al comedy lost his
last feather and the company broke up. The ponies trotted away and I
was left in the window ownerless. The janitor gave me to a refined
comedy team on the eighth floor, and in six weeks I had been set in the
window of five different flats I took on experience and put out two
more leaves.

Miss Carruthers, of the refined comedy team--did you ever see her cross
both feet back of her neck?--gave me to a friend of hers who had made
an unfortunate marriage with a man in a store. Consequently I was
placed in the window of a furnished room, rent in advance, water two
flights up, gas extra after ten o'clock at night. Two of my leaves
withered off here. Also, I was moved from one room to another so many
times that I got to liking the odor of the pipes the expressmen smoked.

I don't think I ever had so dull a time as I did with this lady. There
was never anything amusing going on inside--she was devoted to her
husband, and, besides leaning out the window and flirting with the
iceman, she never did a thing toward breaking the monotony.

When the couple broke up they left me with the rest of their goods at a
second-hand store. I was put out in front for sale along with the
jobbiest lot you ever heard of being lumped into one bargain. Think of
this little cornucopia of wonders, all for $1.89: Henry James's works,
six talking machine records, one pair of tennis shoes, two bottles of
horse radish, and a rubber plant--that was me!

One afternoon a girl came along and stopped to look at me. She had
dark hair and eyes, and she looked slim, and sad around the mouth.

"Oh, oh!" she says to herself. "I never thought to see one up here."

She pulls out a little purse about as thick as one of my leaves and
fingers over some small silver in it. Old Koen, always on the lockout,
is ready, rubbing his hands. This girl proceeds to turn down Mr. James
and the other commodities. Rubber plants or nothing is the burden of
her song. And at last Koen and she come together at 39 cents, and away
she goes with me in her arms.

She was a nice girl, but not my style. Too quiet and sober looking.
Thinks I to myself: "I'll just about land on the fire-escape of a
tenement, six stories up. And I'll spend the next six months looking
at clothes on the line."

But she carried me to a nice little room only three flights up in quite
a decent street. And she put me in the window, of course. And then
she went to work and