Part 1 (1/2)

Bride Roses.

by W. D. Howells.

SCENE

_A Lady_, entering the florist's with her m.u.f.f to her face, and fluttering gayly up to the counter, where the florist stands folding a ma.s.s of loose flowers in a roll of cotton batting: ”Good-morning, Mr.

Eichenlaub! Ah, put plenty of cotton round the poor things, if you don't want them frozen stiff! You have no idea what a day it is, here in your little tropic.” She takes away her m.u.f.f as she speaks, but gives each of her cheeks a final pressure with it, and holds it up with one hand inside as she sinks upon the stool before the counter.

_The Florist:_ ”Dropic? With icepergs on the wintows?” He nods his head toward the frosty panes, and wraps a sheet of tissue-paper around the cotton and the flowers.

_The Lady:_ ”But you are not near the windows. Back here it is midsummer!”

_The Florist:_ ”Yes, we got a rhevricherator to keep the rhoces from sunstroke.” He crimps the paper at the top, and twists it at the bottom of the bundle in his hand. ”Hier!” he calls to a young man warming his hands at the stove. ”Chon, but on your hat, and dtake this to--Holt on!

I forgot to but in the cart.” He undoes the paper, and puts in a card lying on the counter before him; the lady watches him vaguely. ”There!”

He restores the wrapping and hands the package to the young man, who goes out with it. ”Well, matam?”

_The Lady_, laying her m.u.f.f with her hand in it on the counter, and leaning forward over it: ”Well, Mr. Eichenlaub. I am going to be very difficult.”

_The Florist:_ ”That is what I lige. Then I don't feel so rhesbonsible.”

_The Lady:_ ”But to-day, I _wish_ you to feel responsible. I want you to take the whole responsibility. Do you know why I always come to you, instead of those places on Fifth Avenue?”

_The Florist:_ ”Well, it is a good teal cheaper, for one thing”--

_The Lady:_ ”Not at all! That isn't the reason, at all. Some of your things are dearer. It's because you take so much more interest, and you talk over what I want, and you don't urge me, when I haven't made up my mind. You let me consult you, and you are not cross when I don't take your advice.”

_The Florist:_ ”You are very goodt, matam.”

_The Lady:_ ”Not at all. I am simply just. And now I want you to provide the flowers for my first Sat.u.r.day: Sat.u.r.day of this week, in fact, and I want to talk the order all over with you. Are you very busy?”

_The Florist:_ ”No; I am qvite at your service. We haf just had to egsegute a larche gommission very soddenly, and we are still in a little dtisorter yet; but”--

_The Lady:_ ”Yes, I see.” She glances at the rear of the shop, where the floor is littered with the leaves and petals of flowers, and sprays of fern and evergreen. A woman, followed by a belated smell of breakfast, which gradually mingles with the odor of the plants, comes out of a door there, and begins to gather the larger fragments into her ap.r.o.n. The lady turns again, and looks at the jars and vases of cut flowers in the window, and on the counter. ”What I can't understand is how you know just the quant.i.ty of flowers to buy every day. You must often lose a good deal.”

_The Florist:_ ”It gomes out about rhighdt, nearly always. When I get left, sometimes, I can chenerally work dem off on funerals. Now, that bic orter hat I just fill, that wa.s.s a funeral. It usedt up all the flowers I hat ofer from yesterday.”

_The Lady:_ ”Don't speak of it! And the flowers, are they just the same for funerals?”

_The Florist:_ ”Yes, rhoces nearly always. Whidte ones.”

_The Lady:_ ”Well, it is too dreadful. I am not going to have roses, whatever I have.” After a thoughtful pause, and a more careful look around the shop: ”Mr. Eichenlaub, why wouldn't orchids do?”

_The Florist:_ ”Well, they would be bretty dtear. You couldn't make any show at all for less than fifteen tollars.”

_The Lady_, with a slight sigh: ”No, orchids wouldn't do. They are fantastic things, anyway, and they are not very effective, as you say.

Pinks, anemones, marguerites, narcissus--there doesn't seem to be any great variety, does there?”

_The Florist_, patiently: ”There will be more, lader on.”