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“Well, there you are,” said Sir Charles. He glowered out of the window at a lady driver who was trying with little success to back her car out past his Rolls-Royce.

“The trouble is,” said Mr. Fairchild, “that if you want to sell the Manor House, and I gather you’ve more or less made up your mind—”

“Got to. Can’t keep it up. Barn of a place. Far too big.”

“The park’s leased to an agricultural tenant. So the rent of that is regulated. And the lodge is the only cottage left. If you’d been able to give vacant possession of that, it would have been a great attraction. I wonder if we could buy the Snuggses out.”

“They wouldn’t leave,” said Sir Charles. He was staring gloomily out of the window. The woman driver had abandoned the attempt and started blowing her horn. Sir Charles ignored her. He swung round suddenly and said, “Do you suppose he’d do a swap?”

Mr. Fairchild gaped at him.

“Do a what?” he said.

“A swap. An exchange. I’ll take the lodge. He can have the Manor House. And the park.”

“He can’t mean it,” said young Mr. Brett.

“He’s quite serious. He reckons he’d be much better off in the lodge. He’ll be able to save his income instead of spending it trying to keep up the Manor. And he’ll be much warmer in winter.”

“But what will the Snugges do with the Manor House?”

“They’re builders, aren’t they? Plenty of scope for them.”

“It’s mad,” said Mr. Brett. “But all the same—”

“Squire Snuggs,” said Mr. Fairchild with a chuckle. “Think how he’ll enjoy that. There are one or two details. Sir Charles would like to keep the shooting. And there’s one particularly nice walk, up the beech avenue to that summerhouse — a gazebo is the correct name for it, I believe — he’d like to keep alright of way up to that. I’ll leave the conveyancing details to you, my boy. It shouldn’t take very long to fix up.”

It took a month to fix up. And Mr. Snuggs seemed happy with the exchange for nearly a year. At the end of that time he called by appointment to see Mr. Brett, and brought his two sons with him, solid youths who sat on the edges of their chairs holding their hats in their hands. Mr. Snuggs did most of the talking.

“It’s like this,” he said, “I want to put things back to what they was before.”

“You mean you want to re-exchange the properties?”

“That’s right. I want to put it back like it was.” His two sons nodded their somber approval.

“But why?”

“Because it won’t work. First, we get no money out of it. What that farmer chap pays us goes on his improvements, and anything that’s left goes on rates. Do you know how much the rates are on the Manor?”

“I know,” said Mr. Brett, “and so do you. Because I told you when you bought it.”

“Well, you may have told me, but I didn’t take it in. Then there’s the repairs. All right, we do them ourselves. But it’s bloody hard work—” His two sons nodded emphatically. It was clear to Mr. Brett that most of the hard work was done by them. “And it means we can’t take on much outside work, so we’ve got no money coming in. And last but not least, there’s the lodge.”

“Ah,” said Mr. Brett. “The lodge. Yes?”

“Twice already this year he’s been at us for money. First it was all the gutters wanted re-doing. Three hundred pounds that cost us. I offered to do it myself.”

“What did he say to that?”

“He said he didn’t like to see us mixing business with pleasure. He’d get Palmer’s to do it.”

“Aren’t they apt to be a bit expensive?”

“Expensive! They build their houses with bricks of gold. Then there was the drains. We never found anything wrong with the drains, did we?”

Alfred and Henry shook their heads in unison.

“There was a surveyor’s report. I remember.”

“Oh, yes. He got a surveyor’s report all right. Six hundred pounds that cost us. And what are we getting for it? I’ll tell you.” Mr. Snuggs thumped the table with a large mahogany fist. “Ninety pounds a year, and everyone laughing at us. Why, we can’t hardly get in our own gate for the bloody great cars round his front door. And he’s bought himself a new Aston-Martin.”

“It’s true,” said Sir Charles to Mr. Fairchild, “that I do seem to have become a lot more popular since I moved. In the old days no one seemed keen on coming to dinner with me. I couldn’t blame them really. When I had guests we used to eat in the big dining room — the one my grandparents used when they had a royal visitation. It’s got three outside walls, and the central heating system at the Manor is so old-fashioned that although it used a ton of coke a week the pipes never got more than lukewarm. I remember once when I had old Colonel Featherstonehaugh to dinner he took a sip of his burgundy — rather a nice Corton, incidentally — and said, his teeth chattering at the time, “You know, Charles, the only w-w-way you could get this w-w-wine down to room temperature would be to put a l-l-lump of ice in it.” Sir Charles laughed heartily, and Mr. Fairchild laughed with him.

“So you’re better off now?”

“Oh, we’re very snug now. The gas-fired central heating keeps the cottage as warm as toast. Of course, I had to pay for the boiler, but I stung my landlord for all the builders’ work involved. And what’s more, now that I don’t need the cellar for coal, I’ve got most of my wine into it. I wonder, would you care to come up next week and try the Clos de Vougeot? It’s settled nicely.”

“I’d love to,” said Mr. Fairchild.

Pride, plus a determination not to be proved wrong, enabled Mr. Snuggs to stick it out for another twelve months. Then his Austin, two years old now and in sad need of a re-spray, crept into the little Square behind the Corn-market. Mr. Snuggs looked almost as battered as his car. He said to Mr. Brett, “It’s no good. It’s killing me. Something’s got to be done.”

“It’s got worse, has it?”

“Worse? If it goes on for another six months I’ll be bankrupt. And every time I go out of my own front gate I can see that old devil. He sits in his front window all the time, grinning at me. Except when he takes a stroll up to the summerhouse, and sits there grinning at all of us. We’ve got to stop it.”

Mr. Brett nearly said, “There’s no law against grinning,” and then realized that with Mr. Snuggs in his present frame of mind this might cost him a valuable client. He said, “It’s not going to be easy.”

“Couldn’t we raise his rent?”

“It’s a controlled rent. I remember explaining it to you when—”

“Yes, yes,” said Mr. Snuggs testily. “You’ve no call to remind me about that. But I recollect there was something about rates.”

“The taxable value.”

“If it goes up above a certain figure you can get him out. That’s right, isn’t it?”

“That’s roughly correct.”

“It’s a lovely little cottage. In a beautiful state of repair. Modem drainage. Central heating.”

“I seem to remember,” said Mr. Brett, “that my partner, Mr. Fairchild, argued all those points most persuasively in front of the rating authority, but between us we succeeded in defeating him.”

Mr. Snuggs said, “Tchah,” and then, “You’re a lawyer, aren’t you? Why don’t you suggest something instead of just sitting there making remarks?”

“Sir Charles is pretty old. And I heard he hasn’t been very well lately.”

“I believe that’s right,” said Mr. Snuggs, looking more cheerful. “His sister’s come to look after him. And I saw the doctor’s car up there two days ago. Why?”