"I don't like to take it, sir," she said.
The old man was the grandfather of her children, but she gave him always, and quite naturally, the title of respect.
He took it from her and laid it back on the dresser with the other he had brought. Then he put his hand on her arm, and looked at her affectionately through dim spectacles.
"You go to the other extreme," he said. "You're too kind."
After that she kept the money and she was glad of it too, for she was falling behind with her rent now.
Then one Monday morning, the rent-collector making his weekly call, little brown book in hand, gave her a shock.
He was a sprightly youth, cocky and curly, known among his intimates as Chirpy; and with a jealously cherished reputation for a way with the ladies.
"Say, this is my last visit," he announced sentimentally, as he made his entry in the book, and poised his pencil behind his ear. "We can't part like this, can we?—you and me, after all these years. Too cold like." He drew the back of his hand significantly across his mouth.
Ruth brushed his impertinence aside with the friendly insouciance which endeared her to young men.
"Got the sack for sauce, then?" she asked.