Peggy turned astonished and outraged eyes on him.
'I'll invest it for you, and get you forty or fifty pounds a year for it—regular—quarterly.'
'I'm going to spend it,' Peggy announced decisively. 'There are a thousand things I want to do with it. It is good of uncle!'
'No, no! You give it to me. You must learn to value money.'
'To value money! Why must I? None of us do.' She looked round the table. 'Certainly we've none of us got any.'
'It would be much better if they did value it,' said Tommy with a politico-economical air.
'You say that when you've made poor Airey give us this dinner!' she cried triumphantly.
With a wry smile Tommy Trent gave up the argument; he had no answer to that. Yet he was a little vexed. He was a normal man about money; his two greatest friends—Peggy and Airey Newton—were at the extreme in different directions. What did that signify? Well, after all, something. The attitude people hold towards money is, in one way and another, a curiously far-reaching thing, both in its expression of them and in its effect on others. Just as there was always an awkwardness between Tommy and Airey Newton because Airey would not spend as much as he ought, there was now a hint of tension, of disapproval on one side and of defiance on the other, because Peggy meant to spend all that she had. There is no safety even in having nothing; the problems you escape for yourself you raise for your friends.
Peggy, having sworn Tommy to secrecy, turned her head round, saw Arty Kane, could by no means resist the temptation, told him the news, and swore him to secrecy. He gave his word, and remarked across the table to Miles Childwick: 'Peggy's been left a thousand pounds.'