"Five-fifty," I replied. Our rate for a double cabin with two double beds was five and a half or six and a half dollars, depending on the number of people that were to occupy it. We had decided to charge that much or less, depending on the demand for cabins and the number of "vacancy" signs along the highway, following the custom of the former owners.
Each of the young men laid a five dollar bill on the counter. I looked at the bills groggily. I was still half asleep.
"Just one of those will do, with fifty cents beside," I said.
"We want to pay separately," said the shorter man. "Give us each change, please."
I missed Grant, with his quick mind and his easy competence, more intensely at that moment than I missed him yet. I smothered a yawn and tried to concentrate on the difficult task before me. My reasoning, if you could call it that, was hazy and confused.
"Well," I thought, opening the cash drawer and looking at the array of five and one dollar bills, and fifty cent pieces and quarters, "they're each paying half of five and a half. How much is half of five and a half, anyway? Half of five would be two and a half, so half of five and a half would be a little more than that. How much more? Well..." At that point I lost the thread of the whole thing and had to begin over. "Suppose," I thought, starting on a new tack, "I would give each of them a dollar. That would mean they each had paid four dollars, which would be too much. Well, then, suppose I gave them each three dollars. That would mean they had each paid me two dollars, which wouldn't be quite enough. But how much would it lack of being enough?"
Arithmetic had always stirred up a swirling fog inside my head. My eyelids were drooping more and more, and yet I was beginning to feel beneath my drowsiness a desperate panic. The men were growing impatient.
I frowned and stared more sternly at the money in the cash drawer. I summoned all my powers of concentration. I handled the money in the drawer ostentatiously, as a bluff, so that they would think I was beginning to go into action.
I still don't remember how I did it--unless maybe it was by doling out the money slowly and watching their faces until their expressions suggested they had received the full amount--but somehow the awful situation ended and the men went to their cabin.
The following morning when I did the day's bookkeeping I found that there was fifty cents too much in the cash drawer. Still, I didn't feel that the system I had used the previous night had much to recommend it, and I resolved not to try it again.