Mrs. Bent, who was a most perfect woman for a gardener’s wife, insisted on picking me a bunch of good and sweet flowers before I went away, and then, just as I was going, Mr. Bent’s brother-in-law walked past the gate and stopped to ask a horticultural question. He was a beginner, but such was Mr. Bent’s fire and genius in these matters that he inspired everybody with his own passion for the science and, as he truly said, no one could know him intimately without sooner or later becoming a gardener. I am sure I was full of enthusiastic joy about it after supper, and if my Aunt Augusta had had enough garden to grow a blade of grass, I should have planted one. Even as it was, I planned a box for bulbs and things during the next autumn. Mr. Bent’s brother-in-law happened to be going to the tobacconist’s, and he walked as far as the station with me after he had bought half a pound of coarse tobacco to fumigate his greenhouse, which was bursting with green-fly and other pests. Thus I heard the story of Mr. Bent’s little boy and the cocoanut chips for the fourth time, and it was rather instructive in its way to find how the fun of it had waned. In fact, such was my feeling to the story, that I didn’t even tell it to Aunt Augusta when I got home; though, coming fresh to her, it might have faintly amused her. As an example of the poem that I had written with Dicky Travers, I may here quote the verse upon Mr. Bent. It ran as follows: “A middle-aged wonder called Bent, Made the deuce of a garden in Kent, And his roses and lilies And daffadown dillies All helped with the gentleman’s rent.” Here, you see, was humour combined with satire. But the peculiarity of the poem held in the case of this verse, as it did in all the others. While everybody else thought it good, Mr. Bent considered it vulgar and didn’t like it in the least, because of the ironic allusion to raffles. He never asked me to see his garden again, though I entered for raffle after raffle of his choice exotics and once won four fine gardenias, at the ridiculous cost of a penny, and took them home to Aunt Augusta. VII In course of time Mr. Travers informed me that I was elected an active member of the L.A.C. These magic letters stand for the London Athletic Club, easily the most famous athletic club in the world. I had been there as one of the public on several occasions, and already knew by sight such giants of the arena as Phillips and George and Cowie and other most notable men, all historically famous. In fact George soon joined the professional ranks, as we say, and the day was coming when he would run a mile faster than anybody in the world had ever run it. The first time I went to Stamford Bridge it so happened that a most sad misfortune fell on my friend Dicky Travers.