— 8 —Mrs. Sacret met her prospective tenant by appointment at her house in Minton Street. He was the first applicant she had had, for there were many TO LET notices in the dingy adjacent streets and there was no particular attraction about her property. She did not like the man’s description of himself as “a painter”; the word to her represented unstability and ungodliness, but his letter had been well written though from an address that she knew to be humble and probably an apartment house in Pimlico. She had decided, if he had respectable references and seemed himself responsible, to accept him as a tenant and at a moderate rent. The rates were low, and any sum above those would be profit.
The house she had once felt proud to own looked very mean and shabby as she considered it with a c
