he earned now in two days
a week slightly more than Mr Duncalf paid him for the labour of five and
a half days. His income, as collector of rents and manager of estates
large or small, totalled about a pound a week. But, he walked forth in
the town, smiled, joked, spoke vaguely, and said, "Do _you_?" to
such a tune that his income might have been guessed to be anything from
ten pounds a week to ten thousand a year. And he had four days a week in
which to excogitate new methods of creating a fortune.

"I've nowt for ye," said the old woman, not moving.

"Come, come, now! That won't do," said Denry. "Have a pinch of my
tobacco."

She accepted a pinch of his tobacco, and refilled her pipe, and he gave
her a match.

"I'm not going out of this house without half-a-crown at any rate!" said
Denry, blithely.

And he rolled himself a cigarette, possibly to keep warm. It was very
chilly in the stuffy residence, but the old woman never shivered. She
was one of those old women who seem to wear all the skirts of all their
lives, one over the other.

"Ye're here for th' better part o' some time, then," observed Mrs
Hullins, looking facts in the face. "I've told you about my son Jack.
He's been playing [out of work] six weeks. He starts to-day, and he'll
gi'me summat Saturday."

"That won't do," said Denry, curtly and kindly.

He then, with his bluff benevolence, explained to Mother Hullins that
Mrs Codleyn would stand no further increase of arrears from anybody,
that she could not afford to stand any further increase of arrears, that
her tenants were ruining her, and that he himself, with all his cheery
good-will for the rent-paying classes, would be involved in her fall.

"Six-and-forty years have I been i' this 'ere house!" said Mrs Hullins.

"Yes, I know," said Denry. "And look at what you owe, mother!"

It was with immense good-humoured kindliness that he invited her
attention to what she owed. She tacitly declined to look at it.

"Your children ought to keep you," said Denry, upon her silence.

"Them as is dead, can't," said Mrs Hullins, "and them as is alive has
their own to keep, except Jack."

"Well, then, it's bailiffs," said Denry, but still cheerfully.

"Nay, nay! Ye'll none turn me out."

Denry threw up his hands, as if to exclaim: "I've done all I can, and
I've given you a pinch of tobacco. Besides, you oughtn't to be here
alone. You ought to be with one of your children."

There was more conversatio