“O!” I said, considering of it.  “But is that such a very great objection?”

“I think it my duty to mention it, ma’am.  It is a dull object to look at.  Otherwise, I was so greatly pleased with the lodging that I should have closed with the terms at once, as I had your authority to do.”

Trottle thinking so highly of the place, in my interest, I wished not to disappoint him.  Consequently I said: 

“The empty House may let, perhaps.”

“O, dear no, ma’am,” said Trottle, shaking his head with decision; “it won’t let.  It never does let, ma’am.”

“Mercy me!  Why not?”

“Nobody knows, ma’am.  All I have to mention is, ma’am, that the House won’t let!”

“How long has this unfortunate House been to let, in the name of Fortune?” said I.

“Ever so long,” said Trottle.  “Years.”

“Is it in ruins?”

“It’s a good deal out of repair, ma’am, but it’s not in ruins.”

The long and the short of this business was, that next day I had a pair of post-horses put to my chariot—­for, I never travel by railway:  not that I have anything to say against railways, except that they came in when I was too old to take to them; and that they made ducks and drakes of a few turnpike-bonds I had—­and so I went up myself, with Trottle in the rumble, to look at the inside of this same lodging, and at the outside of this same House.

As I say, I went and saw for myself.  The lodging was perfect.  That, I was sure it would be; because Trottle is the best judge of comfort I know.  The empty house was an eyesore; and that I was sure it would be too, for the same reason.  However, setting the one thing against the other, the good against the bad, the lodging very soon got the victory over the House.  My lawyer, Mr. Squares, of Crown Office Row; Temple, drew up an agreement; which his young man jabbered over so dreadfully when he read it to me, that I didn’t understand one word of it except my own name; and hardly that, and I signed it, and the other party signed it, and, in three weeks’ time, I moved my old bones, bag and baggage, up to London.

For the first month or so, I arranged to leave Trottle at the Wells.  I made this arrangement, not only because there was a good deal to take care of in the way of my school-children and pensioners, and also of a new stove in the hall to air the house in my absence, which appeared to me calculated to blow up and burst; but, likewise because I suspect Trottle (though the steadiest of men, and a widower between sixty and seventy) to be what I call rather a Philanderer.  I mean, that when any friend comes down to see me and brings a maid, Trottle is always remarkably ready to show that maid the Wells of an evening; and that I have more than once noticed the shadow of his arm, outside the room door nearly opposite my chair, encircling that maid’s waist on the landing, like a table-cloth brush.