Mark Twain: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

THE TALE OF THE LOST LAND CHAPTER 32: DOWLEY'S HUMILIATION (continued)

"That's all right," I said, indifferently. "What is the amount? give us the items."

Then he read off this bill, while those three amazed men listened, and serene waves of satisfaction rolled over my soul and alternate waves of terror and admiration surged over Marco's:

   2 pounds salt . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   200
    8 dozen pints beer, in the wood . . . . .   800
    3 bushels wheat . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,700
    2 pounds fish . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   100
    3 hens  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   400
    1 goose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   400
    3 dozen eggs  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   150
    1 roast of beef . . . . . . . . . . . . .   450
    1 roast of mutton . . . . . . . . . . . .   400
    1 ham . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   800
    1 sucking pig . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   500
    2 crockery dinner sets  . . . . . . . . . 6,000
    2 men's suits and underwear . . . . . . . 2,800
    1 stuff and 1 linsey-woolsey gown
      and underwear . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,600
    8 wooden goblets  . . . . . . . . . . . .   800
    Various table furniture . . . . . . . . .10,000
    1 deal table  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3,000
    8 stools  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4,000
    2 miller guns, loaded . . . . . . . . . . 3,000

He ceased. There was a pale and awful silence. Not a limb stirred. Not a nostril betrayed the passage of breath.

"Is that all?" I asked, in a voice of the most perfect calmness.

"All, fair sir, save that certain matters of light moment are placed together under a head hight sundries. If it would like you, I will sepa--"

"It is of no consequence," I said, accompanying the words with a gesture of the most utter indifference; "give me the grand total, please."

The clerk leaned against the tree to stay himself, and said:

"Thirty-nine thousand one hundred and fifty milrays!"

The wheelwright fell off his stool, the others grabbed the table to save themselves, and there was a deep and general ejaculation of:

"God be with us in the day of disaster!"

The clerk hastened to say:

"My father chargeth me to say he cannot honorably require you to pay it all at this time, and therefore only prayeth you--"