"But—Denis—it isn't our money, you see!"
He banged a nail into the shelf. "I may be a thief, but I'll never turn my friends away, Nell O'Brien!"
She laughed gaily. "I know! I'll make Sarah tell me the exact amount Aunt Kezia spends in a week, and we'll keep horrible accounts, and never go beyond it! At least, with her money. When we get to the end of that, we'll pay for the things with our own money, and live on bread and water and all that sort of thing!"
"We will, my twin, we will! You're a genius."
He took out his watch, then frowned. "Good-bye, Nell. Hustle me out, or I shall never go!"
"Poor old Denis!"
"That's not hustling. If you sympathise, I shall begin to cry, and refuse to budge."
She went down into the hall to help him into his coat.
"It's poor old Tellbridge, too," he observed comically. "I don't fancy I'm much of a bargain. Oh, Nell, aren't letters immeasurably more interesting, more human, than hard and dry figures? That Pennington," he added, "can tot up—subtract—fly around with figures, till he makes my head spin. He's helped me out lots of times."
"I'm going to figure, too, this morning—with Sarah! So you can think of me drowning in a sea of curly threes and twos and fives, and noughts—heaps of noughts."