"I mean that he paid a twopenny outstanding tailor's bill for me. And he writes now as if he had conferred the most overwhelming obligation." The fact was that Lord Seely had discharged a great number of Algernon's debts; all of them, as his lordship imagined. But there was clearly no need of troubling Castalia with these details. When the letter was finished and sealed, Castalia still sat musingly tracing unmeaning figures with the point of her pen on the blotting-book. At length she said with some hesitation, "Ancram, how is it that we spend so much money? I don't think I am very extravagant." "'So much money!' Good Heavens, Castalia--but you really have no conception of these things. Our whole income, and twice our income, is a miserable pittance. The Dormers pay their butler more." She was again silent for a little while. Then she said, "Isn't there anything we could do without?" Her husband looked at her in astonishment. It was a quite unexpected suggestion on Castalia's part. "Could you be kind enough to point out anything?" he asked drily. She looked somewhat cast down by his tone, but answered, "There's that last case of wine from town--the Rhine wine. Don't you think we might send it back unopened, and do with a bottle of sherry, now and then, from the 'Blue Bell?' Your mother finds that very good." "Pshaw!" with the accustomed sharp, impatient contempt. "My mother knows no more about wine than a baby. To drink bad wine is absolutely to poison oneself. I can't do it, and I don't mean to let you do it, either. And when one knows that it is only a question of a few months, more or less, and that directly I get a better berth these greedy rascals will be paid their extortionate bills in full--positively, Castalia, it seems to me childish to talk in that way!" It was the same with one or two other suggestions of retrenchment she ventured to make. Algernon showed conclusively (conclusively enough to satisfy his hearer, at all events) that it would not do--that it would be absolutely imprudent, on their part, to make any open retrenchment. All these sharks would come round them at once, if they smelt poverty. "I know these gentry better than you do, Castalia," said he. "There is no way of getting on with them except by not being in a hurry to pay them. Nothing spoils tradespeople so much as any over-alacrity of that kind. They immediately conclude that you can't do without them!" "Oh, they're disgustingly impudent creatures, these Whitford tradespeople! There is no doubt in the world about that," said Castalia, in perfect good faith. "Only I thought you seemed to be made uneasy by what Miss Bodkin said to you on the subject."