Читать книгу Memory's Storehouse Unlocked, True Stories - John T. Bristow - Страница 11

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Having bought little three-year-old Karen McDaniel a 5-cent cone, and also one for her to take home to her little brother Harry, I laid a couple of nickels on the counter at the restaurant; and then put down a dime, and picked up the two nickels—this twenty-cents representing the sum total of my cash as of the moment. Karen said, “What you do that for?” I told her that I was going to purchase a 5-cent lead-pencil from Charley Shaffer at the drug store, and that I wanted to keep the nickels, as it would save time of waiting to get back the nickel in change, were I to keep the dime. She said, brightly, “He might not have a nickel.” I said, “That’s just it.” Not realizing the risk which I myself was cooking up at the moment, I said, “It’s never wise to take a risk when it can just as easily be avoided.” Placing the two nickels beside the little dime, I told her the dime was worth as much as the two bigger nickels. Thinking to see if she had caught on, I said, (rather badly stated), “Now, what you think—which would you rather have?” She smiled, almost saucily grinned, and reaching for the dime, said, “I’ll take the little one—you want to keep the big ones.”