He was greatly pleased, also, by the number of
villas and small gardens that diversified the houses of business,
each with a painted summer-house over-topping the wall and a painted
motto on the gate. He longed to explore these gardens and take home
to Harwich some report of the famous Dutch tulip-beds on which
Captain Barker was perpetually descanting. A row of these
garden-walls enticed him down a street to the right and out towards
the suburbs, where the prospect at the end of the road was closed by
a long line of windmills.
All this while he had been sauntering along at the idlest pace, with
a score of pauses. Suddenly he bethought him that it must be time to
return, and was about to do so when his eye was caught by a little
shop on the other side of the road. He could not read the
inscription above it; but the window was crowded with bulbs and roots
of all kinds and bags of seed in small stacks. He crossed the road
and entered the low door, meaning to buy a present for Sophia, whom
for the last half an hour he had completely forgotten.
The proprietor of the shop sat inside behind a low counter, reading a
book by the light of a defective oil-lamp, the smoke of which had
smeared the rafters in a large, irregular circle.
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