Witches’ Loaves by O. Henry. Short summary

5 seconds

The bakery owner, Martha, liked a regular customer who took stale bread. She mistook him for a poor artist and put butter on his bread, which made the man very angry.

1 minute

Martha was the owner of a small bakery. A couple of times during the week, a visitor came into the bakery and interested the woman. The stranger spoke with a German accent, wore glasses, and had a dark beard trimmed in a wedge.

The customer regularly took two stale loaves of bread and never asked about the other item. One day the bakery owner noticed red and brown paint on his fingers and mistook him for a poor painter.

Martha sighs during breakfast that the artist cannot share her meal but eats dry bread. To test a hunch about the stranger’s profession, Martha hangs a picture in the bakery. A customer who came in noticed that the perspective on it was drawn incorrectly.

One day the heroine, taking pity on the artist, put butter in his stale bread. The buyer returned angry; his buddy explained that he worked as a draftsman and erased pencil lines with the stale bread. His latest work, which he had been working on for three months, had been ruined by the oil.