However, you can send four
dollars in change with the bundle, you know."
"Very good, sir," replies the shop-keeper, who entertains, at
once, a lofty opinion of the high-mindedness of his customer. "I
know fellows," he says to himself, "who would just have put the
goods under their arm, and walked off with a promise to call and pay
the dollar as they came by in the afternoon."
A boy is sent with the parcel and change. On the route, quite
accidentally, he is met by the purchaser, who exclaims:
"Ah! This is my bundle, I see- I thought you had been home with
it, long ago. Well, go on! My wife, Mrs. Trotter, will give you the
five dollars- I left instructions with her to that effect. The
change you might as well give to me- I shall want some silver for
the Post Office. Very good! One, two, is this a good quarter?-
three, four- quite right! Say to Mrs. Trotter that you met me, and
be sure now and do not loiter on the way."
The boy doesn't loiter at all- but he is a very long time in getting
back from his errand- for no lady of the precise name of Mrs.
Trotter is to be discovered. He consoles himself, however, that he has
not been such a fool as to leave the goods without the money, and
re-entering his shop with a self-satisfied air, feels sensibly hurt
and indignant when his master asks him what has become of the change.
A very simple diddle, indeed, is this. The captain of a ship,
which is about to sail, is presented by an official looking person
with an unusually moderate bill of city charges.
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