The Canon turned and walked off, wondering in his mind who the very pretty, smartly dressed girl was. Harding unfolded the paper. It was a pound note and inside was not one but two new ten-shilling notes—only stuck together.
"You've given me too much, one pound and two tens," he said, and he separated the two notes and gave one back to Gwen. "You're a bit too generous, Miss Scott," he said.
Gwen took the note, dimpling and smiling and Harding wrote "paid" in pencil on the mauve paper.
"Here's your receipt," he said, handing her the paper, "the collar and all," and he turned away and went back to the sale room, with the money in his pocket.
Meanwhile Gwendolen did not run, she walked back very deliberately. She had the collar in one hand and the ten-shilling note in the other. She heard the two men turn and walk towards the gate. The old gentleman with a gown on, by which she meant the Canon, had disappeared. The quadrangle was empty. Gwen was thinking, thinking.
It wasn't she who was generous, it was Mrs. Potten, at least not generous but casual. She was probably casual because, although she was supposed to be stingy, a ten-shilling note made really no difference to her. It was too bad that some women had so much money and some so little. It was especially unjust that an old plain woman like Mrs. Potten could have hundreds of frocks if she wanted to, and that young pretty women often couldn't. It was very, very unjust and stupid. Why she, Gwen, hadn't enough money even to buy a wretched umbrella. It looked exactly as if it was going to rain later on, and yet there was no umbrella she could borrow. The umbrella she had borrowed before, had disappeared from the stand: it must have been left by somebody and been returned. You can't borrow an umbrella that isn't there. It was all very well for her mother to say "borrow" an umbrella, but suppose there wasn't an umbrella! The idea flashed into Gwen's mind that an umbrella could be bought for ten shillings. It wouldn't be a smart umbrella, but it would be an umbrella. Then she remembered very vividly how, a year ago, she was in a railway carriage with her mother and there was one woman there sitting in a corner at the other end. This woman fidgeted with her purse a great deal, and when she got out, a sovereign was lying on the floor just where her feet had been. Gwen remembered her mother moving swiftly, picking it up, and putting the coin into her own purse, remarking, "If people are so careless they deserve to lose things," and Gwen felt that the remark was keenly just, and made several little things "right" that other people had said were wrong. Now, as she thought this over, she said to herself that it was only a week ago she had lost that umbrella: somebody must have got that umbrella and had been using it for a week, and she didn't blame them; beside the handle had got rather bashed. Another dozen steps towards the rooms made her feel very, very sure she didn't blame them, and—Mrs. Potten deserved to lose her ten-shilling note. Now she had reached the doorway, an idea, that was a natural development of the previous idea, came to her very definitely. She slipped the note into the right-hand pocket of her coat just as she stood on the threshold of the doorway, and then she ran up the stone stairs. No one was looking out of the window. She had noticed that as she came along. Now, she would see if Mrs. Potten was really careless enough not to know that she had given away two ten-shilling notes instead of one.
Gwendolen walked into the sitting-room. There were Mrs. Potten and Lady Dashwood sitting together and talking, as if they intended remaining there for ever.
"Here's your collar, Mrs. Potten," said Gwen, coming in with the prettiest flush on her face, from the haste with which she had mounted the stairs.
She handed the roll of mauve paper and stood looking at Mrs. Potten. Now, she would find out whether Mrs. Potten knew she had flung away her precious ten-shilling note or not. If she was so stingy why was she so careless? She was very, very short-sighted, of course, but still that was no excuse.
"Thanks, my dear," said Mrs. Potten. "I doubt if it is really as nice as the one we saw that was sold. Thirty shillings—the receipt is on the paper. It's the first time I've ever had a receipt at a bazaar or sale. Very business-like; Mr Harding, of course. One can see the handwriting isn't a woman's!" So saying Mrs. Potten, who had been peering hard at the collar and the paper, passed it to Lady Dashwood to look at.