'Owing to some of the principal ingredients used in the manufacture of floor coverings having been taken over by the Ministry of Food, the price of the material is again advanced.'
Have you noticed it at all in your soup?"
THE HOUSE-HUNTER
Unless something is done for Higgins without delay the nation must prepare to face a tremendous rise in the rate of mortality among house-agents.
Soon after he came back from the War he began to adopt a threatening attitude (as the police-court witnesses say) towards these gentlemen. Recently he has gone beyond the threatening stage. If rumour can be trusted, he has thrown at least six of them through their office windows. He has taken a dislike to the whole tribe. They are, in his opinion, a gang of criminals for whom no punishment could be too severe, because they impose upon the public in general and Higgins in particular, by continuing in business as if they were in a position to let houses when, as a matter of fact, there are no houses for them to let.
Higgins wants a house. Yes, incredible though it may sound, this man, who for years has been content to dwell in a dug-out or consort with creeping things in the confines of a canvas tent, and even on occasion make his bed beneath the starry dome of heaven, with nothing in between, has now developed a craving for a residence built of bricks and mortar.
What is more, he expects the house-agents to find it for him, and, since he considers the whole thing from the purely personal point of view, their excuses for failing to do so are of no avail. The fact that half a million other people want houses is nothing to him. He ignores it. He believes that the house-agentry of the country has hatched a gigantic conspiracy to keep him, Higgins, out of a home.
I have done my best to put him out of his misery. After seeing the poor wretch wear himself (and his boots) out in useless journeying to and from the places where house-agents pretend to work I thought of a scheme—not strictly original—for obtaining a house and presented it to him without hope of reward.