A stitch in time saves nine
Lim had always been lazy. He worked on a rubber plantation and it was his job to empty the tins of latex hanging round the trees that his father had tapped and to fill the buckets with the strong sticky liquid. He then had to carry the buckets, which, when full were very heavy, to the shed at the edge of the plantation. His father usually supervised the part at the shed to make sure that they were paid the right amount of money. It was also Lim’s job, therefore, to take care of the tins as they hung round the rubber trees. He had to see that they were firm and securely tied with trees. He had to see that they were firm and securely tied with wire. He had to make sure, too, that there were no holes in them.
On this particular morning, there was a mist in the air and it was already very hot. The rubber plantation was quiet, dark and still. Lim went round the trees, one by one, inspecting the tins and emptying them. Some of them were full to the top, but quite a lot of them were only half-full or even less than that. However, he went to indifferently pouring the latex into the bucket without even bothering to think why so many of the tins were nearly empty.
“I’ll take what I’ve got and not worry about anything else” he thought and joined his father at the shed. Of course, they were not paid so much money that morning, because the latex simply wasn’t there.
“What’s happened today, son ?” asked his father crossly. “Have you missed out half the trees or what ?”
“I don’t know,” shrugged Lim, who ante to hurry home with his share of the payment to check if he had got enough money to buy the latest record of his favorite pop-singer.
“Perhaps some of the tins have got holes in them,” suggested his father. “Our rubber trees are young and should be yielding far more than this. Check all the tins tomorrow !”
“Check all the tins, my foot !” muttered Lim. But not aloud, of course.
And so the day passed and his father came home cross, because he had hope to have more money.
“Don’t forget those tins tomorrow,” he said to him. “If they’ve got holes in them, you must mend with some tin solder do it in good time. If you don’t, we’ll have to replace all the tins with new ones to say nothing of losing a lot of good latex and the good money that goes with it as well. Remember that ‘a stitch in time saves nine’ and in case you are too stupid to understand that, it is a European proverb which means that a little bit of trouble and work today will save the necessity of a lot of trouble and work tomorrow.
“Always preaching,” mumbled Lim, as he went to bed. “They are all the same.”
The next morning, however, he did check the tins and sure enough, as he poured out the latex and inspected the bottoms of the small round tins, he found tiny holes in quite half of them. the latex which had collected was, of course, much less because so much of it had dropped through these holes and had begun to congeal on the soft grass at the base of each tree.
“I’ll find some better tins later on today,” thought Lim, and I’ll buy a stick of solder in the village and come back and mend the rest tonight. But, in fact he did nothing of the sort.
The next morning, the pools of latex below the rubber tree were bigger than ever, because somehow during the night, the holes in the tins seemed to have got bigger than ever. The quantity of latex was so small that his father came to inspect the tins himself.
“You’ll get them mended or replaced now, this very morning,” he yelled in rage, as he looked at the shiftless Lim. “Do it at once.”
But, Lim never did and so, not many days later, there were no latex at all and the tins were beyond hoe of repair.
“They’ve all got to be replaced now” said his father, “and time and money will be lost while we renew them all. If only you’d listened to me and mended them while the holes were small, all this trouble would have been avoided. Now do you see that stitch in time saves nine or will you always be too stupid either to listen or to learn ?”
