With us, cottage rents are, in theory, paid fort- nightly
and fall due on a Monday; the tenants bring them to the estate office and give the money to my secretary, together with a small, tattered rent-book which I am pretty sure has no status as a legal document. My secretary fills in the rent received, gives the rent-book back, is brought up to date on the ailments from which the tenant's family is suffering and under- takes (seldom for the first time) to try to get something done about the collapsing toolshed or the chimney which smokes whenever there is an east wind. When the tenant has gone, she enters the rent in a collapsing ledger.
Two or three times a year, because of holidays and other contingencies, my secretary is absent on one of these Mondays, and it then devolves upon me, the Rachman of Loamshire, to take receipt of these ill-gotten gains. On these occa- sions It do not show to advantage. This is not because I gloat ostentatiously, or slaver uncon- This is partly due to apprehension. I am, for instance, terrified of Mrs. T, normally one of the first arrivals. Mrs. T is very old, very large and very fierce. Being no longer .easily able to nego- tiate the four steps leading to the outer office, she bangs on the door with her stick, like a knight at the threshold of an ogre's castle. I answer this dreadful summons with alacrity, intent on reaching the outer office from my own squalid sanctum before Mrs. T can effect an entry; for I know that, once in, she will sit down, wheezing ominously, and talk for a very long time about the damp patch in the scullery. 'Don't you bother to climb up all those steps, Mrs. T,' I cry if I get there in time; and before she can blast off about the damp patch I sign her rent-book, fill it up and give it back to her with profuse thanks.
Mrs. T looks shocked and affronted. 'Aren't you going to take my rent, then?' she growls. It is clear that she suspects me of sharp practice. No trouble with Mr. H (3s. 7d. a week), ex- cept that I remember him as a trim young footman in a striped waistcoat and now he is an obese,
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