"Not I!" said the baker, carelessly. "If you dropped it here you will find it somewhere on the floor. Stay, I will assist you."
Peter seemed rather disconcerted than otherwise by this offer of assistance, but could not reasonably interpose any objection.
After a very brief search Peter and the baker simultaneously discovered the missing coin. The former pounced upon it, but not before the latter had recognized it as a gold piece.
"Ho, ho!" thought he, in surprise, "my charity is not so well bestowed as I thought. Do you have many such coins?" he asked, meaningly.
"I?" said Peter, hastily, "Oh no! I am very poor. This is all I have, and I expect it will be gone soon,—it costs so much to live!"
"It'll never cost you much," thought the baker, watching the shabby figure of the miser as he receded from the shop.
II.
A MISER'S HOUSEHOLD.
Peter Manson owned a small house in an obscure street. It was a weather-beaten tenement of wood, containing some six or eight rooms, all of which, with one exception, were given over to dirt, cobwebs, gloom, and desolation. Peter might readily have let the rooms which he did not require for his own use, but so profound was his distrust of human nature, that not even the prospect of receiving rent for the empty rooms could overcome his apprehension of being robbed by neighbors under the same roof. For Peter trusted not his money to banks or railroads, but wanted to have it directly under his own eye or within his reach. As for investing his gold in the luxuries of life, or even in what were generally considered its absolute necessaries, we have already seen that Peter was no such fool as that. A gold eagle was worth ten times more to him than its equivalent in food or clothing.