'You are troubled, Bryan.'
'I am short of money, Emma,' he replied; and he went on to say that he had to pay Messrs. So-and-so and So-and-so to-morrow; and that his last week's takings were two pounds less than he had reckoned upon.
How much short are you, Bryan?'
He adjusted his horn spectacles, and brought forward his account-book, and his file of bills, and every farthing the till contained. In a few minutes he had his trouble staring him in the face in black and white, in the shape of a deficit of two pounds eighteen shillings--a serious sum. My mother, with a grateful look in her eyes, produced the stone money-box, in which he had said she might put by anything she was able to save out of the money he gave her to keep house with. She shook it; what was in it rattled merrily. It was a hard job to get the money out, the slit in the box was so narrow; but it was managed at last by means of the blade of a knife, and a little pile of copper and silver lay on the table. I think the three of us seated round the table would not make a bad picture; but then you could not put in my mother's delicious laugh. She had saved more than three pounds. I could scarcely tell whether uncle Bryan was sorry or pleased. He bit his lips very hard, but said never a word; and, taking the exact sum he required, put the balance back into the box.
The chief difficulty uncle Bryan had to contend with in keeping his stock properly assorted was brown sugar. Indeed, brown sugar may be said to have been the bane of his life; to me, it was a most hateful commodity, and I often wished there was not such an article in the world. Uncle Bryan had to pay ready money for sugar, and he could not purchase at the warehouse less than a bag at the time--about two hundredpounds weight, I believe. Sometimes he had not the money to go to the sugar market with, and the stock on the shelves had dwindled down almost to the last quarter of a pound. Then commenced a series of dreadful expeditions which I remember with comical terror. One of the first instructions given by uncle Bryan to my mother had been, never, under any pretext, to serve even the smallest quantity of sugar to a strange customer unless he or she purchased something else at the same time. The reason for this was that there was no profit on sugar; it was what was called a leading article in the trade, and by some mysterious trade machinations, arising probably out of the fever of competition, had come to be sold by the large grocers at exactly cost price. The small grocers, of course, were compelled to follow in the wake of the large ones; if they had not, their customers would have deserted them. Not only, indeed, did the small grocers make no profit on the sugar they sold, but, taking into consideration the draft necessary to turn the scale ever so little when weighing out quarter and half pounds, there was an absolute loss; even the paper in the scale would not make up for it, for it cost as much per pound as the sugar. Hence the necessity for not serving strangers with sugar by itself, and hence it was that I not unnaturally came to look upon it as a desperate crime for any stranger to attempt to purchase sugar over uncle Bryan's counter without asking at the same time for a proper quantity of tea or coffee, or some other article upon which there was a profit. My feelings, then, can be imagined when uncle Bryan (being short of sugar, and not having sufficient funds to purchase a bag at the warehouse), bidding me carry a fair-sized market basket, took me with him one dark night--and often afterwards on many other dark nights--to purchase brown sugar, and nothing else, in pounds, half pounds, and quarters. The plan of operation was as follows: uncle Bryan, selecting a likely-looking grocer's shop (an innocent-looking fly, he being the spider), would station me at some distance from it, bidding me wait until he returned. Then he would enter the shop boldly, and come out, with the air of one who resided in the neighbourhood, holding in his hand a quarter or half pound of feloniously-acquired moist. This he would deposit in the basket (which had a cover to it, to hide our villainy), and we would wander to another street, in which he pounced upon another grocer's shop, where the operation would be repeated. Thus we would wander, often for two or three miles, until the basket was filled with packages of sugar, with which we would return stealthily, like burglars after the successful accomplishment of daring and unlawful deeds. When the basket was too heavy for me to carry, uncle Bryan carried it, and would place me in a convenient spot--always at the corner of two streets, so that in case of pursuit we could make a rapid disappearance--with the basket on the ground. While thus stationed, I have trembled at the very shadow of a policeman, and have often wondered that we were not marched off to prison. Uncle Bryan was not always successful. On occasions he would pause suddenly in the middle of a street, and wheel sharply round. 'Can't go into that shop,' he would say; 'was turned out of it the week before last;' or, 'They know me there; swore at me when they served me the last time; mustn't show my face there for another month;' or, with a laugh, 'Come away, Chris, quick! That woman wanted to know what I meant by imposing on a poor widow who was trying to get an honest living.' These remarks, of themselves, would have been sufficient to convince me that we were committing an offence against law and morality. At first I was a passive accomplice in these unlawful operations, but in time I became an active agent.
'Chris, my boy,' said uncle Bryan to me one night, in an insinuating tone; he was out of spirits, having met with a number of continuous failures; 'do you think you could buy a quarter of a pound in that shop?'
'I'll try to, uncle,' I said, with a sinking heart, for I had long anticipated the dreaded moment.
'Go into the shop in an offhand way, as if you were a regular customer. I'll wait at the corner for you.'
Go into the shop in an offhand way! Why, if I had been the greatest criminal in the world, I could not have been more impressed with a sense of guilt. I showed it in my face when I stepped tremblingly to the counter, and I was instantly detected by the shopkeeper.
'Do you want anything else besides sugar?' he demanded sternly.