ver it: "Well, Mr. Eichenlaub. I am going to be very
difficult."

_The Florist:_ "That is what I lige. Then I don't feel so rhesbonsible."

_The Lady:_ "But to-day, I _wish_ you to feel responsible. I want you to
take the whole responsibility. Do you know why I always come to you,
instead of those places on Fifth Avenue?"

_The Florist:_ "Well, it is a good teal cheaper, for one thing"--

_The Lady:_ "Not at all! That isn't the reason, at all. Some of your
things are dearer. It's because you take so much more interest, and you
talk over what I want, and you don't urge me, when I haven't made up my
mind. You let me consult you, and you are not cross when I don't take
your advice."

_The Florist:_ "You are very goodt, matam."

_The Lady:_ "Not at all. I am simply just. And now I want you to provide
the flowers for my first Saturday: Saturday of this week, in fact, and I
want to talk the order all over with you. Are you very busy?"

_The Florist:_ "No; I am qvite at your service. We haf just had to
egsegute a larche gommission very soddenly, and we are still in a little
dtisorter yet; but"--

_The Lady:_ "Yes, I see." She glances at the rear of the shop, where
the floor is littered with the leaves and petals of flowers, and sprays
of fern and evergreen. A woman, followed by a belated smell of
breakfast, which gradually mingles with the odor of the plants, comes
out of a door there, and begins to gather the larger fragments into her
apron. The lady turns again, and looks at the jars and vases of cut
flowers in the window, and on the counter. "What I can't understand is
how you know just the quantity of flowers to buy every day. You must
often lose a good deal."

_The Florist:_ "It gomes out about rhighdt, nearly always. When I get
left, sometimes, I can chenerally work dem off on funerals. Now, that
bic orter hat I just fill, that wass a funeral. It usedt up all the
flowers I hat ofer from yesterday."

_The Lady:_ "Don't speak of it! And the flowers, are they just the same
for funerals?"

_The Florist:_ "Yes, rhoces nearly always. Whidte ones."

_The Lady:_ "Well, it is too dreadful. I am not going to have roses,
whatever I have." After a thoughtful pause, and a more careful look
around the shop: "Mr. Eichenlaub, why wouldn't orchids do?"

_The Florist:_ "Well, they would be bretty dtear. You couldn't make any
show at all for less than fifteen tollars."

_The Lady_, with a slight sigh: "No, orchids wouldn't