‘It’ll never do if other people get to know about it,’ he said. ‘We shall be having all the happy families in, though I don’t suppose they’ve got much money. Have another notice put up at once.’
The manager took an enormous quill pen from behind the counter. It reached right up to the ceiling of the room, and he had to hold it in both hands. Up the side of it was printed, ‘Rod, pole or perch.’
‘What shall I say?’ he asked.
‘You may say whatever you like,’ said the Mint-man, ‘but you must write whatever I like. Now begin’—
‘Sovereigns are five pounds two ounces each to-day, but they’ll be dearer to-morrow.’
‘Then will you please give me five pounds for each of my sovereigns?’ asked the greedy David. ‘Never mind about the ounces.’
The Mint-man and manager whispered together for a little while, and David could hear fragments of their talk like ‘financial stringency,’ ‘tight tendency,’ ‘collapse of credit,’ which meant nothing to him. All the time the porter was shovelling sovereigns down the back of the Mint-man’s neck.
‘The only thing to be done,’ he said, ‘is to write another notice. Write “The Bank has suspended payment altogether. The deposits are therefore forfeited by square root, rule of three, and compound interest.” What do you make of that?’ he asked David triumphantly.
David knew that compound interest and square root came a long way on in the arithmetic book, and that he couldn’t be properly expected to make anything of it. Evidently they were not going to pay him five sovereigns for each of his, but he had done pretty well already, with his four sovereigns instead of four pence.
‘I don’t make anything of it yet,’ he said, ‘because I haven’t got as far.’