And I commenced to check each line--2 loaves at 2 1/2d., 1 lamp chimney, 3d., soap, 4d., butter, 5d.... It did not require any particularly shrewd head to run up these rows of figures--this little huckster account in which nothing very complex occurred. I tried honestly to find the error that the woman spoke about, but couldn't succeed. After I had muddled about with these figures for some minutes I felt that, unfortunately, everything commenced to dance about in my head; I could no longer distinguish debit or credit; I mixed the whole thing up. Finally, I came to a dead stop at the following entry--"3. 5/16ths of a pound of cheese at 9d." My brain failed me completely; I stared stupidly down at the cheese, and got no farther. "It is really too confoundedly crabbed writing," I exclaimed in despair. "Why, God bless me, here is 5/16ths of a pound of cheese entered--ha, ha! did any one ever hear the like? Yes, look here; you can see for yourself." "Yes," she said; "it is often put down like that; it is a kind of Dutch cheese. Yes, that is all right--five-sixteenths is in this case five ounces." "Yes, yes; I understand that well enough," I interrupted, although in truth I understood nothing more whatever. I tried once more to get this little account right, that I could have totted up in a second some months ago. I sweated fearfully, and thought over these enigmatical figures with all my might, and I blinked my eyes reflectingly, as if I was studying this matter sharply, but I had to give it up. These five ounces of cheese finished me completely; it was as if something snapped within my forehead. But yet, to give the impression that I still worked out my calculation, I moved my lips and muttered a number aloud, all the while sliding farther and farther down the reckoning as if I were steadily coming to a result. She sat and waited. At last I said: "Well, now, I have gone through it from first to last, and there is no mistake, as far as I can see." "Isn't there?" replied the woman, "isn't there really?" But I saw well that she did not believe me, and she seemed all at once to throw a dash of contempt into her words, a slightly careless tone that I had never heard from her before. She remarked that perhaps I was not accustomed to reckon in sixteenths; she mentioned also that she must only apply to some one who had a knowledge of sixteenths, to get the account properly revised. She said all this, not in any hurtful way to make me feel ashamed, but thoughtfully and seriously. When she got as far as the door, she said, without looking at me: "Excuse me for taking up your time then." Off she went. A moment after, the door opened again, and she re-entered. She could hardly have gone much farther than the stairs before she had turned back.