"Well, what does it mean?"
"It means," I said, "that if your money is invested in public companies or things of that nature, then when your half-yearly dividend—You know what a dividend is?"
"Rather," she said. "It comes in on blue paper or pink, and you say, 'That's something to be thankful for;' and you write your name on one half of it and you send that half to the bank, and you tear off the other half and lose it in the next spring-cleaning. I know what a dividend is all right."
"Francesca," I said, "your knowledge is very wonderful. But if you suppose that that is the whole dividend, you are much mistaken. It is the dividend minus the tax. The company saves you trouble by deducting the tax and pays it to the Chancellor for you."
"Bravo the company!" said Francesca.
"And so say I. You see you never get that part of your money, so there's no temptation to spend it—in fact you don't spend it."
"That," she said, "sounds highly plausible."
"Yes, but listen. Suppose you've got some little job at, say, two hundred and fifty pounds a year"—
"Like the little job you were so pleased to get a few years ago."
"Yes," I said, "more or less like that."