“Your cheque,” replied the clerk.
“What’s that?”
“Have you not a cheque-book—or a slip of paper to—”
“Oh! ay, a book. Of course I’ve got a book, young man.”
Saying this, Mrs Gaff, (for it was she), produced from a huge bag the bank-book that had erstwhile reposed in the mysterious tea-caddy.
“Have you no other book than this?”
“No, young man,” replied Mrs Gaff, feeling, but not exhibiting, slight alarm.
The clerk, after glancing at the book, and with some curiosity at its owner, then explained that a cheque-book was desirable, although not absolutely necessary, and went and got one, and showed her the use of it,—how the sum to be drawn should be entered with the date, etcetera, on the margin in figures, and then the cheque itself drawn out in words, “not in figures,” and signed; after which he advised Mrs Gaff to draw out a cheque on the spot for what she wanted.
“But, young man,” said Mrs Gaff, who had listened to it all with an expression of imbecility on her good-looking face, “I never wrote a stroke in my life ’xcept once, when I tried to show my Billy how to do it, and only made a big blot on his copy, for which I gave him a slap on the face, poor ill-used boy.”
“Well, then, tell me how much you want, and I will write it out for you,” said the clerk, sitting down at a table and taking up a pen.