ter. He does not believe this, but it is
the solemn truth. At those moments it was touch and go, whether I
watered his chrysanthemum or not. Where I lost myself was in not
hurrying to his rooms at once with a tumbler. I said to myself that I
would go when I had finished my pipe, but by that time the flower-pot
has escaped my memory. This may have been weakness; all I know is that
I should have saved myself much annoyance if I had risen and watered
the chrysanthemum there and then. But would it not have been rather
hard on me to have had to forsake my books for the sake of Gilray's
flowers and flower-pots and plants and things? What right has a man to
go and make a garden of his chambers?

All the three weeks he was away, Gilray kept pestering me with letters
about his chrysanthemum. He seemed to have no faith in me--a
detestable thing in a man who calls himself your friend. I had
promised to water his flower-pot; and between friends a promise is
surely sufficient. It is not so, however, when Gilray is one of them.
I soon hated the sight of my name in his handwriting. It was not as if
he said outright that he wrote entirely to know whether I was watering
his plant. His references to it were introduced with all the
appearance of after-thoughts. Often they took the form of postscripts:
"By the way, are you watering my chrysanthemum?" or, "The chrysanthemum
ought to be a beauty by this time;" or, "You must be quite an adept now
at watering plants." Gilray declares now that, in answer to one of
these ingenious epistles, I wrote to him saying that "I had just been
watering his chrysanthemum." My belief is that I did no such thing;
or, if I did, I meant to water it as soon as I had finished my letter.
He has never been able to bring this home to me, he says, because he
burned my correspondence. As if a business man would destroy such a
letter. It was yet more annoying when Gilray took to post-cards. To
hear the postman's knock and then discover, when you are expecting an
important communication, that it is only a post-card about a
flower-pot--that is really too bad. And then I consider that some of
the post-cards bordered upon insult. One of them said, "What about
chrysanthemum?--reply at once." This was just like Gilray's
overbearing way; but I answered politely, and so far as I knew,
truthfully, "Chrysanthemum all right."

Knowing that there was no explaining things to Gilray, I redoubled my
exertions