balances is not my forte; but it seems to me that those invoices, when
you bring them, will make it all right. Forty thousand dollars added to
the stock will leave a balance of thirty thousand in favor of the
concern."

"Very likely you are right, after all, Phil. Indeed, I think you must
be. You are always correct about everything."

"O, no, sir; I don't pretend to be always correct, but I try to be so,"
I replied, blushing at the compliments showered upon me.

"But, Phil, you should not attempt to do what you don't understand."

"I thought I was perfectly competent to make out a trial balance, sir."

"Undoubtedly you are. It isn't that," he interposed, with a pleasant
smile. "There are certain details of the business which you don't
understand, and you can't make out a correct trial balance without
including those details."

"I supposed I understood all about the business, and perhaps it would
have come out all right if I had only had those invoices."

"I don't know how that might have been. But suppose Mr. Collingsby had
seen your statement, that the firm had lost ten thousand dollars in six
months."

"I did not intend to show it to him."

"Still he might have seen it. You might have left it on the desk, and a
single glance at it would have alarmed him, when, you can see for
yourself, the business is paying a large profit."

"I made the statement only for you, and I showed it to you in order to
have my blunder pointed out."

"You did perfectly right, Phil, but an accident might have happened,"
said he, walking to the desk where my sheets were still lying.

He picked them up, tore them into a great many pieces, and threw them
into the waste basket.

"At the end of the year we will make out a trial balance together," he
added.

I did not like to see the result of so much hard labor destroyed;
especially as, by Mr. Whippleton's own showing, the figures would be
correct when he produced the missing invoices. But I had my rough
draft, which I had carefully copied, in the desk, and I intended to
carry this home, in order to ascertain at some future time whether my
figures were correct or not. When I obtained the invoices I could tell
whether I had made a failure or not in the act of taking a trial
balance. I was not satisfied that I was so utterly stupid as my
employer made me out to be.

"Those bills ought to have been entered on the lumber book," said I,
when the junior partner had disposed of my pape