"Oh, perhaps I shouldn't have said that. Your wife told me about that, one day I was having tea with her. It wasn't her fault, really. I saw the notes peering through the tea. A bit germy, I thought. For the tea, I mean. But an awfully good idea." As Kindness was still speechless. "Boiling water kills most things, anyhow. Besides," she said, bringing up as support what she should have used for attack, "who else could I go to?"
She reached over and took the stub of pencil from him, turned over a handbill of the local gymkhana which was lying on the saddle-room table, and wrote in schoolgirl characters on the back:
I owe Bartholomew Kindness ten pounds. Erica Meir Burgoyne.
"That will do until Saturday," she said. "My checkbook is finished, anyhow."
"I don't like you frittering away my brass handles all over Kent," Kindness grumbled.
"I think brass handles are very showy," Erica said. "You'd do much better to have wrought iron."
As they went through the gardens together towards his cottage and the tea caddy, Erica said:
"About how many pawnbrokers are there in Kent?"
"'Bout two thousand."
"Oh, dear!" said Erica. And let the conversation lapse.