“I like this much better, the more I look at it, my dear,” said Enoch, relieving himself of his best spectacles, and carefully locking up the drawing in his desk: “stay; do not go without your money. I shall make you a present over and above what we agreed upon; for, as your mother says, it is certainly your best piece. Now, I don’t mean to guess what you are going to do with this money. There come times when girls have use for money. But if you should just be going to give it to your mother to lay by, I could let you have a guinea for that note and shilling. Guineas are scarce now-a-days; but I have one, and I know your mother is fond of keeping them. Will you take it for her?”
Hester was not going to put her money into her mother’s hands. Into the new bank perhaps?—No, she was not going to lay it by at all. And she blushed more than ever, and left the shop.
Enoch sighed deeply, and then smiled dubiously, while he wondered what Mrs. Parndon would do when her daughter married away from her to London, as she was just about to do. It was a sad pinch when her son Philip settled in London, though he had a fine goldsmith’s business; but Hester was so much cleverer, so much more like herself, that her removal would be a greater loss still.
“Why should she not go to London too?” Mr. Craig inquired.
O no, Enoch protested; it was, he believed, he flattered himself, he had understood,—quite out of the question. He added, confidentially, that it might be a good thing for the new bank if she would lodge her money there, for she had a very pretty store of guineas laid by.
“Does she value them as gold,—I mean as being more valuable than bank-notes,—or as riches?” asked Mr. Craig. “If the one, she will rather keep them in her own hands. If the other, she will be glad of interest upon them.”
“She began by being afraid that the war would empty the country of money; and now that less and less gold is to be seen every day, she values her guineas more than ever, and would not part with them, I believe, for any price. As often as she and I get together to talk of our young days, she complains of the flimsy rags that such men as Cavendish choose to call money. ‘Put a note in the scale,’ says she, ‘and what does it weigh against a guinea? and if a spark flies upon it out of the candle, where is it?’—Many’s the argument we have had upon this. I tell her that there is no real loss when a bank note is burned, as there is if an idle sailor chucks a guinea into the sea.”
“If a magpie should chance to steal away a five-pound note of yours,” said the curate, “or if you should chance to let your pocket-book fall into the fire, you will have Mrs. Parndon coming to comfort you with assurances that there is no real loss.”
“To me, there would be, Sir. I do not deny that. I mean that no actual wealth would be destroyed, because the bank note I hold only promises to pay so much gold, which is safe in somebody’s hands, whether there be a fire or not. When gold is melted in a fire, it may be worth more or less (supposing it recovered) than it was worth as coin, according to the value of gold at the time. If the enemy captures it at sea, it is so much dead loss to our country, and so much clear gain to the enemy’s. If a cargo of precious metals goes to the bottom, it is so much dead loss to everybody. So I tell Mrs. Parndon.”
“As she is not likely to go to sea, I suppose she determines to keep her guineas, and guard against fire.”[fire.”]