“Uncle, about money, about finance and things. I know it’s extraordinary I should like such things. But I do. I can’t tell why. It’s like--like a romance to me, all about money and how it is made and managed. There’s a book I found in father’s study at home. ‘Lombard Street’ by Bagehot. That’s all about it, isn’t it? I can’t tell you how I have read it and reread it.” “Never heard of it. ‘Lombard Street?’ Bagehot? Who’s Bagehot?” “I think he was a banker, Uncle.” “I think he was a fool!” It comes out of the red and swollen face of the holder of the illuminated address from the Rajah of Puttapongpoo like a plum-stone spat at her across the table. Rosalie blinked. These beastly men! Violent, vulgar, fat, rude beasts! Uncle Pyke the worst of them! But she came back bravely from her flinch. “If he wasn’t a banker, he knew all about banking. Oh, that’s what I would be more than anything--that’s what I do want to be--a banker--in a bank!” The holder of the illuminated address from the Rajah of Puttapongpoo as if, having expectorated the plum-stone, he desired to expectorate also the taste thereof, spat out an obscene sound of contempt and disgust. “Fah! I say the man, whoever he was, was a fool. And I say this, Miss. I don’t often speak sharply, but I say that I think I know another fool--a little fool--at this table. Pah! Enough of it! What’s this? Trout?” Aunt Belle to the rescue! If Uncle Pyke and Aunt Belle had kept house in Seven Dials instead of Notting Hill, Uncle Pyke would have beaten Aunt Belle and Aunt Belle would have taken the blows without flinching and then have wheedled Uncle Pyke with drops of gin. As it was, Uncle Pyke was merely boorish or torpidly savage towards Aunt Belle and Aunt Belle’s way with him--as with all combative men--was to rally him with a kind of boisterous chaff and to discharge it at him as an urchin with an armful of snowballs fearfully discharges them at an old gentleman in a silk hat: backing away, that is to say, before an advance and advancing before a retreat. Uncle Pyke usually retreated, either to eat or sleep.