"So glad to see how comfortable you are here," said the benevolent one.
"If we could occasionally have a hot bath we should be more comfortable, but the kitchen range is impossible."
"What you need, my friend, is a house of your own so that you can adapt it to your own ideas. How would you like this house?"
My breath was taken away. Had the kindly one come to present me with a house? Was I to be the object of an amiable plutocrat's benevolence?
"I should like it very much," I said.
"You shall have it," he said, slapping me amiably on the knee.
I gasped for breath. In my time I had had boxes of cigars given me, but never houses.
"For fifteen hundred pounds, as you are the tenant," continued the benevolent one.
I gasped for breath again.
"But you bought it for five hundred and fifty pounds just before the War," I said when I had recovered.