THE cook returned to find the washing she had set to dry in front of the fire all scorched. As for the farmyard girl, she had left the stable without taking the time to tie up the beasts and one of the cows had broken the leg of a foal that she was rearing in the same stall.

The gardener’s lost working days were worth a good twenty crowns; the linen and the foal quite as much. So there we have, in one trivial incident consequent upon a missing clasp priced at a few pennies, a loss of forty crowns, borne by people who needed to exercise the strictest economy, to say nothing of the pains caused by the ailment, or of anxiety and other inconveniences not of a budgetary kind.

These were not great misfortunes or losses, but bearing in mind that carelessness prompted accidents of a similar sort day after day, until at last it ruined an honest family, one must concede that a little attention would have repaid the trouble.