As for the young men about our establishment, of whom I was one, we anathematised that house. I do not intend to reproduce the language we used concerning it at one period of our experience, because eventually the evil wore itself out, as most evils do, and at last we came to look upon the desirable residence as an institution of our firm--as a sort of _cause célèbre_, with which it was creditable to be associated--as a species of remarkable criminal always on its trial, and always certain to be defended by Messrs. Craven and Son.
In fact, the Uninhabited House--for uninhabited it usually was, whether anyone was answerable for the rent or not--finally became an object of as keen interest to all Mr. Craven's clerks as it became a source of annoyance to him.
So the beam goes up and down. While Mr. Craven pooh-poohed the complaints of tenants, and laughed at the idea of a man being afraid of a ghost, we did not laugh, but swore. When, however, Mr. Craven began to look serious about the matter, and hoped some evil-disposed persons were not trying to keep the place tenantless, our interest in the old house became absorbing. And as our interest in the residence grew, so, likewise, did our appreciation of Miss Blake.
We missed her when she went abroad--which she always did the day a fresh agreement was signed--and we welcomed her return to England and our offices with effusion. Safely I can say no millionaire ever received such an ovation as fell to the lot of Miss Blake when, after a foreign tour, she returned to those lodgings near Brunswick Square, which her residence ought, I think, to have rendered classic.
She never lost an hour in coming to us. With the dust of travel upon her, with the heat and burden of quarrels with railway porters, and encounters with cabmen, visible to anyone who chose to read the signs of the times, Miss Blake came pounding up our stairs, wanting to see Mr. Craven.
If that gentleman was engaged, she would sit down in the general office, and relate her latest grievance to a posse of sympathising clerks.
"And he says he won't pay the rent," was always the refrain of these lamentations.
"It is in Ireland he thinks he is, poor soul!" she was wont to declare.