But the house had to be let, and it had to be let to Sir Isaac Harman. In another moment an amiable¹ though distinguished² man of letters was in the hall interviewing the great entrepreneur.  
The latter gentleman was perhaps three inches shorter than Mr. Brumley, his hair was grey-shot brown, his face clean-shaven, his features had a thin irregularity, and he was dressed in a neat brown suit with a necktie very exactly matching it. "Sir Isaac Harman?" said Mr. Brumley with a note of gratification.
 
"That's it," said Sir Isaac. He appeared to be nervous and a little out of breath. "Come," he said, "just to look over it. Just to see it. Probably too small, but if it doesn't put you out——"
 
He blew out the skin of his face about his mouth a little.
 
"Delighted to see you anyhow," said Mr. Brumley, filling the world of unspoken things with singularly lurid⁴ curses.
 
"This. Nice little hall,—very," said Sir Isaac. "Pretty, that bit at the end. Many rooms are there?"
 
Mr. Brumley answered inexactly and meditated⁵ a desperate resignation of the whole job to Mrs. Rabbit. Then he made an effort and began to explain.
 
"That clock," said Sir Isaac interrupting in the dining-room, "is a fake."
 
Mr. Brumley made silent interrogations.
 
"Been there myself," said Sir Isaac. "They sell those brass⁶ fittings in Ho'bun."
 
They went upstairs together. When Mr. Brumley wasn't explaining or pointing out, Sir Isaac made a kind of whistling between his clenched⁷ teeth. "This bathroom wants refitting anyhow," he said abruptly⁸. "I daresay Lady Harman would like that room with the bay—but it's all—small. It's really quite pretty; you've done it cleverly, but—the size of it! I'd have to throw out a wing. And that you know might spoil the style. That roof,—a gardener's cottage?... I thought it might be. What's this other thing here? Old barn. Empty? That might expand a bit. Couldn't do only just this anyhow."
 
He walked in front of Mr. Brumley downstairs and still emitting that faint whistle led the way into the garden. He seemed to regard Mr. Brumley merely as a source of answers to his questions, and a seller in process of preparation for an offer. It was clear he meant to make an offer. "It's not the house I should buy if I was alone in this," he said, "but Lady Harman's taken a fancy somehow. And it might be adapted...."
 
From first to last Mr. Brumley never said a single word about Euphemia and the young matrimony and all the other memories this house enshrined. He felt instinctively⁹ that it would not affect Sir Isaac one way or the other. He tried simply to seem indifferent to whether Sir Isaac bought the place or not. He tried to make it appear almost as if houses like this often happened to him, and interested him only in the most incidental manner. They had their proper price, he tried to convey, which of course no gentleman would underbid.
 
In the exquisite¹⁰ garden Sir Isaac said: "One might make a very pretty little garden of this—if one opened it out a bit."
 
And of the sunken rock-garden: "That might be dangerous of a dark night."
 
"I suppose," he said, indicating the hill of pines behind, "one could buy or lease some of that. If one wanted to throw it into the place and open out more.
 
"From my point of view," he said, "it isn't a house. It's——" He sought in his mind for an expression—"a Cottage Ornay."
 
This history declines to record either what Mr. Brumley said or what he did not say.
 
Sir Isaac surveyed the house thoughtfully for some moments from the turf edging of the great herbaceous border.
 
"How far," he asked, "is it from the nearest railway station?..."
 
Mr. Brumley gave details.
 
"Four miles. And an infrequent service? Nothing in any way suburban¹¹? Better to motor into Guildford and get the Express. H'm.... And what sort of people do we get about here?"
 
Mr. Brumley sketched¹².
 
"Mildly horsey. That's not bad. No officers about?... Nothing nearer than Aldershot.... That's eleven miles, is it? H'm. I suppose there aren't any literary people about here, musicians or that kind of thing, no advanced people of that sort?"
 
"Not when I've gone," s............