What I told you in my former letter about bicycles not being luggage has just been confirmed by a decision of the High Court, so that railway companies are entitled to make a charge for carrying your bicycle by train, although they would take a bag of the same weight for nothing.
You cannot extend the time for paying a life assurance premium by adding the three days of grace on to the month’s grace already allowed you by the company. The three days of grace arise after the premium becomes payable and are included in the extended time given you by the company.
If you ever send in a withdrawal order to draw money out of the Post Office Savings Bank, and then find that you do not wish to take out the money because you have received some from some other source, be careful to always draw it out when you get your order, and, if you do not want to use it, pay it in again the following day.
It is most important that you should do this. If you do not do so, you leave the door open to fraud, because a duplicate withdrawal notice is sent to the post office named in your order, and some dishonest official might make use of it; and, secondly, it saves any confusion which might otherwise arise through your change of mind.
Of course I do not mean to say that the officials of the Post Office are dishonest—I should be sorry to make such a statement—but there are black sheep in every flock, and I do happen to know of a certain case in which a girl lost all her savings through not following the advice which I have just given you.
The case which I have in my mind was a particularly hard one, because the withdrawal order was for the whole amount of her banking account. And when she found that after all it was not necessary for her to close her account, it was only natural that she should think that if she did not use her withdrawal order, the money would still remain to her credit in the bank—and so it would have been if the postmaster of the country office had been an honest man; but, unfortunately for the girl, he was not. By means of the withdrawal order he succeeded in getting hold of her money and appropriating it to his own use.
Therefore, my dear Dorothy, despise not the warning of
Your affectionate cousin,
Bob Briefless.