of your niggers were with me three or four days once,
up on the ridge beyond the Burnt Hills--why, you remember,
the nigger was from San Domingo, and he was forever
bragging about the San Domingo peppers, and saying those
on the mainland hadn't enough strength to make a baby
wrinkle his nose, and you found a pepper coming through
the swamp, and you tipped me the wink, and you handed
that pepper to the nigger, and it damned near killed him.
Hell! You must remember that!"

"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.