"I shouldn't dream of doing anything of the sort."
"Come, then, be quick about it. This suspense is making me tremble for my War Loan Bonds."
"Is the Bank," said Francesca, "a generous institution?"
"Banks," I said, "cannot afford to be generous. They are just and accurate and there's an end of it."
"The Bank of England," she said, "being so great, is an exception to the rule. Anyhow, it has been generous to me, for it has given me one hundred pounds."
"Do you mean," I cried, "one hundred pounds that don't belong to you?"
"Of course I do. If they had belonged to me there wouldn't have been anything to make a fuss about."
"This," I said, "is one of the most breathless things ever known. A mere woman, who is unskilled in finance and has only the dimmest recollection of the rule of three and compound interest, gets the better of the greatest banking institution in the world to the tune of one hundred pounds. It's incredible. Of course you've made a mistake."
"That's right," she said. "Always go against your wife and think her wrong, even when it is only an institution that she's contending with."
"It's precisely because it is an institution that I doubt your statement."