“Can’t sell? Why not?”
“Well, it’s quite a story, Rus. He confided it to me one morning almost with tears in his eyes. You see—”
“You mean to tell me that Mr. Pulsifer talked to you?”
“Of course! Why not? Oh, I see what you mean. Yes, he is inclined to be a bit taciturn, but he will talk if you prod him. We didn’t mix much at first, but I treated him kindly and now we’re quite thick. Funny old guy, but human underneath. You see, Rus, he’s a man with a secret sorrow.”
“What’s his sorrow?”
“Here’s the yarn. It seems that he had an aunt who ran a sort of a florist’s establishment in connection with her home. She was fond of flowers and started in selling them to the neighbors. Then other folks came—there wasn’t any other florist around then—and so she built a greenhouse and, first thing she knew, had quite a trade. That was quite a while back, though, before the town was as big as it is. Of course she had competition finally and her business sort of petered out. But she didn’t give up. Instead, she died. And when she died she left the place, quite a big piece of ground with a nice house on it, to J. Warren on condition that he continue the business.
“Well, J. Warren, according to what he didn’t say, was on his uppers about then. He had married and the old sock was full of nothing much but holes. He had some sort of a job with the railway, he said. So he moved to the auntcestral home—rather good, what?—and turned himself into a florist. But folks didn’t come that far any more, for there were other florists in town here, and pretty soon the business was on its last legs. J. Warren was willing enough to let it die, for, as he said, he hated messing around with flowers and didn’t know a—a sunflower from a violet when he started. But he had a feeling that he wasn’t carrying out the terms of the will, as the lawyer chaps say, without making another struggle. So he opened up this place, stopped raising flowers and bought them instead. By that time he had sold off three or four pieces of the land for house-lots and, I fancy, had plenty of money. This place has never paid. He’s lost money every year. He’d like nothing better than quit, but he’s got an enlarged conscience, you see, and there’s the will and dear old Auntie’s dying command! What he really wants to do is go home and shut himself up in a third-floor room and work on an invention of his; something to do with train signals, as near as I could make out.”
“Still, I don’t see why he can’t sell the business.”
“Conscience, dear boy. Auntie wanted him to continue the business. She didn’t say for how long, and there’s the joker. J. Warren dopes it out that just as long as there’s any business to continue it’s up to him to continue it. And he plays fair, too. He advertises and tries to keep the thing going. But he’s set himself a limit. When the losses reach a certain figure—he didn’t tell me what—he will consider that he’s done his duty and close up shop. I thought at first, when I saw him figuring and figuring there at that little desk of his, that he was worried about business and was trying to make out whether he could make ends meet. But he wasn’t, Rus. He was figuring how much longer he’d have to keep things going. Haven’t you ever noticed how he always frowns and looks dejected if some one comes and wants to buy anything? Sure! Every purchase sets him back just so much. Every time there’s a funeral he figures that the time when he can shut himself up in that third-floor room is delayed another two or three days. You ought to hear him talk about the doctors in this town! He says they’re a lot of ‘nincompoops’—whatever that is—and that the mortality here is disgraceful. And he’s as keen as anything for the bill in the legislature that makes Armistice Day a state holiday. J. Warren believes in holidays, lots of ’em. The more holidays the less business, and the less business the sooner the florist establishment of J. Warren Pulsifer gets its death blow and J. Warren grabs a screw-driver and a cold chisel and goes back to inventing!”
“Now,” said Russell, laughing, “I know why he was so funny about renting that half of the store to us. One moment he’d be all scowls and the next quite willing!”