e on, to endure."

CHAPTER XX

SHOPPING

Mrs. Potten found that it "paid" to do her own shopping, and she did it
once every week, on Friday. For this purpose she was compelled to use
her car. This grieved her. Her extreme desire to save petrol would have
been more patriotic if she had not availed herself, on every possible
occasion, of using other people's petrol, or, so to speak, other
people's oats.

She had gone to the Sale of work in Boreham's gig, but there was not
much room in it for miscellaneous parcels, so she was obliged to come
into Oxford on the following morning as usual and do her regular
shopping.

Mrs. Potten's acquaintance with the University consisted in knowing a
member of it here and there, and in accepting invitations to any public
function which did not involve the expenditure of her own money. No
Greenleafe Potten had ever given any endowment to Oxford, nor, for the
matter of that, had any Squire of Chartcote ever spent a penny for the
advancement of learning. Indeed, the old County had been mostly occupied
in preserving itself from gradual extinction, and the new County, the
Nouveaux Riches, had been mainly occupied in the dissipation of energy.

But Mrs. Potten had given the Potten revenues a new lease of life. Not
only did she make a point of not reducing her capital, but she was
increasing it year by year. She did this by systematic and often minute
economies (which is the true secret of economy). The surface of her
nature was emotional, enclosing a core of flint, so that when she (being
short-sighted) dropped things about in moments of excitement, agreeable
or disagreeable, she made such losses good by drawing in the household
belt. If she inadvertently dropped a half-crown piece down a grating
while exchanging controversial remarks with a local tradesman, or mixed
up a note with her pocket handkerchief and mislaid both when forced to
find a subscription to some pious object, or if she left a purse
containing one shilling and fivepence behind her on a chair in the
agitation of meeting a man whom she admired (a man like the Warden, for
instance); when such misfortunes happened she made them up--somehow!

Knowing her own weakness, she armed herself against it, by never
carrying money about with her, except on rare occasions. When she
travelled, her maid carried the money (with her head as the price of
it).

This Friday morning, therefore, Mrs. Potten had a business duty before