"Better get that Bauersch money first. I suppose you put it in your safe?"
"Yes. I'll run up for it." As instructed, she had transferred the important sum for safety during the day from the drawer to her own safe.
"I'll go with you," said he, as if anxious not to deprive himself of her society even for one minute. As they were entering the bathroom he saw Elsie in the obscurity of the upper stairs.
"Elsie," he called, "run out and buy me the Evening Standard, will you? You'll get it opposite the Rowton House, you know. Here's a penny." His tone was carefully matter-of-fact. Both women were astounded; they were almost frightened. Violet had never known him to buy a paper, and Elsie scarcely ever. Violet was grateful for this proof that when the greatness of the occasion demanded it he was capable of sublime extravagance. First the fire! Now the paper! It was not credible.
In the bathroom, where nobody ever had a bath, but of which the bath was at any rate empty of books and very clean, Henry bent his head to avoid the clothes-lines, and Violet kneeled down and unlocked her safe. It was like a little picnic, a little pleasure excursion. It was the first time Henry had been present at the opening of Violet's battered old safe. She swung the steel door; the shadow of her head remained stationary, though the door swung, and fell across the pale interior of the safe in a shape as distorted as Violet's perspective had been half an hour earlier. A fair pile of securities tied up with white tape lay in the embrasure above the twin drawers. Violet drew forth the right-hand drawer; there was nothing in it but Mr. Bauersch's money—ten-pound notes, five-pound notes, one-pound Treasury notes, all new and lovely, with a soiled ten-shilling Treasury note, and some silver wrapped in a bit of brown paper. Violet placed the entire mass on the top of the safe, and Henry, settling his spectacles more firmly on his nose, began to count slowly, accurately, passionately. Violet watched him.
"Why!" he exclaimed with a contented smile, after two countings, "he's given you a pound too much. The bank-notes are all right, but there's nine pound notes instead of eight. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. Only ought to be eight. One hundred and forty-eight pounds, eighteen shillings, it ought to be all together."
"Well, that's funny, that is," said Violet. "I made sure I counted them right. Oh, I know! There was another pound for a French book I sold him. I forgot to enter it in the list. It was marked ten shillings, but I asked him a pound and he took it."
"Oh!" murmured Henry, disillusioned.
"Yes."
"And he took it at a pound, did he? Well, then, you made ten shillings for yourself that time, Vi." And he gave her the ten-shilling note, a glint of humour in his voice and glance.