cooked dinner for herself. And what do you
suppose she had? Bread and tea and a little dab of jam! Nothing else.
Not a single lobster, nor so much as one bottle of champagne. The
Carruthers comedy team had both every evening, except now and then when
they took a notion for pig's knuckle and kraut.

After she had finished her dinner my new owner came to the window and
leaned down close to my leaves and cried softly to herself for a while.
It made me feel funny. I never knew anybody to cry that way over a
rubber plant before. Of course, I've seen a few of 'em turn on the
tears for what they could get out of it, but she seemed to be crying
just for the pure enjoyment of it. She touched my leaves like she
loved 'em, and she bent down her head and kissed each one of 'em. I
guess I'm about the toughest specimen of a peripatetic orchid on earth,
but I tell you it made me feel sort of queer. Home never was like that
to me before. Generally I used to get chewed by poodles and have
shirt-waists hung on me to dry, and get watered with coffee grounds and
peroxide of hydrogen.

This girl had a piano in the room, and she used to disturb it with both
hands while she made noises with her mouth for hours at a time. I
suppose she was practising vocal music.

One day she seemed very much excited and kept looking at the clock. At
eleven somebody knocked and she let in a stout, dark man with towsled
black hair. He sat down at once at the piano and played while she sang
for him. When she finished she laid one hand on her bosom and looked
at him. He shook his head, and she leaned against the piano. "Two
years already," she said, speaking slowly--"do you think in two
more--or even longer?"

The man shook his head again. "You waste your time," he said, roughly
I thought. "The voice is not there." And then he looked at her in a
peculiar way. "But the voice is not everything," he went on. "You
have looks. I can place you, as I told you if--"

The girl pointed to the door without saying anything, and the dark man
left the room. And then she came over and cried around me again. It's
a good thing I had enough rubber in me to be water-proof.

About that time somebody else knocked at the door. "Thank goodness," I
said to myself. "Here's a chance to get the water-works turned off. I
hope it's somebody that's game enough to stand a bird and a bottle to
liven things up a little." Tell you the truth, this little girl made
me