"I suppose I could have this money any time I wished?" she said.
"Certainly. You have only to write a cheque for it."
Carrie opened a paper, and handed it to him. "I have had it all explained to me, but I am afraid I don't understand it very well," she said. "Until I was married I could get only a little of the money as my trustees gave it to me, and they put the rest into an English bank for me. I have the book here. You will see how much the dividends and interest come to every year."
The banker studied the document carefully. Then he took the pass-book she handed him. "Well," he said, "you can do whatever you like with it now. Quite a sum of money has accumulated."
"I could put it into your bank here?"
"Of course. I should be glad to arrange it for you. You would also get more interest for it than you seem to have done in England."
"Then I want you to do it. You lend people money. I wonder if you could let me have as much now as I would get in the next four or five years. Of course, you would charge me for doing it."
The banker smiled a little, and shook his head as he glanced at the document. "You will excuse my mentioning that the interest on the money involved is only to be paid—to you."
"Ah," said Carrie, "of course, I might die, and then, I remember, it would go back again. Still, that only makes what I want to do more necessary. I suppose I could make over to my husband all the money there is in the English bank and anything else that really belongs to me? That is, I could put it into his account here? You see, I don't want him to know—anything about it for a little while."
The banker reflected. He had done business for years with Leland and considered him a friend. This dainty woman's devotion to her husband appealed to him. He decided that he might, for once, go a little further than was usual from a business point of view. "Well," he said, reflectively, "I think I should wait a little. If you kept the money in your own name, you could hand him as much as you thought advisable at any time it appeared necessary. On the whole, I fancy that would be wiser."