All people living in the country are liable to be asked if they do not know of "some nice little place that would just suit us." "For week-ends, chiefly"—the inquirer usually adds. "A kind of pied-À-terre, you know"—the inquirer always adds.

Cautious, self-protective people answer no. Foolish, gregarious people actually try to help.

Addressing that large and growing class, the pied-À-terre hunters, not as a potential neighbour, but as a mere counsellor and very platonic friend, I would say that I have recently discovered two ways of acquiring country places, both of which, although no doubt neither is infallible, have from time to time succeeded.

It was at the end of a fruitless day on the same quest that I hit upon the first. After tramping many miles in vain, I was fortunate in getting a fly at the village inn to drive me to the nearest station. I don't say I had seen nothing I liked, but nothing that was empty. As a matter of fact, I had seen one very charming place, but every window had a curtain in it and the chimneys were sending up their confounded smoke. In other words, it was, to use one of the most offensive words in the language, occupied. Hence I was in a bad temper. None the less, when a little man in black suddenly appeared before me and begged to be allowed to share my cab (and its fare), I agreed. He began to talk at once, and having disposed of the weather and other topics on which one can be strictly and politely neutral, he said that his business took him a good deal into unfamiliar places.

Being aware that he wished it, I asked him what his business was.

"I'm an unsettler," he said.

"An unsettler?"

"Yes. It's not a profession that we talk much about, because the very essence of it is secrecy, but it's genuine enough, and there are not a few of us. Of course, we do other things as well, such as insurance agency, but unsettling pays best."

"Tell me about it," I said.

"Well," he explained, "it's like this. Say you are thinking of moving and you want another house. You can't find an empty one that you like, of course. No one can. But you differ from other persons in being unwilling to make a compromise. You will either wait till you find one that you do like, or you will go without. Meanwhile you see plenty of occupied houses that you like, just as every one else does. But you differ from other persons in being unwilling to believe that you can't have what you want. Do you follow me?"

Naturally I followed him minutely, because he was describing my own case.

"Very well, then," he continued. "This makes the unsettler's opportunity. You return to the agent and tell him that the only house you liked is (say) a white one at East Windles.

"'It was not one on your list,' you say; 'in fact, it was occupied. It is the house on the left, in its own grounds, just as you enter the village. There is a good lawn, and a wonderful clipped yew hedge.'

"'Oh yes,' says the agent, 'I know it: it used to be the Rectory.'

"'Who lives there?' you ask.

"'An old lady named Burgess,' says the agent—'Miss Burgess.'

"'Would she leave?' you ask.

"'I should very much doubt it,' says the agent, 'but I could, of course, sound her.'

"'I'll give you twenty-five pounds,' you say, 'if you can induce her to quit.' And off you go.

"It is then that the unsettler comes in. The agent sends for me and tells me the story; and I get to work. The old lady has got to be dislodged. Now what is it that old ladies most dislike? I ask myself. It depends, of course; but on general principles a scare about the water is safe, and a rumour of ghosts is safe. The water-scare upsets the mistress, the ghost-scare upsets the maids; and when one can't get maids, the country becomes a bore. As it is, she had the greatest difficulty in keeping them, because there's no cinema near.

"Very well, then. Having decided on my line of action, I begin to spread reports—very cautiously, of course, but with careful calculation, and naturally never appearing myself; and gradually, bit by bit, Miss Burgess takes a dislike to the place. Not always, of course. Some tenants are most unreasonable. But sooner or later most of them fall to the bait, and you get the house. That's my profession."

"Well," I said, "I think it's a blackguard one."

"Oh, sir!" he replied. "Live and let live."

"It's funny, all the same," I added, "that I should have run across you, because I've been looking for a house for some time, and the only one I liked was occupied."

He pulled out a pocket-book. "Yes?" he said, moistening his pencil.

But that is enough of him.

So much for my first way, which, as I happen to know, has succeeded, at any rate once. Now for the other, which is less material. In fact, some people might call it supernatural.

I was telling a lady about my friend the unsettler and his methods; but she did not seem to be in the least impressed.

"All very well," she said; "but there's a more efficient and more respectable way than that. And," she added, with a significant glance at her husband and not without triumph, "I happen to know."

She sat at the dinner-table in the old farm-house—"modernized," as the agents have it, "yet redolent of old-world charm." By modernized they mean that the rightful occupiers—the simple agriculturists—had gone for ever, and well-to-do artistic Londoners had made certain changes to fit it for a week-end retreat. In other words, it had become a pied-À-terre. Where the country folk for whom all these and smaller cottages were built now live, who shall say? Probably in mean streets; anyway, not here. The exterior remains often the same, but inside, instead of the plain furniture of the peasantry, one finds wicker arm-chairs and sofa-chairs, all the right books and weekly papers, and cigarettes.

This particular farm-house was charming. An ingle-nook, Heal furniture, old-pattern cretonnes and chintzes, an etching or two, a Japanese print or two, a reproduction of a John, the poems of Mr. Masefield and Rupert Brooke, a French novel, the New Statesman, and where once had been a gun-rack a Della Robbia Madonna.

"It's delightful," I said; adding, as one always does: "How did you get to hear of it?"

"Hearing of it wasn't difficult," she said, "because we'd known about it for years. The trouble was to get it."

"It wasn't empty, then?" I replied.

"No. There was a Mr. Broom here. We asked him if he wanted to go, and he said No. We made him an offer, and he refused. He was most unreasonable." (It was the same word that the unsettler had used.)

I agreed: "Most."

"So there was nothing for it but to will his departure."

"Will?"

"Yes. Concentrate our thoughts on his giving notice, and invite our friends to do the same. I wrote scores of letters all round, impressing this necessity, this absolute, sacred duty, on them. I asked them to make a special effort on the night of March 18th, at eleven o'clock, when we should all be free. It sounds rather dreadful, but I always hold that the people who want a house most are best fitted to have it. One can't be too nice in such matters."

"Well?" I asked.

"Well, you'll hardly believe it—and I shan't be a bit vexed if you don't—but on the morning of the 20th of March I had a letter from Mr. Broom saying that he had decided to leave, and we could have the first call on his house. It was too wonderful. I don't mind confessing that I felt a little ashamed. I felt it had been too easy."

"It is certainly a dangerous power," I said.

"Well," she continued, "I hurried round to see him before he could change his mind. 'Do you really want to leave?' I asked him. 'Yes,' he said. 'Why?' I asked. 'Well,' he said, 'I can't tell you why. I don't know. All I know is that all of a sudden I have got tired and feel vaguely that I want a change. I am quite sure I am making a mistake and I'll never find so good a place; but there it is: I'm going.' I assure you I felt for a moment inclined to back out altogether and advise him to stay on. I was even half disposed to tell him the truth; but I pulled myself together. And—well, here we are!"

"It's amazing," I said. "You must either have very strong-minded friends, or the stars have played very oddly into your hands, or both."

"Yes," she said; "but there's a little difficulty. One has to be so careful in this life."

"One has," I fervently agreed. "But what is it?"

"Some of my friends," she explained, "didn't quite play the game. Instead of willing, as I explicitly indicated, that our Mr. Broom should leave the Manor Farm, they willed merely that Mr. Broom should leave his house, and the result is that all kinds of Mr. Brooms all over the country have been giving notice. I heard of another only this morning. In fact, our Mr. Broom's brother was one of them. It's a very perilous as well as a useful gift, you see. But we've got the farm, and that's the main thing."

She smiled the smile of a conqueror.

"But," remarked another of the guests, who had told us that she was looking for a pied-À-terre, "there's a catch somewhere, isn't there? Don't you see any weak point?"

Our hostess smiled less confidently. "How?" she asked uneasily.

"Well," the guest continued, "suppose.... It couldn't, I mean, be in better hands. For the moment. But suppose some one else wanted it? Take care. Willing is a game that two can play at."

"You don't mean——?" our hostess faltered.

"I do, most certainly," the guest replied. "Directly I go away from here I shall make a list of my most really obstinate, pushful friends to help me."

"But that would be most unfair," said our hostess.

"No one is fair when hunting the pied-À-terre," I reminded her.