“More than one! What do you think of me, lad? If you were going to send a posy to a pretty little girl, would you send her a pitiful, solitary blossom? If you would you ought to be ashamed of yourself!”
The salesman laughed pleasantly, and awaited directions, which came promptly.
“Pick me out the prettiest and biggest basket you have in the shop. Then fill it with these artemisias—if there are enough. If not, finish out with white ones. She looked just like a pretty pink and white blossom herself, with her rosy cheeks and white teeth. And what eyes she had—did she not? Yes, yes; a big basket of posies is a small price to pay for old bones saved from breaking! It must be of the best.”
“How will this please you?” asked the attendant, showing a pretty willow affair, shaped like the baskets seen in old-fashioned “Annuals” as held by the hands of high-coiffured dames with sloping shoulders and simpering mouths.
Mr. Chidly Brook was charmed directly. “That’s it! That is just the very thing! Some of the good old notions have survived these silly later fashions, then? Glad to hear it! I am exceedingly glad to hear it. Now, young man, will you lend me a pen and paper, if you have such a thing handy?”
“Certainly. Will you, please, step to the desk?”
“Just to write a little note, you know. A sort of billet-doux, as we called them in the old days. I was a hand—I was a master hand at writing billet-doux then. Let me see. Number Blank, Second Avenue. A most aristocratic neighborhood, is it not?”
“Well—sir—I don’t know. It might be. It was once, they say. I—”
“Enough. I hate these eternal ‘was onces’! No matter. What will do for a home for that little girl must be a pretty sort of place any way. On our farm, my uncle’s, it was just above that grand street of millionaire residents— Fourteenth— What are you staring at, sir?”
“Nothing. Nothing whatever, beg pardon. But you must have known New York for many years. Fourteenth Street is now a synonym for a street of cheap lodging-houses and such; that is, the resident portion. The business part is fine enough. It will take about forty-three or five chrysanthemums to fill this basket. But we have smaller ones, sir, of the same shape. Will you look at them?”