of Twenty-Second Street, when the avenue was most crowded with people; and there in a few hours on Sunday I would often make more money than I could make in all the other days of the week put together. I don't know why, but people seem less unwilling to part with their money on Sunday than on other days. They don't stop half so long to make up their minds, they don't put on half such a surprised look when you tell them the price, on Sunday as they do on Monday. Well, I was going to say, one Sunday in October—this was when I was fifteen, and he had been sick three years,—a wonderful, soft, sunny day, that this day reminds me of—I was there as usual, on my corner, when Ah, now I have reached the real beginning! That Sunday in October was the real beginning. I have talked all this time, wasted all this breath, and only now reached the beginning. You must let me rest a little, to get strength and courage to go on. . . .
Yes, courage. I need courage to tell you about that Sunday. When I think of it, when I remember it, there is such a wild, hot pain here in my breast, there is such a quick, hard beating of the blood here in my temples, that—that it is not easy to speak about it quietly and slowly, as you wish me to. It is not easy to speak about it at all. When I think of it, what I want to do is not to speak, but to cry out,—just as you would want to cry out if you had fire in your heart. And yet I must speak about it, because that was the very beginning of what is ending now.
What happened on that Sunday, when it happened, gave me no such pain, no such strange, strong feeling, as I have now in recalling it; for, when it happened, had I any idea of what it would lead to? of what its end would be? What happened was simply this.
It was after one, nearly two, o'clock. The crowd had dwindled. Not many people were going by now. I had done well,—had only one buttonhole-bouquet left unsold. That was just a single red rose and a geranium-leaf. I said to myself, "I will wait till five more people have passed. Then, if no one buys, I'll stick this red rose in my hair, and go home." So I turned to count the wayfarers. One—two—three—four went by. Now for the fifth. The fifth was a long while coming. I got impatient. Why hadn't I said four? Why should I wait for this fifth? What likelihood that the fifth would buy? I was tired: I had been standing there ever since ten o'clock,—nearly four hours, standing at the same spot. Besides, I had done so well that I thought I could afford to keep this one rose for myself. It was such a sweet rose; and I knew that the deep red color of it would show finely in my black hair.—Well, so I stood, looking at it, and coveting it, when, all unnoticed by me, the fifth person came, and stopped, and spoke.
