“I want two more bunches,” she said. “How much are they?”
“Are the girls who want them dark or fair?”
“What difference does that make?”
“I have blue violets for blondes, yellow for brunettes, and white for the others.”
“Well I never! One is fair, and two have brown hair and blue eyes.”
“One blue and two whites,” said the Harvester calmly, as if matching women's hair and eyes with flowers were an inherited vocation. “They are twenty cents a bunch.”
“Aha!” he chortled to himself as he whistled to Betsy. “At last we have it. There are no dark-eyed girls here. Now we are making headway.”
Down the street he went, with varying fortune, but with patience and persistence at every house he at last managed to learn whether there was a dark-eyed girl. There did not seem to be many. Long before his store of yellow violets was gone the last blue and white had disappeared. But he calmly went on asking for dark-eyed girls, and explaining that all the blue and white were taken, because fair women were most numerous.
At one house the owner, who reminded the Harvester of his mother, came to the door. He uncovered and in his suavest tones inquired if a brunette young woman lived there and if she would like a nosegay of yellow violets.
“Well bless my soul!” cried she. “What is this world coming to? Do you mean to tell me that there are now able-bodied men offering at our doors, flowers to match our girls' complexions?”