She meant Duncalf and all Duncalf's myrmidons. She was still full of her grievance. The letter which she had received that morning had startled her. And even the shadow of the sacred edifice did not prevent her from referring to an affair that was more suited to Monday than to Sunday morning. A little more, and she would have snorted.
"Nothing to do with me, you know!" Denry defended himself.
"Oh!" she said, "you 're all alike and I 'll tell you this, Mr. Machin, I 'd take him at his word if it was n't that I don't know who else I could trust to collect my rents. I 've heard such tales about rent-collectors.... I reckon I shall have to make my peace with him."
"Why!" said Denry. "I 'll keep on collecting your rents for you if you like."
"You?"
"I 've given him notice to leave!" said Denry. "The fact is, Mr. Duncalf and I don't hit it off together."
Another procrastinator arrived in the porch, and, by a singular simultaneous impulse, Mrs. Codleyn and Denry fell into the silence of the overheard and wandered forth together among the graves.
There, among the graves, she eyed him. He was a clerk at eighteen shillings a week, and he looked it. His mother was a sempstress, and he looked it. The idea of neat but shabby Denry and the mighty Duncalf not hitting it off together seemed excessively comic. If only Denry could have worn his dress-suit at church! It vexed him exceedingly that he had only worn that expensive dress-suit once, and saw no faintest hope of ever being able to wear it again.
"And what's more," Denry pursued, "I 'll collect 'em for five per cent. instead of seven and a half. Give me a free hand and see if I don't get better results than he did. And I 'll settle accounts every month, or week if you like, instead of once a quarter, like he does."
The bright and beautiful idea had smitten Denry like some heavenly arrow. It went through him and pierced Mrs. Codleyn with equal success. It was an idea that appealed to the reason, to the pocket, and to the instinct of revenge. Having revengefully settled the hash of Mr. Duncalf, they went into church.