The room was clean, rather cheery looking, with one window, water and drain in the corner, a room at the back, and a very small one at the side over the hall, with a window half the width of the other. A stove stood in the chimney recess, there was an old lounge, a rug of crazy-work carpet in which Dilsey Quinn had sewed together the bits given to her mother.
“Hello, Dil! Ain’t them the daisies? Did ye ever have sich a lot before in yer life? I don’t mean they’re reg’lar daisies—they’re roses of some kind, but blam’d if I ever seen any like ’em afore.”
He tossed them into a baby-wagon, where sat the frailest and whitest wraith one could ever imagine alive. How she lived puzzled everybody. They never took into account Dil’s passionate and inexhaustible love that fought off death with eager, watchful care.
“O Patsey!” Such a joyful cry of surprise. “Was there a flower mission?”
“Flower mission be blowed! Did ye ever see any sich in a mission by the time it gits round here?”
His stubby nose wrinkled disdainfully, and he gave his head an important toss.
“But, oh, where did you get thim?” There was the least bit of a brogue in Dil’s voice, and she always said “thim” in an odd, precise fashion. “There must be a thousand; they’re packed so tight they’ve almost hurted each other. And, oh, how sweet!”
The breath of fragrance seemed to penetrate every pulse in Dil’s sturdy frame.
“I guess ther ain’t mor’n a hundred; but it’s a jolly lot, and they looked so strange and queer like—weakly, like Bess here, an’ I thought of her. A young lady throwed ’em out to me. I s’pose she’d had so many flowers they didn’t count. My, wasn’t she a high-stepper, purty as they make ’em; but her hair couldn’t shine along o’ Bess’s here. None o’ yer horse-car folks, nuther; she went off in a cab. An’ Jim Casey went fer ’em. I knowed she meant ’em fer me; ye kin tell by a person’s eye an’ the nod o’ ther head. But Casey went fer ’em, an’ I give him a punch jes’ back o’ the ear—clear science, an’ the boys made a row. While the cop was a-mendin’ of their bangs I shinned it off good, I tell ye! I’ve run every step from Gran’ Cent’al, an now I must shin off fer my papers. An’ you kids kin have a picnic wid de flowers.”
Patsey stopped for a breath, redder than ever in the face.