Complete Works of Lewis Carroll (92 page)

KNOT VII.

PETTY CASH.

"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 can'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 cab-driver.

"I TELL YOU THE CAB-DOOR ISN'T HALF WIDE ENOUGH!"

"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 repeated.
"And we're very much provoked indeed.
Aren't we, sister?"

"I never was so provoked in all my life!"
the fatter sister assented, radiantly.

By this time Clara had recognised her picture-gallery acquaintances, and, drawing her aunt aside, she hastily whispered her reminiscences.
"I met them first in the Royal Academy—and they were very kind to me—and they were lunching at the next table to us, just now, you know—and they tried to help me to find the picture I wanted—and I'm sure they're dear old things!"

"Friends of yours, are they?"
said Mad Mathesis.
"Well, I like their looks.
You can be civil to them, while I get the tickets.
But do try and arrange your ideas a little more chronologically!"

And so it came to pass that the four ladies found themselves seated side by side on the same bench waiting for the train, and chatting as if they had known one another for years.

"Now this I call quite a remarkable coincidence!"
exclaimed the smaller and more talkative of the two sisters—the one whose legal knowledge had annihilated the cab-driver.
"Not only that we should be waiting for the same train, and at the same station—
that
would be curious enough—but actually on the same day, and the same hour of the day!
That's what strikes
me
so forcibly!"
She glanced at the fatter and more silent sister, whose chief function in life seemed to be to support the family opinion, and who meekly responded—

"And me too, sister!"

"Those are not
independent
coincidences——" Mad Mathesis was just beginning, when Clara ventured to interpose.

"There's no jolting here," she pleaded meekly.
"
Would
you mind writing it down now?"

Out came the ivory tablets once more.
"What was it, then?"
said her aunt.

"One glass of lemonade, one sandwich, one biscuit—Oh dear me!"
cried poor Clara, the historical tone suddenly changing to a wail of agony.

"Toothache?"
said her aunt calmly, as she wrote down the items.
The two sisters instantly opened their reticules and produced two different remedies for neuralgia, each marked "unequalled."

"It isn't that!"
said poor Clara.
"Thank you very much.
It's only that I
can't
remember how much I paid!"

"Well, try and make it out, then," said her aunt.
"You've got yesterday's luncheon to help you, you know.
And here's the luncheon we had the day before—the first day we went to that shop—
one glass lemonade
,
four sandwiches
,
ten biscuits
.
Total, one-and-fivepence.
" She handed the tablets to Clara, who gazed at them with eyes so dim with tears that she did not at first notice that she was holding them upside down.

The two sisters had been listening to all this with the deepest interest, and at this juncture the smaller one softly laid her hand on Clara's arm.

"Do you know, my dear," she said coaxingly, "my sister and I are in the very same predicament!
Quite identically the very same predicament!
Aren't we, sister?"

"Quite identically and absolutely the very——" began the fatter sister, but she was constructing her sentence on too large a scale, and the little one would not wait for her to finish it.

"Yes, my dear," she resumed; "we were lunching at the very same shop as you were—and we had two glasses of lemonade and three sandwiches and five biscuits—and neither of us has the least idea what we paid.
Have we, sister?"

"Quite identically and absolutely——" murmured the other, who evidently considered that she was now a whole sentence in arrears, and that she ought to discharge one obligation before contracting any fresh liabilities; but the little lady broke in again, and she retired from the conversation a bankrupt.

"
Would
you make it out for us, my dear?"
pleaded the little old lady.

"You can do Arithmetic, I trust?"
her aunt said, a little anxiously, as Clara turned from one tablet to another, vainly trying to collect her thoughts.
Her mind was a blank, and all human expression was rapidly fading out of her face.

A gloomy silence ensued.

KNOT VIII.

DE OMNIBUS REBUS.

"This little pig went to market: This little pig staid at home."

"By Her Radiancy's express command," said the Governor, as he conducted the travellers, for the last time, from the Imperial presence, "I shall now have the ecstasy of escorting you as far as the outer gate of the Military Quarter, where the agony of parting—if indeed Nature can survive the shock—must be endured!
From that gate grurmstipths start every quarter of an hour, both ways——"

"Would you mind repeating that word?"
said Norman.
"Grurm——?"

"Grurmstipths," the Governor repeated.
"You call them omnibuses in England.
They run both ways, and you can travel by one of them all the way down to the harbour."

The old man breathed a sigh of relief; four hours of courtly ceremony had wearied him, and he had been in constant terror lest something should call into use the ten thousand additional bamboos.

In another minute they were crossing a large quadrangle, paved with marble, and tastefully decorated with a pigsty in each corner.
Soldiers, carrying pigs, were marching in all directions: and in the middle stood a gigantic officer giving orders in a voice of thunder, which made itself heard above all the uproar of the pigs.

"It is the Commander-in-Chief!"
the Governor hurriedly whispered to his companions, who at once followed his example in prostrating themselves before the great man.
The Commander gravely bowed in return.
He was covered with gold lace from head to foot: his face wore an expression of deep misery: and he had a little black pig under each arm.
Still the gallant fellow did his best, in the midst of the orders he was every moment issuing to his men, to bid a courteous farewell to the departing guests.

"Farewell, oh old one—carry these three to the South corner—and farewell to thee, thou young one—put this fat one on the top of the others in the Western sty—may your shadows never be less—woe is me, it is wrongly done!
Empty out all the sties, and begin again!"
And the soldier leant upon his sword, and wiped away a tear.

"He is in distress," the Governor explained as they left the court.
"Her Radiancy has commanded him to place twenty-four pigs in those four sties, so that, as she goes round the court, she may always find the number in each sty nearer to ten than the number in the last."

"Does she call ten nearer to ten than nine is?"
said Norman.

"Surely," said the Governor.
"Her Radiancy would admit that ten is nearer to ten than nine is—and also nearer than eleven is."

"Then I think it can be done," said Norman.

The Governor shook his head.
"The Commander has been transferring them in vain for four months," he said.
"What hope remains?
And Her Radiancy has ordered up ten thousand additional——"

"The pigs don't seem to enjoy being transferred," the old man hastily interrupted.
He did not like the subject of bamboos.

"They are only
provisionally
transferred, you know," said the Governor.
"In most cases they are immediately carried back again: so they need not mind it.
And all is done with the greatest care, under the personal superintendence of the Commander-in-Chief."

"Of course she would only go
once
round?"
said Norman.

"Alas, no!"
sighed their conductor.
"Round and round.
Round and round.
These are Her Radiancy's own words.
But oh, agony!
Here is the outer gate, and we must part!"
He sobbed as he shook hands with them, and the next moment was briskly walking away.

"He
might
have waited to see us off!"
said the old man, piteously.

"And he needn't have begun whistling the very
moment
he left us!"
said the young one, severely.
"But look sharp—here are two what's-his-names in the act of starting!"

Unluckily, the sea-bound omnibus was full.
"Never mind!"
said Norman, cheerily.
"We'll walk on till the next one overtakes us."

They trudged on in silence, both thinking over the military problem, till they met an omnibus coming from the sea.
The elder traveller took out his watch.
"Just twelve minutes and a half since we started," he remarked in an absent manner.
Suddenly the vacant face brightened; the old man had an idea.
"My boy!"
he shouted, bringing his hand down upon Norman's shoulder so suddenly as for a moment to transfer his centre of gravity beyond the base of support.

Thus taken off his guard, the young man wildly staggered forwards, and seemed about to plunge into space: but in another moment he had gracefully recovered himself.
"Problem in Precession and Nutation," he remarked—in tones where filial respect only just managed to conceal a shade of annoyance.
"What is it?"
he hastily added, fearing his father might have been taken ill.
"Will you have some brandy?"

"When will the next omnibus overtake us?
When?
When?"
the old man cried, growing more excited every moment.

Norman looked gloomy.
"Give me time," he said.
"I must think it over."
And once more the travellers passed on in silence—a silence only broken by the distant squeals of the unfortunate little pigs, who were still being provisionally transferred from sty to sty, under the personal superintendence of the Commander-in-Chief.