Hi Ian:
The fair price story was always told to us, when kids, ,by Anna Curtis, who wrote a book, Stories of the Underground Railroad, of stories told to her by the generation who smuggled slaves out of the US to Canada. She was ANCIENT, when we were young, but we felt we touched those days through her. She was the one who made us comfortable using plan speech, maybe the last generation to (as Muzzy notes) say Thee but not Thou.
I still feel a compulsion, I seldom give in too, when having a disagreement with Friends, to lapse into Anna "Friend, Thee ....." as she did when wanting you to know she was VERY much in earnest.
She told us of a story when friends first came to Pennsylvania... There was a war party of Native who burst into a meeting. The Friends smiled at them and waved them to empty seats. The Natives watched them sit in silence for quiet a while then got up and placed a white feather over the door, a sign that this was a sacred place. Anna would wait a moment and add, "of course the Algonquins worshiped crazy people, so, between Thee and Me, we aren't sure WHAT they meant!"
Cheers, Larry