I had a busy life while Martha was laid up. I attended on Miss
Matty, and prepared her meals; I cast up her accounts, and examined
into the state of her canisters and tumblers. I helped her, too,
occasionally, in the shop; and it gave me no small amusement, and
sometimes a little uneasiness, to watch her ways there. If a
little child came in to ask for an ounce of almond-comfits (and
four of the large kind which Miss Matty sold weighed that much),
she always added one more by "way of make-weight," as she called
it, although the scale was handsomely turned before; and when I
remonstrated against this, her reply was, "The little things like
it so much!" There was no use in telling her that the fifth comfit
weighed a quarter of an ounce, and made every sale into a loss to
her pocket. So I remembered the green tea, and winged my shaft
with a feather out of her own plumage. I told her how unwholesome
almond-comfits were, and how ill excess in them might make the
little children. This argument produced some effect; for,
henceforward, instead of the fifth comfit, she always told them to
hold out their tiny palms, into which she shook either peppermint
or ginger lozenges, as a preventive to the dangers that might arise
from the previous sale. Altogether the lozenge trade, conducted on
these principles, did not promise to be remunerative; but I was
happy to find she had made more than twenty pounds during the last
year by her sales of tea; and, moreover, that now she was
accustomed to it, she did not dislike the employment, which brought
her into kindly intercourse with many of the people round about.
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