“All joking aside, though, I really did have a frightful experience last winter,” she continued. “There was a sale of desirable household effects advertised to take place up at Blank's on West Forty-fifth Street and of course I went. I've spent so much of my time at Blank's these last few months I suppose people are beginning to think I live there. Well, anyway, I was one of the first arrivals and just as I got settled the auctioneer put up a basket; a huge, fiat, curious-looking, wickerwork affair, it was. You never in all your life saw such a basket! It was too big for a soiled-clothes hamper and besides wasn't the right shape. And it was too flat to store things in and it didn't have any top on it either. I suppose you would just call it a kind of a basket.
“Well, the man put it up and asked for bids on it, but nobody bid; and then the auctioneer looked right at me in an appealing sort of way—I feel that everybody connected with the shop is an old friend of mine by now, and especially the auctioneer—so when he looked in my direction with that yearning expression in his eye I bid a dollar just to start it off for him. And what do you think? Before you could say scat he'd knocked it down to me for a dollar. I just hate people who catch you up suddenly that way! It discouraged me so that after that the sale was practically spoiled for me. I didn't have the courage to bid on another thing the whole afternoon.
“When the sale was over I went back to the packing room to get a good look at what I'd bought. And, my dear, what do you suppose? I hadn't bought a single basket—that would have been bad enough—but no. I'd bought a job lot, comprising the original basket and its twin sister that was exactly like it, only homelier if anything, and on top of that an enormous square wooden box painted a bright green with a great lock fastening the lid down. That wretch of an auctioneer had deliberately taken a shameful advantage of me. How was I to know I was bidding in a whole wagonload of trash? Obtaining money under false pretenses, that's what I call it.
“Well, I stood aghast—or perhaps I should say I leaned aghast, because the shock was so great I felt I had to prop myself up against something. Why, the box alone must have weighed a hundred and fifty pounds. It didn't seem to be the sort of box you could put anything in either. It wouldn't do for a wood box or a coal box or a dog house or anything. It was just as useless as the baskets were, and they were nothing more nor less than two orders of willow-ware on the half shell. Even if they had been of any earthly use, what could I do with them in the tiny three-room apartment that we were occupying last winter? Isn't it perfectly shameful the way these auction-room people impose on the public? They don't make any exceptions either. Here was I, a regular customer, and just see what they had done to me, all because I'm so good-natured and sympathetic. I declare sometimes I'm ready to take a solemn oath I'll never do another favor for anybody so long as I live. It's the selfish ones who get along in this world!
“Well, when I realized what a scandalous trick had been played on me I was seized with a wild desire to get away. I decided I would try to slip out. But the manager had his eye on me. You know the rule they have: 'Claim all purchases and arrange for their removal before leaving premises, otherwise goods will be stored at owner's risk and cost.' And he called me back and told me my belongings were ready to be taken away and would I kindly get them out of the house at once because they took up so much room. Room? They took up all the room there was. You had to step into one of the baskets to get into the place and climb over the box to get out again.
“I asked him how I was going to get those things up to my address and he suggested a taxi. I told him I would just run out and find a taxi, meaning, of course, to forget to come back. But he told me not to bother because there was a taxi at the door that had been ordered to come for somebody else and then wasn't needed. And before I could think up any other excuse to escape he'd called the taxi driver in. And the taxi man took one look at my collection of junk and then he asked us if we thought he was driving a moving van or a Noah's ark and laughed in a low-bred way and went out.
“At that I had a faint ray of hope that maybe after all I might be saved, because I had made up my mind to tell the manager I would just step outside and arrange to hire a delivery wagon or something, and that would give me a chance to escape; but I think he must have suspected something from my manner because already he was calling in another taxi driver from off the street, and there I was, trapped. And the driver of the second taxi was more accommodating than the other one had been, though goodness knows his goodness of heart was no treat to me. I should have regarded it as a personal kindness on his part if he had behaved as the first driver had done. But no, nothing would do but that he must load that ghastly monstrosity of a box up alongside him on the rack where they carry trunks, and two of the packing-room men tied it on with ropes so it couldn't fall off and get lost. I suppose they thought by that they were doing me a favor! And then I got in the cab feeling like Marie Antoinette on her way to be beheaded, and they piled those two baskets in on top of me and the end of one of them stuck out so far that they couldn't get the door shut but had to leave it open. And then we rode home, only I didn't feel like Marie Antoinette any more; I felt like something that was being delivered in a crate and had come partly undone on the way.
“And when we got up to Eighty-ninth Street that bare-faced robber of a taxicab driver charged me two extra fares—just think of such things being permitted to go on in a city where the police are supposed to protect people! And then he unloaded all that mess on the sidewalk in front of the apartment house and drove off and left me there standing guard over it—probably the forlornest, most helpless object in all New York at that moment.
“I got one of the hallboys to call the janitor up from the basement and I asked him if he would be good enough to store my box and my two baskets in the storeroom where the tenants keep their trunks. And he said not on my life he wouldn't, because there wasn't any room to spare in the trunk room and then he asked me what I was going to do with all that truck anyway, and though it was none of his business I thought it would be tactful to make a polite answer and I told him I hadn't exactly decided yet and that I certainly would appreciate his kindness if he could just tuck my things away in some odd corner somewhere until I had fully made up my mind. While I was saying that I was giving him one of my most winning smiles, though it hurt like the toothache to smile under the circumstances and considering what I'd already been through.
“But all he said was: 'Huh, lady, you couldn't tuck them things away at Times Square and Forty-third Street and that's the biggest corner I knows of in this town.'