Partly to reward him for his
good behavior, partly because I never did think it worth while to
make two bites of a cherry, and partly because I did not fancy being
poisoned, I gave my fifteen berries to him. He devoured them with
evident relish.
"Does my spoon taste as badly as yours?" I asked.
"My spoon?" inquired he, innocently.
"Yes. You said before that they tasted coppery."
"I don't think," replied this unprincipled man,--"I don't think it
was the flavor of the spoon so much as of the coin which each berry
represented."
I could have boxed his ears.
I never made a more unsatisfactory investment in my life than the one I
made in that restaurant. I felt as if I had been swindled, and I said so
to Halicarnassus. He remarked that there was plenty of cream and sugar.
I answered curtly, that the cream was chiefly water, and the sugar
chiefly flour; but if they had been Simon Pure himself, was it anything
but an aggravation of the offence to have them with nothing to eat them
on?
"You might do as they do in France,--carry away what you don't eat,
seeing you pay for it."
"A pocketful of milk and water would be both delightful and serviceable;
but I might take the sugar," I added, with a sudden thought, upsetting
the sugar-bowl into a "Boston Journal" which we had bought in the train.
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