The Ghiter on the Snow 93
the most beautiful woman in the world for my wife,
and that could only be done in the regular way by
showing her off in the best dresses and the most wonder-
ful jewellery. It was my duty to her as my wife, and I
could afford it perfectly well because I was a tolerably
rich man to start with anyhow, and besides, the five
thousand I was putting into Feccles’ business would
mean something like a quarter of a million at least,
on the most conservative calculations, as I had seen
with my own eyes.
And that was all clear profit, so there was no reason
in the world why one shouldn’t spend it in a sensible
way. Mr. Wolfe himself had emphasised the difficulty
of getting satisfactory investments in these times.
He told me how many people were putting their
money into diamonds and furs which always keep
their value, whereas government securities and that
sort of thing are subject to unexpected taxation, for
one thing, depreciation for another, with the pos-
sibility of European repudiation looming behind them
all.
As a family man, it was my duty to buy as many
jewels for Lou as I could afford. At the same time,
one has to be cautious.
I bought the things I mentioned and paid for them.
I refused to be tempted by a green pearl tie pin for
myself, though I should have liked to have had it be-
cause it would have reminded me of Lou’s eyes every
time I put it on. But it was really rather expensive,
and Mr. Wolfe had warned me very seriously about
getting into debt, so I paid for the rest of the stuff,
and we went off, and we thought we'd drive out to the
Bois for lunch, and then we took some more snow in
the taxi and Lou began to cry because I had bought
nothing for myself. So we took some more snow, we
had plenty of time, nobody lunches before two o’clock..
We went straight back to the shop and bought the
green pearl, and that got Lou so excited that the taxi
was like an aeroplane; if anything, more so.