Boomptie was not a stingy man; on the contrary, he was very generous to the pretty young damsels who came to buy cakes, and often gave them two or three extra for a smack, which made Mrs. Boomptie peevish sometimes, and caused her to watch at the little pane of glass when she ought to have been minding her business like an honest woman.
But this old hag was as ugly as sin, and the little baker never in his whole life could find in his heart to be generous to an ugly woman, old or young.
“In my country they always give thirteen to the dozen,” screamed the ugly woman in the leather spectacles.
“And where de duyvel is your gountry?” asked Boomptie.
“It is nobody's business,” screeched the old woman. “But will you give me another cake, once for all?”
“Not if it would save me and all my chineration from peing pewitched and pedemonologized dime out of mind,” cried he, in a great passion.
What put it into his head to talk in this way I don't know, but he might better have held his tongue. The old woman gave him three stivers for his cakes, and went away, grumbling something about “living to repent it,” which Boss Boomptie didn't understand or care a fig about. He was chock full of Dutch courage, and defied all the ugly old women in Christendom. He put his three stivers in the till and shut up his shop, determined to enjoy the rest of the night without further molestation.
While he was sitting smoking his pipe, and now and then sipping his beverage, all at once he heard a terrible jingling of money in his shop, whereupon he thought some losel caitiff was busy with his little till. Accordingly, priming himself with another reinforcement of Dutch courage, he took a pine knot, for he was too economical to burn candles at that late hour, and proceeded to investigate. His money was all safe, and the till appeared not to have been disturbed.
“Duyvel,” quoth the little baker man, “I pelieve mine _vrouw_ and I have bote cot a zinging in our heads.”
He had hardly turned his back when the same jingling began again, so much to the surprise of Boss Boomptie, that had it not been for his invincible Dutch courage, he would, as it were, have been a little frightened. But he was not in the least; and again went and unlocked the till, when what was his astonishment to see the three diabolical stivers, received from the old woman, dancing, and kicking up a dust among the coppers and wampum with wonderful agility.