If I lent them to
you, I should never wear them again."
"So much the better for me," (with a knowing grin). "I guess if you
won't lend me the gown, you will let me have some black slack to
quilt a stuff petticoat, a quarter of a pound of tea and some sugar;
and I will bring them back as soon as I can."
"I wonder when that will be. You owe me so many things that it will
cost you more than you imagine to repay me."
"Sure you're not going to mention what's past, I can't owe you much.
But I will let you off the tea and the sugar, if you will lend me a
five-dollar bill." This was too much for my patience longer to
endure, and I answered sharply -
"Mrs. Fye, it surprises me that such proud people as you Americans
should condescend to the meanness of borrowing from those whom you
affect to despise. Besides, as you never repay us for what you
pretend to borrow, I look upon it as a system of robbery. If
strangers unfortunately settle among you, their good-nature is taxed
to supply your domestic wants, at a ruinous expense, besides the
mortification of finding that they have been deceived and tricked
out of their property. If you would come honestly to me and say,
'I want these things, I am too poor to buy them myself, and would be
obliged to you to give them to me,' I should then acknowledge you as
a common beggar, and treat you accordingly; give or not give, as it
suited my convenience. But in the way in which you obtain these
articles from me, you are spared even a debt of gratitude; for you
well know that the many things which you have borrowed from me will
be a debt owing to the Day of Judgment."
"S'pose they are," quoth Betty, not in the least abashed at my
lecture on honesty, "you know what the Scripture saith, 'It is
more blessed to give than to receive.'"
"Ay, there is an answer to that in the same book, which doubtless
you may have heard," said I, disgusted with her hypocrisy, "'The
wicked borroweth, and payeth not again.'"
Never shall I forget the furious passion into which this too apt
quotation threw my unprincipled applicant. She lifted up her voice
and cursed me, using some of the big oaths temporarily discarded for
conscience sake. And so she left me, and I never looked upon her
face again.
When I removed to our own house, the history of which, and its
former owner, I will give by-and-by, we had a bony, red-headed,
ruffianly American squatter, who had "left his country for his
country's good," for an opposite neighbour. I had scarcely time
to put my house in order before his family commenced borrowing,
or stealing from me.
