Thinks I to myself: "I'll just about land on the fire-escape of a tenement, six stories up.And I'll spend the next six months looking at clothes on the line."But she carried me to a nice little room only three flights up in quite a decent street.And she put me in the window, of course.And then she went to work and cooked dinner for herself.And what do you suppose she had? Bread and tea and a little dab of jam! Nothing else.Not a single lobster, nor so much as one bottle of champagne.
The Carruthers comedy team had both every evening, except now and then when they took a notion for pig's knuckle and kraut.
After she had finished her dinner my new owner came to the window and leaned down close to my leaves and cried softly to herself for a while.It made me feel funny.I never knew anybody to cry that way over a rubber plant before.Of course, I've seen a few of 'em turn on the tears for what they could get out of it, but she seemed to be crying just for the pure enjoyment of it.She touched my leaves like she loved 'em, and she bent down her head and kissed each one of 'em.
I guess I'm about the toughest specimen of a peripatetic orchid on earth, but I tell you it made me feel sort of queer.Home never was like that to me before.Generally I used to get chewed by poodles and have shirt-waists hung on me to dry, and get watered with coffee grounds and peroxide of hydrogen.
This girl had a piano in the room, and she used to disturb it with both hands while she made noises with her mouth for hours at a time.
I suppose she was practising vocal music.
One day she seemed very much excited and kept looking at the clock.
At eleven somebody knocked and she let in a stout, dark man with towsled black hair.He sat down at once at the piano and played while she sang for him.When she finished she laid one hand on her bosom and looked at him.He shook his head, and she leaned against the piano."Two years already," she said, speaking slowly--"do you think in two more--or even longer?"The man shook his head again."You waste your time," he said, roughly I thought."The voice is not there." And then he looked at her in a peculiar way."But the voice is not everything," he went on."You have looks.I can place you, as I told you if--"The girl pointed to the door without saying anything, and the dark man left the room.And then she came over and cried around me again.
It's a good thing I had enough rubber in me to be water-proof.
About that time somebody else knocked at the door."Thank goodness,"I said to myself."Here's a chance to get the water-works turned off.I hope it's somebody that's game enough to stand a bird and a bottle to liven things up a little." Tell you the truth, this little girl made me tired.A rubber plant likes to see a little sport now and then.I don't suppose there's another green thing in New York that sees as much of gay life unless it's the chartreuse or the sprigs of parsley around the dish.
When the girl opens the door in steps a young chap in a traveling cap and picks her up in his arms, and she sings out "Oh, Dick!" and stays there long enough to--well, you've been a rubber plant too, sometimes, I suppose.
"Good thing!" says I to myself."This is livelier than scales and weeping.Now there'll be something doing.""You've got to go back with me," says the young man."I've come two thousand miles for you.Aren't you tired of it yet.Bess? You've kept all of us waiting so long.Haven't you found out yet what is best?""The bubble burst only to-day," says the girl."Come here, Dick, and see what I found the other day on the sidewalk for sale." She brings him by the hand and exhibits yours truly."How one ever got away up here who can tell? I bought it with almost the last money I had."He looked at me, but he couldn't keep his eyes off her for more than a second."Do you remember the night, Bess," he said, "when we stood under one of those on the bank of the bayou and what you told me then?""Geewillikins!" I said to myself."Both of them stand under a rubber plant! Seems to me they are stretching matters somewhat!""Do I not," says she, looking up at him and sneaking close to his vest, "and now I say it again, and it is to last forever.Look, Dick, at its leaves, how wet they are.Those are my tears, and it was thinking of you that made them fall.""The dear old magnolias!" says the young man, pinching one of my leaves."I love them all."Magnolia! Well, wouldn't that--say! those innocents thought I was a magnolia! What the--well, wasn't that tough on a genuine little old New York rubber plant?
