she was alone in it. She never left it, except to fetch water from the
pump in the square. She had seen a lot of life, and she was tired.

Denry came unceremoniously in, smiling gaily and benevolently, with his
bright, optimistic face under his fair brown hair. He had large and good
teeth. He was getting--not stout, but plump.

"Well, mother!" he greeted Mrs Hullins, and sat down on the other chair.

A young fellow obviously at peace with the world, a young fellow content
with himself for the moment. No longer a clerk; one of the employed;
saying "sir" to persons with no more fingers and toes than he had
himself; bound by servile agreement to be in a fixed place at fixed
hours! An independent unit, master of his own time and his own
movements! In brief, a man! The truth was that he earned now in two days
a week slightly more than Mr Duncalf paid him for the labour of five and
a half days. His income, as collector of rents and manager of estates
large or small, totalled about a pound a week. But, he walked forth in
the town, smiled, joked, spoke vaguely, and said, "Do _you_?" to
such a tune that his income might have been guessed to be anything from
ten pounds a week to ten thousand a year. And he had four days a week in
which to excogitate new methods of creating a fortune.

"I've nowt for ye," said the old woman, not moving.

"Come, come, now! That won't do," said Denry. "Have a pinch of my
tobacco."

She accepted a pinch of his tobacco, and refilled her pipe, and he gave
her a match.