“Gracious! Would you—you yourself?”
“I would—I myself. I would do anything rather than be so idle. The flowers are mine. We have all enjoyed them. They did us good that way; now I want to make them do us good some other way.”
“Humph! How much will you give me fer my share?”
“Mercenary little wretch! not a cent! I want every single cent for Motherkin. You wouldn’t take anything away from Motherkin, would you, Bob?”
“Not that way. I wouldn’t no quicker’n you would. But if I had a little ‘capital’ I could sell papers like the other kids do on Fourteenth Street an’ round.”
“Robert, you are not a ‘kid.’ You are a well-born boy. I thought you did sell papers, anyway, almost every day.”
“Fer the other fellers, that’s all. I don’t make my livin’. If I had enough I could make a pile.”
“Well, we’ll see. But those chrysanthemums. Think of the value. Forty times seventy-five cents! Forty times porterhouse steaks all round the family. About one hundred and twenty tip-top oyster stews. Potatoes, galore. Bread—bread enough to pave the street from here to Union Square. And six weeks’ rent. Think of it, ‘Humpty-Dumpty,’ and cease to wonder that I can hardly wait till daylight to set about the business. Will you help me?”
“Yep, if Mother’ll let me.”
“You blessed little stupid! Mother is not to know a word about it, till it is past forbidding. Else she has such peculiar ideas about politeness that she might stop us. If you do as I want, as well as you can, I’ll give you all you can make out of the best flower in the lot.”