Already the garden had supplied them with occasional food, but they had to confess that, for the most part, these wild vegetables lacked savour.  The artichokes, now shooting up into a leafy grove, were the great hope of the future.  It would be deplorable to quit the house before this tuber came to maturity.

‘The worst of it is,’ remarked Mr. Spicer one day, when he was perspiring freely, ’that I can’t help thinking of how different it would be if this garden was really my own.  The fact is, Mr. Goldthorpe, I can’t put much heart into the work; no, I can’t.  The more I reflect, the more indignant I become.  Really now, Mr. Goldthorpe, speaking as an intellectual man, as a man of imagination, could anything be more cruelly unjust than this leasehold system?  I assure you, it keeps me awake at night; it really does.’

The tenor of his conversation proved that Mr. Spicer had no intention of leaving the house until he was legally obliged to do so.  More than once he had an interview with his late uncle’s solicitor, and each time he came back with melancholy brow.  All the details of the story were now familiar to him; he knew all about the lawsuits which had ruined the property.  Whenever he spoke of the ground-landlord, known to him only by name, it was with a severity such as he never permitted himself on any other subject.  The ground-landlord was, to his mind, an embodiment of social injustice.

’Never in my life, Mr. Goldthorpe, did I grudge any payment of money as I grudge the ground-rent of these houses.  I feel it as robbery, sir, as sheer robbery, though the sum is so small.  When, in my ignorance, the matter was first explained to me, I wondered why my uncle had continued to pay this rent, the houses being of no profit to him.  But now I understand, Mr. Goldthorpe; the sense of possession is very sweet.  Property’s property, even when it’s leasehold and in ruins.  I grudge the ground-rent bitterly, but I feel, sir, that I couldn’t bear to lose my houses until the fatal moment, when lose them I must.’

In August the thermometer began to mark high degrees.  Goldthorpe found it necessary to dispense with coat and waistcoat when he was working, and at times a treacherous languor whispered to him of the delights of idleness.  After one particularly hot day, he and his landlord smoked together in the dusking garden, both unusually silent.  Mr. Spicer’s eye dwelt upon the great heap of weeds which was resulting from his labour; an odour somewhat too poignant arose from it upon the close air.  Goldthorpe, who had been rather headachy all day, was trying to think into perfect clearness the last chapters of his book, and found it difficult.

‘You know,’ he said all at once, with an impatient movement, ’we ought to be at the seaside.’

‘The seaside?’ echoed his companion, in surprise.  ’Ah, it’s a long time since I saw the sea, Mr. Goldthorpe.  Why, it must be—­yes, it is at least twenty years.’