The Iron Horse, R. M. Ballantyne [howl and other poems .txt] 📗

How to “make the two ends meet,” is a question that has engaged the attention and taxed the brains of hundreds and thousands of human beings from time immemorial, and which will doubtless afford them free scope for exercise to the end of time.

This condition of things would appear to arise from a misconception on the part of those who are thus exercised as to the necessities of life. They seem to imagine, as a rule, that if their income should happen to be, say three hundred pounds a year, it is absolutely impossible by any effort of ingenuity for them to live on less than two hundred and ninety-nine pounds nineteen shillings and eleven-pence three farthing. They therefore attempt to regulate their expenditure accordingly, and rather plume themselves than otherwise on the fact that they are firmly resolved to save and lay bye the farthing. They fail in this attempt as a matter of course, and hence the difficulty of making the two ends meet. If these unfortunates had been bred to the profession of engineering or “contracting,” they would have known that it is what we may style a law of human nature to under-estimate probable expenses. So thoroughly is this understood by the men of the professions above referred to, that, after they have formed an estimate,—set down every imaginable expense, and racked their brains in order to make sure that they have provided for every conceivable and inconceivable item, they coolly add to the amount a pretty large sum as a “margin” to cover unexpected and unthought-of contingencies. But anything of this sort never seems to enter into the calculations of the people who are so much tormented with those obstinate “two ends” that won’t meet. There is one sure and easy mode of escape for them, but they invariably hold that mode to be ridiculous, until in dire extremity they are forced to adopt it. This is simply to make one’s calculations for living considerably within one’s income!

We make no apology for going into the minutiae of this remarkable phase of human existence, because it is necessary, in order to the correct appreciation of the circumstances and feelings of good little Mrs Tipps, when, several weeks after the accident described in a previous chapter, she sat down in her little parlour to reconsider the subject of her annual expenditure.

Netta sat beside her looking somewhat pale, for she had not quite recovered from the effects of her recent illness.

“My darling,” said Mrs Tipps, “how can you charge me with having made an error somewhere? Have I not got it all down here on black and white, as your dear father used to say? This is the identical paper on which I made my calculations last year, and I have gone over them all and found them perfectly correct. Look there.”

Mrs Tipps held up in triumph, as if it were an incontestable evidence of the rectitude of her calculations, a sheet of note-paper so blotted and bespattered with figures, that it would have depressed the heart even of an accountant, because, besides the strong probability that it was intrinsically wrong, it was altogether illegible.

“Dear mamma,” remonstrated Netta, with a twinkle of her eye, “I do not call in question the correctness of your calculations, but I suggest that there may perhaps be an error of some sort somewhere. At all events the result would seem to indicate—to imply—that—that everything was not quite right, you know.”

“Quite true, darling,” replied Mrs Tipps, who was a candid though obtuse soul; “the result is unsatisfactory, eminently so; yet I cannot charge myself with careless omissions. See—here it is; on one side are my receipts. Your dear father always impressed it so earnestly on me that I should keep the receipts of money on one side of the accounts, and the payments on the other. I never could remember, by the way, on which side to put the receipts, and on which the payments, until he hit on the idea of making me contradict myself, and then I should be sure to keep right. He used to say (how well I remember it), ‘Now, darling, this is the way: Whenever you receive a sum of money to enter in your cash-book, always say to yourself, What side shall I put it on? If your mind suggests on the right, at once say No—because that would be wrong—right being wrong in this case,’ and he did use to laugh so over that little pleasantry.”

Mrs Tipps’ gravity deepened as she recalled these interesting lessons in book-keeping.

“Yes,” she continued, with a sigh, “and then he would go on to say, that ‘if it was wrong to go to the right, of course it must be right to go the other way.’ At first I used to be a good deal puzzled, and said, ‘But suppose my mind, when I receive a sum of money, should suggest putting it on the left, am I to contradict myself then?’ ‘Oh no!’ he would say, with another laugh, ‘in that case you will remember that your mind is to be left alone to carry out its suggestion.’ I got to understand it at last, after several years of training, but I never could quite approve of it for it causes so much waste of paper. Just look here!” she said, holding up a little account-book, “here are all the right pages quite filled up, while all the left pages are blank. It takes only four lines to enter my receipts, because you know I receive my money only once a quarter. Well, that brings me back to the point. Here are all the receipts on one side; my whole income, deducting income-tax—which, by the way, I cannot help regarding as a very unjust tax—amounts to two hundred and fifty pounds seventeen shillings and two-pence. Then here you have my paper of calculations—everything set down—rent, taxes, water rates, food, clothing, coals, gas, candles, sundries (sundries, my darling, including such small articles as soap, starch, etcetera); nothing omitted, even the cat’s food provided for, the whole mounting to two hundred and forty-five pounds. You see I was so anxious to keep within my income, that I resolved to leave five pounds seventeen shillings and two-pence for contingencies. But how does the case actually stand?” Here poor Mrs Tipps pointed indignantly to her account-book, and to a pile of papers that lay before her, as if they were the guilty cause of all her troubles. “How does it stand? The whole two hundred and fifty pounds seventeen shillings spent—only the two-pence left—and accounts to tradesmen, amounting to fifty pounds, remaining unpaid!”

“And have we nothing left to pay them?” asked Netta, in some anxiety.

“Nothing, my love,” replied Mrs Tipps, with a perplexed look, “except,” she added, after a moment’s thought, “the tuppence!”

The poor lady whimpered as she said this, seeing which Netta burst into tears; whereupon her mother sprang up, scattered the accounts right and left, and blaming herself for having spoken on these disagreeable subjects at all, threw her arms round Netta’s neck and hugged her.

“Don’t think me foolish, mamma,” said Netta, drying her eyes in a moment; “really it almost makes me laugh to think that I should ever come to cry so easily; but you know illness does weaken one so, that sometimes, in spite of myself, I feel inclined to cry. But don’t mind me; there, it’s past now. Let us resume our business talk.”

“Indeed I will not,” protested Mrs Tipps.

“Then I will call nurse, and go into the subject with her,” said Netta.

“Don’t be foolish, dear.”

“Well, then, go on with it, mamma. Tell me, now, is there nothing that we could sell?”

“Nothing. To be sure there is my gold watch, but that would not fetch more than a few pounds; and my wedding-ring, which I would sooner die than part with.”

Netta glanced, as she spoke, at an unusually superb diamond ring, of Eastern manufacture, which adorned her own delicate hand. It was her father’s last gift to her a few days before he died.

“What are you thinking of, darling?” inquired Mrs Tipps.

“Of many things,” replied Netta slowly. “It is not easy to tell you exactly what—”

Here she was saved the necessity of further explanation by the entrance of Joseph Tipps, who, after kissing his mother and sister heartily, threw his hat and gloves into a corner, and, rubbing his hands together as he sat down, inquired if Edwin Gurwood had been there.

“No, we have neither seen nor heard of him,” said Netta.

“Then you shall have him to luncheon in half-an-hour, or so,” said Joseph, consulting his watch. “I got leave of absence to-day, and intend to spend part of my holiday in introducing him to Captain Lee, who has promised to get him a situation in the head office. You’ve no idea what a fine hearty fellow he is,” continued Tipps enthusiastically, “so full of humour and good sense. But what have you been discussing? Not accounts, surely! Why, mother, what’s the use of boring your brains with such things? Let me have ’em, I’ll go over them for you. What d’you want done? The additions checked, eh?”

On learning that it was not the accounts so much as the discrepancy between the estimate and the actual expenditure that puzzled his mother, Tipps seized her book, and, turning over the leaves, said, “Here, let me see, I’ll soon find it out—ah, well, rent yes; taxes, h’m; wine to Mrs Natly, you put that, in your estimate, under the head of food, I suppose?”

“N–no, I think not.”

“Under physic, then?”

“No, not under that. I have no head for that.”

“What! no head for physic? If you’d said you had no stomach for it I could have understood you; but—well—what did you put it under; sundries, eh?”

“I’m afraid, Joseph, that I have not taken note of that in my extract—your dear father used to call the thing he did with his cash-book at the end of the year an extract—I think I’ve omitted that.”

“Just so,” said Tipps, jotting down with a pencil on the back of a letter. “I’ll soon account to you for the discrepancy. Here are six bottles of wine to Mrs Natly, the railway porter’s wife, at three-and-six—one pound one—not provided for in your estimate. Any more physic, I wonder? H’m, subscription for coals to the poor. Half-a-guinea—no head for charities in your estimate, I suppose?”

“Of course,” pleaded Mrs Tipps, “in making an estimate, I was thinking only of my own expenses, you know—not of charities and such-like things; but when poor people come, you know, what is one to do?”

“We’ll not discuss that just now, mother. Hallo! ‘ten guineas doctor’s fee!’ Of course you have not that in the estimate, seeing that you did not know Netta was going to be ill. What’s this?—‘five pounds for twenty wax dolls—naked—(to be dressed by —)’”

“Really, Joseph, the book is too private to be