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 wasn'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.