If the lady, however, takes a pride in the management of her household and is anxious to keep down expenses, she will insist that every article that the cook buys shall be brought and weighed in her presence before she pays for it. This home is not an ideal one for a cook. He has, however, to submit to the inevitable, but he at once sets his wits to work to circumvent her by ingenious ways and dogged perseverance in his plans, such as no watchfulness on her part will ever enable her entirely to frustrate. There is no profession in China like a cook’s for developing the inventive faculties or for stimulating the imagination.
The mistress in self-defence gets a steelyard. Without that she would be at the mercy of the man whose whole aim in life is now to circumvent her, and circumvent her he will, or the Yellow brain will have lost its cunning. Some of his schemes are most ingenious. For example, he is told one day to go out and buy a fowl. He goes to the market, and secures one after an immense amount of haggling and carries it home.
After he has got there he proceeds to cram down its throat some very common stuff, till its crop is as full as it can contain. This is to increase its weight and consequently his gains, for the animal is sold at so much an ounce.
The cook brings the fowl to be weighed, with a look of the sweetest simplicity on his face. Such a thing as guile could never exist behind such a bland and childlike countenance as his. The mistress, who is up to all his dodges, is unmoved by the seraphic air his face wears. She feels the fowl that is hanging by its legs from the hook on the steelyard, and she remarks how thin it is, and then points to the distended crop, and asks him what he means by such cruelty, and how he dares to try and cheat her by such a transparent device. The cook at once assumes an air of surprise, and looks at the swollen crop with the utmost indignation. “Oh!” he exclaims in a truly theatrical tone, “I have been cheated. This was done in the shop, and, as it was dimly lighted, I did not perceive how I was being taken in. I shall give that man that sold me the fowl a piece of my mind when I next see him.”
The lady is accustomed to such tricks as this, and she says, “I shall deduct two ounces from the weight you have given me.” The man puts on an injured air and in a plaintive voice says, “You surely do not wish me to be a loser by my purchase, I am a poor man and I cannot afford that.” The lady, however, is firm, and by and by his usually placid look once more overspreads his sphinx-like countenance, whilst his admiration for his mistress’ ability is vastly increased.
One day a cook brought in a round of beef to his mistress to be weighed. There was an ingenuous look about him that disarmed suspicion. There was evidently no deception there, and she was just about to accept it, when the instinct of suspicion that lingers in the mind whenever you have to do with the Chinese about money prompted her to say, “Undo the string that ties this beef and let me see inside.” A sudden flush ran through the man’s face, and he hesitated for a moment to carry out her orders, but knowing that any delay would only excite her anger, he cut the string, when out rolled a stone of fully half-a-pound in weight. A look of surprise and indignation swept across the face of his mistress, for even she, with all her knowledge of the fertility of the Chinese brain, had never dreamed of such a cunning device to cheat her.
She looked at the cook with flashing eyes, but he was apparently unmoved. No flush of shame mantled his cheeks. Instead of that an innocent air crept over his countenance, and a look of wonder stole into his eyes, as he exclaimed, “Dear me, however did that stone get there? The people of the shop must have put it in whilst my head was turned. How dishonest of them! I really must give up dealing with them. The principles of Heaven are evidently unknown to them.” The withering tones of indignation uttered by his mistress seemed to make no impression upon him, and he left her presence, muttering to himself, “How wrong of that butcher to cheat me as he has done to-day, and to cause me to lose face, and to make me a laughing-stock to every one that may hear this story.”
The steelyard is an invention that is intended to promote honest dealing. It is sometimes, however, the unconscious instrument of a systematic deceit, which is all the more effective because it is so entirely unsuspected. On one occasion a young fellow had been engaged as cook. He was a man of engaging manners, with a pleasant open face, and a winning disposition that made one unconsciously have great faith in him. He was consequently greatly trusted by his employers, though they never forgot the terrible temptations to which as a cook he was exposed.
It seemed that after a while the spell of money spun its subtle web over him, and he succumbed to its fatal fascination. With the implicit faith that his mistress had in him, the opportunity for making money on all his purchases became enlarged. This led him into gambling, and as the gambler nearly always loses, he had to look around for some method that would give him a larger revenue than could be secured by his squeezes on the articles he bought every day for the use of the home.
In this dilemma, a bright idea occurred to him; he would so manipulate the steelyard that it should serve his purpose, and enable him to pay his gambling debts, and still give him funds to pursue his favourite vice. He accordingly filed off two ounces from the iron weight attached to it, and which acted as a counterpoise to the goods that were being weighed at the other end of the yard, and by a single stroke he secured to himself twelve and a half per cent. on every purchase that he made.