happened to say to her, in his new large manner: "Why! If I could
afford, I'd buy the property off you myself, just to show you...!" (He
did not explain, and he did not perhaps know himself, what had to be
shown.) She answered that she wished to goodness he would! Then he said
wildly that he _would_, in instalments! And he actually did buy the
Widow Hullins's half-a-crown-a-week cottage for forty-five pounds, of
which he paid thirty pounds in cash and arranged that the balance should
be deducted gradually from his weekly commission. He chose the Widow
Hullins's because it stood by itself--an odd piece, as it were, chipped
off from the block of Mrs Codleyn's realty. The transaction quietened
Mrs Codleyn. And Denry felt secure because she could not now dispense
with his services without losing her security for fifteen pounds. (He
still thought in these small sums instead of thinking in thousands.)

He was now a property owner.

Encouraged by this great and solemn fact, he went up one afternoon to
the club at Hillport. His entry was magnificent, superficially. No one
suspected that he was nervous under the ordeal. The truth is that no one
suspected because the place was empty. The emptiness of the hall gave
him pause. He saw a large framed copy of the "Rules" hanging under a
deer's head, and he read them as carefully as though he had not got a
copy in his pocket. Then he read the notices, as though they had been
latest telegrams from some dire seat of war. Then, perceiving a massive
open door of oak (the club-house had once been a pretty stately
mansion), he passed through it, and saw a bar (with bottles) and a
number of small tables and wicker chairs, and on one of the tables an
example of the _Staffordshire Signal_ displaying in vast letters
the fearful question:--"Is your skin troublesome?" Denry's skin was
troublesome; it crept. He crossed the hall and went into another room