the dock.  Counsel could not bring himself to say that she was expecting a baby.  He said that she was “in a certain condition.”  The modesty of the law is marvellous.  One of the most interesting of the prisoners was a little sleek-headed man accused of fraud, who kept moving his head about like a tortoise’s out of its shell.  His head was black and shining where it was not bald and shining.  He had gold-rimmed spectacles and a sallow face.  He glided his hands over the knobs on the front of the dock with a reptilian smoothness.  He had persuaded a number of tradesmen and hotel-keepers that he was an English peer.  He had even complained to one shopkeeper of the smallness of a wallet, as he needed something larger to hold the title-deeds relating to the peerage.  In another case, a young man, staying in a house, had stolen, along with other things, his hostess’s false teeth, her best dress and a great quantity of underclothing.  A parcel of clothing had been recovered from a second-hand shop and was shown to the lady when in the witness-box.  She took up one of the garments and fingered it.  “Well,” said the prosecuting counsel, encouragingly, “is that your best dress?” “Naoh,” she said melancholily, “that’s me ypron.”  Then there was a young man who stole a motor-bicycle by presenting a revolver at the head of the owner.  He denied that he had stolen it, and maintained that, after he had apologised to the owner “for having treated him so abruptly,” they had become friendly and he had been told to take the bicycle away and pay for it later.  Alas! there is a limit to human credulity.  Besides, the young man had a crooked mouth.  After two days in court, one begins to believe that one can tell an honest man from a liar by looking at him.  Probably one is over-confident.

XXII

THE THREE-HALFPENNY BIT

As a rule, there is nothing that offends us more than a new kind of money.  We felt humiliated in the early days of the war when we were no longer paid in heavy little discs of gold, and had to accept paper pounds and ten-shillingses.  We even sneered at the design.  We always sneer at the design of new money or a new stamp.  But we hated the paper even more than the design.  We could not believe it had any value.  We spent it as though it were paper.  One would as soon have thought of collecting old newspapers as of playing the miser with it.  That is probably the true secret of the fall in the value of money.  Economists explain it in other ways.  But it seems likeliest that paper money lost its value because we did not value it.  Shopkeepers took advantage of our foolish innocence, and the tailor demanded sums in paper that he would never have dared to ask in gold.  I doubt if the habit of thrift will ever be restored till the gold currency comes back.  Gold is the only metal for which human beings have any lasting respect.  No one but a child would save up pennies.  There is something in gold—­the colour, perhaps, reminding us of the sun, the god of our ancestors—­that puts us into the mood of worshippers.  The children of Israel found it impossible not to worship the golden calf.  They have gone on worshipping it ever since.  Had the calf been of paper, they would, I feel confident, have remained good Christians.