"You can always sell the lease again for more money."
Christopher kept cool. "I don't want a house to sell, but to live in,
and do my business; I am a physician: now the drawing-room is built over
the entrance to a mews; the back rooms all look into a mews: we shall
have the eternal noise and smell of a mews. My wife's rest will be
broken by the carriages rolling in and out. The hall is fearfully small
and stuffy. The rent is abominably high; and what is the premium for, I
wonder?"
"Always a premium in Mayfair, sir. A lease is property here: the
gentleman is not acquainted with this part, madam."
"Oh, yes, he is," said Rosa, as boldly as a six years' wife: "he knows
everything."
"Then he knows that a house of this kind at a hundred and thirty pounds
a year in Mayfair is a bank-note."
Staines turned to Rosa. "The poor patients, where am I to receive them?"
"In the stable," suggested the house agent.
"Oh!" said Rosa, shocked.
"Well, then, the coach-house. Why, there's plenty of room for a
brougham, and one horse, and fifty poor patients at a time: beggars
musn't be choosers; if you give them physic gratis, that is enough: you
ain't bound to find 'em a palace to sit down in, and hot coffee and rump
steaks all round, doctor.
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