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.
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