The stone weights

Original non-fiction-style practice text.

On the first morning of the outdoor cloth sale, gusts kept lifting the display from its trestle table. The trader, Femi, fetched several smooth stones from a box beneath his chair. Each was wrapped in a scrap of cotton and carried a small stitched number. A visitor asked why he had bothered to number stones which nobody would buy.

Femi explained that they were not interchangeable. Two were light enough to hold down the thinnest silk without leaving a deep crease. The heavier pair secured folded canvas near the edge of the table. Their cotton covers kept rough surfaces away from the fabric. At the end of the day, the numbers helped him check that none had been packed inside a customer’s purchase.

During a lull in the wind, Femi removed a weight so that the visitor could feel the cloth. He replaced it before turning to another customer. The stones were ordinary objects, but he handled them with the same care as his stock. Last season, an unwrapped piece of brick had caught a thread and spoilt a length of fine material. The box beneath his chair was his answer to that expensive lesson. He did not consider the stones merchandise. They were part of the equipment which allowed the merchandise to remain worth buying.

Give two purposes served by wrapping the stones in cotton and numbering them.