It is most annoying to have the cold light of feminine logic turned on to an impromptu epigram. The gardener pushed the parsnips towards her as a hint that she was talking too much. But Courtesy had the sort of eye that sees no subtlety in parsnips. Her understanding was of the black and white type.
“Death is the door to life,” remarked Miss Shakespeare, nailing down the golden opportunity with eagerness. 21 Penny Street very rarely gave Miss Shakespeare the satisfaction of such an opening. There was, however, a lamentable lack of response. The subject, which had been upheld contrary to the laws of gravitation, fell heavily to earth.
“Is this your threepenny bit or mine?” asked the girl Courtesy. For that potent symbol, the victim of its owner’s absence of mind, in the course of violent exercise between the gardener’s plate and hers, had fallen into her lap.
Whose idea was it to make money round? I sometimes feel certain I could control it better if it were square.
“It is mine,” said the gardener, still posing as a philosopher. “A little splinter out of the brimstone lake. Feel it.”
Courtesy smelt it without repulsion.
“Talk again,” she said. “Where would you be without money?”
“Where would I be without money? Where would I be without any of the vices? Singing in Paradise, I suppose.”
“If I pocket this threepenny bit,” said Courtesy, that practical girl, “what will you say?”
“Thank you—and good-bye,” replied the gardener. “It is my last link with the world.”