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Updated: May 6, 2025
He returned to London and told every one how he found us. I admit we were not prepared to receive company. The house-boat consisted of five apartments a saloon, three bedrooms, and a kitchen. When he boarded us we were distributed as follows: I sat smoking in the saloon, Marriot sat smoking in the first bedroom, Gilray in the second, Jimmy in the third, and Scrymgeour in the kitchen.
We had Ho-garth, and Bunbury, and George Cruikshank, and Gilray; we had Leech and Surtees, and the creator of Tittlebat Titmouse; we had the Shepherd of the 'Noctes, and, above all, we had you.
"The clerk says that Mr. Gilray was away and that he did not like to open them." "Just like him!" said Girdlestone, peevishly pushing back his plate of soup. "I hate doing business out of hours." He tore the envelopes off the various letters as he spoke. "What's this? Casks returned as per invoice; that's all right. Memorandum on the Custom duties at Sierra Leone. Hallo! what have we here?
"Standing there smoking in the moonlight," the authoress says in her next chapter, "De Courcy was a strangely romantic figure. He looked like a man who had done everything, who had been through the furnace and had not come out of it unscathed." This was precisely what Gilray wanted to look like. Again he hesitated, and then put his pipe in his pocket.
One reads of men doing such things for young ladies who seek lilies in dangerous ponds or edelweiss on overhanging cliffs. But Gilray was not my sweetheart, nor, I feel certain, any other person's. I come now to the day prior to Gilray's return. I had just reached the office when I remembered about the chrysanthemum. It was my last chance.
With this profound ethnological remark Mr. Gilray bobbed himself out of the room and went back radiantly to his ink-stained desk. "Look at that," the old man said, when the click of the outer door showed that the clerk was out of ear-shot. "Over five thousand profit in a month. Is it not terrible that such a business should go to ruin? What a fortune it would have been for you!"
Marriot and Gilray and Scrymgeour signed to Jimmy, as if some plan of action had been arranged, and Jimmy said huskily, sitting upon the hearth-rug: "Pettigrew isn't coming. He was afraid he would break down." Then we began to smoke. It was as yet too early in the night for my last pipe, but soon I regretted that I had not arranged to spend this night alone.
No doubt I readily promised to attend to it, but Gilray deceived me by speaking as if the watering of a plant was the merest pastime. He had to leave London for a short provincial tour, and, as I see now, took advantage of my good nature. He said that you got into the way of watering a flower-pot regularly just as you wind up your watch. That certainly is not the case.
I have no objection, John, as you are an old servant of the firm, to giving you the preference in this matter. I cannot take more than fourteen hundred but I shall be happy to accommodate you up to that sum at the rate named." John Gilray was overwhelmed by this thoughtful and considerate act. "It is really too generous and kind, sir," he said. "I don't know how to thank you."
My plan was to run downstairs immediately after dinner every evening and give it a thorough watering. One thing or another, however, came in the way. I often remembered about the chrysanthemum while I was in the office; but even Gilray could hardly have expected me to ask leave of absence merely to run home and water his plant. You must draw the line somewhere, even in a government office.
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