THE EPISODE OF THE LANDLADY'S DAUGHTER

First of a Series of Six Stories
[First published in _Pictorial Review_, May 1916]


When a seed-merchant of cautious disposition and an eye to the main
chance receives from an eminent firm of jam-manufacturers an extremely
large order for clover-seed, his emotions are mixed. Joy may be said to
predominate, but with the joy comes also uncertainty. Are these people,
he asks himself, proposing to set up as farmers of a large scale, or do
they merely want the seed to give verisimilitude to their otherwise bald
and unconvincing raspberry jam? On the solution of this problem depends
the important matter of price, for, obviously, you can charge a fraudulent
jam disseminator in a manner which an honest farmer would resent.

This was the problem which was furrowing the brow of Mr. Julian
Fineberg, of Bury St. Edwards, one sunny morning when Roland Bleke
knocked at his door; and such was its difficulty that only at the
nineteenth knock did Mr. Fineberg raise his head.

"Come in--that dashed woodpecker out there!" he shouted, for it was his
habit to express himself with a generous strength towards the junior
members of his staff.

The young man who entered looked exactly like a second clerk in a
provincial seed-merchant's office--which, strangely enough, he chanced