suaded me to come into her room, which was warmer and sunny. It was a poor room, but it had three windows fronting south and on the street, and these windows were filled with plants, and I liked to watch the leaves grow and the flowers expand. Theresa was proud of her plants, and she liked to talk to me of them. She was a Polish Jewess, dark-eyed, pale, and with a severe cough. No one could have been poorer than she, often she had nothing to eat, and I have known her to buy coal rather than bread, because if her fire went out her plants might freeze. She earned what support she had by sewing for a tailor, but the motion of the machine was too hard for one so weak, and two days' labor would often make her ill in bed as many more. Yet she never complained, but was cheery, and often talked of what she should do when she was well again. She had wit, and vigor of expression, and had been educated: so, as we were women who were poor and in trouble, we came to be friends. And after a little I too became a sewing-woman, and helped Theresa, and she became better, and could do more, because I used the machine, and she did the hand-work only. After a time it angered me to work for such wages as we received, and I found some that paid us better, and then we became sure of both food and fire. We had long talks together, but never of our troubles. Theresa told me of her life in Poland, and much of a year she spent in London, and I used to repeat poems to her, and sometimes—for I had voice enough to please her well—I would sing, because it seemed to rest her to hear me. Once I repeated Mrs. Browning's "He giveth His Beloved Sleep," but she asked me never to say it again. I think it made her life seem even harder to her. But nothing pleased Theresa as much as her flowers; and when her great oleander bloomed in December, just before Christmas, she was proud and elated indeed. Everybody in the house came in to see it, and it seemed to make them all happy. And I picked a flower from it and laid it against some leaves of her rose-geranium.
"See, Theresa," said I, "a man would be proud to wear this, or to carry it to a lady, and you could get a good deal of money for your blossoms. I will early to-morrow morning tie up twenty or thirty little posies, and old Bridget Lane will sell them for you, I know. She never has anything but coarse pins and evil-smelling soap in her basket, but she always chooses the fashionable promenade in which to look for custom, and I am sure she will be glad to brighten her stock and to sell them for very little commission."
"Twenty or thirty!" cried Theresa. "Why, you would take all I have on the tree!"
"Oh, no," said I. "There would be some left for the next day."
"But I could not sell them!"
All in vain were my arguments. Theresa refused to think of either wine or medicine in exchange for her flowers, and so they bloomed and faded on the tree. But later—after Christmas—a baby died in the house, and there was no money to buy flowers for it, and then Theresa cut off every leaf from her rose-geranium and left it perfectly bare, and she, herself, covered the little one with their green fragrance.
When I look back on that part of my life it seems as if it might
