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116 paused, confused, suddenly seeing he was drifting into personalities. Stranleigh smiled, and completed the sentence for him.

"And Lord Stranleigh is rich?"

"Yes, my lord. Then there's another matter," said the speaker. "Good tenants have been turned out of the best cottages, and these cottages have been let to London people for the summer, at rents that a labouring man can't pay, and this crowds the rest of us into the poorer cottages where there isn't enough room."

"My friend, you are not logical. You complain first that your cottages are unhealthy, and then you say that Wilson lets them to London people, who are very particular about their habitations."

"Oh, London people be fools; everyone knows that."

Stranleigh laughed.

"Are they?"

"Yes," said another, "but they're there in summer, and not in the wet spring, or the fall of the year, with leaks a-dripping in, and the floor in a puddle."

The conversation, which had proceeded quite on a basis of equality, was interrupted by the opening of the door.

"Mr. Wilson, my lord"; and a brisk, business-like man of forty, with a shrewd, somewhat hard face, entered, hat in hand.