nt to go back to Bartlett's store and ask to have his
bill changed. He was sure Mr. Bartlett would think it odd, after he
had charged the groceries.

"I'll have to walk way down to the shopping center," thought Jerry.
Thinking about all the streets he would have to cross, with the
trouble of getting the heavy cart up and down the curbs, Jerry was not
so sure that starting a charge account had been such a good idea after
all. He had a feeling that in a way he might have played sort of an
April Fool joke on himself. But it was too late now to undo what he
had done. He would feel like a ninny going back and telling Mr.
Bartlett that he had decided to pay cash, that he had changed his mind
about opening a charge account for the Martin family.

"I'll get my bill changed at the A & P," Jerry decided. And went so
fast in that direction that the bag holding the potatoes fell out of
the cart and broke and Jerry lost two of them down a sewer. After that
he went more slowly, though he found it hard to make the heavy cart go
downhill slowly. It made his arms ache holding it back.

2

Change for a Ten-Dollar Bill

Having to drag a heavy cart with a big bag of groceries in it nearly a
mile to the shopping center became considerable of a chore even before
Jerry was halfway there.

"Lemme see," he thought as he bumped the cart down a curb. "I know I
have to put away eight dollars and twenty-one cents for Mr. Bartlett.
How much is that from ten dollars? That's the right change for Mummy."

Jerry had a pained look on his face as he tried to do the subtraction
in his head. He was never any good in mental arithmetic. Give him a
pencil in his hand and he could do pretty well at figuring. But his
mind seemed to go blank when he had to carry and all that in his head.
He reached in all his pockets but did not have a pencil. And he knew
he had to ask for the right change.

Just then Jerry saw Carl Weston coming up the street. He was a
classmate of Jerry's in the sixth grade. He wore thick-lensed glasses
and was quite a brain. He'd be almost sure to have a pencil or a
ballpoint pen. But Jerry asked him and he didn't, so Jerry gave him a
line about being a whiz at arithmetic and said he bet Carl could say
right off how much money you'd have left if you subtracted eight
dollars and twenty-one cents from ten dollars.

For a few seconds Jerry saw a human adding-machine at work. Then Carl
said, "One dollar and seventy-nine cents, o