“Now, see here! Now, see here!” he cackled. “This won’t do at all, Widder—this won’t do at all! I want my money, and I want it prompt. And if you can’t pay your present rent prompt, how do you expect to pay it next month, when you must find three dollars more? Now, tell me that, Ma’am?”
“Really, Mr. Chumley! You are too bad,” complained Mrs. Morse. “I am so hard at work. You quite drive the ideas out of my head. I—I don’t know what train of thought I was following.”
Mr. Chumley snorted. “You’d better be huntin’ the advertisement columns of a newspaper for a job, Widder,” he said. “Them ‘trains of thought’ of yours won’t never carry you nowhere. I gotter have my money. How are you going to get it?”
“I have never failed to pay you heretofore, have I?” asked the lady, bringing out her handkerchief now. “I think this is too bad——”
“But I want money!”
“And you shall have it, I have considerable owing to me—oh, yes! a good deal more than sufficient to pay your rent, Mr. Chumley. You will get it.”
That was a very unsatisfactory interview for the landlord, and particularly so for Mrs. Morse. She complained when he had gone to Jess:
“Now, my day is just spoiled. I’m all at loose ends. It will cost me a day’s work. Really, Josephine, if only people wouldn’t nag me so for money!”
And Jess strove to shield her all that she could from such interviews. Mrs. Morse needed to live alone in a world with her brain-children. Meanwhile her flesh-and-blood child had to fight her battles with the landlord and tradesmen.
It was amid such sordid troubles that Jess evolved the idea for her play. The butterfly is born of the ugly chrysalis; out of this unlovely environment grew a pretty, idyllic comedy which, although crude in spots, and lacking the professional touch which makes a dramatic piece “easy acting,” really showed such promise that Mrs. Morse acclaimed its value loudly.