“I thought we were going to get on a boat and find an island somewhere,” said Hamnpork. “Very ratty places, boats,” he added, approvingly. Then he went on, with a slightly nervous and slightly annoyed look at Dangerous Beans, “And people tell me that we need this money stuff because now we can do all this thinking we've got to be eff… efit…”

“Ethical, sir,” said Dangerous Beans.

“Which sounds unratty to me. Not that my opinion counts for anything, it seems,” said Hamnpork.

“We've got enough money, sir,” said Peaches. “We've already got a lot of money. We have got a lot of money, haven't we, Maurice.” It wasn't a question; it was a kind of accusation.

“Well, when you say a lot–” Maurice began.

“And in fact we've got more money than we thought,” said Peaches, still in the same tone of voice. It was very polite, but it just kept going and it asked all the wrong questions. A wrong question for Maurice was one that he didn't want anyone to ask. Peaches gave her little cough again. “The reason I say we've got more money, Maurice, is that you said what were called ‘gold coins’ were shiny like the moon and ‘silver coins’ were shiny like the sun, and you'd keep all the silver coins. In fact, Maurice, that's the wrong way around. It's the silver coins that are shiny like the moon.”

Maurice thought a rude word in cat language, which has a great many of them. What was the point of education, he thought, if people went out afterwards and used it?

“So we think, sir,” said Dangerous Beans to Hamnpork, “that after this one last time we should share out the money and go our separate ways. Besides, it's getting dangerous to keep repeating the same trick. We should stop before it's too late. There's a river here. We should be able to get to the sea.”

“An island with no humans or krllrrt cats would be a good place,” said Hamnpork.