id dreamily. "I've often
wondered how that was done. Do you like it?"

"No, Francesca," I said, "I do not like it. To be quite frank with you I
detest it."

"But you're helping the War," she said. "That ought to buck you up like
anything. Every extra penny you pay is a smack in the eye for the
KAISER, so cheer up and make a good big return."

"I will do," I said, "what is strictly fair between myself and the
Government. I can afford to be just to the CHANCELLOR, but, by Heaven, I
cannot afford to be generous. Generosity has no place in an Income Tax
return."

"Go ahead with it then," she said. "I don't know what's stopping you."

"You," I said, "are stopping me--you and that part of my income from
which the tax is not deducted at the source."

"That sounds quite poetical," she said. "It runs into metre directly.
Listen:--

No man can well be rude or even coarse
Who has his tax deducted at the source.

But I wish you'd tell me what it means."

"Francesca," I said bitterly, "you are pleased to be a rhymer. You are,
in fact, rhyming while the exchequer is burning; and then you add insult
to injury by asking me the meaning of an elementary financial phrase."

"Well, what _does_ it mean?"

"It means," I said, "that if your money is invested in public companies
or things of that nature, then when your half-yearly dividend--You know
what a dividend is?"

"Rather," she said. "It comes in on blue paper or pink, and you say,
'That's something to be thankful for;' and you write your name on one
half of it and you send that half to the bank, and you tear off the
other half and lose it in the next spring-cleaning. I know what a
dividend is all right."

"Francesca," I said, "your knowledge is very wonderful. But if you
suppose that that is the whole dividend, you are much mistaken. It is
the dividend minus the tax. The company saves you trouble by deducting
the tax and pays it to the CHANCELLOR for you."

"Bravo the company!" said Francesca.

"And so say I. You see you never get that part of your money, so there's
no temptation to spend it--in fact you don't spend it."

"That," she said, "sounds highly plausible."

"Yes, but listen. Suppose you've got some little job at, say, two
hundred and fifty pounds a year"--

"Like the little job you were so pleased to get a few years ago."

"Yes," I said, "more or less like that."

"Not so honourable, of course," said Francesca.

"No, of course not, but similar