Base is the slave that pays

“Aunt Mattie!”

“My child?”

“Would you mind writing it down at once! I shall be quite certain to forget it if you don’t!”

“My dear, we really must wait till the cab stops. How can I possibly write anything in the midst of all this jolting?”

“But really I shall be forgetting it!”

Clara’s voice took the plaintive tone that her aunt never knew how to resist, and with a sigh the old lady drew forth her ivory tablets and prepared to record the amount that Clara had just Spent at the confectioner’s shop. Her expenditure was always made out of her aunt’s purse, but the poor girl knew, by bitter experience, that sooner or later “Mad Mathesis” would expect an exact account of every penny that had gone, and she waited, with ill-concealed impatience, while the old lady turned the tablets over and over, till she had found the one headed “PETTY CASH”.

“Here’s the place,” she said at last, “and here we have yesterday’s luncheon duly entered. One glass lemonade (Why ca’n’t you drink water, like me?), three sandwiches (They never put in half mustard enough. I told the young woman so, to her face; and she tossed her head — like her impudence!), and seven biscuits. Total one-and-two-pence. Well, now for to-day’s?”

“One glass of lemonade — “ Clara was beginning to say, when suddenly the cab drew up, and a courteous railway-porter was handing out the bewildered girl before she had had time to finish her sentence.

Her aunt pocketed the tablets instantly. “Business first,” she said: “petty cash — which is a form of pleasure, whatever you may think — afterwards.” And she proceeded to pay the driver, and to give voluminous orders about the luggage, quite deaf to the entreaties of her unhappy niece that she would enter the rest of the luncheon account. “My dear, you really must cultivate a more capacious mind!” Was all the consolation she vouchsafed to the poor girl. “Are not the tablets of your memory wide enough to contain the record of one single luncheon?”

“Not wide enough! Not half wide enough!” was the passionate reply.

The words came in aptly enough, but the voice was not that of Clara, and both ladies turned in some surprise to see who it was that had so suddenly struck into their conversation. A fat little old lady was standing at the door of a cab, helping the driver to extricate what seemed an exact duplicate of herself: it would have been no easy task to decide which was the fatter or which looked the more good-humoured of the two sisters.

“I tell you the cab-door isn’t half wide enough!” she repeated, as her sister finally emerged, somewhat after the fashion of a pellet from a pop-gun, and she turned to appeal to Clara. “Is it, dear!” she said, trying hard to bring a frown into a face that dimpled all over with smiles.

“Some folks is too wide for ’em,” growled the cabdriver.

“Don’t provoke me, man!” cried the little old lady, in what she meant for a tempest of fury. “Say another word and I’ll put you into the County Court, and sue you for a Habeas Corpus!” the cabman touched his hat, and marched off, grinning.

“Nothing like a little Law to cow the ruffians, my dear!” she remarked confidentially to Clara. “You saw how he quailed when I mentioned the Habeas Corpus. Not that I’ve any idea what it means, but it sounds very grand, doesn’t it?”

“It’s very provoking,” Clara replied, a little vaguely.

“Very!” the little old lady eagerly replied. “And we’re very much provoked indeed. Aren’t we, sister?”

“I never was so provoked in all my life!” the fatter sister assented radiently.

By this time Clara had recognized her picture-gallery acquaintances, and, drawing her aunt aside, she hastily ............