u,
I mean," said Whimple. "You see I had intended to start you collecting
rents to-day."

"Me!"

"Yes. Miss Whimple, my boy, is the possessor of some twenty houses;
four of them in your district, William, to say nothing of some choice
lots that are increasing in value every month. She's a wonderful
woman, boy; her dad left her four houses to begin with, and she's done
the rest. If I had her business ability, William, I'd be on the fair
way to being wealthy now."

"But, Mister Whimple, my face won't matter. Like as not it'll give me
a chance to talk to the people and find out whether they're good
tenants or not. Let me try it, sir."

"All right. One of the tenants down your way owes two months' rent
now, and in the other cases the rents are due to-day. Here are the
addresses. You look after these four tenants every month; I'll take
care of the others."

And forthwith William Adolphus Turnpike set out, as he expressed it to
Lucien Torrance, "to round up some coin for Mister Whimple's aunt." He
was proud of the trust imposed in him, and could not forbear a parting
shot at Lucien.

"You're gotter stay here," he said importantly, "and answer fool
questions when people call. But it's me to the front, Lucien Torrance,
on a man's job."

CHAPTER VI

William was an unconscious diplomat. His business career had already
been marked by the devotion of much time to the consideration of the
easiest methods of dealing with problems as they presented themselves
from time to time, though not always with success, and his first
perusal of the list of tenants handed him by Whimple showed him that
the job of rent collecting would be no sinecure. He knew his own
district very well; the work and conditions, the family life, and many
other details of a more or less intimate nature, were matters of
knowledge to him. He read the list over again as he turned down a
street to make his first call, and then passed the first house on his
list, and kept right on until he came to Jimmy Duggan's coal and wood
yard. Jimmy was located in his office, a wooden shack with a tin roof,
where he was laboriously engaged in the monthly task of straightening
out his books. To him William confided the errand entrusted to him,
and over the habits and the career of the first-named tenant on the
list there followed a solemn conference. At its close, William, with a
"Much obliged, Jimmy," sallied forth to the house he had passed on his