The Basket of Plumbs[1]
A poor girl, whose face was pale and sickly, and who led a little ragged child by the hand, came up one day to the door of a large house, and, seeing a boy standing there, said to him, 'Do, pray, sir, ask your mamma to buy these plumbs. There are four dozen in my basket.' George Loft took the basket to his mother, who counted the plumbs, and finding them right in number and that they were sound, good fruit, sent out to know the price.
The girl asking more than Mrs. Loft thought they were worth, she put the plumbs again into the basket, and told George to carry them back, and say it did not suit her to buy them.
Now these plumbs were fresh picked from the tree; they had a fine bloom on them, and were very tempting to the eye. George loved plumbs above all other fruit, and he walked very slowly from the parlour with his eyes fixed on the basket. The longer he looked, the more he wished to taste them. One plumb, he thought, would not be missed; and as he put his hand in to take that one, two others lay close under his fingers. It was as easy to take three as one, and the three plumbs were taken and put into his pocket. When he reached the hall door and gave the basket back to the girl,
his face was as red as a flame of fire, but she did not notice it, nor thought of counting her plumbs; for how could she suppose any one in that house would be so mean as to take from her little store!
It chanced that as the girl turned from the door, Mrs. Loft came to the parlour window, and, seeing the girl look so ill, she felt sorry she had not bought the plumbs. Therefore, throwing up the sash, she asked the cause of her sickly looks. The girl then told a sad story of distress: she had been ill of a fever; her parents had caught the disease of her, and were now very bad and not able to work for the support of their children. In the little garden of their cottage a plumb-tree grew, and she had picked the ripe plumbs and had come out to sell them that she might buy
physic for her parents and food for herself and her hungry little sister. Mrs. Loft paid the girl the full price for her plumbs, gave her wine to carry to her sick parents and food for herself and the child, and bade her return the next day for more.
Soon after the grateful girl had left the house, Mrs. Loft, placing the fruit in her dessert-baskets, found that, instead of forty-eight, there were only forty-five plumbs; and, far from thinking her son had been guilty of the theft, she laid the blame on the girl, who she now thought had tried to impose on her. It was not the loss of three plumbs that Mrs. Loft cared for, but the want of an honest mind that gave her offence. She had meant to be a friend to the poor girl, but now she began to doubt the truth of her
story; for Mrs. Loft thought if she could impose in one thing she might also in others. Deeming the girl therefore no longer worthy of her kindness, she gave orders for her to be sent away when she came on the morrow.