And he said, ‘Can this be?’”
(Motto chosen chiefly for its inappropriateness.)
One evening at the house of a friend of mine, while we were seated at the table, Mr. Baker, my friend’s husband, absently feeling in his vest pocket, found a five dollar note which he had no recollection of putting there.
“Hallo!” he exclaimed, “that is no place for you. I should have put you in my pocketbook. Here, wife, don’t you want some ready money?” and he threw the note across the table to her.
“Many thanks,” she replied; “money is always acceptable, although I have no present need of it.” She folded the note and put it under the edge of the tea-tray, and then proceeded to pour out the tea and attend to the wants of her guests.
At her right sat Mrs. Easton, or Aunt Susan, whom we all knew as an acquaintance who, from time to time, spent a week with Mrs. Baker. Her visit was just at an end, and she was to return home that evening.
As Mrs. Baker was pouring her tea, it occurred to her that she was in her aunt’s debt for certain small matters, and when she had the opportunity, she pushed the note under her plate, saying:
“Here, auntie, take this five dollars in part payment of my debt.”
“Very well,” she replied, “but the money does not belong to me. I owe you fifteen dollars, my dear Grace, which you lent me last Saturday. I had to pay the taxes on my little home, and had not the ready money, and Grace lent it to me,” explained Aunt Susan.
Grace, an orphan, was a cousin of Mrs. Baker. She and her brother Frank boarded with her, and made a very pleasant addition to the family circle. She was studying music, and her brother was a clerk in a mercantile establishment.