"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 did n'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 rôle of hard, unsentimental man of business. But he could think of nothing. So he proceeded sternly: