landlord. "I was here a little while ago and nobody answered my knock, though I could hear that typewriter going rat, tat, tat all the time."
"I'm sorry, Mr. Chumley," said Jess, hastily. "But you know how mother is when she's busy. She hears nothing."
"Humph!"
"Won't you come in?" hesitated Jess, still holding the door. The rent was not due for a day or two, and he usually gave them a few days' grace if they did not happen to have it right in the nick of time.
"I guess I will," squeaked the landlord.
He was a little whiffet of a man—"looked like a figure on a New Year's cake," Bobby Hargrew said. His mouth was a mere slit in his gray, wrinkled face, and his eyes were so close together that the sharp bridge of his nose scarcely parted them.
Some landlords hire agents to attend to their property and to the collection of rents. Not so Mr. Chumley. He did not mind the trouble of collecting, and he could fight off repairs longer than any landlord in town. And the one-half of one per cent. collection fee was an item.
"Think I've come ahead of time, eh?" he cackled, rubbing his blue hands—as blue as a turkey's foot, Jess thought—over the renewed
