Two men were journeying together.
On the way, one of them noticed an axe lying on the ground. No sooner did he set his eyes on it than he picked it up, as if it had been his own all along.
Seeing it was a very new axe, his companion shared with him the pleasure and commented, “We have had a lucky find.”
The comment, however, made the man who had found the axe annoyed. “Don’t say ‘we,'” said he. “Say ‘You have had a find.'”
Shortly afterwards the people who had lost the axe came up with them. The man with the axe in his hand, seeing the owners in pursuit, said, “We are done for.”
“Don’t say ‘we,'” his companion replied, “say ‘I’m done for’—since when you found the axe you would not let me share the possession of it.”
