A baker learns that the smell he ‘gives away’ sells more than the signs he paints.
**Hook:** The new baker priced his buns fairly and his signs ambitiously: BEST AROMA IN TOWN—FREE. People laughed—then stopped, noses arrested by warm air spelling butter.
**Rise:** A landlord complained: the smell escaped to the street, and several customers ate with their noses and left with their wallets. The baker, red-cheeked with effort and doubt, considered closing the window. An old woman tapped the glass. “Leave it,” she said. “I buy memory first.” The baker left it. He placed a narrow bench under the window, and a tin labeled Pay by Smile or Story. Children climbed; workers leaned; someone whispered a recipe into the tin like a donation.
Sales rose the way dough does—slow, certain, inevitable. People who came for air bought something to thank themselves. The landlord tried to grumble and could not over the crunch of his own crust.
**Finish:** The sign changed to AROMA: ON THE HOUSE. BREAD: IN YOURS. **Moral:** What you give freely makes what you sell worth buying.
