That afternoon like a miser he spread his twenty big notes all over the table, and a sudden exaggerated sense of their value came to him. Twenty thousand francs! Why, it meant Capital. In some quiet country place he could live for three or four years on that; buy himself an interest in a business, get a good start in life again. The Casino had served him well.
Margot looked at him with growing anxiety. “You’ll stop now, won’t you?”
“No, I haven’t got enough yet.”
“Mon Dieu! How much do you want?”
“Sixty thousand! I want to buy a good car for about twenty thousand. Then there’s a little cottage with a big garden at Villefranche I can get for another twenty. Between the car and the garden I think I can make a pretty tidy living.”
“And the third twenty?”
“That’s for you, my child. What the French call a dot, the day you marry.”
“And if I never marry?”
“Well, then, you’ll keep house for me in my little cottage covered with roses. You’ll still be my little sister.”
“That’s nicer. Now you can stop at forty thousand.”