"Well," he said, "I suppose you know I'm a rent-collector?"

"No, I didn'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:

"Mr Herbert Calvert has put all his property into my hands, and he has
given me strict instructions that no rent is to be allowed to remain in
arrear."

No answer from Ruth. Mr Calvert was a little fellow of fifty who had
made money in the mysterious calling of a "commission agent." By
reputation he was really very much harder than Denry could even pretend
to be, and indeed Denry had been considerably startled by the advent of
such a client. Surely if any man in Bursley were capable of unmercifully
collecting rents on his own account, Herbert Calvert must be that man!