One day a friend of mine offered me a sweet. I went to work, carrying my bag in one hand and the sweet in another. I went and looked at the sweet with admiration. I thought, I would put my bag, sit at the desk and eat it. Suddenly I saw my boss, going towards me. He was pleased to see me, stretched his hand and said, ‘Good morning. How are you? I see you are in a good mood.’ He talked to me and looked at my sweet. I shook his hand and thought, ’If somebody offered you a sweet, Ivan Petrovich, you would be in a good mood, too.’ But I said aloud, ‘Morning. Excuse me, I’m in a hurry. I’m very busy.’ And I went to my office.
I came in, put my bag, sat at the desk and as soon as I started to unwrap the sweet, my colleagues appeared at once, just one after another. They entered as if to solve business problems, but looked askance at my sweet. I took it and hid into the bag. I did it, because there were a lot of people in the office, but I had only one sweet, and I couldn’t treat all of them to it!
My working day was over and I went home. There I had another bad luck, the guests; there were eight people on the whole. Naturally, I pretended to be glad to see them, but I didn’t let the bag with the sweet out of my hands and sat at the table with it. The guests laughed at me.
‘Why are you embracing your bag? What have you got in it? Any jewelry?’ they asked.
I answered,
‘Look! You’ve come to me and besides, you are laughing at me! What I’ve got in my bag is my business. I’ve got only one sweet, but there are a lot of you here. I’m not going to treat you to the sweet.’
You know, they turned out to be unreal friends. They got offended and left, they don’t visit me and talk to me any more. And the sweet, what happened to the sweet? While I was carrying it in my bag, it melted and made my important business papers dirty. Now I feel very upset: I lost my sweet, I lost my friends… I have done something wrong, but I cannot understand what exactly.