenant."
"Well, I shan't threaten and abuse you and call you every nasty name under the sun. And you won't, you won't turn me out when my lease is up?"
He bowed over the hand she held out to him.
"You shall never be turned out as long as you want to stay."
By twelve o'clock they had arranged the details; Mr. Waddington was to put in a bathroom; to throw the two rooms on the ground floor into one; to build out a new sitting-room with a bedroom over it; and to paint and distemper the place, in cream white, throughout. And it was to be called the White House. By the time they had finished with it Ballinger's cottage had become the house Mrs. Levitt had dreamed of all her life, and not unlike the house Mr. Waddington had dreamed of that minute (while he planned the bathroom); the little bijou house where an adorable but not too rigorously moral lady—He stopped with a mental jerk, ashamed. He had no reason to suppose that Elise was or would become such a lady.
And the poor innocent woman was saying, "Just one thing, Mr. Waddington, the rent?"
(No earthly reason.) "We can talk about that another time. I shan't be hard on you."