But I, when I learned that old Pettigrew had been down to tell my mother all about his rheumatism, to inspect the roof, and to allege that nothing was needed, gave way to my most frequent emotion in those days, a burning indignation, and took the matter into my own hands.  I wrote and asked him, with a withering air of technicality, to have the roof repaired “as per agreement,” and added, “if not done in one week from now we shall be obliged to take proceedings.”  I had not mentioned this high line of conduct to my mother at first, and so when old Pettigrew came down in a state of great agitation with my letter in his hand, she was almost equally agitated.

“How could you write to old Mr. Pettigrew like that?” she asked me.

I said that old Pettigrew was a shameful old rascal, or words to that effect, and I am afraid I behaved in a very undutiful way to her when she said that she had settled everything with him—­she wouldn’t say how, but I could guess well enough—­and that I was to promise her, promise her faithfully, to do nothing more in the matter.  I wouldn’t promise her.

And—­having nothing better to employ me then—­I presently went raging to old Pettigrew in order to put the whole thing before him in what I considered the proper light.  Old Pettigrew evaded my illumination; he saw me coming up his front steps—­I can still see his queer old nose and the crinkled brow over his eye and the little wisp of gray hair that showed over the corner of his window-blind—­and he instructed his servant to put up the chain when she answered the door, and to tell me that he would not see me.  So I had to fall back upon my pen.

Then it was, as I had no idea what were the proper “proceedings” to take, the brilliant idea occurred to me of appealing to Lord Redcar as the ground landlord, and, as it were, our feudal chief, and pointing out to him that his security for his rent was depreciating in old Pettigrew’s hands.  I added some general observations on leaseholds, the taxation of ground rents, and the private ownership of the soil.  And Lord Redcar, whose spirit revolted at democracy, and who cultivated a pert humiliating manner with his inferiors to show as much, earned my distinguished hatred for ever by causing his secretary to present his compliments to me, and his request that I would mind my own business and leave him to manage his.  At which I was so greatly enraged that I first tore this note into minute innumerable pieces, and then dashed it dramatically all over the floor of my room—­from which, to keep my mother from the job, I afterward had to pick it up laboriously on all-fours.