If Germany lost the War, the German securities nominally worth two hundred thousand marks might become simply waste paper; even now they were only computed by the bank at a purchase value of about one fifth what they had stood at before the War.

If Germany were victorious or agreed to a compromise peace, her mother's shares in Belgian companies might be unsaleable.

Better to secure now a lump sum of four thousand pounds in bank notes that would be legal currency, at any rate as long as the German occupation lasted.

And as one never knew what might happen, it was safer still to have all this money (equivalent to a hundred thousand francs), in their own keeping.

They could live even in war time, on such a sum as this for four, perhaps five years, as they would be very economical and Vivie would try to earn all she could by teaching.