payment of any debts incurred by my wife under the sum of one pound.
That'll stop this half-crown cheque nuisance. Why don't you go out and buy
yourself a packet of assorted postal-orders?"

"I did once; but I got in with a nice long list just before closing-time,
and there was very nearly a riot on both sides of the counter."

"Well, anyhow, this sort of thing has got to stop; I can't waste all the
morning settling your miserable little bills. What we'll do is this: you
shall have your own banking-account, and in future you can write your own
cheques--as long as the Bank will stick it."

"Oh, how perfectly splendid!" cried Suzanne. "I've always wanted to have a
cheque-book of my own, but Father thought it unsexing. Do let's go and take
out the licence at once."

The precious hour of fertilisation was already wasted, so there and then I
escorted Suzanne to the Bank. At my demand we were ushered into the
Manager's room, where we were received with a courtesy only too obviously
tempered by the suspicion that I had come to suggest an overdraft. On my
explaining our errand, however, the Manager's features relaxed their
tenseness, and as I wrote the cheque that brought Suzanne's account into a
sordid world he even attempted a vein of fatherly benediction.

"Now we shall require a specimen of the lady's signature," he said as he
produced an amazingly obese ledger and indicated where Suzanne was to sign
her name. "Remove the glove, please," he added hastily.

"Just like old times in the vestry," said Suzanne to me in a whisper. Then
she wrote her name--"Suzanne Désirée Beverley Trumpington-Jones"--all of