In the bathroom, where nobody ever had a bath, but of which the bath was at any rate empty of books and very clean, Henry bent his head to avoid the clothes-lines, and Violet kneeled down and unlocked her safe. It was like a little picnic, a little pleasure excursion. It was the first time Henry had been present at the opening of Violet's battered old safe. She swung the steel door; the shadow of her head remained stationary, though the door swung, and fell across the pale interior of the safe in a shape as distorted as Violet's perspective had been half an hour earlier. A fair pile of securities tied up with white tape lay in the embrasure above the twin drawers. Violet drew forth the right-hand drawer; there was nothing in it but Mr. Bauersch's money--ten-pound notes, five-pound notes, one-pound Treasury notes, all new and lovely, with a soiled ten-shilling Treasury note, and some silver wrapped in a bit of brown paper. Violet placed the entire mass on the top of the safe, and Henry, settling his spectacles more firmly on his nose, began to count slowly, accurately, passionately. Violet watched him.
"Why!" he exclaimed with a contented smile, after two countings, "he's given you a pound too much. The bank-notes are all right, but there's nine pound notes instead of eight. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. Only ought to be eight. One hundred and forty-eight pounds, eighteen shillings, it ought to be all together."
"Well, that's funny, that is," said Violet. "I made sure I counted them right. Oh, I know! There was another pound for a French book I sold him. I forgot to enter it in the list. It was marked ten shillings, but I asked him a pound and he took it."
"And he took it at a pound, did he? Well, then, you made ten shillings for yourself that time, Vi." And he gave her the ten-shilling note, a glint of humour in his voice and glance.
Princely munificence! She was deliciously dumbfounded. She had misjudged him. Heaven was established again in the sealed home. She thanked him with a squeeze of the arm, and then put the note in the left-hand drawer of the safe, where were a lot of other notes.
"So that's your stand-by, in case?" said Henry.
"That's my stand-by, in case," said Violet, pleased by the proud approval in his voice, and she snapped-to the drawer and the brass handle rattled against the front of it.