Mrs Tipps’ gravity deepened as she recalled these interesting lessons in book-keeping.
“Yes,” she continued, with a sigh, “and then he would go on to say, that ‘if it was wrong to go to the right, of course it must be right to go the other way.’ At first I used to be a good deal puzzled, and said, ‘But suppose my mind, when I receive a sum of money, should suggest putting it on the left, am I to contradict myself then?’ ‘Oh no!’ he would say, with another laugh, ‘in that case you will remember that your mind is to be left alone to carry out its suggestion.’ I got to understand it at last, after several years of training, but I never could quite approve of it for it causes so much waste of paper. Just look here!” she said, holding up a little account-book, “here are all the right pages quite filled up, while all the left pages are blank. It takes only four lines to enter my receipts, because you know I receive my money only once a quarter. Well, that brings me back to the point. Here are all the receipts on one side; my whole income, deducting income-tax—which, by the way, I cannot help regarding as a very unjust tax—amounts to two hundred and fifty pounds seventeen shillings and two-pence. Then here you have my paper of calculations—everything set down—rent, taxes, water rates, food, clothing, coals, gas, candles, sundries (sundries, my darling, including such small articles as soap, starch, etcetera); nothing omitted, even the cat’s food provided for, the whole mounting to two hundred and forty-five pounds. You see I was so anxious to keep within my income, that I resolved to leave five pounds seventeen shillings and two-pence for contingencies. But how does the case actually stand?” Here poor Mrs Tipps pointed indignantly to her account-book, and to a pile of papers that lay before her, as if they were the guilty cause of all her troubles. “How does it stand? The whole two hundred and fifty pounds seventeen shillings spent—only the two-pence left—and accounts to tradesmen, amounting to fifty pounds, remaining unpaid!”
“And have we nothing left to pay them?” asked Netta, in some anxiety.
“Nothing, my love,” replied Mrs Tipps, with a perplexed look, “except,” she added, after a moment’s thought, “the tuppence!”
The poor lady whimpered as she said this, seeing which Netta burst into tears; whereupon her mother sprang up, scattered the accounts right and left, and blaming herself for having spoken on these disagreeable subjects at all, threw her arms round Netta’s neck and hugged her.
“Don’t think me foolish, mamma,” said Netta, drying her eyes in a moment; “really it almost makes me laugh to think that I should ever come to cry so easily; but you know illness does weaken one so, that sometimes, in spite of myself, I feel inclined to cry. But don’t mind me; there, it’s past now. Let us resume our business talk.”
“Indeed I will not,” protested Mrs Tipps.
“Then I will call nurse, and go into the subject with her,” said Netta.
“Don’t be foolish, dear.”
“Well, then, go on with it, mamma. Tell me, now, is there nothing that we could sell?”