Plays Unpleasant by George Bernard Shaw

would have got him prosecuted for manslaughter if it had been let go much longer, he gives me the sack. Wouldnt listen to a word, though I would have offered to make up the money out of my own pocket: aye, and am willing to do it still if you will only put in a word for me.
    TRENCH [
aghast
] You took money that ought to have fedstarving children! Serve you right! If I had been the father of one of those children, I’d have given you something worse than the sack. I wouldnt say a word to save your soul, if you have such a thing. Mr Sartorius was quite right.
    LICKCHEESE [
staring at him, surprised into contemptuous amusement in the midst of his anxiety
] Just listen to this! Well, you are an innocent young gentleman. Do you suppose he sacked me because I was too hard? Not a bit on it; it was because I wasnt hard enough. I never heard him say he was satisfied yet: no, nor he wouldnt, not if I skinned em alive. I dont say he’s the worst landlord in London: he couldnt be worse than some; but he’s no better than the worst I ever had to do with. And, though I say it, I’m better than the best collector he ever done business with. Ive screwed more and spent less on his properties than anyone would believe, that knows what such properties are. I know my merits, Dr Trench, and will speak for myself if no one else will.
    COKANE . What description of properties? Houses?
    LICKCHEESE . Tenement houses, let from week to week by the room or half room: aye, or quarter room. It pays when you know how to work it, sir. Nothing like it. It’s been calculated on the cubic foot of space, sir, that you can get higher rents letting by the room than you can for a mansion in Park Lane.
    TRENCH . I hope Mr Sartorius hasnt much of that sort of property, however it may pay.
    LICKCHEESE . He has nothing else, sir; and he shews his sense in it, too. Every few hundred pounds he could scrape together he bought old houses with: houses that you wouldnt hardly look at without holding your nose. He has em in St Giles’s: he has em in Marylebone: he has em in Bethnal Green. Just look how he lives himself, and youll see the good of it to him. He likes a low deathrate and a gravel soil for himself, he does. You come down with me to Robbins’s Row; and I’ll shew you a soil and a deathrate,I will! And, mind you, it’s me that makes it pay him so well. Catch him going down to collect his own rents! Not likely!
    TRENCH . Do you mean to say that all his property – all his means – come from this sort of thing?
    LICKCHEESE . Every penny of it, sir.
    Trench, overwhelmed, has to sit down
.
    COKANE [
looking compassionately at him
] Ah, my dear fellow, the love of money is the root of all evil.
    LICKCHEESE . Yes, sir; and we’d all like to have the tree growing in our garden.
    COKANE [
revolted
] Mr Lickcheese: I did not address myself to you. I do not wish to be severe with you; but there is something peculiarly repugnant to my feelings in the calling of a rent collector.
    LICKCHEESE . It’s no worse than many another. I have my children looking to me.
    COKANE . True: I admit it. So has our friend Sartorius. His affection for his daughter is a redeeming point – a redeeming point, certainly.
    LICKCHEESE . She’s a lucky daughter, sir. Many another daughter has been turned out upon the streets to gratify his affection for her. Thats what business is, sir, you see. Come, sir: I think your friend will say a word for me now he knows I’m not in fault.
    TRENCH [
rising angrily
] I will not. It’s a damnable business from beginning to end; and you deserve no better luck for helping in it. Ive seen it all among the out-patients at the hospital; and it used to make my blood boil to think that such things couldnt be prevented.
    LICKCHEESE [
his suppressed spleen breaking out
] Oh indeed, sir. But I suppose youll take your share when you marry Miss Blanche, all the same. [
Furiously
] Which of us is the worse, I