"Give me some references."
"Rather give you a cheque."
I set ink and pen before him, and he, demanding my name, filled in the slip.
"There you are," he said, preparing to run off. "I've made it three fifty. Now, I'm depending on you. Don't fail me, whatever you do."
It occurred to my mind that although he was trusting me, there appeared no reason why I should trust him. The cheque was drawn on a local branch, and leaving Peter in charge, and giving him enough to do to keep him out of mischief, I went along and saw the manager. He said the cheque, if paid in at once, would be met, and he suggested I should open an account of my own. I did this.
The milkman—an uncertain person so far as concerned rumours of large events—proved useful and reliable here. He knew, as not many knew, the financial position of establishments in the neighbourhood; his information, most likely, was gained from news collected in areas, and corroborated by promptitude or delay in settlement of his account. Also, he was able to tell me of houses where the furniture was old and valuable. By a stroke of luck, it happened that the very first door in Crooms' Hill I knocked at proved to be a place where my call was welcomed, and indeed expected. The three ladies there, facing serious reductions in dividends, had resolved to leave Greenwich, and go off to a cottage owned by them and already sufficiently furnished in Buckinghamshire. (When the transaction ended, one of them admitted to me that fear of air-raids and nearness to the Arsenal had something to do with the decision.) Terrified by the idea of a public sale, they had, the night before, made an appeal on their knees that some other means should be supplied.
"Providence has sent you," said the eldest, contentedly, "and, knowing that you have been selected to help us at this moment of trouble, we are willing you should go over the house, choose what you require, and name your own figure. Of course, it's a wrench for us to part with the furniture, but it brings with it the consolation that we are taking our share in the war. And it is such a relief to find that we are not called upon to deal with some man, with a smell of tobacco about him."
Their simplicity disarmed me, and their genuine piety forced me to deal with them in a more straightforward manner than I might otherwise have adopted. One or two of the articles were particularly good and valuable: there was, for instance, a Chesterfield sofa that would have fetched forty pounds in the open market, and I told them so, and advised them to take it, with some of the rest, away to Farnham Common. In the servants' bedroom I found three Queen Anne mirrors. I made up an inventory that included four-posters, cupboards, dining tables, suites of chairs, an Adam cabinet, two escritoires, some remarkably fine glass, and a few mezzotints.
On these last I was not qualified to put an exact value.