No, the trouble is about the interloper. It appears that, having the remainder of a lease to run, he can go on anteloping (you know what I mean) for two years more if he likes. To do him justice he admits that the place is mine and wants to leave it. He has no real love for the priceless old spot. All that he asks is somewhere better to go to. So I am gladly doing my best to help him. I send him notices of forty-roomed Tudor mansions, which seem to abound in the market, mansions with timbered parks, ornamental waters, Grecian temples, ha-has, gazebos, herds of graceful bounding gazebos, and immediate possession. I do more than this. I send him extravagant eulogies of lands across the seas, where the grapes grow larger, the pear-trees blossom all the year round and separate thrushes laid on to each estate never cease to sing. I suggest the advantages of the mercantile marine and a life on the rolling main, of big game shooting, polar exploration, and the residential attractions of Constantinople, Berlin, Dublin and Vladivostok.
Concurrently with this I try hard to cultivate in him a certain distaste for the dear old home. I walk up and down the road in front of it with a pair of field-glasses, and, if I see that a little chip has fallen off anywhere or the paint on the gate has been scratched, I call on him at once.
"I happened to be passing the demesne," I say, "when I noticed a rather serious item of dilapidation," or "A word with you about the messuage; it looks a trifle off colour to-day. Have you had it blistered lately?" And this worries him a good deal, because he is responsible for all repairs.
I do not fail to point out to my friends, either, that this is my well-known family seat, and I persuade them from time to time to go and ask for me at the door. "What, isn't he living here yet?" I get them to say, with a well-feigned surprise. "It is his house, isn't it?" I frequently have letters addressed to myself sent there, and every morning and afternoon the nurse takes the children past it for a walk. The children are well drilled.
"Look, Priscilla, that's our garden," says Richard in a high penetrating treble; and
"There's a darlin' little buttercup. I want to go in," Priscilla replies.
All this quiet steady pressure is bound to have its due effect in time. Gradually I think he will begin to feel that a shadow haunts the ancestral halls (the front one, you know, and the back passage), that a footstep not his own treads behind him on the stair, that the dear old home will never be happy until it is occupied by its rightful lord.
I shall send him a marked copy of this article.
Evoe.