Mrs. Bennett purchased a modest three-bedroom house with the intention of turning it into a rental property. The house was structurally sound, conveniently located, and entirely unremarkable. Its greatest advantage was that it required very little work.

Mrs. Bennett found this disappointing. She replaced the kitchen cabinets, although the old ones were perfectly serviceable. She installed Italian tiles in the bathrooms, oak flooring throughout the house, and a set of expensive brass fixtures that required special cleaning instructions.

Her contractor pointed out that none of these improvements would significantly increase the rent. Mrs. Bennett explained that she was not the sort of person who did things halfway.

Six months later, the house was magnificent. It had cost considerably more than expected, but Mrs. Bennett was delighted. She photographed every room and placed an advertisement for tenants.

The first applicant was a young engineer with an excellent credit score and a Labrador retriever. Mrs. Bennett rejected him. The dog would scratch the floors. The second applicant was a married couple with two children. They had stable jobs, excellent references, and no pets. Mrs. Bennett imagined the children running through the house in their shoes. The third applicant was a quiet accountant who lived alone. Mrs. Bennett liked him until he mentioned that he enjoyed cooking. She had spent a great deal of money on the kitchen.

By the fourth month, her property manager was becoming concerned. "Perhaps," he suggested, "we should remember that this is a rental property." Mrs. Bennett agreed completely. She then asked whether they could require tenants to remove their shoes before entering. The property manager resigned shortly afterward.

By the eighth month, the house remained empty. Mrs. Bennett visited every Saturday to dust the countertops, inspect the floors, and admire the sunlight falling across the Italian tiles. Her husband suggested that they move into it themselves. "Don't be ridiculous," she replied. "We'd ruin it."

I understand Mrs. Bennett better than I would like to admit. We're entering an age when even a decent professional guitar, nothing particularly exotic, can easily cost close to $2,000. Inflation. What are you going to do? So you pay the money, take the guitar home, and admire it. The finish is flawless. The frets are perfect. The case smells wonderful. Then comes Friday night, and you're supposed to take it to a bar where someone will spill beer, knock over a microphone stand, or stumble into your amplifier. You begin thinking about the scratches. The dents. The possibility of a broken headstock. Perhaps you'll take the cheaper guitar instead.

And so the expensive one becomes a case queen. A beautiful instrument that spends its life in a beautiful case, protected from the very activity for which it was built.

I'm sure there are thousands of garages containing magnificent sets of tools, their chrome and nickel surfaces shining like jewelry. Perfectly arranged sockets, spotless wrenches, screwdrivers that have never encountered a stubborn screw. Everything immaculate. Everything except the work.

It's a curious human weakness. We buy things because of what they allow us to do, then become so attached to their perfection that we stop doing it. A guitar is supposed to be played. A hammer is supposed to strike something. A house is supposed to have people living in it. And people, unfortunately, leave marks.

The following spring, Mrs. Bennett finally found a tenant. He was a retired gentleman, a former university professor, who promised to treat the house with the utmost care. He had no children, no pets, and very few visitors. Mrs. Bennett was delighted.

Three weeks after moving in, he called to report a small problem. A picture had fallen from the wall. Mrs. Bennett arrived within twenty minutes. The professor apologized and showed her the damage. A tiny hole in the plaster, barely visible behind a bookcase. She stared at it for a long time. Then she asked him whether he had considered hanging pictures without using nails. The professor explained that he had lived in houses for seventy-three years and had always hung pictures on walls. Mrs. Bennett found this a surprisingly aggressive attitude.

That evening, she told her husband that the tenant was already damaging the property. Her husband asked whether the rent had arrived. Of course it had. "Then perhaps," he said, "the house is finally doing what you bought it to do." Mrs. Bennett considered this.

The next morning, she drove to the property with a small container of plaster filler. She repaired the hole, repainted the wall, and went home feeling considerably better. For the first time in months, the house had given her something to fix.