371: Herb sold . . .
Herb ’n’ Lorna, Chapter 16 continues
Herb sold what he had on hand, but he had no way at all to sell any new designs. His Uncle Ben had been dead for eleven years. Since Herb wasn’t about to risk trying to make a coarse-goods connection of his own in Chacallit, his new designs never went any further than sketches, and the sketches never went any farther than the bottom of the metal box that he kept under his workbench.
It took a couple of months of coarse-goods work for Herb and Lorna to accumulate enough for a down payment on a small house for Bert and Ella. Lorna prepared the full Sunday-dinner spread for the occasion of their presenting the money: carrot and celery sticks, olives, sweet gherkins, Waldorf salad, fricasseed chicken, dumplings, peas, chocolate cake.
Herb paced the kitchen floor while Lorna got things ready to go out to the table. “Come on, Lorna,” he said. “Tell me what you’re going to tell them.”
“Don’t you have any confidence in me?” she asked.
“Of course I do. I just — are you sure Bert will believe it?”
“Well, no.”
“No?”
“No, I’m not sure, but I think so. Here take this chicken out to the table and have them come and sit down.”
When Ella and Bert came to the table, Herb began pouring beer for everyone. There wasn’t quite enough left in the bottle to fill his own glass. He started for the kitchen.
“Oh, Herrrrb,” said Lorna. “Forget about it, can’t you? I want them to see what we have for them.”
“Now, be patient, Lorna,” said Herb. “They’ve been waiting for five years. They can wait a minute longer.”
“But I can’t,” said Lorna.
Herb went into the kitchen, got another quart bottle of beer from the refrigerator, opened it, brought it into the dining room, filled his glass, and started for the kitchen again.
“Herrrb!” said Lorna. Herb chuckled. He set the bottle on the sideboard and sat down at the head of the table.
“We have something to give to you,” said Herb. He turned toward Lorna, and she lifted a napkin to unveil, on the table between them, a small box, wrapped in white paper and tied with a white ribbon.
“This is for you,” said Lorna.
“Shall I open it?” asked Ella.
“Sure,” said Herb. “Go ahead.”
Ella untied the ribbon, tore the paper away, and opened the box.
“I — I — oh — ” was all she could say. She pushed the box toward Bert, who looked into it and frowned. He took a stack of bills from the box.
“Now, Herb,” he said. “What’s this about? You know how I — ”
Herb just smiled. He had no idea what story Lorna had invented, but he said, with every confidence that what he said was true, “Lorna can tell you all about it.”
“Herb’s too modest to tell you himself,” she said. Herb coughed and looked into his plate. “All these years, he’s been investing the rent money you’ve been paying us.”
“You have?” said Bert.
“I should say so,” said Herb.
“He’s been investing it in the Studebaker company,” said Lorna. “And he’s done very well. This is the profit.”
“Well, that’s nice,” said Bert, “but we can’t — ”
“You didn’t listen to what I said,” said Lorna. “This is the profit. It’s not the money you paid us, just the money Herb made from the money you gave us.”
Bert shook his head. “I’m still not sure about — ”
Lorna looked hard into his eyes. “Of course, we kept out an amount equal to the interest we would have made if we had put the money in the bank,” she said.
“Well,” said Bert, “in that case — ”
[to be continued on Monday, October 31, 2022]
In Topical Guide 371, Mark Dorset considers Ethical Issues: Lying: “Altruistic Lying” and “Paternalistic Lying” from this episode.
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