It was always in these few days before his yearly exodus, that John ran across the things that one most desires to buy. Shop-keepers had a bad habit of placing their most alluring bargains in the very fore-front of the window. Everything, in fact, seemed cheaper in July, and seventeen pounds was a sum which had all the appearance of being so immense, that the detraction of thirty shillings from the hoard would make but little material difference to the bulk of it. But John had learnt by experience that if you take thirty shillings from seventeen pounds, it leaves fifteen pounds ten, an odd amount, demanding that those ten shillings be spent also to equalise matters. Then the fifteen pounds which is left is still immense and the process beginning all over again, there is finally left but a quota of what had been at first. With fifteen pounds in bank notes in his letter-case and two pounds in gold in his pocket, he found himself looking in the window of Payne and Welcome’s, where a little Nankin milk jug of some unimpeachable dynasty was standing in all expectation, just waiting to catch the eye of such a person as himself who might chance to pass by. That afternoon, Jill was coming to tea--her first visit to Fetter Lane, made, as he thought, simply in honour of his departure. And that little milk jug was begging to come, too. He stood for a while and stared at it. It would not be more than fifteen shillings--expensive, too, at that. Fifteen shillings would make no impression upon so vast a sum as seventeen pounds. A voice whispered it in his ear, from behind his back,--just over his shoulder. "You want a milk jug," said the voice, "and it’s a beautiful blue. It will go wonderfully with the teapot and the little blue and white cups and saucers. Get it, man! Get it!" and it reminded him in a joking way, with a subtle, cunning laugh, of his philosophy when he was a boy. "What are sweets for, but to eat?" "What is money for, but to spend?" With sudden decision, he walked in; but it was not through the entrance of the jeweller’s shop. He marched into the confessional box in the chapel of unredemption. There, pulling out his three five-pound notes and his two sovereigns, he planked them down upon the counter. "I want ten shillings on those," said he. They were used to John’s eccentricities there, but they never thought him so mad as this. "Why, it’s seventeen pounds," said the man. "That’s quite right," said John. "I counted it myself. And I want ten shillings on it."