“Yes,” said Denry.

“What rent?” asked Ruth, as though for aught she guessed it might have been the rent of Buckingham Palace that he had called about.

“Yours,” said Denry.

“Mine!” she murmured.  “But what has my rent got to do with you?” she demanded.  And it was just as if she had said, “But what has my rent got to do with you, little boy?”

“Well,” he said, “I suppose you know I’m a rent-collector?”

“No, I didn’t,” she said.

He thought she was fibbing out of sheer naughtiness.  But she was not.  She did not know that he collected rents.  She knew that he was a card, a figure, a celebrity; and that was all.  It is strange how the knowledge of even the cleverest woman will confine itself to certain fields.

“Yes,” he said, always in a cold, commercial tone, “I collect rents.”

“I should have thought you’d have preferred postage-stamps,” she said, gazing out of the window at a kiln that was blackening all the sky.

If he could have invented something clever and cutting in response to this sally he might have made the mistake of quitting his role of hard, unsentimental man of business.  But he could think of nothing.  So he proceeded sternly: 

“Mr Herbert Calvert has put all his property into my hands, and he has given me strict instructions that no rent is to be allowed to remain in arrear.”

No answer from Ruth.  Mr Calvert was a little fellow of fifty who had made money in the mysterious calling of a “commission agent.”  By reputation he was really very much harder than Denry could even pretend to be, and indeed Denry had been considerably startled by the advent of such a client.  Surely if any man in Bursley were capable of unmercifully collecting rents on his own account, Herbert Calvert must be that man!

“Let me see,” said Denry further, pulling a book from his pocket and peering into it, “you owe five quarters’ rent—­thirty pounds.”

He knew without the book precisely what Ruth owed, but the book kept him in countenance, supplied him with needed moral support.

Ruth Earp, without the least warning, exploded into a long peal of gay laughter.  Her laugh was far prettier than her face.  She laughed well.  She might, with advantage to Bursley, have given lessons in laughing as well as in dancing, for Bursley laughs without grace.  Her laughter was a proof that she had not a care in the world, and that the world for her was naught but a source of light amusement.

Denry smiled guardedly.

“Of course, with me it’s purely a matter of business,” said he.

“So that’s what Mr Herbert Calvert has done!” she exclaimed, amid the embers of her mirth.  “I wondered what he would do!  I presume you know all about Mr Herbert Calvert,” she added.

“No,” said Denry, “I don’t know anything about him, except that he owns some property and I’m in charge of it.  Stay,” he corrected himself, “I think I do remember crossing his name off your programme once.”