Page:Yiddish Tales.djvu/374

 370 S. LIBIN

When the flowers began to come out, I used to sit there for hours, and could never look at it enough. The roses appeared to be dreaming with their great golden eyes wide open. The cucumbers lay along the ground like pussy-cats, and the stalks and leaves spread ever so far across the beds. The beans fought for room like street urchins, and the pumpkins and the potatoes you should have seen them! And the flow- ers were all colors pink and blue and yellow, and 1 felt as if everything were alive, as if the whole garden were alive I fancied I heard them talking together, the roses, the potatoes, the beans. I spent whole evenings in my garden. It was dear to me as my own soul. Look, look, look, don't the roses seem as if they were alive?"

But I looked at Manasseh, and thought the con- sumptive workman had grown younger and healthier. His face was less livid, and his eyes shone with happi- ness.

"Do you know," said Manasseh to me, as we walked away from the garden, "I had some cuttings of rose- trees at home, in a basket out on the fire-escape, and they had begun to bud."

There was a pause.

"Well," I inquired, "and what happened?"

"My wife laid out the mattress to air on the top of the basket, and they were all crushed."

Manasseh made on outward gesture with his hand, and I asked no more questions.

The poky, stuffy shop in which he worked came into my mind, and my heart was sore for him.