She accepted a pinch of his tobacco, and refilled her pipe, and he gave her a match. "I ’m not going out of this house without half a crown at any rate!" said Denry blithely. And he rolled himself a cigarette, possibly to keep warm. It was very chilly in the stuffy residence, but the old woman never shivered. 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 ye about my son Jack. He ’s been playing [out of work] six weeks. He starts to-day, and he ’ll gi’ me summat Saturday." "That won’t do," said Denry, curtly and kindly. He then, with his bluff benevolence, explained to Mother Hullins that Mrs. Codleyn would stand no further increase of arrears, from anybody, that she could not afford to stand any further increase of arrears, that her tenants were ruining her, and that he himself, with all his cheery good will for the rent-paying classes, would be involved in her fall. "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. "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 ought not to be here alone. You ought to be with one of your children." There was more conversation, which ended in Denry repeating, with sympathetic resignation: "No, you ’ll have to get out. It’s bailiffs." Immediately afterwards he left the residence, with a bright filial smile. And then, in two minutes, he popped his cheerful head in at the door again. "Look here, mother," he said, "I ’ll lend you half a crown if you like." Charity beamed on his face, and genuinely warmed his heart. "But you must pay me something for the accommodation," he added. "I can’t do it for nothing. You must pay me back next week and give me threepence. That’s fair. I could n’t bear to see you turned out of your house. Now, get your rent-book." And he marked half a crown as paid in her greasy, dirty rent-book, and the same in his large book. "Eh, you ’re a queer ’un, Mester Machin!" murmured the old woman, as he left. He never knew precisely what she meant. Fifteen—twenty years later in his career, her intonation of that phrase would recur to him and puzzle him.