Fraternity-Testvériség, 1956 (34. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1956-04-01 / 4-5. szám
FRATERNITY 39 I squatted down on the floor and watched to see if some teentsy shiny coinlet wouldn’t crawl out somewhere. Nothing moved. Truth to tell, we didn’t realy believe that there was anything inside. We looked at each other — and laughed at the childish joke. I touched the upside down drawer. “Shh!” my mother warned me, “gently, or they may run away. You don’t know yet what a nimble beastie the penny is. Very swiftly does it run; why, it just rolls. And how it rolls . . .” We were doubled up with mirth. We’d learned only too often how easily pennies could roll. When we came to, I stretched out my hand once more to tilt the drawer. “Goodness!” my mother cried out again. I was so startled that I snatched back my fingers as if they had touched the stove. “Watch out, you little prodigal. How eager he is to let them go! They are ours just so long as they are under here. Let them rest a bit longer. Because, you see, I want to wash. For that, I need soap. It takes at least seven pennies to get soap; they won’t sell it for less. I have three already; now I need four more, and they are here in this little house. They live here, but they don’t care to be bothered. If they get cross, they’ll go away so that we’ll never see them again. Be careful, then, for money is very touchy. It must be handled with care — with proper respect! It takes offense readily, like fine young ladies from town. Listen, don’t you know some coaxing rhyme, something that might lure it from its snail-shell?” How many times we chuckled during this chatter, who could tell? But the snail-luring verse was very funny. “Uncle money, come out here, Your house is a-burning, come out here . . .” With that, I turned the house right side up. There were a hundred different odds and ends of rubbish underneath. Of money, alas, there was none. My mother, her lip drawn up sourly, kept on rummaging, but in vain. “What a pity”, she said, “that we don’t have a table. If we had dumped it out onto a table, we would have shown more consideration. Then there would have been something underneath it.” I scooped up all the scraps and put them into the drawer. Meanwhile, my mother pondered. She fairly racked her brains to see if she hadn’t put some money somewhere, sometime, but she didn’t know of any. Something was stirring in me, though. “Mother dear, I know where there is a penny.” “Where, my son? Let’s get it before it melts like the snow.” “In the glass cupboard; it was in the drawer.” “O hapless child, what a good thing you didn’t say so before! By now it would be gone, too.” We stood up and went to the glass cabinet, which had been without glass for a long time now, but the penny was there in its drawer, right where I knew it would be. For three whole days I had planned to filch it from there, but I had never dared. I would have bought candy with it, too, only I would not have dared do that either.
