TIT FOR TAT

New Zealand Tablet, 16 September 1909, Page 1478

TIT FOR TAT

A story is told of a Norman peasant who shares with a Scot the highest reputation for canniness. The baker of the old Normandy Tillage was a French peasant of the good old-fashioned sort and keen after the sous. He considered it to his advantage to buy his butter from a customer, a well-to-do farmer in the neighborhood, but after a time he complained . that the farmer gave him short weight. His complaints were unheeded. At last' he laid them before the district magistrate. The farmer was summoned before him and forced to produce his scales, but he brought no weights. ' I brought none,' he explained. 'I didn't need them.' 'Not need weights?' ' Not for the baker. I weigh his weekly pound of butter with the pound loaf he daily supplies to me.'