Butter

We lived in the West Indies. I was a boy of seven. Late one day, when we had no butter for our dinner, my father dispatched me to the village store. I asked the proprietor for butter. She looked at me doubtfully. They had no sticks of butter in a refrigerator, only a great drum of butter from Denmark. In dialect she said, “How will you carry away this butter?” I had brought nothing, no cup to carry butter. She dabbed a bit of butter onto a piece of paper. “Now go! You will come here tomorrow morning with cup!”