“For the benefit of new readers a synopsis is attached,” said Suzanne.  “They’re mostly small items; for instance, Madame Pillby—­she’s the little dressmaker round the corner, you know; though why an all-British spinster should call herself ‘Madame’ I can’t imagine—­five-and-fourpence-ha’penny.”

“Suzanne; I will not write a cheque for five-and-fourpence-ha’penny!  Are they all like that?”

“The biggest is two guineas; that’s what it cost to have my last dance-hat altered to your specifications, because you said it tickled your nose.  There are seventeen of them in all—­bills, not hats; total, twelve pounds fifteen shillings and elevenpence three farthings, pa-pa.”

“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do,” I said.  “I’m going to advertise in the Personal Columns of the papers that I will not be responsible for 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 Desiree Beverley Trumpington-Jones”—­all of it.  By the time she had finished she had trespassed into several columns reserved for entirely different uses.  The Manager surveyed the effect with consternation.

“Rather a long name, isn’t it?” he asked diffidently.  “I was only wondering if our cheque-forms would accommodate it all.”

“Well, I’m not really responsible for it all,” she replied.  “The Trumpington-Jones part is the more or less permanent result of a serious accident when I was little more than a child.  But I might shorten it a bit.  I sometimes answer to the name of Soozles, but I suppose that would only do for really intimate cheques.  How would ‘S.  Beverley T.-Jones’ do?  I shouldn’t like to lose the ‘Beverley’ as it’s a kind of family heirloom, and I always use it, even when I’m writing to the sweep.”