"Well, Mogey," said Smush, returning from the pantry with a bundle of candles under his arm. "I've got good news and bad news. The good news is that I finally found that chocolate donut hole that rolled off the table last month."
"Is that the source of the crumbs on your moustache?" Mogey asked.
Smush peeled off his moustache to regard it, nodded, and pasted it back upon his upper lip.
"So you didn't save any for me?" Mogey exclaimed. "I'm not sure how that's good news. What's the bad news?"
"We're out of candles," Smush disclosed. "It's time for us to call on... the chandler."
"Confound it!" said Mogey. "I can't face him again. I can't! And I won't."
But the need for light won out in the end. After all, it is said that you eat with your eyes first, and in Mogey and Smush's case, less than an hour after their last candle guttered out, Mogey had already choked on two separate chicken bones, and Smush had accidentally swallowed an entire baby back rib. So they turned up on the chandlery doorstep, ready to face the music as it were.
"Ah ha!" shouted Bose Bumbous as he opened the door. The sturdy chandler was only four feet tall, but it was said he once defeated a team of oxen in tug-of-war. "Two of my favorite customers."
"Yep," grumbled Smush. "I don't suppose you've started accepting cash as a form of payment?"
"No sir," Bose Bumbous replied. "We're still a foot massage-only business. My father - and his father before him - believed that the only acceptable payment for a stack of candles was a good old-fashioned foot rub."
Mogey groaned. Bose Bumbous mistook this for a groan of appreciation.
"Thank you, my friend," Bose Bumbous said. "You know, I do my best to carry on Papa's legacy and run an honest shop here - my prices are still the most reasonable of any chandlery in the province. All I ask is that my customers deliver all foot massages they owe upon receipt of product. Now how many candles can I get you fellers?"
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