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"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!
There was a startled pause. "I mean it," said Denry firmly, even fiercely, and raised his glass. "Here's to the Widow Hullins!" There was a sensation, because, incredible though the thing was, it had to be believed. Denry himself was not the least astounded person in the crowded, smoky room. To him, it had been like somebody else talking, not himself.
"Not much of the Widow Hullins touch about this!" he reflected privately. And he wished that all rent-collecting might be done with such ease, and amid such surroundings, as this particular piece of rent-collecting. He saw what a fine thing it was to be a free man, under orders from nobody; not many men in Bursley were in a position to accept invitations to four o'clock tea at a day's notice.
The only fire in the room, however, was in the short clay pipe which she smoked; Mrs Hullins was one of the last old women in Bursley to smoke a cutty; and even then the pipe was considered coarse, and cigarettes were coming into fashion though not in Chapel Alley. Mrs Hullins smoked her pipe, and thought about nothing in particular.
"Six-and-forty years have I been i' this 'ere house!" said Mrs Hullins. "Yes, I know," said Denry. "And look at what you owe, mother!" It was with immense good-humoured kindliness that he invited her attention to what she owed. She tacitly declined to look at it. "Your children ought to keep you," said Denry, upon her silence.
This discerning hag, the Widow Hullins by name, had said to him briefly, "Well, you're a queer 'un!" Within five minutes he was following Mr. Bryany into a small parlour on the first floor of the Turk's Head a room with which he had no previous acquaintance, though, like most industrious men of affairs in metropolitan Hanbridge, he reckoned to know something about the Turk's Head. Mr.
"What made you give that house to Mrs Hullins?" she asked him suddenly, with a candour that seemed to demand candour. "Oh," he said, "just a lark! I thought I would. It came to me all in a second, and I did." She shook her head. "Strange boy!" she observed. There was a pause. "It was something Charlie Fearns said, wasn't it?" she inquired.
"Them as is dead, can't," said Mrs Hullins, "and them as is alive has their own to keep, except Jack." "Well, then, it's bailiffs," said Denry, but still cheerfully. "Nay, nay! Ye'll none turn me out." Denry threw up his hands, as if to exclaim: "I've done all I can, and I've given you a pinch of tobacco. Besides, you oughtn't to be here alone. You ought to be with one of your children."
Everybody looked inquisitively at the renowned Machin, the new member. "I am," said Denry. He had concealed the change of ownership from the Widow Hullins. In his quality of owner he could not have lent her money in order that she might pay it instantly back to himself. "I beg your pardon," said Fearns, with polite sincerity.
She was one of those old women who seem to wear all the skirts of all their lives, one over the other. "Ye're here for th' better part o' some time, then," observed Mrs Hullins, looking facts in the face. "I've told you about my son Jack. He starts to-day, and he'll gi'me summat Saturday." "That won't do," said Denry, curtly and kindly.
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