This behaviour on the part of his flowers rather troubled him. Sometimes he said to himself that it was because the soil was poor. Sometimes he believed it might be that the flowers were offended because he made mistakes about their names. I think myself it was simply because he was the kind of person to whom awkward things happen. You know, some people understand life so well that everything is always all right. Their clothes, their houses, their gardens, their fingernails, are always neat and well-attended. Their cars are shiny. Then there are other people to whom embarrassing things happen.
Whatever the reason, it was so. He was not clever at growing flowers. There were other things that grew round him plentifully. He was good at raising books, for instance. It was extraordinary. Every day or so a truck would drive up and leave books for him; he didn't even have to pay for them. It was all part of the magic. Books sprouted all round him. Also people who wanted to sell vacuum cleaners or real estate. And as for the telephone: if telephone calls had been flowers he would have had one of the finest gardens in the world.
But in his ragged garden he had done rather
