I agreed that it wasn’t.
“Then I thought I would change half a sovereign—that would be smaller and look less hoardingish—at the station, as I was going into Chepstow to get some more wool for those socks for Queen Mary. Would you believe it?—the station-master said—you know his jocular way—‘Why, Miss Primkins, what bank have you been robbing? I haven’t had my hand crossed with gold, I don’t know when! I’d like to keep it myself, for luck, only the Prime Minister would be down on me for hoarding, I suppose.’
“My knees shook so I could hardly get into the train. I decided I wouldn’t let anyone see another bit of it; yet actually, when I was in Mrs. Davis’s shop and getting out the money to pay for the wool, if I didn’t take out another half-sovereign in mistake for a sixpence!—I was so unnerved, I suppose—and she said, ‘Just fancy seeing a half-sovereign again! I thought they were all called in. Wherever did you light on that, Miss Primkins?’
“Now you can understand I’m at my wits’ end to know what to do with that money. I can’t spend it without everyone knowing. If I put it in my savings bank book, and so get it back to the Government that way, I have to hand it over the counter at the post office. You know so much about business, can you suggest anything?”
I immediately offered to give the nervous, worried lady Treasury notes in exchange.
“Oh, but I couldn’t let you incriminate yourself like that,” she protested, “kind as it is of you. There’s your reputation as well as mine to be thought of.”
I explained, however, that it was easier to dispose of an accusing golden sovereign in London without arousing the suspicions of the populace than it was in the country, and I said I was sure my bank manager would oblige me by receiving the gold for the good of the country, knowing me to be an honest and respectable Englishwoman.
“I never thought to be so thankful to see the last of a sovereign,” she said, as she tucked the paper notes into her handbag. “I’ve scarcely slept all this week. Why, Germany is the very last thing I would help!”