LOVE of flowers is one of the gifts the fairies gave me in my cradle.
It’s a great possession, fills so many blanks. You can forget you’ve
got no baby of your own when you watch the flowers’ babies lifting
their little faces to the sun.
I bought four plants at Bloomingdales and put them in the front window,
a juniper bush, a Boston fern, a carrot fern and a rubber plant. I
like the ferns best, the new shoots are so lovely, pushing up little
green curly tops in the shelter of the old strong ones. I remind
myself of Miss Lucretia Tox in _Dombey and Son_, with a watering can
and a pair of scissors to snip off dead leaves. There’s one great
difference between us--Miss Tox had a Mr. Dombey across the way. I’ve
nothing across the way. The only male being that that discreet and
expressionless row of houses has given up to my eyes is the young
doctor opposite. He does the same thing every morning, runs down the
steps with a bag and a busy air, walks rapidly to Lexington Avenue,
then, when he thinks he’s out of sight, stands on the corner not
knowing which way to go.
I feel that, in a purely neighborly spirit, I ought to have an illness.
I would like to help all young people starting in business, take all
the hansoms that go drearily trailing along Fifth Avenue, especially
if the driver looks drunken and despondent, and give money to every
beggar who accosts me. They say it is a bad principle and one is always
swindled. Personally I don’t think that matters at all. Your impulse is
all right and that’s all that counts. But I digress again--I must get
over the habit.
This morning I was doing my Miss Lucretia Tox act when Betty Ferguson
came in. Betty is one of my rich friends; we were at school together
and have kept close ever since. She married Harry Ferguson the same
year that I married Harmon Drake. Now she has three children, and a
house on Fifth Avenue, not to mention Harry. Her crumpled rose leaf
is that she is getting fat. Every time I see her she says resolutely,
“I am going to walk twice round the reservoir to-morrow morning,” and
never does it.
She came in blooming, with a purple orchid among her furs, and the
rich rosy color in her face deepened by the first nip of winter. She
has a sharp eye, and I expected she would immediately see the rug and
demand an explanation. I was slightly flustered, for I have no excuse
ready and I never can confess my weaknesses to Betty. She is one of the
sensible people who don’t see why you can’t be sensible, too.
She did not, however, notice the rug, but clasping my hand fixed
me with a solemn glance that made me uneasy. Betty oblivious to
externals--what had I done?
“Who was the woman I met coming out of here just now?” she said
abruptly.
“Mrs. Bushey,” I hazarded, and then remembered Mrs. Bushey was off
somewhere imparting physical culture.
“Is Mrs. Bushey very tall and thin with black hair and a velvet dress,
and a hat as big as a tea tray?”
“No, she’s short and stout and--”
“Evie,” interrupted Mrs. Ferguson, sounding a deep note, “that woman
wasn’t Mrs. Bushey. Nobody who looked like that ever leased an
eighteen-foot house and rented out floors.”