In the spring of 1912 he had signed a four-year lease at seventeen
hundred a year, with an option of renewal. This lease had expired the
previous May. When he had first rented the rooms they had been mere
potentialities, scarcely to be discerned as that, but Anthony had seen
into these potentialities and arranged in the lease that he and the
landlord should each spend a certain amount in improvements. Rents had
gone up in the past four years, and last spring when Anthony had waived
his option the landlord, a Mr. Sohenberg, had realized that he could get
a much bigger price for what was now a prepossessing apartment.
Accordingly, when Anthony approached him on the subject in September he
was met with Sohenberg's offer of a three-year lease at twenty-five
hundred a year. This, it seemed to Anthony, was outrageous. It meant
that well over a third of their income would be consumed in rent. In
vain he argued that his own money, his own ideas on the repartitioning,
had made the rooms attractive.
In vain he offered two thousand dollars--twenty-two hundred, though they
could ill afford it: Mr. Sohenberg was obdurate. It seemed that two
other gentlemen were considering it; just that sort of an apartment was
in demand for the moment, and it would scarcely be business to _give_ it
to Mr.
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