'Did I?' he stammered. 'I beg your pardon—hers, I mean. I must have been dreaming. I couldn't sleep last night, General, and——'
Now, a confession was the very last thing the General desired. He broke in hastily:
'All right, my dear fellow, all right. I mustn't be too down upon you. It was a tremendous piece of news that you received last night, quite enough to set a young man's wits wool-gathering. But take it quietly, if you can. In six months, if I know human nature, you will be so much accustomed to it that you will feel as if you had been rich all your life.'
'But it isn't the riches,' began poor Tom, tremulously. 'It is——'
'Yes, yes. I understand. The change—prodigious, as you say. Now don't talk any more. Go home like a sensible fellow and have a good sleep.'
'If I might have a little conversation with you first, sir——'
'Impossible, my dear boy. Quite out of the question. Look at these'—pointing to the pot-plants—roses and geraniums and fuchsias and lilacs, which Yaseen Khan and the gardener were bringing down in batches and placing beside the river—'all to be seen to before the sun rises.'
'I shall not be long. I only want to ask you a single question.'
'But how long will it take to answer? No, no; I am not going to be betrayed into an argument. It takes all one's wit, I can tell you, to deal with one's plants.'
As the General talked he worked. He had thrown off his coat and tucked up his shirt-sleeves, and lighted a small briarwood pipe, and he was moving about briskly among the plants, watering them, syringing them, washing blight off their foliage, loosening the earth about their roots, and drenching them with tobacco-smoke.