“That would have been the Chavica pertusum,” said Gafferson, thoughtfully. He seemed to rouse himself to an interest in the story itself with some difficulty. “Yes—I remember it,” he admitted, finally. “I shouldn't have known you though. I'm the worst in the world about remembering people. It seems to be growing on me. I notice that when I go up to London to the shows, I don't remember the men that I had the longest talks with the time before. Once you get wrapped up in your flowers, you've got no room in your head for anything else—that's the way of it.”
Thorpe considered him with a ruminating eye. “So this is the sort of thing you really like, eh? You'd rather be doing this, eh? than making your pile in logwood and mahogany out there, or floating a gold mine?” Gafferson answered quite simply: “I wasn't the kind to ever make a pile. I got led into going out there when I was a youngster, and there didn't seem to be any good in trying to get back, but I wasn't making more than a bare living when you were there, and after that I didn't even do that much. It took me a good many years to find out what my real fancy was. I hated my hotel and my store, but I was crazy about my garden. Finally an American gentleman came along one day, and he put up at my place, and he saw that I was as near ruined as they make 'em, and he says to me, 'You're no good to run a hotel, nor yet a store, and this aint your country for a cent. What you're born for is to grow flowers. You can't afford to do it here, because nobody'll pay you for it, but you gather up your seeds and roots and so on, and come along with me to Atlanta, Georgia, and I'll put fat on your bones.'
“That's what he said to me, and I took him at his word, and I was with him two years, and then I thought I'd like to come to England, and since then I've worked my way up here, till now I take a Royal Horticultural medal regular, and there's a clematis with salmon-coloured bars that'll be in the market next spring that's named after my master. And what could I ask more 'n that?”
“Quite right,” said Thorpe. “What time do they have breakfast here?”
The gardener's round, phlegmatic, florid countenance had taken on a mild glow of animation during his narrative. It relapsed into lethargy at the advent of this new topic.
“It seems to me they eat at all hours,” he said. “But if you want to see his Lordship,” he went on, considering, “about noon would be your best time.”
“See his Lordship!” repeated Thorpe, with an impatient grin. “Why I'm a guest here in the house. All I want is something to eat.”
“A guest,” Gafferson repeated in turn, slowly. There was nothing unpleasant in the intonation, and Thorpe's sharp glance failed to detect any trace of offensive intention in his companion's fatuous visage. Yet it seemed to pass between the two men that Gafferson was surprised, and that there were abundant grounds for his surprise.
“Why, yes,” said Thorpe, with as much nonchalance as he could summon, “your master is one of my directors. I've taken a fancy to him, and I'm going to make a rich man of him. He was keen about my seeing his place here, and kept urging me to come, and so finally I've got away over Sunday to oblige him. By the way—I shall buy an estate in the country as soon as the right thing offers, and I shall want to set up no end of gardens and greenhouses and all that. I see that I couldn't come to a better man than you for advice. I daresay I'll put the whole arrangement of it in your hands. You'd like that, wouldn't you?”
“Whatever his Lordship agrees to,” the gardener replied, sententiously. He turned to the staging, and took up one of the pots.