"You mustn't forget its detachment of the Guards to protect it. Many's the good dinner I've had with the officer of the Bank Guard in the old days." "I'm afraid that leaves me cold, not being able to take part in it." "If it gave me pleasure to dine at the Bank, I should have thought the subject would have interested you." "Well, it wasn't exactly what I wanted to consult you about." "What was it then?" I said. "You know you mustn't cast doubts on the financial stability of the Bank. You'll be put in prison if you do." "I shouldn't dream of doing anything of the sort." "Come, then, be quick about it. This suspense is making me tremble for my War Loan Bonds." "Is the Bank," said Francesca, "a generous institution?" "Banks," I said, "cannot afford to be generous. They are just and accurate and there's an end of it." "The Bank of England," she said, "being so great, is an exception to the rule. Anyhow, it has been generous to me, for it has given me one hundred pounds." "Do you mean," I cried, "one hundred pounds that don't belong to you?" "Of course I do. If they had belonged to me there wouldn't have been anything to make a fuss about." "This," I said, "is one of the most breathless things ever known. A mere woman, who is unskilled in finance and has only the dimmest recollection of the rule of three and compound interest, gets the better of the greatest banking institution in the world to the tune of one hundred pounds. It's incredible. Of course you've made a mistake." "That's right," she said. "Always go against your wife and think her wrong, even when it is only an institution that she's contending with." "It's precisely because it is an institution that I doubt your statement." "You're not very helpful; you don't tell me whether I'm to sit down under the burden of owning one hundred pounds of the bank's money that doesn't belong to me." "Francesca," I said, "you must calm yourself and tell me as clearly as possible how you came into possession of this extra hundred pounds which is apparently burning a hole in your pocket--if indeed you have a pocket, which I doubt." "You're quite wrong; I've got two pockets in the dress I'm wearing at this moment." "I will not," I said, "discuss with you the number of your pockets. Now tell me your pathetic story. I am all ears." "Well," said Francesca, "it's this way. I put one hundred pounds in the old War Loan, and then Exchequer Bonds came along, and I put one hundred pounds of my very best savings into them, and then came the new Five per Cent. War Loan, and somehow or other I got converted into that. And after that there was what they called a broken amount, which I brought up to fifty pounds or a multiple of fifty pounds. That cost me about forty pounds. I don't know why they wanted me to do it or why I did it." "Probably they thought it would be easier for the Bank." "That's paltry; easiness ought to have nothing to do with it."