"Oh, I couldn't." Erica was almost shocked. "Hart is quite new." Hart being a newcomer with only eleven years' service.
Kindness looked mollified.
"It isn't anything shady," she assured him. "I would have got it from Father at dinner tonight; the money, I mean; but he has gone to Uncle William's for the night. And women are so inquisitive," she added after a pause.
This, which could only refer to Nannie, made up the ground she had lost over the petrol. Kindness hated Nannie.
"Ten pounds is a big bit out of my coffin," he said with a sideways jerk of the head.
"You won't need it before Saturday. I have eight pounds in the bank, but I don't want to waste time tomorrow morning going into Westover for it. Time is awfully precious just now. If anything happens to me, you're sure of eight pounds anyhow. And Father is good for the other two."
"And what made you come to Kindness?"
There was complacence in the tone, and anyone but Erica would have said: because you are my oldest friend, because you have always helped me out of difficulties since I was three years old and first put my legs astride a pony, because you can keep my counsel and yours, because in spite of your cantankerousness you are an old darling.
But Erica said, "I just thought how much handier tea caddies were than banks."
" What's that! "