A bedraggled looking person entered the café, clutching awkwardly a dozen or more cut roses. He passed from table to table and offered them for sale. The price was ridiculously small.
It seemed strange to me that Simonoff's face should turn so white. His manner suggested great agitation. When the peddler reached him, Simonoff purchased the entire stock and gave him in payment far in excess of the amount asked. The happy vender directed one searching glance at him, then went out whistling.
"What will you do with all those roses?" I asked.
"Give them away," he answered, "to the dirtiest, most woebegone, most forlorn little children I can find. I shall do this in memory of John Keats."
I looked my astonishment.
"'A thing of beauty is a joy forever,'" Simonoff intoned dreamily. "But there's a story connected with it."
"I suspected it," I said quietly. "When a school teacher consents to part with a perfectly good dollar for a dozen wilted roses, there must be an esoteric reason."
"Materialist," he laughed.
The dancing and the scurry of pattering feet had both ceased. The sounds of the night were now more soothing, more harmoniously blended. The earliest arrivals of the theatre crowd were besieging the sidewalk ticket office of the burlesque house opposite. Simonoff launched into his narrative.
I was sitting here one evening all alone. The day had been particularly trying. I had been visited by my district superintendent, a perfect paragon of stupidity. He had squatted in my class room until I wished him and his bulk on the other side of the Styx. When it was all over I came here, glad to shake off the chalk dust and the pompous inconsequence of my official superior. Suddenly I was startled out of my brooding.