Your ShelfYour Projects

The Cost of Carelessness

6%

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 4, 1912

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 89, No. 1.

Read the full edition

The Cost of Carelessness

“I WONDER,” Grace Andrews remarked, catching a bill that fell from the change Lilian Reed was receiving at the post-office window, “whether I could ever achieve such a royal disregard of money. Don’t you ever count your change, Lilian?”
“Never. What’s the good of fussing? If it’s gone, it’s gone.”
“Only sometimes might it not affect some one else?”
“I don’t know anybody it could affect except daddy, and he doesn’t care. Don’t go to being exact at your age, Grace; you’ll be sure to turn out like Miss Lucretia Moxey, and I know you wouldn’t like that.”
“The fates forfend!” exclaimed Grace, in laughing protest.
But although Grace said no more at the time, and the two promptly forgot the incident, Lilian was to receive a lesson she could not easily forget.
It happened one day that a package was sent to her from a jeweler’s shop by a special messenger, a round-faced, honest-eyed boy of fourteen. The bill was for thirteen dollars. Lilian gave him two tens, and according to her usual custom, stuffed the change into her pocket without looking at it. That afternoon she was called up on the telephone by Mr. Tracy, the head of the firm. He apologized for troubling her, but said that their messenger was five dollars short on his accounts, and declared that he must have given her five dollars too much change. He had had but three packages to deliver, and both the others were accounted for.
“O, no, Mr. Tracy,” Lilian replied, promptly, “I am very certain that he gave me the right change—one five and two ones.”
“I am afraid so,” Mr. Tracy returned, “but the boy was so insistent that it seemed only fair to him to ask you.”
“It was no trouble at all,” Lilian answered, cheerfully. “I hope that he will find the money, Mr. Tracy. It could not possibly have been here.”
That afternoon, it happened, Lilian did not go out; but the next morning, planning a shopping trip, she opened her purse to count her money. A wad of bills tumbled into her lap. She opened it carelessly; it contained two fives and two ones. There was no doubt about it; she had had but the twenty and some change the day before. It was humiliating, but she was honest. She at once called up Mr. Tracy and confessed her carelessness. Mr. Tracy’s voice came back gravely:—
“I am very sorry, Miss Reed; we dismissed the boy yesterday. In our business we dare not keep one upon whom the least suspicion rests.”
“But surely,” the girl cried, “you can get him back?”
“Unfortunately, through an oversight, we did not have his address. It was our carelessness and our loss, I am afraid, for we liked him. I only hope it was not too serious a matter for him—we could give him no recommendation, you see.”
Lilian stammered a word or two and hung up the receiver. But her eyes were full of trouble. For the first time she realized how much a girl’s carelessness might cost others.—The Youth’s Companion.